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Editorial: Why Does the NSA Engage in Mass Surveillance of Americans When It's Statistically Impossible for Such Spying to Detect Terrorists?
By FLOYD RUDMIN
May 24, 2006
The Bush administration and the National Security Agency (NSA) have been secretly monitoring the email messages and phone calls of all Americans. They are doing this, they say, for our own good. To find terrorists. Many people have criticized NSA's domestic spying as unlawful invasion of privacy, as search without search warrant, as abuse of power, as misuse of the NSA's resources, as unConstitutional, as something the communists would do, something very unAmerican.
In addition, however, mass surveillance of an entire population cannot find terrorists. It is a probabilistic impossibility. It cannot work.
What is the probability that people are terrorists given that NSA's mass surveillance identifies them as terrorists? If the probability is zero (p=0.00), then they certainly are not terrorists, and NSA was wasting resources and damaging the lives of innocent citizens. If the probability is one (p=1.00), then they definitely are terrorists, and NSA has saved the day. If the probability is fifty-fifty (p=0.50), that is the same as guessing the flip of a coin. The conditional probability that people are terrorists given that the NSA surveillance system says they are, that had better be very near to one (p_1.00) and very far from zero (p=0.00).
The mathematics of conditional probability were figured out by the Scottish logician Thomas Bayes. If you Google "Bayes' Theorem", you will get more than a million hits. Bayes' Theorem is taught in all elementary statistics classes. Everyone at NSA certainly knows Bayes' Theorem.
To know if mass surveillance will work, Bayes' theorem requires three estimations:
1) The base-rate for terrorists, i.e. what proportion of the population are terrorists.
2) The accuracy rate, i.e., the probability that real terrorists will be identified by NSA;
3) The misidentification rate, i.e., the probability that innocent citizens will be misidentified by NSA as terrorists.
No matter how sophisticated and super-duper are NSA's methods for identifying terrorists, no matter how big and fast are NSA's computers, NSA's accuracy rate will never be 100% and their misidentification rate will never be 0%. That fact, plus the extremely low base-rate for terrorists, means it is logically impossible for mass surveillance to be an effective way to find terrorists.
I will not put Bayes' computational formula here. It is available in all elementary statistics books and is on the web should any readers be interested. But I will compute some conditional probabilities that people are terrorists given that NSA's system of mass surveillance identifies them to be terrorists.
The US Census shows that there are about 300 million people living in the USA.
Suppose that there are 1,000 terrorists there as well, which is probably a high estimate. The base-rate would be 1 terrorist per 300,000 people. In percentages, that is .00033% which is way less than 1%. Suppose that NSA surveillance has an accuracy rate of .40, which means that 40% of real terrorists in the USA will be identified by NSA's monitoring of everyone's email and phone calls. This is probably a high estimate, considering that terrorists are doing their best to avoid detection. There is no evidence thus far that NSA has been so successful at finding terrorists. And suppose NSA's misidentification rate is .0001, which means that .01% of innocent people will be misidentified as terrorists, at least until they are investigated, detained and interrogated. Note that .01% of the US population is 30,000 people. With these suppositions, then the probability that people are terrorists given that NSA's system of surveillance identifies them as terrorists is only p=0.0132, which is near zero, very far from one. Ergo, NSA's surveillance system is useless for finding terrorists.
Suppose that NSA's system is more accurate than .40, let's say, .70, which means that 70% of terrorists in the USA will be found by mass monitoring of phone calls and email messages. Then, by Bayes' Theorem, the probability that a person is a terrorist if targeted by NSA is still only p=0.0228, which is near zero, far from one, and useless.
Suppose that NSA's system is really, really, really good, really, really good, with an accuracy rate of .90, and a misidentification rate of .00001, which means that only 3,000 innocent people are misidentified as terrorists. With these suppositions, then the probability that people are terrorists given that NSA's system of surveillance identifies them as terrorists is only p=0.2308, which is far from one and well below flipping a coin. NSA's domestic monitoring of everyone's email and phone calls is useless for finding terrorists.
NSA knows this. Bayes' Theorem is elementary common knowledge. So, why does NSA spy on Americans knowing it's not possible to find terrorists that way? Mass surveillance of the entire population is logically sensible only if there is a higher base-rate. Higher base-rates arise from two lines of thought, neither of them very nice:
1) McCarthy-type national paranoia;
2) political espionage.
The whole NSA domestic spying program will seem to work well, will seem logical and possible, if you are paranoid. Instead of presuming there are 1,000 terrorists in the USA, presume there are 1 million terrorists. Americans have gone paranoid before, for example, during the McCarthyism era of the 1950s. Imagining a million terrorists in America puts the base-rate at .00333, and now the probability that a person is a terrorist given that NSA's system identifies them is p=.99, which is near certainty. But only if you are paranoid. If NSA's surveillance requires a presumption of a million terrorists, and if in fact there are only 100 or only 10, then a lot of innocent people are going to be misidentified and confidently mislabeled as terrorists.
The ratio of real terrorists to innocent people in the prison camps of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and Kandahar shows that the US is paranoid and is not bothered by mistaken identifications of innocent people. The ratio of real terrorists to innocent people on Bush's no-fly lists shows that the Bush administration is not bothered by mistaken identifications of innocent Americans.
Also, mass surveillance of the entire population is logically plausible if NSA's domestic spying is not looking for terrorists, but looking for something else, something that is not so rare as terrorists. For example, the May 19 Fox News opinion poll of 900 registered voters found that 30% dislike the Bush administration so much they want him impeached. If NSA were monitoring email and phone calls to identify pro-impeachment people, and if the accuracy rate were .90 and the error rate were .01, then the probability that people are pro-impeachment given that NSA surveillance system identified them as such, would be p=.98, which is coming close to certainty (p_1.00). Mass surveillance by NSA of all Americans' phone calls and emails would be very effective for domestic political intelligence.
But finding a few terrorists by mass surveillance of the phone calls and email messages of 300 million Americans is mathematically impossible, and NSA certainly knows that.
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Editorial: Bush's Garroting of Democracy
By Robert Parry
May 24, 2006
On May 21, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told ABC's "This Week" that news organizations like the New York Times could be prosecuted for publishing classified information about the "war on terror," such as the disclosure of Bush's secret program of warrantless wiretapping inside the United States.
The night before that TV interview, the FBI conducted an extraordinary raid on the Capitol Hill office of Democratic Rep. William J. Jefferson of Louisiana as part of a bribery investigation, raising bipartisan concerns about the Executive Branch trampling congressional rights and intimidating members of Congress.
"The actions of the Justice Department in seeking and executing this warrant raise important Constitutional issues that go well beyond the specifics of this case," House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said in a statement.
"Insofar as I am aware, since the founding of our Republic 219 years ago, the Justice Department has never found it necessary to do what it did Saturday night crossing this Separations of Powers line, in order to successfully prosecute corruption by members of Congress," Hastert said. [Washington Post, May 23, 2006]
The FBI appears to have strong evidence against Jefferson - including allegedly finding $90,000 in bribe money hidden in his home freezer - but the Capitol Hill raid sent a message that the President and his Attorney General will cross any line when dealing with allegations of wrongdoing that might apply to members of Congress from both parties.
The implicit chilling effect on congressmen and senators, who might otherwise consider holding Bush accountable for his own abuses, could not be missed.
Gonzales delivered a similar warning to the news media, that the administration is dusting off the 89-year-old Espionage Act as a legal justification for prosecuting journalists and their sources when stories appear citing classified information, such as the New York Times article about Bush authorizing wiretaps of some American communications without court warrants.
"We are engaged now in an investigation about what would be the appropriate course of action in that particular case, so I'm not going to talk about it specifically," Gonzales said. But he cited "some statutes on the book which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility."
Though Gonzales did not mention a specific statute, he apparently was referring to the Espionage Act, which was passed in 1917 during World War I and bars an unauthorized person from receiving defense information and passing it on to others.
The rarely used statute generally has been interpreted as applying to spies for other nations, but the Justice Department is relying on it to prosecute two ex-lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee who received classified information from a Defense Department employee, who has pleaded guilty and got a 12-year sentence.
Besides the Times wiretap story in December 2005, administration officials have complained about a Washington Post story on secret overseas CIA prisons where suspected terrorists are allegedly tortured and about a USA Today story about a Bush-approved plan to build a vast database of phone calls in the United States.
While some experts doubt the administration would bring Espionage Act charges against journalists, it appears the Justice Department at least will examine phone records of reporters involved in the stories as part of investigations to identify government leakers.
Plame Case
Even if not prosecuted directly, journalists could face jail time if they are hauled before grand juries and refuse to identify their sources.
Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald used that hardball tactic in the investigation of who leaked the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame, a probe that has revealed that the leak was part of a "concerted" White House effort to "discredit, punish or seek revenge against" Plame's husband and Iraq War critic, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
Fitzgerald sent New York Times reporter Judith Miller to jail for 85 days on contempt charges until she relented and agreed to testify about one of her sources on Plame's identity, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff I. Lewis Libby.
In October 2005, Fitzgerald indicted Libby on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to federal investigators. Court filings also have connected Cheney and Bush at least to the broader White House effort to release classified information to counter Wilson's accusation that the administration "twisted" intelligence to justify the Iraq War.
Though the Plame Affair has revealed the White House leaking a sensitive secret - the identity of an undercover CIA officer - the Bush administration is now turning the case to its own advantage, as a precedent to go after reporters and sources who reveal possible criminal actions by Bush, such as the warrantless wiretaps and the torture of detainees.
Bush and his supporters have claimed that disclosure of the warrantless wiretaps did serious damage to U.S. national security by alerting al-Qaeda and other terrorists to the U.S. capability to electronically intercept communications.
However, skeptics of this argument cite evidence that al-Qaeda has long been aware that its phone calls were targeted by U.S. electronic surveillance. Even Gonzales conceded that point under questioning before the Senate Judiciary Committee in February 2006. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Torture Boy Signals More Spying."]
As for the secret "black site" prisons where torture allegedly occurred, administration officials say the Washington Post article makes it less likely that U.S. allies will cooperate with such projects in the future - even though the Post withheld the names of East European countries where the prisons were located.
'Plenary' Powers
Though it's arguable whether "secrets" like the U.S. capability to do electronic spying are really secrets, the Bush administration apparently has decided to use their disclosure to advance a broader strategy for building an authoritarian system inside the United States.
In defending the warrantless wiretaps earlier this year, Gonzales and other administration lawyers asserted that the "war on terror" justified Bush using his "plenary" - or unlimited - powers as Commander in Chief to override laws and constitutional safeguards.
Bush also has claimed that he has powers as the "unitary executive," meaning that he alone can decide what laws and regulations to enforce. Through so-called "signing statements," Bush has announced that he has the authority to ignore hundreds of laws, including many that he's signed.
For instance, after evidence surfaced about abuse of detainees in U.S. custody, Congress enacted a law in December 2005 barring degrading and inhumane treatment of these terrorism suspects. After first opposing the legislation, Bush signed the law, but he then declared in a "signing statement" that he would not be bound by the law.
A similar theory applies to Bush's claim to "plenary" powers, which supposedly let him as Commander in Chief brush aside constitutional provisions, including the Fourth Amendment requirement of a court warrant based on "probable cause" to justify government searches and the constitutional right to habeas corpus, a fair trial.
In regard to national security wiretaps, the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act also spells out procedures for the Executive to obtain secret warrants for eavesdropping on the communications of suspected enemy agents.
Though the FISA law even lets the Executive start the wiretaps before seeking a court warrant, Bush not only ignored those provisions but lied to the American people about his continued need to get warrants. In a speech in Buffalo, N.Y., on April 20, 2004 - more than two years after signing an order for warrantless wiretaps - Bush said:
"By the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires - a wiretap requires a court order," Bush said. "Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."
Later that year, before Election 2004, Bush managed to keep his new authority - and his lie - hidden by persuading the New York Times to withhold the warrantless-wiretap story. Only after the Times finally ran the article on Dec. 16, 2005, did Bush admit that he had authorized wiretaps without a court order.
Under his "plenary" powers, Bush also has asserted the right to jail without trial people he calls "enemy combatants," including U.S. citizens. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com's "Bush's Grimmer Vision" and "The End of Unalienable Rights."]
Presidential Excesses
While Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and other previous presidents have used lies and claims of national security to conceal embarrassing or controversial decisions before, Bush may have gone further than any of his predecessors in institutionalizing these powers.
By mixing in his control over government secrecy - with the "plenary" powers and the concept of "unitary executive" - Bush also is extending to himself the power to limit the free press and thus manage what Americans see and hear.
The administration's position seems to be that if Bush classifies his abrogation of laws and the Constitution - as in warrantless spying on Americans and torturing detainees - he can then have his Justice Department investigate, prosecute and jail the whistleblowers who expose these controversies.
As part of this trend, the Bush administration also has moved to reclassify historical information previously released and stored at the National Archives. Plus, his CIA has clamped down on what former CIA officials can write and the FBI is even trying to seize old documents from the estate of the late investigative reporter Jack Anderson.
In what could be almost an enunciation of an Official Secrets Act, FBI spokesman Bill Carter declared about the Anderson case, "no private person may possess classified documents that were illegally provided to them." [NYT, April 30, 2006]
While that prohibition may seem reasonable to some Americans, the clinker is that Bush gets to decide what is secret and what isn't, which means that he can make selective disclosures of sensitive information to help himself and punish the exposure of innocuous secrets that might embarrass him.
In the ABC-TV interview, Gonzales made clear that the administration believes government secrecy supercedes the First Amendment.
"I understand very much the role that the press plays in our society, the protection under the First Amendment we want to promote and respect," Gonzales said, "but it can't be the case that that right trumps over the right that Americans would like to see, the ability of the federal government to go after criminal activity. ... We have an obligation to enforce the law and to prosecute those who engage in criminal activity."
In many of these cases, however, Gonzales appears determined to prosecute people involved in exposing what might be considered "criminal activity" by himself, President Bush and other senior administration officials.
Gonzales's message to both government whistleblowers and the press corps is hard to escape. If you disclose apparent misconduct by the Bush administration in areas of national security, you will be hunted down and punished.
As Bush said after a meeting with the four top congressional leaders on Dec. 18, 2000, "I told all four that there were going to be some times where we don't agree with each other. But that's OK. If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
If Bush's theories of unlimited presidential power are carried much further, his dictatorship comment might end up looking less like a joke and more like evidence of premeditation.
There will be little left of traditional American democracy, beyond perhaps periodic elections in which a thoroughly deceived or uninformed electorate traipses to the polls and pushes buttons on electronic voting machines that may or may not record the votes.
Source
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Editorial: Young Christian soldiers
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Dave Neiwert
Orcinus
Digby brings our attention to the recent "Battle Cry" rally in Philadelphia, where a crowd of about 25,000 -- mostly teenagers and young adults -- pledged their fealty to a vision of a theocratic Christian nation. This pledge was obtained, mostly, by scaring the crap out of them,
That was clear from this account on DKos:
- But BattleCry Philadelphia was more than just a vulgar carnival designed to suck donations into the coffers of Ron Luce's corporation "Teen Mania". Indeed, it had a point, to recruit the future elite "warriors" in the coming battle against the separation of church and state. It turned dark and frightening on Saturday afternoon. After Franklin "Islam is a Wicked Religion" Graham came out to thunder against the evils of homosexuality and the Iraqi people (whom he considers to be exactly the same people as the ancient Babylonians who enslaved the tribes of Israel and deserving, one would assume, the exact same fate) we heard an explosion. Flames shot out on stage and a team of Navy Seals was shown on the big TV monitors in full camouflage creeping forward down the hallway from the locker room with their M16s. They were hunting us, the future Christian leaders of America. Two teenage girls next to me burst into tears and even I, a jaded middle-aged male, almost jumped out of my skin. I imagined for that moment what it must have felt like to have been a teacher at Columbine high school. 10 seconds later they rushed out onstage and pointed their guns in our direction firing blanks spitting flames. About 1000 shots and bang, we were all dead.
Perhaps most disturbing, the rally included an endorsement from President Bush, as Sunsara Taylor reported:
- It began with fireworks so loud and startling I screamed. Lights and smoke followed, and a few kids were pulled up on stage from the crowd. One was asked to read a letter.
This was the letter that opened the event. Its author was George W. Bush. Yes, the president of the United States sent a letter of support, greeting, prayer and encouragement to the BattleCry event held at Wachovia Spectrum Stadium in Philadelphia on May 12. Immediately afterward, a preacher took the microphone and led the crowd in prayer. Among other things, he asked the attendees to "Thank God for giving us George Bush."
On his cue, about 17,000 youths from upward of 2,000 churches across America and Canada directed their thanks heavenward in unison.
Taylor filed an earlier report at Counterpunch, and likewise noted Battle Cry's ties to the White House, including the appointment of founder Ron Luce to the White House Advisory Commission on Drug-Free Communities, and extending to Bush's circle of contacts with the religious right:
- Behind their multi-million dollar operation that sends more than 5,000 missionaries to more than thirty-four countries each year, are some of the most powerful and extreme religious lunatics in the country. Their partners include Pat Robertson (who got a call from Karl Rove to discuss Alito before the nomination was made public), Ted Haggard (who brags that his concerns will be responded to by the White House within 24 hours), Jerry Falwell (who blamed September 11th on homosexuals, feminists, pagans, and abortionists), and others. Their events have been addressed by Barbara Bush (via video) as well as former President Gerry Ford. This weekend's event will include Franklyn Graham who has ministered to George Bush and publicly proclaimed that Islam is an "evil religion."
I first noticed BattleCry when they held their San Francisco rally a couple of months ago. After reading up on them and listening carefully to their rhetoric, I think Taylor's labeling of them as "fascist" is not exactly correct. Rather, I think they're a classic case of pseudo fascism:
- Unlike the genuine article, it presents itself under a normative, rather than a revolutionary, guise; and rather than openly exulting in violence, it pays lip service to law and order. Moreover, even in the areas where it resembles real fascism, the similarities are often more familial than exact. It is, in essence, less virulent and less violent, and thus more likely to gain broad acceptance within a longtime stable democratic system like that of the United States.
And further:
- The familial resemblance of fascism's architecture is unmistakable, but it is not fully fleshed out. It is like a hologram, a skeletal outline, of fascism.
Fascism is not a single, readily identifiable principle but a political pathology, best understood (as in psychology) as a constellation of traits ... Taken individually, many of these traits seem innocuous enough, even readily familiar, part of the traditional American political hurly-burly. A few of them are present throughout the political spectrum -- but definitely not all of them.
It is only when taken together in sum does the constellation become clear. And when it comes together, it is fated to take on a life of its own.
The main component of fascism that is missing from Battle Cry is the real, beating heart of fascism: its eliminationist violence. There's plenty of pretend violence, and certainly plenty of demonization of the "enemy," all of which build toward the real thing. But there's relatively little talk, yet, of "crushing" or eliminating or exterminating the enemy, which is really the signal characteristic of the Brownshirt.
That doesn't mean they don't have the potential to morph into something very dangerous indeed, in large part because their message is so potent in the national environment of fearfulness that has been the core of the Bush administration's appeal since 9/11.
Recall, if you will, the description of the "exemplary dualist" mindset (also >here) on which this appeal is based, drawn from "Religious Totalism, Violence and Exemplary Dualism: Beyond the Extrinsic Model," by the sociologists Dick Anthony and Thomas Robbins:
- It has been a staple of recent American cultural analysis and criticism that the contemporary United States increasingly lacks a consensual and compelling social ethic and that in consequence, the 'covenant' uniting the American people has become, in Robert Bellah's words, an 'empty and broken shell.' One consequence of the lack of an integrative ethic, we have intimated above, is a diminished capacity of parents -- who are themselves wrestling with the fragmented selves that result from the lack of an integrated ethic -- to serve as persuasive role-models or identification figures for their children, and thereby to transmit a coherent set of values. In this context parents may tend to treat their children as 'self-objects' in the sense of evaluating them in terms of tangible, purely external criteria such as their apparent social-academic-vocational 'success' or competence. This pattern enhances the anxiety over the themes of success, competence and power on the part of children, who are more likely to develop a fragmented or polarized self composed of a grandiose, all-powerful or omnipotent self which is split off from a devalued, pathetic, failed self.
Social movements with distinctly dualistic worldviews provide psycho-ideological contexts which facilitate attempts to heal the split self by projecting negativity and devalued self-elements onto ideologically devalued contrast symbols. But there is another possible linkage between these kinds of movements and individuals with split selves in the throes of identity confusion. People with the whole range of personality disorders, which utilize splitting and projective identification, tend to have difficulties in establishing stable, intimate relationships. Splitting tends to produce volatile and unstable relationships as candidates for intimacy are alternately idealized and degraded. Thus, narcissists tend to have vocational, and more particularly, interpersonal difficulties as they obsessively focus upon status-reinforcing rewards in interpersonal relations. They have difficulty developing social bonds grounded in empathy and mutuality, and their structure of interpersonal relations tends to be unstable. Thus, individuals may be tempted to enter communal and quasi-communal social movements which combine a more structured setting for interpersonal relations with a dualistic interpersonal theme of 'triangulation' which embodies the motif of 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend.' Such movements create a sense of mutuality by focusing attention on specific contrast groups and their values, goals and lifestyles so that this shared repudiation seems to unite the participants and provide a meaningful 'boundary' to operationalize the identity of the group. Solidarity within the group and the convert's sense of dedication and sacrifice on behalf of group goals may enable him or her to repudiate the dissociated negative (bad, weak or failed) self and the related selfish and exploitative self which they may be aware that others might have perceived. These devalued selves can then be projected on to either scapegoats designated by the group or, more generally, non-believers whose values and behavior allegedly do not attain the exemplary purity and authenticity of that of devotees.
As I went on to explain (also here), the "underlying worldview has a much broader audience in the field of mainstream fundamentalism and so-called cults":
- Nine characteristics which appear to us to be shared by authoritarian personalities, fundamentalists and authoritarian cults such as Hare Krishna, the Unification Church, etc.:
(1) Separatism or the heightened sensitivity and tension regarding group boundaries. This usually includes 'Authoritarian Aggression' which entails rejecting and punitive attitudes toward deviants, minorities and outsiders.
(2) Theocratic leanings or willingness to see the state expanded so as to enforce the group's particular moral and ideological preferences at the expense of pluralism or church-state separation.
(3) Authoritarian submission entailing dependency on strong leaders and deferential attitudes toward authorities and hierarchical superiors.
(4) Some form of conventionalism in terms of both belief and practice. Apparent exceptions such as antinomian groups, for example, the Bhagwan movement of Rajneesh or the quasi-Marxist Peoples Temple of Jim Jones ...
(5) Apocalypticism.
(6) Evangelism or a focus on proselytization and conversion.
(7) Coercive tendencies in terms of either punitive reactions toward internal dissidence and non-conformity (for example, exile from fellowship, shunning, harsh 'self-criticism,' confessional sessions) or willingness to have non-conformists suppressed or discouraged by the state.
(8) Consequentialism or a tendency to see moral or ideological virtue producing tangible rewards to believers. This may entail belief in a 'just world' in which the good are tangibly rewarded and the wicked undone on the human plane.
(9) Finally, groups whose members tend to score high in authoritarianism or dogmatism tend to have strong beliefs and tend to make doctrinal acceptance a membership criterion. As with 'Moonies' studied by Galanter (among whom strong belief was correlated with feelings of group solidarity and the 'relief effect'), authoritarians and fundamentalists appear to have a strong 'investment' in their beliefs.
As I noted, much of Anthony's and Robbins' work builds upon the work of sociologist Robert Lifton and his colleague Charles Strozier, whom they cite extensively:
- Both writers have explicitly linked totalism and fundamentalism. Interestingly, they tend to define fundamentalism in terms very close to descriptions of authoritarianism: for example, fundamentalist childrearing practices -- allegedly strict, repressive, corporally punitive and guilt-inducing -- resemble the familial milieux associated with authoritarian personalities. The emphasis by Lifton and Strozier on fundamentalist scriptural literalism, textual fetishism, obsession with disorder, nostalgia for a strongly ordered golden age less chaotic than the present, and emphasis on restoration keyed to inerrant scriptural texts, appears to evoke classic descriptions of authoritarian personalities.
This is the basis of pseudo-fascist appeals, and any effort to confront it effectively will have to come to terms with how it arises.
Michelle Goldberg -- whose new book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, really is a must-read -- describes the depths of the challenge well:
- To write "Kingdom Coming," I traveled all over America, going to megachurches and ministries, attending rallies and conferences, and visiting some of the government-funded faith-based initiatives that, under Bush, have slowly begun to replace secular social services. I immersed myself in the literature of the movement and even took to listening to Christian radio. I began to realize that what I was encountering was as much a totalistic political movement as a religious one. What I describe as Christian nationalism is not synonymous with evangelical Christianity or even Christian fundamentalism. It is, rather, a movement that purports to have extrapolated a complete governing program from the bible, and that claims divine sanction for its campaign of national renewal. It promotes a revisionist history in which the founders were conservative Christians who never meant to separate church and state, and in which America's true Christian character has been subverted by several generations of God-hating leftists. It explicitly condemns the Enlightenment and denies that Enlightenment values had anything to do with our nation's original ideals. The movement's literature is so vast, its alternative skein of pseudo-facts so intricate, that it often seemed totally impervious to outside argument.
... By citing Arendt, I am certainly not suggesting that theocratic dictatorship is imminent in America. Rather, I'm saying that the Christian nationalist movement has a proto-totalitarian ideology and structure, and that, while it only represents a minority of Americas, it has amassed more influence than those who cherish secularism and pluralism should be comfortable with.
When we see groups like this taking shape, we need to understand that they are a warning sign that something is coming that the politics of the past may be inadequate to contain. It means we need to reach deeper and find something that dispells the cloud of fear that conservative rule has shrouded over the nation.
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Editorial: National Post Admits Zonar Fable Contrived
Wednesday May 24th 2006, 7:57 pm
Kurt Nimmo
Another Day in the Empire
According to Reuters, the National Post, the "conservative" (actually neocon) Canadian newspaper, has apologized for publishing the Iranian zonar story, as it turns out to be a complete fabrication. "The story was based on a column by Iranian expatriate writer Amir Taheri, who said a law being debated by Iran's parliament would force Jews to sew a yellow strip of cloth to their clothes. Christians would wear a red strip while Zoroastrians would wear a blue one," notes the news organization. "The story and the column appeared at a time when the international community is pressuring Tehran over its nuclear program." In other words, the bogus story was designed to slander Iran at a crucial moment during negotiations over Iran's completely legal nuclear energy program.
Of course, the National Post's so-called apology matters naught, as politicians and religious leaders around the world over the past week have condemned Iran as a Nazi menace eager to feed Jews into ovens and crematoria. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Iran "is very capable of this kind of action.... It boggles the mind that any regime on the face of the Earth would want to do anything that could remind people of Nazi Germany," a predictable comment (or slander) considering Harper is a Canadian version of a neocon and sincerely believes the worst about the Iranians.
Meanwhile, Canada's ambassador to Iran, Gordon Venner, was summoned to the Foreign Ministry, according to the Associated Press. "Iranian television gave no reason for Ambassador Gordon Venner's summons. But it came days after Harper criticized Iran over a report last week in the National Post, quoting Iranian exiles as saying Iran's conservative parliament was debating a draft law that would force Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims in the country to wear special patches of colored cloth to distinguish them from Muslims," a normal reaction, considering Harper did not bother to apologize to Iran after the National Post retracted the story.
"I'm glad to hear that the government of Iran is not considering this,'' said Harper, when he should have formally apologized for essentially characterizing the Iranians as Nazi racists determined to commit genocide.
In fact, it would be spot on if Ahmadinejad had accused the Bush crime family of Nazi connections, as documents in the National Archives and the Library of Congress reveal Prescott Bush, the grandfather of the current resident of the White House, "served as a business partner of and U.S. banking operative for the financial architect of the Nazi war machine from 1926 until 1942," as John Buchanan reported for the New Hampshire Gazette on October 10, 2003. In other words, the Bush family has more to do with persecuting Jews (and plenty of Roma, homosexuals, political dissidents, communists, socialists, "deviant" artists, and others) than Iran ever will. But never mind. Bush's neocons are waging a crusade against Muslim culture and facts will not be allowed to get in the way-not that most Americans, steeped in a ceaseless flow of propaganda vomit, know the difference.
As for the neocon Harper, he simply was unable to restrain himself. Regardless of the fact the National Post published a crude bit of factitious propaganda, that "doesn't make me any less concerned about the comments that the government of Iran has made on issues like Israel's right to exist, on denial of the Holocaust and these kinds of positions," in reality positions Ahmadinejad never took.
Upon proper translation, it is discovered Ahmadinejad called for the removal of the regimes in Israel and the United States. He has not demanded the elimination or annihilation of Israel and the Jews, as the hysterical corporate media in this country claims, based on a deliberately mistranslated Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) transcript. Naturally, this sort of behavior should be expected as MEMRI is run by Yigal Carmon, a former IDF (or IOF, Israel Occupation Forces) intelligence bureaucrat, and Meyrav Wurmser, wife of the neocon David Wurmser, both chalking up a long and sordid track record of dredging lunatic fringe rantings from the Arab and Muslim press and passing them off as typical fare.
Harper, Bush, Blair, Howard, the neocons and other criminals will continue to demonize Iran-as an attack is in the cards, probably sooner before later, although predicting an exact or even ballpark date is an exercise in futility-and it is the assigned task of a complaisant corporate media to feed us a steady diet of feeble fabrication, outright lies, slander (a neocon specialty), and basically soften us up for mass murder and war crimes stacked upon war crimes like cord wood stacked outside a Maine cabin in November.
No doubt, in the next few weeks, as the "negotiations" with Iran continue (i.e., threats to impose sanctions on the country and inflict misery on the Iranian people), we will be subject to more tall tales, exaggerations, and absurd accusations. For the Straussian neocons are like clockwork, they mean what they say and they say Iran must be decimated, as was Iraq previously.
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United States of Fascism
States signing on to deadly force law
By ROBERT TANNER
AP National Writer
Wed May 24, 2006
A campaign by gun rights advocates to make it easier to use deadly force in self-defense is rapidly winning support across the country, as state after state makes it legal for people who feel their lives are in danger to shoot down an attacker - whether in a car-jacking or just on the street.
The law has spurred debate about whether it protects against lawlessness or spurs more crime.
Supporters say it's an unambiguous answer to random violence, while critics - including police chiefs and prosecutors - warn that criminals are more likely to benefit than innocent victims.
Ten states so far this year have passed a version of the law, after Florida was the first last year. It's already being considered in Arizona in the case of a deadly shooting on a hiking trail.
Supporters have dubbed the new measures "stand your ground" laws, while critics offered nicknames like the "shoot first," "shoot the Avon lady" or "right to commit murder" laws.
At its core, they broaden self-defense by removing the requirement in most states that a person who is attacked has a "duty to retreat" before turning to deadly force. Many of the laws specify that people can use deadly force if they believe they are in danger in any place they have a legal right to be - a parking lot, a street, a bar, a church. They also give immunity from criminal charges and civil liability.
The campaign is simply about self-defense, said Oklahoma state Rep. Kevin Calvey, a Republican and author of the law in his state. "Law-abiding citizens aren't going to take it anymore," he said.
"It's going to give the crooks second thoughts about carjackings and things like that. They're going to get a face full of lead," Calvey said. He introduced the bill at the request of the local National Rifle Association, and it passed with overwhelmingly support: The House agreed 83-4, the Senate 39-5.
Democratic Gov. Brad Henry signed it and said: "This act will allow law-abiding Oklahomans to protect themselves, their loved ones and their property."
Besides Oklahoma, the nine other states to sign on are Arizona, Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi and South Dakota, according to the NRA.
Critics say the NRA is overstating its success. Only six of those states expanded self-defense into public places, said Zach Ragbourn, a spokesman at the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. There already is a presumption in law that a person does not have to retreat in their home or car, he said.
And there have been a few high-profile defeats, too.
In New Hampshire, the measure passed the legislature only narrowly and then was vetoed by Democratic Gov. John Lynch, who was joined by police and prosecutors.
Police Chief Nathaniel H. Sawyer Jr. of New Hampton, N.H., said the legislation addressed a problem that does not exist. In 26 years in law enforcement, he has never seen anyone wrongfully charged with a crime for self-defense, he said.
"I think it increases the chance for violence," said Sawyer, also the president of the New Hampshire Association of Police Chiefs. "It increases the chance of innocent people being around the violence and becoming involved in it or hurt."
The bill would have allowed a person "to use deadly force in response to non-deadly force, even in public places such as shopping malls, public streets, restaurants and churches," Lynch said when he vetoed the legislation. Existing law already gives citizens the right to protect themselves, he said.
The NRA argues that victims wind up with an unfair burden if the law, as it does in New Hampshire, requires a duty to retreat, if possible. "That does crime victims little good when they have to make a split-second decision to protect their life from violent attack by a criminal," said Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's executive director.
"The only people that have anything to fear from this type of law is someone who plans on robbing, shooting or raping someone," LaPierre said.
That argument sounds good and it's winning supporters, said Florida state Rep. Dan Gelber, a critic of the law when it passed in his state last year and a former federal prosecutor.
But like Sawyer in New Hampshire, he does not see any instances now or in the past of a victim being prosecuted for failing to retreat. He sees the Florida law, and the national campaign, as an effort by the NRA to build support and keep its members riled up.
"The NRA is a victim of its own successes. No political party in Florida today is going to advance any serious gun-control agenda," said Gelber, a Democrat. "What's left is these little things which have no impact on every day life, but inspire and activate the base."
And, he argued, it gives defense attorneys a potential avenue to seek acquittal for crimes. In effect, criminals will benefit much more often than any innocent victim. "It's going to give the guy who's really looking for a fight, or does something totally irresponsible or venal, a defense he would not otherwise have."
Last week in Arizona, the state appellate court delayed the start of jury deliberations in the trial of a retired school teacher charged with second-degree murder for shooting a man on a hiking trail in May 2004. The court is deciding whether the new law applies to his claim of self-defense.
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US Senate limits debate on immigration reform
AFP
Wed May 24, 2006
WASHINGTON - The US Senate limited debate on immigration reform, paving the way for a final vote on a measure that could legalize the status of millions of illegal immigrants.
The motion to cut off what has been protracted debate was made by Republican Senate majority leader Bill Frist and approved on a 73-25 vote.
"We are heartened by this cloture vote. We're now down the home stretch," Republican Senator John McCain said at a bipartisan news conference.
Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy, who co-authored the reform plan with McCain, said: "This may be the most important vote that we cast here in the United States Senate, probably tomorrow, maybe late tonight, for our national security and for our humanity."
The real battle will be in trying to reconcile the Senate plan with the House of Representatives's version. In December the House approved a plan that would criminalize illegal immigrants and reinforce border security.
"We know that the last battle is not yet over, but that we have made a significant amount of progress," said Senator Ken Salazar, a Democrat of Mexican origin.
Senators seeking a comprehensive immigration reform want to move quickly to the bills' reconciliation stage.
"I would like to move to the conference very quickly. It's going to be a complex conference. And I think our Senate bill will provide a certain amount of momentum," said Arlen Specter, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Specter said that President George W. Bush "will be better involved early than late" in the debate..
Defenders of the estimated 11.5 million illegal immigrants living in the United States insisted the Senate reform plan must triumph, even though it is a watered-down version of the original plan.
"Obviously the measure that will leave the Senate isn't perfect ... but we have to move forward," Frank Sharry, director of the National Immigration Forum, said in a news teleconference.
Most of the illegal immigrants are Mexican. Bush has asked the Mexican government to do its part to keep its citizens without US visas on its side of the 3,000-kilometer (2,000-mile) common border.
Mexican President Vicente Fox, speaking Wednesday during an official visit to the United States, described the immigration issue as "complex".
"Since the beginning of my administration, the government of Mexico has promoted the establishment of a new system that regulates the movement of people across our border in a manner which is legal, safe and orderly," Fox told lawmakers in Salt Lake City, in the western state of Utah.
Fox took office in December 2000.
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Feds Raid Home of Photo Agency Head
By TMZ.COM STAFF
May 23, 2006
TMZ has learned that the FBI searched the home Tuesday of a woman who runs an LA paparazzi agency
The allegation is that her computers were used to illegally hack into the computers of Us Weekly magazine to obtain information about celebrities, in particular Charlie Sheen.
Sources tell TMZ the U.S. Attorney obtained the search warrant several days ago. Law enforcement went to the home of Jill Ishkanian, a partner at Sunset Photo and News, where they seized computers and other items. As of now, the official file is sealed.
Ishkanian founded Sunset Photo and News last year after leaving Us Weekly, where she worked as a reporter.
TMZ repeatedly called Sunset Photo and News for comment, but each time company reps immediately hung up the phone.
In a related development, TMZ spoke with former Hollywood madame Heidi Fleiss, who says she was contacted by officials and accused of being involved in the alleged hacking plot. The reason? Sources say Fleiss and Ishkanian are close friends. Fleiss told TMZ the allegations against her are "ridiculous."
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Search of Capitol Hill office creates another storm
By Gail Russell Chaddock
The Christian Science Monitor
Wed May 24, 2006
WASHINGTON - Lawmakers gathered on the House floor Monday evening to vote on veterans benefits, but that's not what caused most of the buzz. Nor was the corruption probe of Rep. William Jefferson (D) of Louisiana the leading topic of conversation.
No. More than reports of videotaped bribery and cash hidden in his home freezer, the scuttlebutt centered on the fact that the FBI had, for the first time, searched a congressional office.
Is Congress missing the point - or is there a serious constitutional issue at stake here?
On Capitol Hill, at least, the constitutional concern runs deep - and across party lines. "When I first saw [reports of the search], I thought: 'Wonder if the federal government needs to be reined in,' " said Rep. Zach Wamp (R) of Tennessee.
Even House Speaker Dennis Hastert weighed in, following what colleagues describe as angry phone calls from his staff to the Justice Department. "The Founding Fathers were very careful to establish in the Constitution a separation of powers to protect Americans against the tyranny of any one branch of government. They were particularly concerned about limiting the power of the Executive Branch," he said in a statement.
"Insofar as I am aware, since the founding of our Republic 219 years ago, the Justice Department has never found it necessary to do what it did Saturday night, crossing this Separation of Powers line, in order to successfully prosecute corruption by members of Congress," he added, noting especially the need to protect "certain legislative branch documents." "Nothing I have learned in the last 48 hours leads me to believe that there was any necessity to change the precedent established over those 219 years."
Legal analysts locate those protections in Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution, known as the "Speech or Debate" clause, intended to ensure that Congress was not intimidated or controlled by the executive branch. Typically, when there's a subpoena for congressional documents, it goes to the House or Senate legal counsel to make certain that congressional interests are being protected. Otherwise, there's no protection for the executive branch rifling through committee papers, for example.
The Justice Department appeared aware of the potential problem. In a statement on Monday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the FBI had used special procedures to deal with constitutionally protected materials. "I think the executive branch intends to work with the Congress to allay those concerns."
Reportedly, those procedures included the use of a "filter team" to determine whether any of the seized documents were privileged. The team, made up of FBI agents and prosecutors who were independent of the investigation, would keep such documents from being perused. A judge was to rule on any seized documents whose status was in question, according to the affidavit.
A federal district judge in suburban Virginia issued the warrant that allowed the FBI to search Jefferson's office.
"It's an extremely complex area of constitutional law," says Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond. "Historically, even if the FBI had a warrant, there's no precedent for intrusion into the office of a member of Congress."
But with the approval rating for Congress at 21 percent - three points short of its all-time low - there are signs that the public isn't picking up such constitutional distinctions. Nearly half of Americans believe that most in Congress are corrupt and that corruption affects both parties equally, although they trust Democrats to handle the issue better than Republicans, according to a recent Gallup poll.
"The tone has been set by the top of the Republican Party. I've never seen a Congress as corrupt as I've seen here, and I've been in the Congress 32 years," said Rep. Henry Waxman (D) of California.
After some 16 months of gridlock, the House ethics committee, or Standards of Official Conduct, is getting back on track. The panel, which went through turmoil after initiating an investigation into then-majority leader
Tom DeLay, is under new leadership and launching investigations into Jefferson and Rep. Bob Ney (R) of Ohio, and into any cases related to convicted former Rep. Duke Cunningham (R) of California.
"Members of Congress must obey the law and cooperate fully with any criminal investigation; if they don't they will be held accountable," said Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi in a statement, referring to Jefferson's refusal to turn over documents to the FBI that were subpoenaed some eight months ago.
Jefferson, for his part, said Monday that "there are two sides to every story" and that he expects to be exonerated. He has not been charged with any criminal conduct.
Staff on both sides say they expect Speaker Hastert and Ms. Pelosi to speak soon on how to protect Congress from abuse of power by the executive branch. "I expect to seek a means to restore the delicate balance of power among the branches of government that the Founders intended," Hastert said, in a statement.
Similar concerns were raised after the FBI's ABSCAM sting operation, which resulted in the conviction of seven members of Congress and five other public officials on bribery charges between 1978 and 1980. The scandal produced the first expulsion from the House since 1861.
"Like ABSCAM, the Jefferson case does seem to be an egregious case of corruption. Congress's best response would probably be to police itself more effectively, rather than claim the executive is violating 'balance of power,' " says Julian Zelizer, a congressional historian at Boston University.
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Cheney may be called in CIA leak case
By TONI LOCY
Associated Press
May 25, 2006
WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney could be called to testify in the perjury case against his former chief of staff, a special prosecutor said in a court filing Wednesday.
Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald suggested Cheney would be a logical government witness because he could authenticate notes he jotted on a July 6, 2003, New York Times opinion piece by a former U.S. ambassador critical of the
Iraq war.
Fitzgerald said Cheney's "state of mind" is "directly relevant" to whether I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's former top aide, lied to FBI agents and a federal grand jury about how he learned about CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity and what he subsequently told reporters.
Libby "shared the interests of his superior and was subject to his direction," the prosecutor wrote. "Therefore, the state of mind of the vice president as communicated to (the) defendant is directly relevant to the issue of whether (the) defendant knowingly made false statements to federal agents and the grand jury regarding when and how he learned about (Plame's) employment and what he said to reporters regarding this issue."
Reached for comment late Wednesday, Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride said, "Since the inquiry relates to a case in the courts, I refer you to the Office of the Special Counsel."
In the Times article, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson accused the Bush administration of twisting intelligence on Iraq to justify going to war. In 2002, the CIA sent Wilson to Niger to determine whether Iraq tried to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger to build a nuclear weapon. Wilson discounted the reports. But the allegation wound up in
President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address.
Cheney wrote on the article, "Have they done this sort of thing before? Send an ambassador to answer a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?"
Libby told the agents and the grand jury that he believed he had learned from reporters that Plame is married to Wilson and had forgotten that Cheney had told him that in the weeks before Wilson's article was published.
In his grand jury testimony, Libby said Cheney was so upset about Wilson's allegations that they discussed them daily after the article appeared. "He was very keen to get the truth out," Libby testified, quoting Cheney as saying, "Let's get everything out."
Libby also testified that he did not recall seeing Cheney's notes on the Wilson article.
Cheney viewed Wilson's allegations as a personal attack because the article suggested that the vice president knew that Wilson had discounted old reports that Iraq had tried to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger to build a nuclear weapon.
Eight days after Wilson's article, conservative syndicated columnist Robert Novak identified Plame and suggested that she had played a role in the CIA's decision to send Wilson to Niger.
Fitzgerald contends that Plame's status as a CIA officer was classified and that Libby was told that disclosing her identity could pose a danger.
The prosecutor wants to use Cheney's notes on the Wilson article to corroborate other evidence he has that Libby lied about outing Plame to reporters.
In a filing last week, Libby's lawyers said Fitzgerald would not call Cheney as a witness and would have a hard time getting the vice president's notes admitted into evidence at Libby's trial, which is scheduled for January.
"Contrary to defendant's assertion, the government has not represented that it does not intend to call the vice president as a witness at trial," Fitzgerald wrote. "To the best of government's counsel's recollection, the government has not commented on whether it intends to call the vice president as a witness."
The fact that Cheney's notations included a reference to Wilson's wife makes it "more likely than not" that the vice president and Libby discussed her shortly after Wilson's article was published - and not weeks or months later as Libby told the grand jury, Fitzgerald wrote.
Libby also told the grand jury that Cheney often scribbled on newspaper articles and kept them on a corner of his desk at the White House.
"He often cut out from a newspaper an article using a little penknife that he has and put it on the edge of his desk," Libby testified, according to a transcript of the grand jury proceeding that Fitzgerald attached to his filing.
Libby testified that Cheney would pull an article out of the pile later and "think about it."
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US Fence Follows Global Trend
by Martin Sieff
UPI Senior News Analyst
May 25, 2006
Washington - President George W. Bush's decision to build a security fence along the continent-spanning U.S.-Mexican border is already being fiercely criticized by Mexico's president. But it is part of a new global pattern. From Israel to India, fences are "in."
Only a few years ago, security fences along national borders and increased border controls were globally out of fashion. The Berlin Wall was torn down in 1989 by ecstatic East Germans in the non-violent upheaval that heralded the collapse of communism. The security fences that tore Europe in two for 44 years collapsed at the same time as communism crumbled.
A new era of globalism powered by worldwide economic growth and the Information Technology revolution followed. New York Times pundit Thomas Friedman heralded the arrival of a supposed "flat earth."
The European Community consolidated itself into the European Union and early in the 21st century its Copenhagen Expansion boosted its size from 350 million people in 15 nations to 450 million in 25 nations.
Internal security barriers within the EU were torn down and the customs, security and immigration checks on its external perimeter became a joke. France took them more seriously than most other EU nations, but control was theoretical when anyone could walk into neighboring Spain or Italy from North Africa, or even to Greece, and then simply drive or take a train into France from its fellow EU members.
The mega-terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were the dramatic event that started to reverse this global trend. The United States moved fast to start tightening up its security checks and entry procedures. But over the past five years, the huge, virtually unlimited flows of North African and South Asian Muslim immigrants into the EU and of Latin American, overwhelmingly Mexican, illegal immigrants, into the United States, have continued unabated.
Islamist extremist terrorists appear to have been much more successful in taking advantage of the EU's lax security policies to penetrate major Western nations and organize terrorist cells there than have been in the United States.
This is in large part because the scale of U.S. domestic security surveillance and the amount of manpower resources available has been vastly greater in the United States than in the very small and still vastly undermanned European national domestic security services. Also, Islamist terrorists have shown a healthy respect for the toughness and alertness of Mexico's own federal security forces as well as those of the United States.
When the United States led coalition forces into Iraq to topple President Saddam Hussein in March 2003, Pentagon and White House planners did not take the concept of border security seriously at all. No thought was given to it.
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Rumsfeld's deputy Paul Wolfowitz publicly dismissed then-U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki's prescient warning that hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops would be needed to maintain security in Iraq after Saddam's fall. Today, there are only 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and around 220,000 Iraqi army and security forces of doubtful reliability.
Together, they have failed to even make significant inroads on the Sunni Muslim insurgency in southern Iraq. The nation's land borders with Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran remain largely open, despite occasional U.S. large-scale military operations to interdict them.
It was tough old Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, always ready to break or outrage liberal taboos and Conventional Wisdoms, who put security fences and defensible borders back on the global strategic map.
Israeli hardline right wingers and liberal supporters of the Palestinians alike derided his concept of a security fence or barrier to cut the Gaza Strip and the Palestine Authority-controlled areas of the West Bank off from Israel in order to stop the regular attacks of Palestinian suicide bombers from Hamas and Islamic Jihad that killed more than a thousand Israeli civilians, a large proportion of them women and children, in the Second Palestinian Intifada.
The fence appeared to armchair strategists as a defensive move, not manly, an admission of defeat and a departure from Israel's traditionally aggressive, reactive strategy against terror attacks. But it worked.
Successful suicide bomber attacks fell from dozens a year to single figures. Hundreds of civilian lives per year were saved. The Indian Army was so impressed by the success of the Israeli fence that it built a similar, far longer one, along the Line of Control separating Indian-controlled Jammu and Kashmir from the much smaller part of the state held by Pakistan since 1947-1948.
Soon the Indians were reporting that Islamist guerrilla incursions across the Line of Control had fallen by 80 percent. Now Saudi Arabia is building a similar fence to try and get its illegal immigration of 400,000 people a year from poverty-stricken neighboring Yemen under control.
Bush's new border fence is part of this new global pattern. It remains to be seen how many more nations, including, perhaps, some that will criticize his new barrier, will follow his example.
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China opposes US report on military power
www.chinaview.cn 2006-05-25 02:51:54
BEIJING, May 24 (Xinhua) -- China was strongly resentful of and firmly opposed to a U.S. annual report on its military power, said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao here on Wednesday.
The 2006 China Military Power Report, issued by the U.S. Defense Ministry recently, has continued to spread "China's threat" and severely violated the principles governing international relations, said Liu when responding to press.
He said the report, still with the "Cold War" mentality, has exaggerated China's military power and military expenditure with ulterior motives and wantonly interfere in China's internal affairs.
"China is a peace-loving nation and has insisted on a way of peaceful development, with a national defense policy that is defensive in nature. The international community has generally acknowledged that China is an important force of promoting peace in the Asia-Pacific region and the world at large," said Liu.
He said it is natural for China, a sovereign state, to develop its national defense construction which is aimed at defending national security and safeguarding territorial integrity.
"Taiwan is an inseparable part of China's territories. The Chinese government sticks to the policy of 'peaceful reunification and one country, two systems'," said Liu.
He said the Chinese government will exert its utmost effort and show all sincerity to strive for the prospect of peaceful reunification of the motherland. However, Liu said, China will never tolerate "Taiwan independence" and will never allow any one to separate Taiwan from China in any way.
Liu said China has urged the U.S. side to stick to its commitments of adhering to the one-China policy, abiding by the three communiques between China and the U.S. and opposing to "Taiwan independence", stop selling weapons to Taiwan and not to send any wrong signal to the splittist forces of "Taiwan independence."
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US House speaker under investigation: report
www.chinaview.cn 2006-05-25 12:22:26
WASHINGTON, May 24 (Xinhua) -- U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Dennis Hastert is under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, ABC News reported Wednesday.
Quoting unnamed sources in the Justice Department, ABC News said information implicating Hastert, a Republican from Illinois, was developed from convicted lobbyists, who are now cooperating with the government in a corruption investigation.
The report, however, was denied shortly by the Justice Department.
Hastert's office later issue a statement saying the ABC News story was "absolutely untrue."
Referring to the Justice Department denial, the statement said Hastert was not under investigation by the Justice Department, and demanded ABC News "a full retraction" of the story.
A number of lawmakers could be implicated in the corruption scandal involving former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who pleaded guilty to charges including conspiracy, tax evasion and wire fraud charges early this year and agreed to cooperate in the
investigation.
Abramoff was convicted and sentenced to five years and 10 months in prison in March this year.
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Government Secrecy Is a Farce
By Ivan Eland
May 25, 2006
Over the weekend, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made a draconian threat to prosecute journalists for writing about the National Security Agency's (NSA's) clandestine and illegal monitoring of U.S.-overseas telephone calls. That threat shows what an Orwellian farce the government's classified information system has become.
Gonzales is threatening to prosecute reporters under the 1917 Espionage Act. This anachronistic act was passed during World War I to make it illegal for unauthorized personnel to receive and transmit national defense information.
The law is also currently being used to prosecute two lobbyists from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) for obtaining and transmitting classified information they received from a U.S. Defense Department employee. The lobbyists' lawyers have filed a motion in court arguing that the law is an unconstitutional breach of the First Amendment right to free speech.
A successful prosecution in the AIPAC case could open the floodgates to indict journalists for publishing classified information leaked to them by government officials. The government would have an easier time prosecuting reporters than it does uncovering and indicting often-anonymous leakers. In fact, the threat of being prosecuted might make reporters less inclined to protect sources, thereby flushing out the leakers, or making officials more reluctant to leak in the first place.
The casual observer might conclude that reducing the amount of classified information in the media might be a good idea. But the revelation of the unconstitutional NSA domestic spying program shows that leaks by conscientious officials can, at times, have positive effects. And the public shouldn't assume that all, or even most, of the information the government shields from public view needs to be secret.
Classification can hide facts embarrassing to the U.S. government or keep information from the American public that is common knowledge among foreign governments. An example of the latter was President Jimmy Carter's revelation on television that the United States had spy satellites, which the nations of the world had long known.
Officials working for both Democratic and Republican administrations have routinely and predictably exhibited contradictory behavior toward classified information-on the one hand, regularly leaking highly classified information for political or policy gain and, on the other hand, attempting to stifle leaks of embarrassing information. The most famous case of the latter was President Nixon's team of Watergate "plumbers," which was originally set up to plug leaks.
Such schizophrenic behavior was recently on display at the confirmation hearing of General Michael Hayden, nominated for director of the CIA. General Hayden said that he would only respond to Sen. Dianne Feinstein's pointed questions about embarrassing government spying activities and prisoner interrogation methods in a committee session closed to the media and public.
But in response to one of Sen. Feinstein's questions, General Hayden eagerly took the opportunity to talk about the Iranian threat in open session. Similarly, government officials keep the cost of the overall U.S. intelligence budget classified, even though it is widely known to be about $44 billion.
Yet they have no problem leaking to the media to brag about the tripling of clandestine intelligence officers in the field or the opening of 20 percent more secret CIA stations around the world-information that actually might be of some use to terrorists and foreign intelligence agencies.
Yes, there is some information that should be classified-for example, intelligence officers in the field (or their foreign sources and contacts) could be killed if their identities were revealed. Yet the same Bush administration that may well prosecute reporters for writing about its illegal warrantless spying program conspired at the highest levels to expose the identity of a CIA field officer for political gain. The evidence seems to indicate that Vice President Dick Cheney was interested in CIA officer Valerie Plame's occupation.
But the over-classification of much government information makes officials cynical about keeping much smaller amounts of legitimately sensitive data under wraps. Thus, a massive declassification of government information would make the remaining secrets more secure and less open to political manipulation. Unfortunately, the Bush administration is classifying ever more information.
More important, in a democracy, where the supposed rulers-the people-need the maximum information possible to make good decisions, the amount of information that is withheld from the public should be minimal. And if the government cannot keep its data secret, government officials, not journalists, should be the ones who are prosecuted.
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US sniper grills former partner
Thursday, 25 May 2006, 09:28 GMT 10:28 UK
Convicted Washington sniper John Allen Muhammad has questioned his young accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo at a second murder trial in Maryland.
Muhammad, 45, acting as his own lawyer, was admonished several times by the judge for his line of questioning.
He is accused of six counts of murder in Montgomery County, just outside Washington DC, in 2002.
In 2004, he was sentenced to death by a court in neighbouring Virginia after he was convicted of one fatal shooting.
Malvo, now 21, was jailed for life in Virginia. He agreed to testify against Muhammad at the trial in Rockville, Maryland and to plead guilty.
Muhammad, dressed in a grey suit, conducted his cross-examination, appearing at times aggressive, at times gentler.
At one point, he called Malvo "son".
"I would prefer you address me by my name," Malvo replied.
Muhammad apologised, only to do it again.
Psychological battle
Muhammad questioned the younger man about his mental health, referring to his insanity plea lodged at an earlier trial.
"Who decided you was insane... How many doctors said you was insane?" Muhammad asked Malvo.
"They said I was indoctrinated," said Malvo.
Correspondents say the questioning came across as a compelling psychological battle between the two former partners.
Muhammad, who said in opening statements that he and Malvo were innocent and "I'm going to prove it", pressed the younger man for details and questioned him about contradictory statements he has made.
On Tuesday, prosecutors questioned Malvo about their relationship, apparently aiming to portray Muhammad as a predatory figure who had brainwashed Malvo and turned him into a killer.
The prosecution team say they are pursuing the second trial in case the Virginia convictions are overturned on appeal.
They also say they want to serve justice in Montgomery County, where six of the 10 killings took place in October 2002.
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Venezuelan anger at computer game
BBC News
24/05/2006
Venezuelan politicians have complained about a forthcoming "shoot-em-up" computer game that simulates an invasion of the South American nation.
In production by Los Angeles-based Pandemic Studios, Mercenaries 2: World In Flames is based around the overthrow of an imaginary Venezuelan "tyrant".
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has long accused the US of planning to invade, something Washington denies.
His supporters say the game aims to drum up support for a real invasion.
'Realistic possibility'
Pandemic has insisted that the title - due to be released next year - is solely about entertainment.
I think the US government knows how to prepare campaigns of psychological terror so they can make things happen later
Venezuelan congressman Ismael Garcia
"Pandemic has no ties to the US government," Greg Richardson, the firm's vice president of commercial operations, told the Associated Press.
"Pandemic Studios is a private company, focusing solely on the development of interactive entertainment."
Yet Pandemic's publicist Chris Norris said its designers "always want to have a rip from the headlines".
He added: "Although a conflict doesn't necessarily have to be happening, it's realistic enough to believe that it could eventually happen."
However, on its website Pandemic lists a game called "Full Spectrum Warrior / Army Training", which it describes as a "squad-level, dismounted, light infantry training simulator created for use by the US Army".
Messes with oil
Mr Chavez and the US have been at daggers drawn for most of the eight years since he came to power in 1998.
In addition to repeatedly accusing Washington of seeking to overthrow him, Mr Chavez has greatly increased state control over its oil industry, the world's fourth largest, and responsible for 15% of US supplies.
In Mercenaries 2: World In Flames, gamers play soldiers sent to overthrow "a power-hungry tyrant [who] messes with Venezuela's oil supply, sparking an invasion that turns the country into a war zone".
Venezuelan congressman Ismael Garcia, a supporter of Mr Chavez, said the computer game was preparation work for a real invasion.
"I think the US government knows how to prepare campaigns of psychological terror so they can make things happen later," he said.
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Skilling and Lay guilty
May 25, 2006: 12:05 PM EDT
HOUSTON (CNNMoney.com) - Enron former chief executive Jeffrey Skilling and founder Kenneth Lay were found guilty Thursday of conspiracy and fraud in the granddaddy of all corporate fraud cases.
On the sixth day of deliberations, a jury of eight women and four men convicted the former executives of misleading the public about the true financial health of Enron, whose collapse in late 2001 symbolized the wave of corporate fraud that swept the United States early this decade.
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Global Political Skullduggery
East Timor's "Sudden Rebellion"
Wayne Madsen Report
May 25, 2006
More on East Timor's "sudden rebellion." According to Australian sources, East Timor's long sought independence is in severe jeopardy as a result of collusion between the United States, Australia, Indonesia, and the World Bank under pro-Indonesian president Paul Wolfowitz. More astounding are reports that Indonesian intelligence has thoroughly penetrated the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), by using blackmail techniques involving pedophilia and bribes. These techniques have also been used to target former Australian and U.S. ambassadors and other diplomats and military personnel assigned to Indonesia. Wolfowitz is a former U.S. ambassador to Indonesia.
Australian sources report that Woodside, Australia's largest oil and natural gas company, has been playing hardball recently with East Timor's government over disputed oil blocks in the Timor Sea. Woodside has also been active in oil deals in Iraq's northern Kurdistan region, a major reason for Australia's troop deployment to that war-torn nation.
Fighting continues between loyal East Timorese government troops and rebel troops loyal to Maj. Alfredo Reinado, who is said to have been supported by secret contracts, arms, and training supplied by covert Australian private military contractors with a wink and a nod from the Bush and John Howard administrations. Bush and Howard met in Washington just prior to East Timor's military rebellion. Australian sources report that the scenario is the same as employed by Autralian neo-colonialists in the civil war-plagued Solomon Islands: secretly support a rebellion, force the government to call on Australian military assistance, and then declare the country a "failed state" and permanently establish a military and political presence in the country.
East Timor's government led by Xanana Gusmao, wise to this Australian ploy, a first denied entry to Australian troops, instead calling on help from Malaysia (as a counter to Indonesia) and Portugal (one of the few nations East Timor can trust). However, after the denial of Australian troop entry, Gusmao witnessed a drastic upturn in the rebellion by ex-East Timorese military rebels that directly threatened the entire East Timor government with a coup. The East Timor executive was then forces to accept Australian troops, which are now pouring into the country ahead of troops from Malaysia, Portugal, and New Zealand.
Quietly looking on is Indonesia, which hopes that a new government in East Timor beholden to the multinational oil industry will give former President Suharto's family's oil firms, trading firms that deal with the state-owned Pertamina, lucrative deals for East Timor's off-shore oil blocks. Meanwhile, big oil has now re-introduced war to East Timor, a nation that lost 100,000 of its people in a brutal war with Indonesia, supported by the past Republican administrations of Ford, Reagan, and Bush I.
Comment: "secretly support a rebellion, force the government to call on Australian military assistance, and then declare the country a "failed state" and permanently establish a military and political presence in the country..."
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Australia to deploy 1,300 troops to East Timor
25/05/2006
Australia will send 1,300 troops to violence-hit East Timor immediately, Prime Minister John Howard said today.
Australia will send 1,300 troops to violence-hit East Timor immediately, Prime Minister John Howard said today.
Howard said the situation in East Timor had deteriorated significantly since he announced the deployment of 130 commandos to the troubled island nation who had secured the airfield earlier today.
"Given the deterioration, we will go ahead without any conditionality with the full deployment and the 1,300 will be in place in a very short order," Howard said.
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Pakistani convicted for plot to bomb New York subway
AFP
Wed May 24, 2006
NEW YORK - A Pakistani man was convicted of planning to blow up a New York subway station ahead of the Republican National Convention held before the 2004 presidential election.
Shahawar Matin Siraj, 24, could face life in prison for conspiring to plant explosives at the 34th Street subway station near Madison Square Garden, where the political gathering took place, according to the Justice Department.
Another man, James Elshafay, pleaded guilty in October 2004 to participating in the plot and later testified against Siraj.
The federal jury in Siraj's five-week trial heard hours of secretly recorded conversations between him and an Egyptian nuclear engineer who became a paid informant for the New York City Police Department, the Justice Department said in a statement.
In the calls, Siraj declared his hatred for the United States and openly discussed his desire to place explosives on various bridges and in subway stations in New York, including his plan to bomb the 34th Street station, the department said.
Siraj and Elshafay scoped out the subway station on August 21, 2004, and later drew diagrams as part of their plot, it said. They were arrested six days later, but they carried no explosive material.
"Siraj conspired to plant a bomb in one of the most active public transportation hubs in America," prosecutor Roslynn Mauskopf said in a statement.
"Thanks to the diligent work of law enforcement, the plot never developed beyond the planning stage, and the public was never at risk," she said.
Republicans and Democrats hold huge political conventions every four years to officially name their presidential candidates.
President George W. Bush was nominated as the Republican candidate at the 2004 gathering.
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Australia Eyes Uranium Enrichment Program
SPX
May 25, 2006
Canberra, Australia - While Washington pressures Iran over its uranium enrichment program, Australia is considering beginning the process for its own civilian energy needs.
Australia's Foreign Minister Alexander Downer stated Australia needed to consider whether to begin uranium enrichment, and Prime Minister John Howard has called for a "full-blooded" debate on nuclear power and uranium mining, leading many to wonder if the government is considering nuclear power generation in Australia.
Australia currently has no nuclear reactors. There are 441 reactors currently in operation worldwide.
The Australian reported on May 21 that Howard was discussing nuclear issues during a visit to Canada, which has substantial uranium reserves.
Downer told ABC Television that Australia, with 30 to 40 percent of the world's known uranium reserves, needed a dispassionate discussion of nuclear issues, saying, "There's the question of whether Australia itself would eventually, some time, no doubt in the far distant future, build nuclear power stations.
There's a question of whether Australia would ever enrich uranium -- in other words, we go up the processing chain, rather than just dig it out. There needs to be at least a debate and some consideration about that."
Howard did not comment on whether Australia might export the enriched uranium if it went down the enrichment path.
Sen. Bob Brown said the Howard government's position conflicted with its strong stand against terrorism, remarking, "We are now in an age of handbag-sized nuclear weapons and the spread of technology means the inevitable increased danger of terrorists ... getting hold of nuclear technology."
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Romania hopes to cooperate more closely with Poland
www.chinaview.cn 2006-05-25 13:18:26
WARSAW, May 24 (Xinhua) -- Romania hopes to boost cooperation with Poland in economy, culture and science before Romania's EU entry, Romania's Ambassador to Poland Gabriel Constantin Bartas said Wednesday.
Gabriel Constantin Bartas made the remarks in the western Polish city of Zielona Gora, where he met with local government representatives to discuss the current and future cooperation with western Poland's Lubuskie province, the Polish new agency PAP reported.
After his meeting with Zielona Gora mayor Bozena Ronowicz, the Romanian ambassador said his country was interested in broader cooperation with Poland.
Trade volume between Romania and Poland stood at over 1 billion euro (1.28 billion U.S. dollars) last year, according to Gabriel Constantin Bartas.
He hoped that Polish and Romanian winemaking firms would establish cooperation.
The ambassador stressed that Romania should join the EU on Jan.1, 2007 as scheduled.
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Europe rethinks its 'safe haven' status
By Sarah Wildman
The Christian Science Monitor
Wed May 24, 2006
VIENNA - The night air in Vienna has finally turned warm, filling the city's trams with visitors. On the Ringstrasse, tourists take in the city, pointing out the City Hall and the parliament.
"Did you see that one girl - so young! And wearing a veil," a woman clucks in lightly accented English, staring out the window of tram D. "They will form a separate culture."
The sentiment isn't isolated. Earlier this month, Austria's Interior Minister Liese Prokop announced that 45 percent of Muslim immigrants were "unintegratable," and suggested that those people should "choose another country."
In the Netherlands, one of Europe's most integrated refugees and a critic of radical Islam, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, resigned her seat in parliament in the wake of criticism that she faked details on her asylum application to the Netherlands in 1992. And France's lower house of parliament last week passed a strict new immigration law, now awaiting Senate approval.
Indeed, recent rumblings from the top echelons of governments across Europe suggest that the continent is rethinking its once-vaunted status as a haven for refugees as it becomes more suspicious that many immigrants are coming to exploit its social benefits and democratic principles.
"The trend today more and more in Europe is to try to control immigration flow," says Philippe De Bruycker, founder of the Odysseus Network, an academic consortium on immigration and asylum in Europe. "At the same time we still say we want to respect the right of asylum and the possibility of applying for asylum. But of course along the way we create obstacles for asylum seekers," he acknowledges.
A day after Ms. Prokop made her controversial statement on May 15, Ms. Hirsi Ali - a Somalian immigrant elected to parliament in 2003 - was informed by her own political party that her Dutch citizenship was in question. Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk, a former prison warden dubbed "Iron Rita" who has long promised a tough stance on immigration, said "the preliminary assumption must be that - in line with case law of the Dutch Supreme Court - [Hirsi Ali] is considered not to have obtained Dutch nationality."
At issue were inconsistencies in Hirsi Ali's application for asylum in 1992 - giving a false name and age, and saying she was fleeing from Somalia's civil war, not a forced marriage. Though she had publically admitted to the falsities in 2002, a recent TV documentary heightened public scrutiny of the controversial parliamentarian, who has been under 24-hour protection from death threats since the murder of Theo Van Gogh, the director of a film she wrote. Hirsi Ali's case, heatedly debated across Europe in the days since Ms. Verdonk's announcement, was seen as particularly ironic. But it also highlights the dramatic change in Europe since the turn of this century.
In the years following the World War II, a chagrined US and Europe vowed to follow the Geneva Conventions and create safe havens for refugees. Yet such lofty ideals were hard to uphold after massive influxes of workers in the 1960s and early 1970s were halted during an economic downturn.
Those immigrant populations - often Muslims from North Africa and the Middle East - swelled with family reunification, yet often remained economically and socially distinct from the societies they had adopted. The image of the immigrant began to change, and distinctions between those who came for work and those who came for safety began to blur.
Now, says Jean-Pierre Cassarino, a researcher at the European-Mediterranean Consortium for Applied Research on International Migration in Florence, Italy, "asylum seekers are viewed as potential cheaters."
Today, in once-homogenous Europe, tensions between immigrants and native Europeans appear to be increasing. The perception that an ever increasing number of newcomers - who neither speak the language of their adopted country nor accept its cultural mores - are changing the culture has increased support for ideas once only advanced by far-right political parties.
"France, Austria, and the Netherlands all have had very significant electoral success of the far-right parties," says Michael Collyer, a research fellow in European migration policy at the University of Sussex.
Collier points to the success in France - also this past week - of a strict new immigration law proposed by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. Mr. Sarkozy's proposal would institutionalize "selective" immigration, giving an advantage to privileged immigrants of better economic and education status who are more "integratable."
It would also change the rights of family reunification for workers already in the country; speed up the expulsion of undocumented immigrants who are discovered or whose applications for asylum are rejected; lengthen the amount of time it takes to apply for permanent residency status for married couples; and toughen visa requirements. Most controversial, Sarkozy announced deportations for undocumented immigrant school children.
"We speak of the need to fight immigration but we don't have a clear position on whether we need immigrants," says Mr. De Bruycker, noting the precipitous dip in population growth in
European Union countries in the last half century. He adds that a series of recent incidents have affected the image of immigrants in the European mind. The murder of a Jewish man - Ilan Halimi - on the outskirts of Paris earlier this spring, for example, by a band of immigrant youths. Or the murder of a Malian woman and a Flemish child in Antwerp last week by the son of a founder of Belgium's most far-right party.
"In Europe, we are still unable to accept that we are a continent of immigration," says De Bruycker.
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Castro enraged by Forbes
www.chinaview.cn 2006-05-25 13:47:09
BEIJING, May 25 (Xinhuanet) -- Cuban President Fidel Castro has again challenged the U.S. magazine Forbes to prove the allegations that he has personal bank accounts abroad, during this month'a second TV appearance in Havana on Wednesday.
An article in the May edition of the Forbes magazine asserted Castro's personal wealth is worth 900 million U.S. dollars, listing him as the seventh wealthiest ruler in the world in its annual tally.
In a first TV appearance on May 15, Castro brandished a copy of the magazine to tell the Cubans the story about his personal wealth is a "repugnant slander" by a capitalist publication.
"If they can prove that I have a bank account abroad, with 900 million dollars, with 1 million dollars, 500,000 dollars, 100,000 dollars or 1 dollar in it, I will resign," he said.
Castro said his net worth is zero and that he earns only 900 Cuban pesos (40 dollars) a month, stressing that he would step down if the U.S. publication could prove its assertion.
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Russia continues pulling out military hardwares from Georgia bases
www.chinaview.cn 2006-05-25 17:36:53
MOSCOW, May 25 (Xinhua) -- A convoy of trucks carrying heavy weapons and equipment from a Russian military base in Georgia departed on Thursday as Russia continued its pullout from its bases in the Caucasus Mountain nation, the headquarters in Transcaucasia announced.
The trucks will bring from the Batumi base to the Russian base Gyumri in Armenia 54 units of military material, communication trucks as well as some property, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.
This is the third convoy of trucks which pulled out weapons and property of Russian troops from bases in Georgia in 2006. The two previous ones pulled out military property from the Akhalkalaki base. Another six train will depart from Batumi over the next few months.
Russia and Georgia signed an agreement in late March that set out the deadline and details of the pullout of Russian military bases from Georgia.
Under the accord, the two sides agreed to complete the phased withdrawal of the Russian bases and other military installations in Georgia by the end of 2008.
Russia inherited four military bases in Georgia from the former Soviet Union and has withdrawn two of them.
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Harper says he's finished with Ottawa press corps
Last Updated Wed, 24 May 2006 23:11:10 EDT
CBC News
Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he'll no longer give news conferences for the national media, after a dispute led a number of journalists to walk away from an event when he refused to take their questions.
Speaking to A-Channel in London, Ont., Harper said "unfortunately the press gallery has taken the view they are going to be the opposition to the government."
"They don't ask questions at my press conferences now. We'll just take the message out on the road. There's lots of media who do want to ask questions and hear what the government is doing."
Since becoming prime minister in January, Harper has had a testy relationship with the national media in Ottawa. His staff has tried to manage news conferences by saying they will decide which reporters get to ask questions.
The press gallery has refused to play by those rules. "We can't accept that the Prime Minister's Office would decide who gets to ask questions," Yves Malo, a TVA reporter and president of the press gallery, told CP on Tuesday. "Does that mean that when there's a crisis they'll only call upon journalists they expect softball questions from?"
On Tuesday about two dozen Ottawa reporters walked out on a Harper event when he refused to take their questions.
That led Harper to say that from now on he will speak only to local media.
The CBC says it will continue to cover the prime minister. "If the prime minister chooses to take questions we will be there to ask them," said Ottawa managing editor George Hoff. "We will have a journalist there to ask questions," he said.
Harper's supporters said Wednesday they believed the conflict is being blown out of proportion.
"I think this will get sorted out over time," Conservative Geoff Norquay said during an interview on Politics on CBC Newsworld.
"I think both sides have an interest in sorting it out and I think they will over time. The reality is that every new government wants to keep a tight lid on its messages and this one in particular because it had the previous example of Mr. Martin who had so many priorities that they all turned to mush in the minds of the Canadian people. And that's why this government is tightly focused on its messages," he said.
Comment: Harper is following the same path as George Bush by cutting off the national media and "taking his message out on the road". Refusal by a politician to answer questions from the press is a step towards tyranny.
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Earth, Wind, and Fire
NASA launches GOES-N weather satellite
By TRAVIS REED
Associated Press
Wed May 24, 2006
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - After months of delay, NASA on Wednesday launched a weather satellite that will allow forecasters to better pinpoint severe storms and investigate world climate change.
The GOES-N satellite took off about 6 p.m. on a Boeing Delta 4 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The satellite separated from the rocket as scheduled about 10:30 p.m., putting it on a path for orbit.
The last time a Delta 4 rocket flew - a test flight of the rocket's heavy-lift model in December 2004 - it failed to put a dummy satellite into its intended orbit.
A launch scheduled last August was scrubbed after an alarm indicated low voltage on batteries powering the system that allows the rocket to transmit data to ground stations. The delay was the latest in a series of setbacks dating to last May.
The GOES-N is a step in the development of a family of weather satellites designed and built by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration since 1975. It is the first in a series of three new satellites.
"It's not revolutionary ... but it has evolutionary improvements," said Steve Kirkner, GOES program manager for NOAA. "What this will provide is better knowledge ... better information."
GOES stands for Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites.
The satellite carried instruments to transmit high-resolution images, infrared data, and temperature and moisture profiles of the atmosphere. The instruments would allow meteorologists on the ground to take images of weather problem spots and improve short-term forecasts locally.
Steve Letro of the National Weather Service likened the new satellite to a Christmas gift. It gives meterologists another tool in "the fight against hurricanes, tornadoes and other types of severe weather," he said.
The spacecraft probably won't be in use for at least two years, until one of two satellites currently in orbit runs out of fuel or fails.
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New Orleans seen top target for '06 hurricanes
By Barbara Liston
Reuters
Wed May 24, 2006
ORLANDO, Florida - New Orleans, still down and out from last year's assault by Hurricane Katrina, is the U.S. city most likely to be struck by hurricane force winds during the 2006 storm season, a researcher said on Wednesday.
The forecast gives New Orleans a nearly 30 percent chance of being hit by a hurricane and a one in 10 chance the storm will be a Category 3 or stronger, meaning sustained winds of at least 111 miles per hour (178 km per hour), said Chuck Watson of Kinetic Analysis Corp., Savannah, Georgia a risk assessment firm.
"Given the state of the infrastructure down there and the levees, gosh, that's just not good news. But that's what the climate signals look like," Watson said.
Watson, who has partnered with University of Central Florida statistics professor Mark Johnson, also predicted that oil production in the Gulf of Mexico will be disrupted for a minimum of a week at a cost of 7-8 million barrels of oil.
Up to 25 percent of U.S. oil production in the Gulf was shut down last year and 20 percent is still out.
Watson gave a one in 10 chance that oil rigs will sustain enough damage to reduce production by 278 million barrels this year, further escalating prices for gasoline.
The forecasters, who have worked with the oil and gas industry and with state insurance regulators, base their forecast in part on the paths of storms over the past 155 years and expected global climate conditions this year.
Watson and Johnson said a weak La Nina weather condition and warmer-than-normal Gulf of Mexico water temperatures were contributing factors. U.S. government weather experts say the La Nina phenomenon in place earlier this year has dissipated and should not be a factor during the hurricane season.
On Tuesday, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the 2006 hurricane season was expected to produce 13 to 16 named storms, including four to six "major" hurricanes of Category 3 strength or higher. No leading forecasters came close to predicting what happened in 2005, when 28 tropical storms spawned a record 15 hurricanes.
The 2006 forecast for News Orleans was worse than Watson's prediction for the city last year, he said. But for now, he considers the 2005 season an aberration rather than a trend or a definitive sign of effects from global warming.
"If it happens again this year or next year, then we're in a different climate world than we were in the last 100 years or so," Watson said.
Of 28 coastal cities evaluated under the forecast model, New Orleans ranked top with a 29.3 percent chance of experiencing hurricane-force winds in the storm season that begins officially on June 1.
Other top candidates include Mobile, Alabama, with a 22 percent chance of being buffeted by hurricane-force winds, and the Florida cities of Key West and Pensacola, which both have a 20 percent chance.
West Palm Beach, Florida, which suffered severe damage during last year's Hurricane Wilma, came in just after Key West and Pensacola with a 19 percent chance of being struck yet again by hurricane-force winds.
Watson and Johnson have published a number of research papers on storm and wind damage modeling.
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Powerful earthquake shakes east coast of Kamchatka
25.05.2006, 12.07
PETROPAVLOSK-KAMCHATSKY, May 25 (Itar-Tass) - An earthquake of 5.1 on the Richter scale has occurred in the Kamchatka Bay, near the east coast of the peninsula, early on Thursday morning (local time). There were no victims or destructions, Itar-Tass was told later in the day at the Chief Kamchatka Department of the Ministry for Emergency Situations.
The earth tremor was recorded at 03:36 local time (18:36 Moscow time, May 24). The epicentre of the earthquake was at the depth of eighty kilometres beneath the sea bottom some 350 kilometres to the northeast of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. The nearest inhabited locality of Ust-Kamchatsk is located approximately one hundred kilometres from that spot. The tremor was not felt there or in the regional centre.
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Earthquake hits southern Iran
Thursday, May 25, 2006 - ©2005 IranMania.com
LONDON, May 25 (IranMania) - An earthquake hit the city of Jenah and surrounding villages in the southern province of Hormuzgan. According to IRNA, it was measuring 3.7 on the Richter scale.
According to the seismological base of the Geophysics Institute of Tehran University, the quake occurred at 21:26 hours local time (17:56 GMT).
The quake was felt in an area measuring 53.99 degrees in longitude and 26.97 degrees in latitude, the report added.
There have been no reports of any casualty or damage to property caused by the quake.
Iran is often hit by quakes of varying magnitudes as it sits on some of the world's most active seismic faultlines.
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Minor Earthquake Shakes Northern California
UPDATED: 11:13 pm PDT May 24, 2006
MORAGA, Calif. -- A minor earthquake shook an area east of Oakland on Wednesday night and there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.
The magnitude-3.2 quake struck at 10:38 p.m. PDT about 8 miles east of Oakland, according to a preliminary report from the US Geological Survey.
The quake was centered southeast of Moraga, but it was felt as far away as Foster City on the peninsula.
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Minor earthquake shakes part of Stockholm
25/05/2006 - 11:23:46
A minor earthquake shook parts of Stockholm early today, sending some scared residents to the streets for safety.
The quake measured about 2.0 on the Richter scale, which is considered only a small tremor, but still very rare for the Stockholm region, said Reynir Bodvarsson, a seismologist at Uppsala University.
"It is very rare that such a big quake happens in the middle of Stockholm," Bodvarsson said.
"Over the past few hundred years, it has only happened a couple of times."
The quake took place in the south-eastern parts of Stockholm shortly after 1am local time, he said.
Some residents initially thought the noise caused by the tremor was a large explosion, and emergency services were flooded with calls from scared locals.
Some residents even left their homes to seek shelter on the street when their windows started shaking, Swedish media reported.
But Bodvarsson said it was unlikely the quake caused any damage to the city.
"If a building was damaged by this, it must have already been in very bad shape," he said.
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Case may be first 3-person bird flu chain
By SAM CAGE
Associated Press
Wed May 24, 2006
GENEVA - A family of eight infected with bird flu in Indonesia likely passed the disease among themselves, but world health officials said Wednesday there is no reason to raise its pandemic alert level.
It is the fourth - and largest - family cluster of bird flu cases likely transmitted from person to person since the start of the outbreak in Hong Kong in 2003, World Health Organization spokesman Gregory Hartl said.
But this case may mark the first time bird flu has passed from person to person to person, a top U.S. health official said.
The previous clusters all involved someone who was infected by a sick bird and then spread the virus to others. This new cluster appears to involve a cascade of transmission, said Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in a telephone briefing from Geneva.
The family members' close physical proximity is probably responsible for the spread of the disease, Hartl said.
"It fits the kind of pattern perfectly which we've seen so far," Hartl told The Associated Press. Global and U.S. health officials say tests on virus samples taken from the family do not indicate any significant changes.
Investigators say the family, living in the remote northern Sumatra village of Kubu Sembelang, were infected with a strain of H5N1 bird flu that was genetically the same as the virus found circulating in the area earlier. Tests are still being carried out on poultry there.
Infections have not been detected in health-care workers or others in the village, but those who may have come in contact with the family are being given Tamiflu as a precaution, Gerberding said.
WHO has suspected that in rare cases bird flu may have passed from one person to another, although people usually catch it from chickens and other poultry.
Experts have long believed the virus is spread when people breathe it in - possibly in dust from bird droppings or in droplets sneezed or coughed by humans into the air.
But it remains unclear exactly how the virus spreads in family groups - whether through respiratory systems, food, infected surfaces or a combination of these, Hartl said.
"Which transmission mode is most important, we really don't know yet," he said. "When you get all of these things together, it becomes perhaps more likely."
Other experts have suggested family members have a genetic weakness to the disease. In all four family clusters recorded so far, only direct blood relatives - not spouses - have caught bird flu.
WHO will leave its pandemic alert level unchanged at 3, where it has been for months, meaning there is "no or very limited human-to-human transmission."
Six of the seven family members who caught bird flu have died, the most recent on Monday. An eighth family member who died was buried before tests could be done, but she was considered to be among those infected with bird flu.
"... It apparently can only spread between human to human when there is extensive and close contact between someone who is already showing clinical signs of the disease and the uninfected person," Hartl said.
In the three previous family clusters - in Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam - the number of infected relatives was much smaller, Hartl said.
CDC officials noted that the evidence for human transmission was stronger in the Indonesia and Thailand clusters, but human transmission could not be ruled out in the Vietnam cluster.
Health workers have found no sign the latest Indonesian case has moved outside the family, and there is also "no evidence that efficient human-to-human transmission has occurred," WHO said in a statement.
Still the size of the cluster and the failure to determine the source of the infections was worrying, Peter Cordingley, spokesman for WHO's Western Pacific region.
Bird flu has killed 124 people worldwide since the virus started ravaging poultry stocks across Asia in 2003.
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"Sleeper effect" of cigarettes can last for years
Reuters
Wed May 24, 2006
Summary: Trying just one cigarette may not be so harmless for non-smokers after all.
Scientists have discovered that a single cigarette has a "sleeper effect" that can increase a person's vulnerability for three years or more to becoming a regular smoker.
Fidler and her team analyzed the impact of smoking a single cigarette on more than 2,000 children aged between 11 and 16 over five years.
LONDON - Trying just one cigarette may not be so harmless for non-smokers after all.
Scientists have discovered that a single cigarette has a "sleeper effect" that can increase a person's vulnerability for three years or more to becoming a regular smoker.
"We know that progression from experimenting with one cigarette to being a smoker can take several years," said Jennifer Fidler of University College London.
"But for the first time we've shown that there may be a period of dormancy between trying cigarettes and becoming a regular smoker -- a 'sleeper effect' or vulnerability to nicotine addition," she added.
Fidler and her team analyzed the impact of smoking a single cigarette on more than 2,000 children aged between 11 and 16 over five years.
Of the 260 children who by age 11 had tried one cigarette, 18 percent were regular smokers by the time they reached 14. But only seven percent of 11-year-olds who had never smoked had taken up the habit three years later.
"The results also indicate that prior experimentation is a strong predictor of taking up smoking later," said Fidler, who reported the findings in the journal Tobacco Control on Thursday.
The scientists are not sure why a single cigarette has such an impact but they said the exposure to nicotine could change pathways in the brain which could make children more vulnerable to stress or depression, which can make them more likely to try it again.
The first cigarette could also remove fears about getting caught or how to smoke, which would have prevented them from taking up the habit.
Jean King, of the charity Cancer Research UK, said the findings have important implications for anti-smoking campaigns.
"Any research that helps unravel the processes involved in young people becoming addicted to nicotine is key to developing effective and targeted ways to prevent them from starting smoking in the first place," she said.
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Backyard Approach Finds Extrasolar Planet
By Bjorn Carey
SPACE.com
23 May 2006
Three years of scouring the skies with a "homemade" telescope fashioned from commercially available parts has finally paid off for astronomer Peter McCullough.
First came the observation of the brief but telltale dimming of a sun-like star 600 light-years away, then the detection of the star's wobble indicative of an orbiting planet's presence.
Finally, McCullough's international team of professional and amateur astronomers received the official word that they had discovered a Jupiter-sized planet.
"Of the planets that pass in front of their stars, XO-1b is the most similar to Jupiter yet known, and the star XO-1 is the most similar to our Sun," said McCullough, of the Space Telescope Science Institute. "But XO-1b is much, much closer to its star than Jupiter is to the Sun."
More to come
By scouring the skies with many telescopes made from relatively inexpensive equipment instead of a few large observatories, the search for extrasolar planets could pick up dramatically.
"This discovery suggests that a fleet of modest telescopes and the help of amateur astronomers can search for transiting extrasolar planets many times faster than we are now," McCullough said.
To find XO-1b, the team built their telescope, which they call the XO prototype telescope, from two commercially available 200-millimeter telephoto camera lenses. The setup, which resembles a pair of high-powered binoculars, is mounted on the summit of the Haleakala volcano in Hawaii.
The XO prototype telescope cost about $60,000, which is far less than the many millions spent on typical professional observatories.
The team scanned the sky from September 2003 to September 2005 and observed tens of thousands of bright stars. A computer sifted through the data for tiny decreases in a star's light. If a normally bright star appears slightly dimmer in one picture, it could be because a planet is passing in front of it.
Backyard help
Once the team identified a few dozen promising candidates, McCullough assigned four stars to amateur astronomers for further observation, including the star XO-1.
After observing XO-1 in June and July 2005, astronomers confirmed that the roughly 2 percent dips in the star's brightness are caused by a planet-sized object that eclipses the star every four days. Astronomers at the McDonald Observatory in Texas verified the object as a planet, named XO-16, and determined its mass was slightly less than that of Jupiter.
"It was a wonderful feeling because the team had worked for three years to find this one planet," McCullough said. "The discovery represents a few bytes out of nearly a terabyte of data: It's like trying to distill gold out of seawater."
This technique is called the transit method, and it allows astronomers to determine a planet's mass and size, which can be used to estimate other characteristics, such as the planet's density.
So far, of the roughly 180 extrasolar planets detected, including XO-1b, only 10 have been discovered using the transit method. Most have been spotted indirectly by noting a gravitationally-induced wobble in the host star.
The search continues
There is still much to be learned about XO-1b, including whether it shares its star with other planets.
"By timing the planet's passages across the star, both amateur and professional astronomers might be lucky enough to detect the presence of another planet in the XO-1 system by its gravitational tugs on XO-1b," McCullough said. "It's even possible that such a planet could be similar to Earth."
As McCullough continues searching for other planets, he believes XO-1b is a good candidate for investigation by the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes. Hubble could precisely measure the star's distance and the planet's size, while Spitzer might be able to provide an image of the planet based on its infrared radiation.
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Pick Your Poison
Artifically sweet cocktails speed alcohol absorption
Reuters
May 24, 2006
LOS ANGELES--Alcoholic drinks made with artificial sweeteners lead to a high rate of alcohol absorption, resulting in a greater blood alcohol peak and concentration than from drinks made with sugar-based mixers.
The reason, Australian investigators told attendees here at Digestive Disease Week 2006, is the accelerated emptying of the stomach caused by artificial sweetening agents.
Chris Rayner and colleagues at Royal Adelaide Hospital studied eight healthy male volunteers. On one day, the subjects consumed an orange-flavored vodka drink made from alcohol and a mixer sweetened with sugar containing 478 calories. On the second day, the men drank the same amount of alcohol with a diet mixer containing 225 calories.
The researchers measured the rate of stomach emptying using ultrasound technology. Blood samples were also taken at 30-minute intervals for three hours.
The stomach had emptied half of its contents in 15.3 minutes after the diet drink and 21.1 minutes with the sugar-sweetened drink.
The peak blood alcohol concentration was significantly higher with the diet drink than with the regular drink. The blood alcohol concentration was also higher with the artificial sweetener than with the sugar-sweetened drink.
"It was surprising how much of a difference the artificial sweetener made," Rayner commented during his presentation.
"People tend to consume more because of the lower calorie content," he told Reuters Health. "These drinks also tend to be consumed at times other than meal times, when food would slow gastric emptying."
The findings have public health significance, Rayner said. He recommends that product labeling include information on the intoxicating qualities of artificially sweetened alcoholic drinks. There could be legal implications for those driving home, as well, he noted.
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Israeli pleads not guilty to drug charges
By CURT ANDERSON
Associated Press
Wed May 24, 2006
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - An Israeli identified by federal prosecutors as one of the world's biggest distributors of Ecstasy pleaded not guilty Wednesday to federal charges that could put him in prison for four decades.
Zeev Rosenstein, 51, entered the plea nearly three months after he was extradited from Israel to face charges that he conspired to distribute more than 1 million Ecstasy pills in the United States between summer 1999 and November 2001.
Rosenstein, dressed in a tan jailhouse outfit, said "not guilty, your honor" through a Hebrew translator when asked for a plea by U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Seltzer. No trial date has been set.
If convicted, he could face up to 20 years in prison on each of the two counts in his drug indictment. His Ecstasy network allegedly spanned four continents and used Latin American smugglers to bring the drug into the United States.
Rosenstein is being held on $10 million bond. His attorney, Howard Srebnick, said Rosenstein is currently unable to make bail despite having significant financial resources around the world.
Rosenstein, who was on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's list of 44 top worldwide drug traffickers, was arrested in Israel more than a year ago. He is allegedly one of Israel's most powerful organized crime figures, although he has largely escaped prosecution until now.
Ecstasy is a synthetic drug that can induce euphoria, increased energy and sexual arousal. It also often suppresses appetite, thirst and the need to sleep, and in high doses can cause health problems and even death.
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10 Wash. residents tested, all have toxins
By RACHEL LA CORTE
Associated Press
Wed May 24, 2006
OLYMPIA, Wash. - A coalition of environmental and advocacy groups tested 10 Washington residents from around the state and found each of them had dozens of potentially harmful chemicals in their bodies, ranging from pesticides to flame retardants.
Coalition officials who released the report in Seattle on Tuesday acknowledged it wasn't a scientific representation of the state, but said they wanted to put a face on the issue.
The Toxic-Free Legacy Coalition collected hair, urine and blood samples last fall from the participants, who were specifically chosen for the tests. Most of the participants are involved with organizations that are members of or have worked with the coalition.
The coalition said it chose the people to represent both genders, different races, professions and people who live in different parts of the state, as well as people who were local leaders.
Laboratories in Victoria, British Columbia, Seattle, and Los Angeles tested the samples for 86 chemicals. Each participant, including state Sens. Bill Finkbeiner and Lisa Brown, both from opposite sides of the state, tested positive for at least 26 of the various chemicals, and as many as 39.
An extensive study on exposure to environmental chemicals by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year stressed that the presence of an environmental chemical in blood or urine "does not mean that the chemical causes disease." But state coalition members said they wanted people to be aware of potential risks.
"It's very likely each of us is walking around with a cocktail of chemicals in our bodies," said Erika Schreder, staff scientist for the Washington Toxics Coalition and the lead scientist on the report. "The chemicals that we found in our test participants are chemicals that are linked to very serious health problems. That's a concern."
But Dr. Elaine Faustman, a toxicologist and professor of environmental and occupational health at the University of Washington, said it's important to keep in mind the levels of chemicals in each person, not just that they are detected.
She noted that there are persistent chemicals in almost everyone.
"For us, the dose makes the poison," she said.
However, Faustman said that while the sample size was very small, the report was a good tool to see specific data for the Pacific Northwest.
Among the chemicals found were phthalates, a manmade ingredient of many plastics, cosmetics and other consumer products.
Other chemicals included fire-retardant PBDEs, and PFCs, which are found in the plastic coating Teflon.
Finkbeiner, R-Kirkland, had 30 chemicals detected and a mercury level above the EPA "safe" level. Of the group tested, he had the highest levels of the Teflon chemicals and the pesticide carbaryl.
"I never gave too much thought or made too many lifestyle choices based on these issues prior to having this profile. It sure made me think a whole lot more," said Finkbeiner, who added that he has since stopped using Teflon pans, plans to buy more organic foods, and will pull weeds in his yard instead of spraying them with pesticides.
Schreder said the report should serve as a wake-up call to the state's lawmakers and Gov. Chris Gregoire.
"What we're really lacking is a comprehensive approach to ensure these harmful toxins are not in our products," she said.
A spokeswoman for the American Chemistry Council, which represents about 130 major chemical companies, said the small sample of the report doesn't warrant "the far-reaching conclusions or recommendations that are made."
Sarah Brozena said scientists have long known that humans can absorb chemicals from the environment.
"We are finding them now because there are much better analytical techniques that can measure them at these very trace (part per billion or part per trillion) levels," she said in an e-mailed statement. "Further, detection of chemicals in our bodies - by itself - is not an indication of risk to health and shouldn't be cause for alarm."
Earlier this year, the state Department of Health and the Department of Ecology asked the Legislature to ban all trade in PBDEs, arguing that the fireproofing chemicals are being found in Columbia River fish, seal blubber, grizzly bears and women's breast milk.
A bill died in the Legislature this year, though supporters said they will try again next year.
Schreder said that, in addition to the passage of the PBDE ban, the coalition wants the state to require companies that do business with Washington state to provide complete information on what types of chemicals are used. The coalition also wants to see an immediate plan to phase out certain products and manufacturing chemicals, and to help companies make the switch with either incentives or technical assistance.
Gregoire's office did not return a phone call Tuesday seeking comment on the report.
Brown, D-Spokane, said the report got her attention, and she's certain it will open a dialogue in the next legislative session.
"We pretty much take for granted that Washington state is a beautiful place to live and work," said Brown, who tested positive for 37 chemicals, including high levels of mercury. "We want it to be a truly healthy place to live."
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Chocolate may boost brain power
By Megan Rauscher
Reuters Health
Wed May 24, 2006
NEW YORK - Chocolate lovers rejoice. A new study hints that eating milk chocolate may boost brain function.
"Chocolate contains many substances that act as stimulants, such as theobromine, phenethylamine, and caffeine," Dr. Bryan Raudenbush from Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia noted in comments to Reuters Health.
"These substances by themselves have previously been found to increase alertness and attention and what we have found is that by consuming chocolate you can get the stimulating effects, which then lead to increased mental performance."
To study the effects of various chocolate types on brain power, Raudenbush and colleagues had a group of volunteers consume, on four separate occasions, 85 grams of milk chocolate; 85 grams of dark chocolate; 85 grams of carob; and nothing (the control condition).
After a 15-minute digestive period, participants completed a variety of computer-based neuropsychological tests designed to assess cognitive performance including memory, attention span, reaction time, and problem solving.
"Composite scores for verbal and visual memory were significantly higher for milk chocolate than the other conditions," Raudenbush told Reuters Health. And consumption of milk and dark chocolate was associated with improved impulse control and reaction time.
Previous research has shown that some nutrients in food aid in glucose release and increased blood flow, which may augment cognitive performance. The current findings, said Raudenbush, "provide support for nutrient release via chocolate consumption to enhance cognitive performance."
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Study: ADHD drugs send thousands to ERs
By LINDA A. JOHNSON
Associated Press
Wed May 24, 2006
Accidental overdoses and side effects from attention deficit drugs likely send thousands of children and adults to emergency rooms, according to the first national estimates of the problem.
Scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated problems with the stimulant drugs drive nearly 3,100 people to ERs each year. Nearly two-thirds - overdoses and accidental use - could be prevented by parents locking the pills away, the researchers say.
Other patients had side effects, including potential cardiac problems such as chest pain, stroke, high blood pressure and fast heart rate.
Concerns over those effects have led some doctors to urge the Food and Drug Administration to require a "black box," its most serious warning, on package inserts for drugs such as Ritalin, Concerta and Adderall. Yet even doctors advising the FDA don't agree on whether that's warranted.
The issue was discussed in a series of letters in Thursday's
New England Journal of Medicine, including some from doctors worried about the dangers of not treating attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
"The numbers (of side effects) are puny compared to the numbers of stimulant prescriptions per year," said Dr. Tolga Taneli, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark. "I'm not alarmed."
An estimated 3.3 million Americans who are 19 or younger and nearly 1.5 million ages 20 and older are taking ADHD medicines. Ritalin is made by Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp. of East Hanover, N.J.; Concerta by Johnson & Johnson of New Brunswick, N.J., and Adderall by Shire US Inc. of Newport, Ky.
Twenty-five deaths linked to ADHD drugs, 19 involving children, were reported to FDA from 1999 through 2003. Fifty-four other cases of serious heart problems, including heart attacks and strokes, were also reported. Some of the patients had prior heart problems.
Still, there hasn't been a clear estimate of the scope of side effects. The CDC report, while not a rigorous scientific study, attempts to provide that by using a new hospital surveillance network.
From August 2003 through December 2005, the researchers counted 188 ER visits for problems with the drugs at the 64 hospitals in the network, a representative sample of ERs monitored to spot drug side effects.
Doctors linked use of stimulant ADHD drugs to 73 patients with side effects or allergic reactions. Another 115 accidentally swallowed ADHD pills, including a month-old baby, or took too much.
"These are cases where a young child took someone else's medication or they took too much of their own," CDC epidemiologist Dr. Adam Cohen said of the second group.
Nearly 1 in 5 patients was admitted to the hospital, 1 in 5 needed stomach pumping or treatment with medicines, and 1 in 7 had cardiac symptoms. Sixteen percent of the side effects involved interaction with another drug.
Besides cardiac problems, common symptoms included abdominal pain, rashes and spasms, pain or weakness in muscles, according to Cohen. No patients died.
Extrapolating to all U.S. hospitals, the researchers estimated 3,075 ER visits occur each year.
In another letter in the journal, the heads of the American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry wrote they are concerned a black box warning would discourage use of ADHD drugs, raising patients' risks of academic failure, substance abuse and other problems.
This past February, an FDA drug safety advisory panel voted 8-7 for a black box warning. The next month, another FDA panel instead recommended data on cardiac and other risks go in a new "highlights" section the agency plans to add to the top of drug inserts.
Dr. Marsha Rappley, pediatrics professor at Michigan State University, and two other doctors on the advisory panels believe the vote for a black box was premature.
She said studies show the drugs raise blood pressure and pulse rates a bit, but it's unknown whether that would harm children taking them for years, and that cardiac risks may be higher for adults.
Dr. Steven Nissen, cardiology chief at the Cleveland Clinic, who had pressed for a black box warning at the FDA panel meeting, said ADHD drugs are powerful stimulants and inherently risky. Nissen and other doctors say the drugs are being prescribed to some who don't need them.
This week, the FDA said it is "working diligently" on "labeling changes that we feel accurately reflect the available data and the advice of the committees." The agency declined interview requests.
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Obese Australians raising fat cats and fat dogs
By James Grubel
Reuters
Wed May 24, 2006
CANBERRA - Australia is a nation of pet lovers but it may be loving its animals to death with pet owners passing on rising levels of obesity by overfeeding their cats and dogs, the country's main animal welfare body says.
Despite its image as a sports-mad country full of fit, sun-bronzed youth, Australia in reality is battling the bulge and challenging the United States as the world's fattest nation. The problem now extends to household pets.
Obesity rates for Australians have doubled over the past 20 years, with 62 percent of men and 45 percent of women now deemed overweight or obese.
The same trend applies to household pets, with an increase in the number of overweight cats and dogs being dealt with by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), and even one case of an obese pet mouse.
"It's a big problem, and quite reflective of what's happening in the human situation," said Mark Lawrie, the RSPCA's chief vet.
Australia is a nation of 20 million people, almost 4 million dogs, 2.5 million cats, 8.7 million pet birds and more than 12 million pet fish.
It has one of the world's highest rates of pet ownership at 64 percent of households, compared to 62 percent in the United States and 44 percent in Britain.
Lawrie told Reuters surveys had found that between 40 and 44 percent of dogs and more than one in three household cats were now overweight, due to poor diet and a lack of exercise.
Fat cats and dogs were more vulnerable to diabetes, arthritis, heart problems and liver disease.
Dogs most at risk were Labradors, Beagles and cross-breeds such as Labradoodles -- a mixture of a Labrador and a Poodle -- with household moggies more at risk than other types of cats.
The RSPCA said de-sexing and lower levels of exercise had an impact on pet obesity, but the key issue was over-eating.
"It's really the calorie intake and food that makes the big difference," Lawrie said, adding that many pet owners could not resist giving their animals food when they asked for it.
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Biological clock ticks for men too: study
Reuters
Wed May 24, 2006
NEW YORK - A man's fertility appears to decline after the age of 40, in much the same way that a woman's ability to conceive fades after 35, according to French researchers.
Their study, of nearly 2,000 couples undergoing fertility treatment, found that pregnancy attempts were 70 percent more likely to fail when the man was age 40 or older than if he were younger than 30 -- regardless of his wife's age.
Because all the women in the study were completely sterile and undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF), the age of the fathers was key. And while past studies have suggested that older men are less likely to father children, the extent to which this was related to biological changes or to decreased sexual activity has been unclear.
"Our results provide, for the first time, strong evidence for a paternal age effect on failure to conceive that is linked only to biological male aging," the study authors report in the journal Fertility and Sterility.
Dr. Elise de La Rochebrochard of the French national health institute INSERM led the study.
According to the researchers, the lower IVF success rate among relatively older men may be due to poorer-quality sperm.
It has long been known that women are less likely to conceive after the age of 35 than before, de La Rochebrochard and her colleagues note. But the current findings, they write, suggest that for men, the age of 40 is similarly important.
"In reproduction," the researchers conclude, "age must no longer be considered as the concern of the woman, but as that of the couple."
SOURCE: Fertility and Sterility, May 2006.
Comment: It's interesting that no mention is made of the effects of numerous environmental contaminents on fertility.
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Lying for War in Iran
War Pimp Bolton: Iran regime can stay if ends arms pursuit
By Irwin Arieff
Reuters
Mon May 22, 2006
UNITED NATIONS - John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the
United Nations, said on Monday that Iran's leaders could stay in power and improve their ties with Washington if they ended their pursuit of nuclear arms.
He later insisted, however, that he had not meant to threaten Tehran with regime change if its leaders failed to do so.
Bolton, addressing a meeting of B'nai B'rith International, a Jewish humanitarian organization, cited Washington's move last week to normalize relations with Libya after that country gave up its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and said Iran's leaders faced a similar "clear choice."
"This is a sign to the rulers in Tehran that if they give up their long-standing support for terrorism and they give up their pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, that their regime can stay in place and that they can have a different relationship with the United States and the rest of the world," he said.
Asked by reporters afterward about those comments, he said he did not mean to imply the United States would seek a change in the Iranian regime if Tehran refused to suspend its enrichment of uranium, as the
U.N. Security Council has demanded.
"What it says is, if you do what Libya did, the same thing will happen," he said. "The 'regime stay' strategy is following the Libyan example."
It was "flatly wrong," he added, to argue that Western powers wanted the Security Council to adopt a resolution that was legally binding on Iran "as an excuse to use force for regime change or anything else."
Iran insists it wants only to produce energy for civilian use, but Western powers led by the United States, Britain, France and Germany argue it is using a civilian nuclear program as a cover for producing the highly enriched uranium needed for atomic bombs.
London, Paris and Berlin, working with Washington, are drafting an offer of incentives to Tehran if it agrees to curb its nuclear ambitions, twinned with disincentives should it fail to do so.
"I've probably said a thousand times that the Libya example is there for both North Korea and Iran to see, and that's all I've ever said and this wasn't any different," Bolton said.
Comment: Isn't it amazing how the Bush administration actually believes it has the right to decide who runs what country and how they run it?
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European banks bow under US pressure to cut Iran ties
By Helena Spongenberg
EUObserver.com
23.05.2006
Four of Europe's biggest banks have been strong-armed by the US into cutting ties with Iran in what some western media are calling anti-nuclear sanctions through the "back door."
Pressured by threats of fines and loss of business, UBS and Credit Suisse of Switzerland, ABN Amro of the Netherlands and HSBC of the UK have all started to reduce their links with Iran, the New York Times reports.
Citing terrorist laws, top US officials have stepped up their efforts for banks in the Middle East, Europe and in North America to limit their activities in Iran, stressing the risky nature of dealing with a country that has repeatedly rebuffed EU and US demands to halt uranium enrichment activities.
Banks with branches or headquarters in the US have in the past faced fines for dealing with countries that Washington has sought to isolate and nearly all European banks have an office on US soil which is subject to US law.
Both Brussels and Washington had hoped that the UN security council would impose sanctions on Iran for its failure to comply with demands to stop its nuclear enrichment programme.
But Russia and China are reluctant to endorse sanctions, while enjoying trade partnerships with Iran. Attempts to end the gridlock and reach agreement on a UN resolution ended in failure two weeks ago.
Last week, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said the EU could help Tehran with "the best and most sophisticated technology" for civilian nuclear use, if it really was the case that Iran's aim was to produce energy for peaceful purposes only.
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Iran ready for talks with US unconditionally
www.chinaview.cn 2006-05-24 23:08:50
TEHRAN, May 24 (Xinhua) -- Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi said on Wednesday that Tehran had repeatedly announced readiness to hold talks with the United States unconditionally over Iran's nuclear program, the official IRNA news agency reported.
"As the Russians announced, negotiations (over the nuclear issue) should take place without any preconditions," Asefi was quoted by IRNA as saying at the Majlis (Parliament).
"From the very beginning, we has announced that the issue should be settled only through negotiations," he stressed.
Asefi also criticized the U.S. position on Iran's nuclear dispute, saying "Washington is trying to make all countries reach an agreement on Iran's nuclear activities through force and illogical interpretations."
On a new proposal by the European Union aimed to settle the standoff over Iran's nuclear issue, Asefi did not give any comment, only saying that the proposal was to be set forth during Wednesday's meeting of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany and that it would be announced to Iran after the meeting.
In an effort to persuade Iran to halt its fuel cycle work, the European trio of Britain, France and Germany are planning to offer Tehran a package of incentives in the trade, technology and security fields and penalties if Iran continues defiance.
But Washington has ruled out providing security guarantees to Iran as part of the EU package, saying that security assurances are not on the table.
The European proposals are to be discussed at a meeting in London on Wednesday by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- along with Germany.
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Ahmadinejad: Not Hitler After All
By Jan Frel, AlterNet. Posted May 25, 2006.
A now discredited article by Iranian-American and neocon chum Amir Taheri that appeared last Friday in the Canadian National Post suggested that new legislation in Iran would require Jews and other religious minorities to wear distinctive color badges. At the article's end appeared this invitation to readers:
"Dangerous Parallel: Is Iran turning into the new Nazi Germany? Share your opinion online at nationalpost.com."
The readers who wrote in immediately savaged the article, its author and the National Post's facile, transparent attempt to resurrect the Wermacht. No one took the bait, and the disbelief quickly spread across the internet.
The swift rejection of this attempt to turn Iran into the Fourth Reich incarnate is surely a natural reflex of a public still smarting from the ordeal of the Iraq PR campaign. Another explanation for the rapid response is the massive growth in streams of alternative information available to the public -- organizations like Media Matters and PR Watch literally make their living exposing lies and propaganda as they are released through media and government channels.
And then there are the bloggers who can singlehandedly get to the bottom of large-scale lies. In the case of the National Post story, blogger Taylor Marsh phoned the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which had confirmed Taheri's story after the report came out. A researcher Marsh spoke with on Friday "was eager to confirm it, using words like 'throwback' to the Nazi era, 'very true' and 'very scary.' ... "
Within the day, the story was repudiated. Middle East expert Juan Cole revealed that there was no evidence of any such anti-Jewish Iranian legislation, citing a report in the Australian press that quoted an Iranian politician denying its existence. Later in the day, Marsh again called the Wiesenthal Center and got the runaround. Looking at a fax the researcher sent her as background, Marsh discovered that the National Post had suggested to a rabbi at the Wiesenthal Center that it was important to "draw attention" to Taheri's report, exposing the scaffolding behind the propaganda effort.
Marsh concluded with the pointed question, "Who got the Simon Wiesenthal Center to stick their necks out on this bogus Iranian badge story, risking their very reputation and funding credibility, and who had what to gain by doing so?"
Marsh's deconstruction matters, because the story quickly made the rounds in conservative media, as analyst Jim Lobe wrote for IPS:
Taheri's story ... was reprinted by the New York Post, which is owned by media baron Rupert Murdoch, and picked up by the Jerusalem Post, which also featured a photo of a yellow star from the Nazi era over a photo of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Another neoconservative publication, the New York Sun, also noted the story Monday, claiming that the specific report that special badges were required by the legislation had been "incorrect." At the same time, however, the Sun quoted two Iranian-American foes of the Islamic Republic as suggesting that dress requirements for religious minorities were still being considered by Iran's ruling circles. It offered no evidence to support that assertion.
The rapid discrediting of the Taheri article had real impact; instead of Condi Rice's trumpeting it as evidence of a proto-Nazi human-rights disaster, all we heard was a peep from U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, who professed ignorance of the now-toxic article and slyly referred to the idea of Iran forcing people to wear badges as evocative of "Germany under Hitler."
Since the evil dictator line has been used and abused to the point of meaninglessness over the past five years in Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea and elsewhere, Bush and his team have been reduced to plundering words that still have some resonance in American life: "Hitler," "Nazis" and "Holocaust." Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker quoted a former senior intelligence official who said that Hitler is the comparison "name they are using" for Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
But, as the National Post story makes apparent, this tactic is not really working. The columnists and propagandists who support attacking Iran appear to sense that the Nazi backdrop through which they have been asked to present "The Iranian Question" reflects the utter baselessness of the charge and the facility with which opponents can easily refute their claims. Unlike the point-blank lies and bullet-point shotgun blasts on the op-ed pages and cable segments we got with Iraq about evil and weapons programs, with the Iran campaign, it has to be subliminal, surreptitious, stab-in-the-back.
Take conservative pundit Niall Ferguson's attempt in the L.A. Times. His May 15 opinion article was ostensibly about the rise of many little Cold Wars with the proliferation of nuclear powers. But within six sentences, Ferguson reveals that he wants to talk about Iran. Soon enough, in the most backhanded way possible, he tiptoes toward the Nazis:
"It is, of course, always dangerous to draw analogies with the 1930s. Too many bad decisions have been made over the years on the basis of facile parallels -- between Hitler and Nasser, between Hitler and Saddam Hussein."
In other words, even the Nazi comparison may have been looted of its meaning in the name of making bad decisions. So haven't we learned our lesson? No, because Bush still has one very bad decision to make, and a fanatic obsession with war does not generally give rise to creative impulses. So Ferguson relents: "Still, in one respect, Ahmadinejad really has taken a leaf out of the Führer's book."
It would be a distraction to explain just which leaf Ferguson is referring to, because then we'd be missing the point, which is to push us to link our historic venom against Nazis with anything Iranian, at any cost. Even the projection of Ahmadinejad as supreme leader is dubious; analysts and reporters have argued that he's merely a figurehead, and Seymour Hersh qouted a European diplomat who declared, "Ahmadinejad is not in control."
If enough people laugh off the attempts to draw Hitler's moustache on Ahmadinejad's upper lip, we might see the domestic propaganda division of the Get Iran effort shut down. The rapid and torrential takedown of the Taheri story is a good step in that direction.
But what if the propaganda were to stop, yet the attack on Iran were launched anyway?
Given the growing sense of total independence the Bush administration has displayed over the years, and its contempt for the press, it doesn't take a huge leap of the imagination to envision them attacking Iran while ignoring congressional power, public opinion, protesters and dissidents alike. That would be a very scary "first" in American history -- the only administration to go to war without a propaganda campaign. They don't even feel the need to lie to us anymore.
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Cleaning Up in Iraq
A dozen Marines may face courts-martial for alleged Iraq massacre
By Gayle S. Putrich
Marine Corps Times
May 25, 2006
A key member of Congress said he "wouldn't be surprised" if a dozen Marines faced courts-martial for allegedly killing Iraqi civilians Nov. 19. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., told Marine Corps Times that the number of dead Iraqis, first reported to be 15, was actually 24. He based that number on a briefing from Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Mike Hagee on Wednesday.
Hagee visited Capitol Hill in anticipation of the release of two investigation reports, which are expected to show that among the 24 dead civilians, five of the alleged victims, all unarmed, were shot in a car with no warning, Murtha said. The killings took place in Hadithah, 125 miles northwest of Baghdad.
At least seven of the victims were women and three were children.
"If the allegations are substantiated, the Marine Corps will pursue appropriate legal and administrative actions against those responsible," said Col. David Lapan, a spokesman at Marine Corps headquarters.
"The investigations are ongoing, therefore any comment at this time would be inappropriate and could undermine the investigatory and possible legal process," he said. "As soon as the facts are known and decisions on future actions are made, we will make that information available to the public to the fullest extent allowable." Murtha, an outspoken war critic and retired Marine colonel, has maintained for several weeks that the reality of the Hadithah incident was far more violent than the original reports suggested.
"They originally said a lot of things. I don't even know how they tried to cover that up," he said.
Two investigations into the incident are ongoing, according to the Pentagon - one by Multi-National Forces Iraq, expected before the end of the week, and a second by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, that is due in June.
The Marine Corps originally said a convoy from the Camp Pendleton, Calif.-based Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, hit a roadside bomb Nov. 19 that killed Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, 20, of El Paso, Texas.
Marine officials initially said 15 Iraqi civilians also were killed in the blast, but later reported that the civilians were killed in a firefight that took place after the explosion.
But a 10-week investigation by Time magazine resulted in a March 27 report that included claims by an Iraqi civil rights group that the Marines barged into houses near the bomb strike in retaliation, throwing grenades and shooting civilians who were cowering in fear.
Three officers from the 3/1, including battalion commander Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, were relieved April 7 for "lack of confidence in their leadership abilities stemming from their performance during a recent deployment to Iraq."
The two other Marines who were relieved, Capts. Luke McConnell and James Kimber, were company commanders in the battalion.
Officials would not explicitly connect the firings to the Hadithah investigation.
While no charges have been filed yet, defense attorneys who handle military cases are bracing for what could fast become a busy summer season in the courtroom.
"It looks like it's coming," said one San Diego area-based civilian defense attorney who has handled other cases of assault and manslaughter and has gotten a sort of "warning order" about potential new cases.
"I think there's a lot of pressure to do something," the civilian attorney said.
"It's going to be extraordinarily difficult for them to find enough defense counsel," one Marine Corps attorney said.
Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who was also briefed on the reports, said his committee will hold hearings on the incident after lawmakers return from their Memorial Day recess.
Hunter was matter-of-fact about the reports' contents.
"It is not good," he said. "Let the chips fall where they may."
Hagee was due to brief leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee late Wednesday.
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Amnesty urges U.S. on Iraq contractors
By DANICA KIRKA
Associated Press
Tue May 23, 2006
LONDON - The United States is riding roughshod over human rights by outsourcing key anti-terror work in
Iraq to private contractors, who operate beyond Iraqi law and outside the military chain of command, Amnesty International said Tuesday.
It called for tighter rules on the use of contractors in a statement released with its 2006 annual report detailing human rights violations in 150 countries around the world. The rights watchdog said contracting for military detention, security and intelligence operations had fueled violations.
"We're concerned about the use of private contractors in Iraq because it creates a legal black hole of responsibility and accountability," Amnesty's Secretary-General Irene Khan told AP Television News.
"These contractors are protected from being prosecuted under Iraqi law, but they're not part of the U.S. military command. So when they commit crimes, or when they abuse human rights, they're accountable to no one."
Few aspects of the multibillion-dollar U.S. contracting effort in Iraq have been disclosed.
A report by the U.S. Government Accounting Office last year said monitoring of civilian contractors in Iraq was so poor there was no way to determine how many contractors were working on U.S.-related security and reconstruction projects or how many have been killed.
Amnesty's annual report contended the counterterrorism campaign by the United States and other powerful nations had undermined human rights around the world, draining energy and attention from crises afflicting the poor and underprivileged.
Amnesty also called for a change of strategy in Iraq, a stronger push to end rights abuses in Sudan and for closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack dismissed the report, saying: "Nobody is being tortured at Guantanamo Bay."
McCormack also said Amnesty had done nothing to put
Saddam Hussein on trial but credited the group with bringing to light human rights abuses that were perpetrated by his regime.
Rights groups have loudly criticized the policies of the United States and its allies since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, complaining that human rights and civil liberties are being sacrificed in the name of counterterrorism.
Amnesty said the use of private contractors, who acted as interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad and have been implicated in prisoner abuse in Afghanistan, was of particular concern.
It urged the U.S. government to insist on training private security contractors in human rights law and clear, beefed-up procedures for investigating and prosecuting contractors suspected of abuses.
Amnesty identified "clear signs of hope" in response to disasters such as the Asian tsunami that drew an outpouring of support from ordinary people worldwide for the victims.
However, it accused the United States, China, Russia and other powerful nations of pursuing selfish national interests and diluting efforts to solve crises such as the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region and the troubles between
Israel and the Palestinians.
It had harsh words for Iraq, which was described as having sunk into "a vortex of sectarian violence."
The United States "has basically mortgaged its moral authority on the streets of Fallujah and Baghdad," Khan told the AP.
Amnesty said European countries were "partners in crime" with the U.S. by eroding civil liberties and allowing terrorism suspects to be taken to countries where they might risk torture - a practice known as extraordinary rendition.
That makes it harder for the West to lecture other governments, such as Egypt and China, on their rights record or to single out countries such as Colombia and Uzbekistan that have argued that counterterrorism justified the repression of opponents, the rights group said.
Amnesty devoted much of its news conference in London to chastising the Americans, whose superpower status gives it enormous influence around the globe. America - once the beacon of rights campaigning worldwide - has offered a smokescreen for rights violators with its war on terror, Khan said.
"There is no doubt that it (the war on terror) has given a new lease on life to old-fashioned repression," Khan told a news conference.
Amnesty called for the United Nations to address the conflict in Darfur, push for a treaty to restrict trade in small arms and urged the world body's new Human Rights Council to flex its muscles over rights issues in Chechnya and China.
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U.S. is urged to stop paying Iraqi reporters
By David S. Cloud
The New York Times
WEDNESDAY, MAY 24, 2006
WASHINGTON - A Defense Department investigation of Pentagon-financed propaganda efforts in Iraq warns that paying Iraqi journalists to produce positive stories could damage American credibility and calls for an end to military payments to a group of Iraqi journalists in Baghdad, according to a summary of the investigation.
The review, by Rear Admiral Scott Van Buskirk, was ordered after the disclosure last November that the military had paid the Lincoln Group, a Washington-based Pentagon contractor, to plant articles written by American soldiers in Iraqi publications without disclosing the source of the articles.
The contractor's work also included paying Iraqi journalists for favorable treatment.
Though the document does not mention the Lincoln Group, Van Buskirk concluded that the military should scrutinize contractors involved in the propaganda effort more closely "to ensure proper oversight is in place."
He also faulted the military for failing to examine whether paying for placement for articles would "undermine the concept of a free press" in Iraq, according to the summary.
It was not clear on Tuesday whether the report would have any immediate effect on the military's actions in Iraq. In interviews this week, several Pentagon officials said the Lincoln Group and other contractors were still involved in placing propaganda messages in Iraqi publications and on television.
Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson, a senior military spokesman in Iraq, said Tuesday that he could not comment on the report. William Dixon, a spokesman for the Lincoln Group, also declined to comment on Tuesday.
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Information Society
Europe: No patents for software
By Ingrid Marson
CNET News.com
May 24, 2006
Software patent campaigners have reacted with surprise to an apparent change in the European Commission's stance on those patents.
The Commission said last week that computer programs will be excluded from patentability in the upcoming Community Patent legislation and that the European Patent Office will be bound by this law.
"The EPO would...apply and be bound by a new unitary Community law with respect to Community patents," the Commission said in a statement. "The draft Community Patent regulation confirms in its Article 28.1(a) that patents granted for a subject matter (such as computer programs), which is excluded from patentability pursuant to Article 52 EPC, may be invalidated in a relevant court proceeding."
This statement appears to contradict one made by the EC last year, when it said that the EPO would continue to grant software patents that make a technical contribution, despite the European Parliament's decision to reject the software patent directive. That directive would have widened the extent to which software could be patented.
The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, which has doggedly campaigned against software patents in Europe, was confused at the change of tune.
"I'm stunned," Pieter Hintjens, the president of the FFII, said Wednesday. "Does the Commission now accept that the EPC (European Patent Convention) rules do actually rule? Or have I misunderstood something?"
In the past, campaigners have expressed concerns that the Community Patent legislation would be used by the Commission to legalize software patents.
The EC statement last week was made in response to a question posed by a Polish member of the European Parliament, Adam Gierek, in April. Gierek asked whether the Community Patent legislation would ratify the EPO's current practice of granting software patents.
"I am concerned about European Patent Office practices, which are undermining the social acceptability of the patent system, with patents being granted for solutions that are not patentable under the current law," Gierek said in his question. "Does the Commission still stand by the position set out in...the proposal for a Council regulation on the Community patent, namely that the case law which the EPO developed for the European patent will apply to the Community patent?"
Even if the Community Patent legislation does allow software patents to be invalidated in court, that would not be enough, Hintjens said. The patent office should offer an independent appeal process, rather than forcing companies to pursue a costly legal case at the European Court of Justice, he said.
"The proposed Community Patents will be granted by the EPO--a nonaccountable, non-Community organization--with no independent appeal possible. The Commission says this is not a problem, since the (European Court of Justice) can invalidate the granted patents in infringement cases," Hintjens said.
"That is, however, only true if it comes to civil litigation, which is often too expensive for (smaller companies), forcing them to pay for a license. Therefore, software patents not yet taken to court will impose an enormous burden on the industry," he added.
Gierek's question and the EC's full answer can be viewed on the European Parliament's Web site.
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PC game spending hit $1.4 bln in US: NPD
Reuters
Wed May 24, 2006
LOS ANGELES - U.S. spending on video games for personal computers hit $1.4 billion in 2005, according to an estimate released by market research firm NPD Group on Wednesday.
Online subscriptions to PC games and gaming Web sites accounted for about $344 million of those annual sales, said NPD.
Faster Internet connections are making it easier for consumers to play games online and to download game content that had once only been available in stores, said NPD, which last year began tracking online subscriptions.
Subscriptions to play specific online titles -- such as "World of Warcraft" from Blizzard Entertainment and Vivendi Games -- reached roughly $292 million in 2005, with about 1.4 million paid subscribers.
Casual gaming sites, such as Electronic Arts Inc.'s Pogo.com or RealOne Arcade from RealNetworks Inc., had sales of around $52 million in 2005 and had 1.05 million paid subscribers. Such sites often include puzzle games that can be played in a 15-minute coffee break.
Major U.S. game publishers such as EA and Activision Inc. expect downloads to grow into a substantial business, although that part of the industry is just starting out.
NPD analyst Anita Frazier said digital downloads appeared to have contributed about 3 percent of total PC market sales in 2005, which would amount to about $42 million.
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Coming soon: The Web toll
By Tim Folger
Popular Science
Thursday, May 25, 2006; Posted: 11:00 a.m. EDT (15:00 GMT)
What if the Internet were like cable television, with Web sites grouped like channels into either basic or premium offerings? What if a few big companies decided which sites loaded quickly and which ones slowly, or not at all, on your computer?
Welcome to the brave new Web, brought to you by Verizon, Bell South, AT&T and the other telecommunications giants (including PopSci and CNN.com's parent company, Time Warner) that are now lobbying Congress to block laws that would prevent a two-tiered Internet, with a fast lane for Web sites able to afford it and a slow lane for everyone else.
Specifically, such companies want to charge Web sites for the speedy delivery of streaming video, television, movies and other high-bandwidth data to their customers. If they get their way (Congress may vote on the matter before the year is out), the days of wide-open cyberspace are numbered.
As things stand now, the telecoms provide the lines -- copper, cable or fiber-optic -- and the other hardware that connects Web sites to consumers.
But they don't influence, or profit from, the content that flows to you from, say, cinemanow.com; they simply supply the pipelines. In effect, they are impartial middlemen, leaving you free to browse the entire Internet without worrying about connection speeds to your favorite sites.
That looks set to change. In April a House subcommittee rejected a measure by Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts (D) that would have prevented telecoms from charging Web sites extra fees based on bandwidth usage.
The telecom industry sees such remuneration as fair compensation for the substantial cost of maintaining and upgrading the infrastructure that makes high-bandwidth services, such as streaming video, possible.
Christopher Yoo, a professor at Vanderbilt University Law School, argues that consumers should be willing to pay for faster delivery of content on the Internet, just as many FedEx customers willingly shell out extra for overnight delivery. "A regulatory approach that allows companies to pursue a strategy like FedEx's makes sense," he says.
On a technical level, creating this so-called Internet fast lane is easy. In the current system, network devices called differentiated service routers prioritize data, assigning more bandwidth to, for example, an Internet telephone call or streaming video than to an e-mail message.
With a tiered Internet, such routing technology could be used preferentially to deliver either the telecoms' own services or those of companies who had paid the requisite fees.
What does this mean for the rest of us? A stealth Web tax, for one thing.
"Google and Amazon and Yahoo are not going to slice those payments out of their profit margins and eat them," says Ben Scott, policy director for Free Press, a nonprofit group that monitors media-related legislation. "They're going to pass them on to the consumer. So I'll end up paying twice. I'm going to pay my $29.99 a month for access, and then I'm going to pay higher prices for consumer goods all across the economy because these Internet companies will charge more for online advertising."
Worse still, Scott argues, the plan stands to sour your Web experience. If, for instance, your favorite blogger refused to ante up, her pages would load more slowly on your computer than would content from Web sites that had paid the fees.
Which brings up another sticking point: A tiered system would give established companies with deep pockets a huge competitive edge over cash-strapped start-ups consigned to slow lanes.
"We have to remember that some of the companies that we now consider to be titans of the Internet started literally as guys in a garage," Scott says."That's the beauty and the brilliance of the Internet, yet we're cavalierly talking about tossing it out the window."
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Ark's Quantum Quirks
Ark
Signs of the Times
Catwash
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Crushing Palestine
Israel's Olmert calls for peace talks in US Congress speech
AFP
May 24, 2006
WASHINGTON - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told a joint session of the US Congress that his country will impose a border with Palestinians unless the new Hamas government recognizes Israel and returns to peace talks.
"We will not wait forever," Olmert told members of the US Senate and House of Representatives at the end of his first official visit to Washington as prime minister.
"We will not give a terrorist regime a veto over progress, or allow it to take hope hostage," said Olmert, who spoke only hours after an Israeli raid on the West Bank administrative capital of Ramallah to capture an Islamic Jihad militant.
President George W. Bush on Tuesday gave qualified support to Olmert's proposal to withdraw from a huge part of the West Bank, but retain key areas where there are Jewish settlements. Olmert told Congress he wanted to hold talks with Palestinians on the plan.
"I extend my hand in peace to Mahmud Abbas, elected president of the Palestinian Authority. On behalf of the state of Israel, we are willing to negotiate with a Palestinian Authority," he said.
"In a few years they could be living in a Palestinian state, side by side in peace and security with Israel," Olmert said.
But he reiterated Israel's demand that the Hamas government recognize Israel's right to exist and renounce violence as a precondition for any peace agreement.
"No one can make it happen for them if they refuse to make it happen for themselves," Olmert said of the prospects for negotiations.
The premier repeated Israel's commitment to the US-sponsored roadmap to peace -- which calls for a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians -- but said there had to be a deadline.
"Our deepest wish is to build a better future for our regions, hand in hand with a Palestinian partner," he said. "But if they refuse, we will not give a terrorist regime a veto over progress, or allow it to take hope hostage."
"Should the Palestinians ignore our outstretched hand for peace, Israel will seek other alternatives to promote our future and the prospects of hope in the Middle East."
Olmert's three-day visit to Washington was aimed at reaffirming Israel's strong ties with its chief ally following Olmert's election victory.
The support Bush offered to Olmert's predecessor Ariel Sharon was vital for the success of Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip last year. Olmert knows he needs similar support for his West Bank plan.
"The next step is even more vital to our future and to the prospects of finally bringing peace to the Middle East. Success will only be possible with America as an active participant," he said.
After their White House summit on Tuesday, Bush called Olmert's strategy a "bold" idea.
In his speech, which received no less than 18 standing ovations from the US lawmakers, Olmert sought to put Israel together with the United States in its efforts to confront terrorism.
"Our countries do not just share the experience and pain of terrorism. We share the commitment and resolve to confront the brutal terrorists."
He urged the United States and the international community to act to confront the Iranian nuclear programme, which he qualified as "an existential threat" for Israel.
"A nuclear Iran is an intolerable threat to the peace and security of the world," he said. "Our moment is now. History will judge our generation by the actions we take now," the premier said.
"If we don't take Iran's bellicose rhetoric seriously now, we will be forced to take its nuclear aggressions seriously later," he said.
"This challenge, which I believe is the test of our time, is one the West cannot afford to fail."
The United States and its allies accuse Iran of seeking to build a nuclear bomb while Iran insists its atomic program is peaceful.
Bush on Tuesday said that "in the event of any attack on Israel, the United States will come to Israel's aid."
Comment: See here for a transcript of Olmert's speech to Congress. Read it all, if you can stomach at least one blatant lie or paramoralism per paragraph.
The only really new information from his words appears to be the confirmation that Iran will be jointly attacked by American and Israeli military forces sometime in the very near future.
When an Israeli PM comes to Washington and says to Congress:
"Allow me to turn to another dark and gathering storm casting its shadow over the world….
Every generation is confronted with a moment of truth and trial. From the savagery of slavery, to the horrors of World War Two, to the gulags of the Communist Bloc. That which is right and good in this world has always been at war with the horrific evil permitted by human indifference.
Iran, the world's leading sponsor of terror, and a notorious violator of fundamental human rights, stands on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons. With these weapons, the security of the entire world is put in jeopardy.
We deeply appreciate America's leadership on this issue and the strong bipartisan conviction that a nuclear-armed Iran is an intolerable threat to the peace and security of the world. It cannot be permitted to materialize. This Congress has proven its conviction by initiating the Iran Freedom and Support Act. We applaud these efforts.
A nuclear Iran means a terrorist state could achieve the primary mission for which terrorists live and die: the mass destruction of innocent human life. This challenge, which I believe is The Test of Our Time, is one the West cannot afford to fail.
The radical Iranian regime has declared the United States its enemy. Its President believes it is his religious duty and his destiny to lead his country in a violent conflict against the infidels. With pride he denies the Jewish Holocaust and speaks brazenly, calling to wipe Israel off the map.
For us, this is an existential threat. A threat to which we cannot consent. But it is not Israel's threat alone. It is a threat to all those committed to stability in the Middle East and the well being of the world at large.
Mr. Speaker, our moment is NOW. History will judge our generation by the actions we take NOW…by our willingness to stand up for peace and security and freedom, and by our courage to do what is right.
The international community will be measured not by its intentions but by its results. The international community will be judged by its ability to convince nations and peoples to turn their backs on hatred and zealotry.
If we don't take Iran's bellicose rhetoric seriously now, we will be forced to take its nuclear aggression seriously later."
There can only be one outcome - war, death and suffering on a very large scale.
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Israeli official says Jewish area of Hebron will grow, be connected to Israel
05:56:10 EDT May 25, 2006
LAURIE COPANS
JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel will enlarge Jewish settlement enclaves in the West Bank city of Hebron and include them within the country's final borders, an ally of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Thursday.
It was the first time a government official has said Israel intends on retaining the volatile area, located well inside the West Bank, under Olmert's plan to unilaterally set Israel's final borders by 2008.
Otniel Schneller, a legislator who is helping to formulate Olmert's plan, said that the Jewish neighbourhoods of Hebron will be connected to the nearby settlement of Kiryat Arba, and the two communities included in Israel.
"The Jewish neighbourhood in Hebron will grow" and be linked to Kiryat Arba, Schneller told The Associated Press. "Hebron and Kiryat Arba are supposed to be part of the Israeli state."
About 500 Jewish settlers live in heavily guarded enclaves in Hebron in the midst of about 170,000 Palestinians. The settlers are among the most ultranationalist in the West Bank.
Olmert's plan calls for withdrawing from most of the West Bank while retaining major settlement blocs. Although Hebron is not part of these blocs, Schneller said the city's Jewish areas will remain part of Israel.
Hebron is home to the a holy site where Jews and Muslims believe the biblical patriarchs are buried. Schneller said the holy site will be included in the section that Israel keeps.
Israel will find "creative ways" to separate most of the Palestinians from the Israeli-controlled section, bringing the settlement, the Cave of the Patriarchs and Kiryat Arba together, Schneller said.
Olmert has pledged to try to negotiate the withdrawal with the Palestinians, but says Israel will decide itself what areas to give the Palestinians if peace talks are not possible. With the Islamic militant group Hamas in control of the Palestinian government, peace talks appear unlikely.
The unilateral pullout would fall short of Palestinian claims to all of the West Bank and east Jerusalem as part of a future independent state.
Comment: The "creative ways" of Israel are well known and well documented: false flag operations that put the blame for Israeli acts of terror on the Palestinians, outright assault and murder of people, including children and teens, support for illegal settlers, manipulation of the US media, blackmail of US politicians, spying, and then ignoring any recognition of their crimes with the accusation of "anti-Semite" thrown at their critics.
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Abbas calls for referendum if dialogue fails to reach agreement
www.chinaview.cn 2006-05-25 19:45:01
RAMALLAH, May 25 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said on Thursday that he will order a referendum if an inter-Palestinian dialogue fails to adopt the National Accordance filed by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
"I would like to say frankly that the time and situation are unbearable, so I will put the document for referendum within 40 days," Abbas told the opening ceremony of the dialogue.
"This is not a threat, but you have to decide within 10 days, all of us are responsible. Within 40 days, we will ask the people to decide," he said.
Earlier this month, leaders of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails presented a document which calls for national unity among all the Palestinians.
The document was signed by jailed officials of Islamic and national factions, including the Fatah movement, Hamas, the Islamic Jihad (Holy War), the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Hamas officials said that Hamas would accept Abbas' idea.
Nayef Rajoub, a senior Hamas official and a minister of the Hamas-led cabinet, said that "Hamas welcomes democracy and respects the choice of the people."
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Economy On The Edge
Oil holds at $70 after US gasoline stock build
By Paul Marriott
Reuters
May 25, 2006
SYDNEY - Oil prices steadied at $70 on Thursday after a slide on growing U.S. gasoline inventories, softness across commodities sectors and signs of progress in the stand-off over Iran's nuclear ambitions.
U.S. crude was 20 cents up at $70.06 a barrel by 0535 GMT, after losing $1.90 or 2.7 percent on Wednesday. London Brent crude gained 13 cents to $69.35.
"The strong build in gasoline stocks revealed yesterday certainly nudges some of the bigger issues out of the way," said Justin Smirk, senior economist at Westpac in Sydney. "Before the U.S. summer, there is always a cyclical focus on stock levels."
U.S. gasoline stocks rose by 2.1 million barrels last week, well ahead of a 1.2 million forecast as refineries delivered increased output ahead of the Memorial Day holiday on May 29, the traditional launch of the U.S. summer driving season.
"Commodities are a bigger issue, with the market wondering if this is the start of a big correction," said Westpac's Smirk. "Our view is that until something big happens they will stay around these levels but we can expect high levels of volatility."
Oil slipped in tandem with most commodities. Copper fell more than 6 percent to reverse much of the previous session's recovery and gold fell over 5 percent to its lowest level in a month as investors continued to worry high prices would hurt demand.
Many commodity classes have recently traded around record highs, prompting concerns about inflation, higher interest rates and a slower global economy. Oil is below April's record $75.35, but is still up nearly 15 percent from the start of the year. "Anything that takes some of the tension out of the situation with Iran will also weigh on oil prices," said Westpac's Smirk. "It's a situation which has been supporting higher prices for some time now."
World powers meeting in London on Wednesday said they had made progress on a package of proposed threats and incentives to stop OPEC member Iran's nuclear program, which some believe is for weapons despite Tehran's insistence it wants nuclear power.
A spokesman for the State Department said that Iran, the world's fourth-biggest oil exporter, had sought bilateral talks with the United States but that Washington would stick to a multilateral approach.
Longer-dated crude forward contracts are above $70 as expectations for a rough summer hurricane season underpin prices. The U.S. government has said the U.S. Gulf, still recovering from 2005, could see up to 10 hurricanes this year.
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Boaters throttle back as gas soars
By Larry Copeland
USA TODAY
Wed May 24, 2006
Bo and Ima Gravitt have a lifestyle that many would envy: They're retired, and they live half the year aboard their houseboat on pristine West Point Lake here at the Georgia-Alabama border. They usually spend the late spring floating, fishing and partying.
Not this year, though. The high cost of gas has grounded the Gravitts. Asked whether fuel prices affect life here in this fisherman's paradise, Bo Gravitt, 73, answers: "Damn right it does. That's the reason why we're sitting on the bank. Any other time, we'd be out on the water."
"This is the highest we've ever seen (gasoline) in our lifetime," Ima Gravitt says. "We've been coming here ... since the mid-'70s."
Drivers aren't the only ones anxiously eyeing gas prices. As the nation's boating season kicks into high gear over the Memorial Day weekend, boaters across the USA are changing the way they take part in their favorite recreational activity.
"They're all telling me gas prices are affecting the way people use their boats," says Scott Croft, spokesman for Boat Owners Association of the United States (BoatUS), the nation's largest advocacy group for recreational boaters. "I haven't heard anyone say they aren't going to be in the water at all. But people are cutting down on the time spent with the engine running. They're taking shorter trips and fewer trips. They're spending more time on the docks."
They're even "boat-pooling." Boaters wanting to fish the underwater canyons off the coasts of New Jersey and Southern California are doing "buddy-boating," Croft says. "They say, 'You take me fishing on your boat today, I'll take you on mine tomorrow.' "
'Good old boys' hurting
It might be hard for some cash-strapped commuters who have given up movies or dinner out to pay $3 a gallon for gas to feel much sympathy for boaters. But boaters are everywhere - there are about 70 million in the USA and 13 million registered boats.
Soaring gas prices have the biggest impact on owners of small boats and boaters on fixed incomes, says Robbie Nichols, owner of Southern Harbor Resort & Marina on West Point Lake. "The people fishing in the big tournaments, you don't see a drop with these guys," he says. "But you've got some regular good old boys coming and fishing in the smaller club tournaments, and they've had to cut back."
Gas prices are affecting boating elsewhere, too:
- Pennsylvania anglers are fishing closer to home this year. Ron Anderson, who owns the Appalachian Trails tackle shop near Lake Arthur in Moraine State Park about 30 miles north of Pittsburgh, says, "Where they used to travel 50, 60 or 70 miles to go to a variety of lakes to fish, now they're reducing the number of outings and the distance traveled.
"A lot of my local guys who used to travel to Pymatuning Lake on the Pennsylvania-Ohio border, about an hour and a half away with a boat in tow, are now fishing locally. And where they used to go three times a month, now they're going once a month," he says.
- Some marina owners expect a bad summer. Mary Briskey, one of the owners of Luna Pier Harbor Club in southern Michigan near Toledo, Ohio, says she expects about 25% of her 400 docks to go unrented this summer as boat owners stay home. Briskey says the highest number of idle docks in the past was about 10%.
"People are just deciding to not use their boats," she says.
Research has shown that anglers "are sensitive to the cost of accessing recreation sites," says Richard Ready, an assistant professor of agricultural and environmental economics at Penn State University. "We expect the new increase in gas prices will cause anglers to go fishing less frequently," he says.
Still, most boaters apparently plan to get on the water this year. Two-thirds of boat owners indicated that fuel prices would not cause them to use their boats less often, according to a survey this month by Nationwide Mutual Insurance. Many are willing to pay about $2.70 more per gallon - on top of the current price - before they'd consider docking their crafts.
Gas prices at marinas, where boaters fuel up, generally are higher than those at nearby service stations. For example, the price of mid-grade at Southern Harbor last week was $3.39 a gallon; at a Spectrum service station about 2 miles away, mid-grade was $2.94.
$668 to fill the tank
Prices like those have curtailed Don Baker's water activities. Baker, 64, is a retired electronics researcher and developer and a former air-traffic controller who owns a house on West Point Lake and a 63-foot houseboat he docks at Southern Harbor.
Baker says he has cut the time he spends cruising the lake by about 75%.
"We like to take the boat out on the water and cruise for 5-6 hours," he says. But it now costs about $668 to fill the tank. "I'm not going anywhere," Baker says.
Not everyone is cringing. Across the dock from Baker, Bob Atkins, 55, is fishing off the dock for crappie - not to save gas but because that's where they're biting, he says.
"It's not high enough to make that much of a difference," says Atkins, a sales and marketing director who owns a 24-foot fishing boat docked here. "What is it, a little more than two or three years ago? If you don't have disposable income, it's a problem. But most people who buy boats know they're going to have to spend money."
Robert Forsell, 65, drove to West Point Lake from his home in Milton, Fla., with two friends to fish for bass. His 18-foot pontoon boat, which has a 60-horsepower Mercury engine, gets about 6 miles to the gallon. But Forsell, who is retired from the Army, says gas prices aren't affecting his boating.
"We just plan ahead," he says. "We knew the gas prices were going to be what they are, so we knew what we were going to need. Where it hurt us was driving up here. We used $75 worth of gas."
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$6bn Mastercard float will test Wall Street's appetite
By Stephen Foley in New York
The Independent
25 May 2006
Mastercard, the credit card network under fire for its high fees, ends four decades as a private organisation with a flotation on the New York Stock Exchange today.
The $2.65bn share sale is Wall Street's biggest for two years, and comes on the heels of market debuts for the internet telephony pioneer Vonage yesterday and Burger King last week.
Bankers are watching Mastercard closely for signs that recent stock market weakness might snuff out the mini-boom in flotations. The company's advisers were meeting last night to price the shares, which could value the company at between $5.3bn and $5.8bn.
Mastercard was set up by a coalition of banks to process electronic payments, and 1,400 banks, many of the small regional players, will get a windfall from the flotation. The biggest members include HSBC, which looks set to pocket $100m. JP Morgan Chase, the biggest shareholder with 10.4 per cent, could net more than $200m.
The flotation is a defensive move, aimed at shielding Mastercard's members, whose shareholding will be reduced from 100 per cent to between 46 and 49 per cent, from a legal assault by retailers and regulatory pressure across the globe.
Shopkeepers say they are being ripped off and that Mastercard and its arch-rival Visa International act anti-competitively to charge high fees for processing credit and debit card payments. Mastercard faces 40 class action suits in the US as well as political calls for an anti-trust investigation into the company. Last year, the UK's Office of Fair Trading ruled against Mastercard, saying it had breached competition law and that its fees amounted to a tax on consumers.
Mastercard's flotation takes the total money raised through share offerings on Wall Street this year to $21bn, almost 60 per cent more than at this point last year. Companies have been attracted by the buoyant stock market conditions, while investors have warmed to the big-name brands on offer.
Burger King's flotation raised $425m for the hamburger chain's private equity owners last week, while Chipotle, the Mexican fast-food chain spun off by McDonald's in January, is the year's best performing new share, having tripled since flotation. Traders gave a decidedly poor reception, however, to the flotation of Vonage yesterday. It had raised $531m, valuing the company at $2.6n, but its shares were down 14 per cent at their worst.
The company has attracted 1.6 million subscribers to its phone service offering voice calls over the internet, but it spends as much on marketing as it gets in revenue, and investors fear it may never turn a profit. Cable companies have begun to embrace internet telephony and are fighting back with cheap deals combining television, internet and phone services. Vonage has also been undermined by Skype, owned by eBay, which offers internet calls for free.
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