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Editorial: Iran Proposal to U.S. Offered Peace with Israel
May 24
IPS
By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - Iran offered in 2003 to accept peace with Israel and to cut off material assistance to Palestinian armed groups and pressure them to halt terrorist attacks within Israel's 1967 borders, according to the secret Iranian proposal to the United States.
The two-page proposal for a broad Iran-U.S. agreement covering all the issues separating the two countries, a copy of which was obtained by IPS, was conveyed to the United States in late April or early May 2003. Trita Parsi, a specialist on Iranian foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies who provided the document to IPS, says he got it from an Iranian official earlier this year but is not at liberty to reveal the source.
The two-page document contradicts the official line of the George W. Bush administration that Iran is committed to the destruction of Israel and the sponsorship of terrorism in the region.
Parsi says the document is a summary of an even more detailed Iranian negotiating proposal which he learned about in 2003 from the U.S. intermediary who carried it to the State Department on behalf of the Swiss Embassy in late April or early May 2003. The intermediary has not yet agreed to be identified, according to Parsi.
The Iranian negotiating proposal indicated clearly that Iran was prepared to give up its role as a supporter of armed groups in the region in return for a larger bargain with the United States. What the Iranians wanted in return, as suggested by the document itself as well as expert observers of Iranian policy, was an end to U.S. hostility and recognition of Iran as a legitimate power in the region.
Before the 2003 proposal, Iran had attacked Arab governments which had supported the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The negotiating document, however, offered "acceptance of the Arab League Beirut declaration", which it also referred to as the "Saudi initiative, two-states approach."
The March 2002 Beirut declaration represented the Arab League's first official acceptance of the land-for-peace principle as well as a comprehensive peace with Israel in return for Israel's withdrawal to the territory it had controlled before the 1967 war.. Iran's proposed concession on the issue would have aligned its policy with that of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, among others with whom the United States enjoyed intimate relations.
Another concession in the document was a "stop of any material support to Palestinian opposition groups (Hamas, Jihad, etc.) from Iranian territory" along with "pressure on these organizations to stop violent actions against civilians within borders of 1967".
Even more surprising, given the extremely close relationship between Iran and the Lebanon-based Hizbollah Shiite organisation, the proposal offered to take "action on Hizbollah to become a mere political organization within Lebanon".
The Iranian proposal also offered to accept much tighter controls by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in exchange for "full access to peaceful nuclear technology". It offered "full cooperation with IAEA based on Iranian adoption of all relevant instruments (93+2 and all further IAEA protocols)".
That was a reference to protocols which would require Iran to provide IAEA monitors with access to any facility they might request, whether it had been declared by Iran or not. That would have made it much more difficult for Iran to carry out any secret nuclear activities without being detected.
In return for these concessions, which contradicted Iran's public rhetoric about Israel and anti-Israeli forces, the secret Iranian proposal sought U.S. agreement to a list of Iranian aims. The list included a "Halt in U.S. hostile behavior and rectification of status of Iran in the U.S.", as well as the "abolishment of all sanctions".
Also included among Iran's aims was "recognition of Iran's legitimate security interests in the region with according defense capacity". According to a number of Iran specialists, the aim of security and an official acknowledgment of Iran's status as a regional power were central to the Iranian interest in a broad agreement with the United States.
Negotiation of a deal with the United States that would advance Iran's security and fundamental geopolitical political interests in the Persian Gulf region in return for accepting the existence of Israel and other Iranian concessions has long been discussed among senior Iranian national security officials, according to Parsi and other analysts of Iranian national security policy.
An Iranian threat to destroy Israel has been a major propaganda theme of the Bush administration for months. On Mar. 10, Bush said, "The Iranian president has stated his desire to destroy our ally, Israel. So when you start listening to what he has said to their desire to develop a nuclear weapon, then you begin to see an issue of grave national security concern."
But in 2003, Bush refused to allow any response to the Iranian offer to negotiate an agreement that would have accepted the existence of Israel. Flynt Leverett, then the senior specialist on the Middle East on the National Security Council staff, recalled in an interview with IPS that it was "literally a few days" between the receipt of the Iranian proposal and the dispatch of a message to the Swiss ambassador expressing displeasure that he had forwarded it to Washington.
Interest in such a deal is still very much alive in Tehran, despite the U.S. refusal to respond to the 2003 proposal. Turkish international relations professor Mustafa Kibaroglu of Bilkent University writes in the latest issue of Middle East Journal that "senior analysts" from Iran told him in July 2005 that "the formal recognition of Israel by Iran may also be possible if essentially a 'grand bargain' can be achieved between the U.S. and Iran".
The proposal's offer to dismantle the main thrust of Iran's Islamic and anti-Israel policy would be strongly opposed by some of the extreme conservatives among the mullahs who engineered the repression of the reformist movement in 2004 and who backed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in last year's election.
However, many conservative opponents of the reform movement in Iran have also supported a negotiated deal with the United States that would benefit Iran, according to Paul Pillar, the former national intelligence officer on Iran. "Even some of the hardliners accepted the idea that if you could strike a deal with the devil, you would do it," he said in an interview with IPS last month.
The conservatives were unhappy not with the idea of a deal with the United States but with the fact that it was a supporter of the reform movement of Pres. Mohammad Khatami, who would get the credit for the breakthrough, Pillar said.
Parsi says that the ultimate authority on Iran's foreign policy, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was "directly involved" in the Iranian proposal, according to the senior Iranian national security officials he interviewed in 2004. Kamenei has aligned himself with the conservatives in opposing the pro-democratic movement.
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Editorial: Zionism - An Existential Threat To The Jews of Israel
Joe Quinn
Signs of the Times
26/05/2006
We recently received an email from a reader who challenged certain aspects of the Stranger Than Fiction article that we have posted on our site. After an opening paragraph, the reader appears to quote an article by Steven Plaut, a professor at the Graduate School of the Business Administration at the University of Haifa, Israel and columnist for the Jewish Press. Having responded to the reader, (and indirectly to Plaut's analysis, we thought it was worth sharing with our readers as it provides an idea of our stance on "Zionism" the state of Israel, Jewish people and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict...
The reader writes:
Your article on Zionists being behind everything includes the myth of the Irgun murdering innocent women and children at deir yassin, and that is simply not true:
Plaut's article (indented) starts with my comments interspersed thereafter.
This week is the anniversary of the events that took place in the Arab village of Deir Yassin in 1948. In recent years, Deir Yassin has been converted into a bludgeon by the Far Left, the Neonazi Right, and Israel-bashers in general.
There was nothing to "convert" in Deir Yassin. Historians and people who were involved on the Israeli side have testified to the reality of a massacre of somewhere between 100 and 150 Palestinian civilians by Israeli paramilitary forces. But that is to be expected given the circumstances, it has happened many times throughout history.
Deir Yassin is the ultimate "Man Bites Dog" news story supposedly based on the inversion of players. It is recited endlessly by the very same people who have nothing to say against a century of countless massacres of Jewish civilians by Arabs. The church in St. John's Wood in London is just one of many examples of outfits "commemorating" the "victims" of Deir Yassin this week.
The above in not accurate. That there was indeed a massacre of Palestinian civilians by Israeli paramilitary groups at Deir Yassin is verified by Israeli soldiers who were involved, and is a generally accepted fact by moderate historians. It is also consistent with many, many other situations where one group was set against another to fight over a "homeland". Perhaps you should ponder the possible reason why photographs of dead Palestinians at Deir Yassin have never been published and are to this date still kept secret in IDF archives, not even academic researchers being allowed to gain access to them.
Deir Yassin was a not-at-all innocent Arab village sitting near the only road into Jerusalem in 1948. In the previous December, the UN had voted to partition what was left of Madatory Palestine into two states, one a Jewish state and the other an Arab state to be named Palestine, of approximately equal sizes. The Jews of Israel accepted the plan, while the Arab states and the Palestinian Arab leadership rejected it. Had they accepted it, a Palestinian state would have arisen peacefully in 1948.
You seem to have no problem with the fact that Israel had no right to Palestinian land, save the "right" given to them by "Yahweh", and that the Palestinians were justified in resisting the annexation of their land and the transportation of Palestinians from land that was being "given" to Israel. There is not a community of people ANYWHERE on the planet that would not resist such a fascist land grab and cleansing of an indigenous population, and that includes Jews. Put them shoe on the other foot and tell me what Jews would have done. It never ceases to amaze me that people like you so strenuously demand rights for the Jewish people while presiding over and advocating the denial of those rights to Palestinians and then complain when Palestinians refuse to accept such treatment.
In response to the UN resolution, Arabs launched attacks against Jews everywhere in the country and in particular placed the city of Jerusalem under siege. The Jewish population of Jerusalem was quite literally starving. The only road into the city passed through the area of Deir Yassin, and the Arab militiamen in the town were stopping all convoys from passing through.
Naturally. When a population is about to be cleansed from a part of their land they will resist, it is natural and indeed a right under the third Geneva convention.
Since Israel had yet to be formally proclaimed, the only Jews doing the fighting were members of three poorly-armed militias. The main one was the Hagana, commanded by David Ben Gurion and the socialist Zionist party. There were two smaller ones operating independently under the command of the dissident "revisionist Zionist" movement, the Etsel and the Lehi.Poorly-trained irregulars of the two latter militias were ordered to attack Deir Yassin to relieve the siege. They did so in ferocious hand-to-hand fighting, in which some Deir Yassin villagers were killed. The Bash-Israel lobby has always maintained that the villagers were "massacred" in cold blood, despite a distinct lack of evidence.
Nonsense. What happened at Deir Yassin was in the context of the broader picture of Israeli forces appropriating Palestinian land to make it part of Israel. Meir Pa'il who was involved in the fighting stated that he:
"started hearing shooting in the village. The fighting was over, yet there was the sound of firing of all kinds from different houses ... Sporadic firing, not like you would [normally] hear when they clean a house." He also stated that no commanders directed the actions, just groups of guerrillas running about "full of lust for murder".
"Full of lust for murder", but they didn't massacre anyone. Let's be reasonable here. Jews are ordinary people and subject to the effects of war.
Those who participated in the battle claim the villagers were killed when the Jewish militiamen fired into homes from which fire was directed at them. The village was successfully taken and the siege of Jerusalem was lifted. Large numbers of Jewish militiamen had been killed in the house-to-house battle for the village. Approximately 100 Arabs in the village died, a number that was later greatly inflated by anti-Jewish propagandists to 250.
Indeed, the number was inflated by some, but not by "anti-Jewish propagandists" but by Palestinians who had just seen their countrymen, women and children murdered in the defence of their land! Does Palestinian death and suffering mean so little to you?
Part of the problem was that the mainstream socialist Zionist parties themselves magnified the supposed misbehavior of the two opposition militias in order to discredit them in the coming political contest for control of the emerging Jewish state. This trend has been echoed in recent years, and Deir Yassin has become the "massacre of choice" for anti-Semites trying to prove the Jews are bloodthirsty barbarians. In part these have based their claims on a document by a Hagana officer, one Meir Peil, who was not actually present at the battle but surveyed the village AFTER the fighting was finished. Peil claimed he thought there had been looting and intentional killing of some villagers. The problem is that Peil is also a leftwing radical and not exactly a neutral source. Other less politicized sources tell a different tale. Even some Arab sources confirm that no massacre took place in Deir Yassin.
Peli's cameraman took the photos that Israel will not release, so Peli was there. You can believe any nonsense that you want, but get this into your head: this is not about "Jews being bloodthirsty barbarians", this is about "Zionists". If you OBJECTIVELY research Zionist history you will realise that these few "Zionist" leaders are indeed "bloodthirsty barbarians", but the doesn't make Jews bloodthirsty or barbarians.
Zionists claim to be the leaders of the Jewish people, when they are in fact leading Jews down a road that will lead them to their own destruction. It is the "Zionists" and "Zionist" thinking that leads YOU to take it as a fact that Jews were somehow entitled to Palestinian land and therefore Palestinians had no right to resist the taking of their land, and if they did, or do, they are "terrorists".
Are you so blind that you cannot see the OBVIOUS injustice that has been perpetrated against the Palestinian people? That the state of Israel was founded on a blatant injustice and that it was the work of the "Zionists" who have now made ordinary Jews in Israel RESPONSIBLE for "Zionists'" criminal acts? Can you see that their thinking has infected YOUR mind to such an extent that you sit there and defend THEIR CRIMINAL ACT?
Meanwhile, a few years back the ZOA issued a new study, Deir Yassin History of a Lie, a 32-page analysis (with 156 footnotes) by ZOA National President Morton A. Klein.
Among other things, the ZOA study shows that the original claim of 254 dead was not based on any actual body count. The number was invented by Mordechai Ra'anan, leader of the Jewish soldiers who fought in Deir Yassin. He later admitted that the figure was a deliberate exaggeration in order to undermine the morale of the Arab forces, which had launched a war against the Jews in Mandatory Palestine to prevent the establishment of Israel. Other eyewitnesses to the battle estimated that about 100 Arabs had died. Despite Ra'anan's admission, the figure 254 was circulated by Palestinian Arab leader Hussein Khalidi. His claims about Deir Yassin were the basis for an article in the New York Times claiming a massacre took place--an article that has been widely reprinted and cited as "proof" of the massacre throughout the past 57 years.
Do not disrespect yourself any longer by continuing to deny the fact that Jewish paramilitaries were "full of lust for murder", however, neither should you understand that their actions mean that "Jews are bloodthirsty barbarians". The only "bloodthirsty barbarians" are the people who pushed Jewish people into a position where they would be in permanent conflict with Palestinians. Ask yourself, what is the likely outcome of such a scenario? Who will "win"?
Meanwhile, there have been numerous exposes of the lies that have been invented surrounding the battle for Deir Yassin and these have largely discredited the Peil "eyewitness" report.
A massacre did take indeed take place, following the events in Deir Yassin, which had occurred on Friday morning April 9, 1948. On Monday morning, April 13, 1948, an Arab mob, chanting "Deir Yassin", massacred a bus convoy of Jewish doctors and nurses who were headed to Hadassah hospital on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem. Seventy-eight members of Hadassah's medical staff were murdered in cold blood. Only recently was it revealed that some of the Hadassah nurses had found refuge in the nearby compound of the British consul, only to be turned over to Arabs by the Brits, and the Arabs proceeded to slaughter them in "revenge" for what they thought had occurred at Deir Yassin.
Of course, these things will happen, what do you expect? The key to understanding this is in your comment above that the nurses were "turned over to Arabs by the Brits". This is the source of the conflict. Can't you see it? Can't you see that it is the policy makers and the politicians that have ALWAYS been the bane of humanity, setting one group against another so that THEY can profit from it? As long as you continue to value a Jewish life over a Palestinian life and believe that Jews are the victims and Arabs as "terrorists", you will remain a victim of the nefarious agenda of these "Zionists" and government policy makers.
Both sides used the symbol of "Remember Deir Yassin" in 1948 during the war. There were Jews who intimidated Arabs with the slogan and there were Arab commanders who rallied their populace with the same adage. Meanwhile, what has fanned the flames of Deir Yassin has been the United Nations decision to confine more than three million Palestinian Arabs to refugee camps, promising them the "right of return" to Arab villages that no longer exist.
Indeed, and would you like to comment on, or frame your understanding of the history of Israel in terms of the justice or otherwise of what was clearly the ethnic cleansing of one people by another?
In recent years a group of pro-Arab propagandists in the US have stared holding annual "memorials" for the "victims" of the "massacre" in Deir Yassin. The late Edward Said had been a member and the group includes such people as anti-Semite Norman Finkelstein, Saudi-financed ex-congressman Paul Findlay, and PLO propagandist Hanan Ashwari.
These are people who have never denounced Arab massacres of Jewish children, which were committed not by poorly trained irregulars in the heat of a crucial battle, but by Islamofascist terrorists awash in money and under the direct personal command of the PLO.
In the above, you belie your sublimation to a certain amount of brainwashing of the type promoted by "Zionist" politicians and other government policy makers. Norman Finkelstein is not an "anti-Semite", he is a professor of political science at DePaul University and historian who simply documents the FACTS of the history of Israel. The simple fact is that the history of the state of Israel is founded on an obvious injustice against the Palestinian people. To assert the reality of this injustice does NOT make anyone an anti-Semite.
The cry of anti-Semitism is very clearly being used in repeated attempts to silence any critical analysis of the history of Israel. Such silencing can only benefit the policy makers who benefit from pitting one group of humans against another. You do the Jewish people no service by siding with such people and promoting their agenda. Their agenda has led to the continued suffering of Jews and Palestinians alike. I am therefore prompted to ask you:
"whose side are you on"?
Regards,
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Editorial: The Latest Confrontation Between the US Empire and Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez
by Stephen Lendman
I've said before it's easy to know what the empire is thinking (especially its powerful movers and shakers sitting in corporate boardrooms) by reading the Wall Street Journal daily as I do. Despite its heavy pro-empire bias, readers can also get some real news and information - something nearly impossible elsewhere in the corporate media especially from the venerable New York Times I've before labeled the closest thing we have in the US to an official ministry of information and propaganda.
I'll return to that subject another time, but for now I want to highlight the May 25 front page feature article in the Journal titled "New President Has Bolivia Marching to Chavez's Beat." The sub-title is even worse - "Venezuelan Populist Pushes Anti-US Latin Alliance; Has He Gone Too Far?" And below that and still headlined - "Cuban Doctors in the House."
I hope readers understand from that language what's quite clear to me: a virtual call to arms against Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, two leaders who likely more than any others believe that since their people elected them, they have an obligation to serve them and not the interests of a belligerent and dominant Northern neighbor.
What Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez Are Doing Jointly That's Roused the US Ire
The WSJ attack begins by its implied condemnation that right after being elected Morales told foreign steel companies they would have to renegotiate a proposed deal to develop a huge iron ore deposit known as El Mutun. The Journal also complained that the Bolivian government invited Venezuelan experts to help them in the bargaining, which, of course, was logical and sensible if such help was available. The outcome of the negotiation was that Bolivia demanded a new agreement that was much fairer to the Bolivian people than the one-sided one the previous government accepted. The foreign steel producers weren't too pleased, and neither was the Journal.
The WSJ was just getting warmed up as it then complained both nations joined with Cuba in a Free Trade Agreement of the People (much like Venezuela's ALBA) which is much different from the one-sided ones the US demands with it getting all and developing nations giving everything, "take it or leave it." Under the agreement, Venezuela pledged to supply Bolivia with 200,000 barrels of crude and refined products a month at below-market prices and in return buy 200,000 tons of Bolivian soybeans a year as well as quantities of chestnuts and almonds. Chavez also will provide 5,000 scholarships and 100 advanced internships for Bolivians to study in Venezuela. And while other foreign energy companies are freezing their Bolivian investments, the Venezuelan state-owned energy company PdVSA is investing in a number of Bolivian projects including a new gas separation plant and jointly owned filling stations with the Argentinian oil company YSFB. Venezuela is also taking a leading role in the development of Bolivia's El Mutun iron ore deposits further strengthening the ties between the two nations.
My point in listing the above arrangements is that all nations should be working cooperatively with each other doing these same sorts of things to maintain their independence and benefit their people. The Journal, however, is indignant about them - meaning, of course, that Bolivia is taking its lead from Venezuela and daring to go around the dominant US "our way or the highway" kind of agreements that steal from poor nations to make powerful US corporations richer and more powerful. But the Journal just kept pouring it on expressing its ire (by implication) that Venezuelan technocrats dare to help Bolivia set policies on a range of issues from health care to land reform to nationalizing the oil, natural gas and other industries. These plans are intended to help the Bolivian people benefit fairly from their own natural resources and for Cuban doctors and teachers to be used in poor areas to set up clinics and schools and give the people essential social services they never had before.
Hugo Chavez will also loan Bolivia $100 million "to implement (its) potentially explosive promise to redistribute some 12.4 million acres of state-owned property to indigenous groups" - a first step in a broader program to put unproductive state and private lands that don't have clear title in the hands of the people who need it and will use it to benefit them and the nation. The Journal calls this land reform plan a "time bomb" that could lead to a "civil war," - incredibly hostile language. They're also upset that Morales is purging his military of some of its high-ranking officers, requiring every public official to take an almost 50% pay cut, and stipulating that no bureaucrat can earn more than his own salary of $22,000 a year (compared to George Bush's $400,000 while he spends half his time at his Texas "ranch" raking in the bucks and not the hay).
Evo Morales has accomplished all this in just four months since he was inaugurated as Bolivia's President on January 24th of this year. And while the US empire and WSJ are upset and angry, the Bolivian people love him and show it in the approval rating he's earned that now exceeds 80% or nearly threefold higher than how George Bush currently scores. No matter, the Journal pours it on further. It berates Chavez for using his oil wealth to lead a "bloc of anti-American countries in the region and beyond," has lent hundreds of millions of dollars to Argentina and Equador (imagine the arrogance of going around the IMF and World Bank that specialize in impoverishing developing nations to enrich giant corporations) and supports Iran's right to enrich uranium and develop its commercial nuclear industry as that country has every legal right to do without outside interference.
And now the clincher - I can barely contain myself. Because of this alliance and what's emerging from it, the Journal claims Chavez and Morales "threaten to undo years of political and economic 'liberation' (does it get more Orwellian than that) in South America and is the latest in a series of energy-security threats." I can only think of an expressive Yiddish term that best explains my reaction to that statement - what unmitigated "chutzpah." For those who don't know the term, it means an extreme level of arrogance and insolence.
It's quite unacceptable to the US empire that these two leaders would dare act as all leaders should. And the Wall Street Journal feels the same way and says it clearly or by none too subtle implication throughout its lengthy feature article today. The message from it indicates there's trouble ahead for Hugo Morales and Evo Morales, and it's coming from the USA.
What It All Means
I've written a lot in recent months about how the US is stepping up its hostile rhetoric against Hugo Chavez in preparation to launching its fourth attempt to oust the Venezuelan leader after failing to do it three previous times. This morning's Journal article clearly indicates Evo Morales has been elevated to likely co-equal status with President Chavez after just four short months in office. Of course, Fidel Castro has been on the US's hit list for over 45 years and is probably more in jeopardy now than he's been for some time. The US simply won't allow any nation to function outside its orbit of influence, especially those rich in natural resources like Venezuela, Bolivia and Iran. Iran in particular has been the target of the most extreme US venom for no other reason than it's oil rich like Iraq and Venezuela and its leadership won't sell out its sovereignty to a hostile US demanding it.
The Wall Street Journal provides empire watchers a useful service - a window through which to view likely US intentions and to be able to do it on a daily basis. Today's article is one such view and an important one. It steps up the hostile rhetoric one more notch and provides one more clear sign that these two nations must brace for what seems certain US action against them to remove their leaders and replace them with ones again subservient to US wishes. Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales do anything but that and as such represent the greatest threat above all others to US continued dominance in the region - a good example that left unchecked may grow and spread and help erode the US's unchallengeable position it's held up to now.
Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales want no part of it, and the US won't tolerate that attitude. Clearly a confrontation is ahead on what timetable and by what means we won't know until it unfolds. But it surely will, and commentators on this web site and other progressive ones will be monitoring all the signs and events and reporting them as they unfold. Stay tuned.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
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Murderous Intent
A Note On Palestine And Iran
Signs of the Times
26/05/2006
Stories from the past few days on American and Israeli maneuverings over Iran and Palestine seem to be indicating that the rabid hatred with which the Israeli and American ruling parties view the Arabs of the Middle East is set to very soon explode into savagery in the form of a joint US-Israeli attack on Iran. Such an attack will surely be used by Israel as an opportunity to implement its final solution to the Palestinian question.
Today we are sounding the alarm bells, needless, unjustified and brutal war is coming yet again, as American and world citizens sit back and watch the psychopaths in power do their worst, what future can any of us possibly hope for with such insanity directing the course of human destiny...
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Palestinian delegation attacked by congressman
Oliver Burkeman in New York
Thursday May 25, 2006
The Guardian
A New York congressman is declaring partial victory in his campaign to force the Palestinian delegation to the UN to leave the US. "They should start packing their little Palestinian terrorist bags," Anthony Weiner said after the House of Representatives passed a bill banning financial aid to the Palestinian Authority.
An amendment introduced by Mr Weiner outlaws the Palestinian UN mission on Manhattan's upper east side. But even if the amendment passes the Senate, the president can block it.
Palestinian offices in the US must apply for a waiver every six months.
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U.S. House Calls Palestinian Authority a 'Terrorist Sanctuary'
Reuters
23/05/2006
The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly backed legislation on May 23 to brand the Palestinian Authority a "terrorist sanctuary" and further restrict aid, defying President George W. Bush in the midst of high-profile Mideast talks.
The House voted 361-37 for the bill that backers said was needed to block any U.S. funds from supporting Hamas, a militant group pledged to the destruction of Israel and deemed a terrorist organization by Washington.
The vote came during Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's first trip to Washington, which is expected to include discussions on how to ease the Palestinians' humanitarian crisis while isolating the Hamas Islamists controlling the Palestinian government.
The Bush administration contends this bill could tie its hands in that effort. The administration has stopped direct aid to the Hamas-led government, but the bill would put into law more sweeping bans. A Palestinian representative denounced the bill as harmful to peace.
The House bill would cut off direct and indirect U.S. assistance to the Palestinian Authority, other than aid to meet "the basic human health needs" of the Palestinian people and for measures Congress approves on a case-by-case basis. It would limit aid through nongovernmental organizations and restrict diplomatic contacts with Hamas representatives.
The bill calls for the Palestinian Authority to be designated a "terrorist sanctuary." It would ban visas for entry into the United States of any member of the PA or any of its components.
It also recommends withholding U.S. contributions to the United Nations proportional to the amount the world body provides the authority.
Facing insurmountable momentum in the House for the bill, congressional aides said the administration will aim to stall or weaken the companion measure in the Senate. The Senate version already gives the administration more leeway than the House-passed bill.
"We hope we'll be able to move" the bill, said Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, second-ranked in the Senate Republican leadership. Discussions were being held with the White House on ways it could waive bans in the bill, which has about 88-cosponors from the 100-member Senate, he said.
Under the House bill, aid would be restored if Hamas recognizes Israel's right to exist, renounces terrorism and disarms.
Nabil Abu Rdainah, an adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, told Reuters in Jerusalem the House action "harms the peace process and undermines international efforts ... to lift the siege imposed on the Palestinian people."
Hamas took power in March after winning January parliamentary elections. Tensions have surged between Fatah, the long-dominant Palestinian faction, and Hamas, and skirmishes have given rise to fears of mounting violence among rival Palestinian factions.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat who led a small charge against the bill in nearly three hours of debate on May 22, said it was too punitive on Palestinians and "onerous and burdensome" on the administration's diplomatic efforts.
"I am afraid that this legislation may well backfire by actually strengthening the hands of extremists," he said.
But Rep. Tom Lantos of California, top International Relations Committee Democrat and the bill's co-sponsor, said instead of punishing Palestinians, the bill was "carefully crafted and aimed at Hamas."
"The United States must make it unambiguously clear that we will not support a terrorist regime," said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican.
Comment: As you can see, the Israel lobby in the U.S. does not hold any inordinate power over US politicians.
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House Vote Harms Palestine, Israel, US
The Nation
25/05/2006
"Innocent Palestinian people are being treated like animals, with the presumption that they are guilty of some crime," argues Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner whose involvement in the Middle East peace process has extended across three decades. Instead of checking and balancing the president's misguided approach to an election result that displeased him, Congress has added fuel to the fire.
Jimmy Carter has been blunt: Despite the fact of a Palestinian election result that was not to their liking, the former president says, "it is unconscionable for Israel, the United States and others under their influence to continue punishing the innocent and already persecuted people of Palestine."
Since the political wing of the militant group Hamas swept parliamentary elections in Palestine, the U.S. and Israel have been trying to use economic pressure to force a change of course. Disregarding the democracy that President Bush says he wants to promote in the Middle East, the U.S. has sanctioned policies that have fostered chaos on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and created increasingly harsh conditions for people who have known more than their share of suffering.
"Innocent Palestinian people are being treated like animals, with the presumption that they are guilty of some crime," argues Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner whose involvement in the Middle East peace process has extended across three decades. "Because they voted for candidates who are members of Hamas, the United States government has become the driving force behind an apparently effective scheme of depriving the general public of income, access to the outside world and the necessities of life."
Instead of checking and balancing the president's misguided approach to an election result that displeased him, Congress has added fuel to the fire.
By a lopsided vote of 361 to 37, the House voted Tuesday for the so-called "Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act," a measure so draconian that even the Bush administration has opposed it.
The legislation, which still must be reconciled with a similar measure passed by the Senate, would cut off all assistance to the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, and place conditions on humanitarian assistance delivered directly to the Palestinians by non-government organizations. Presidential spokesman Tony Snow, in restating the White House's opposition to the measure says that it "unnecessarily constrains" the flow of essential assistance - food, fresh water, medicine - in a manner that does, indeed, "tie the president's hand" when it comes to providing humanitarian aid.
It also has the potential to encourage, rather than restrain, violence.
Representative Earl Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat who was one of the few members of the House to argue against the legislation, correctly explained that the approach endorsed by most of his colleagues will strengthen the hand of Palestinian extremists.
"It does little to prioritize on the basis of our strategic interests, and provides no prospect for Palestinian reform coming through the process of negotiations," Blumenauer said of the legislation. "In so doing, it weakens the hands of those who advocate for peace negotiations, and supports those extremists who believe in violence."
Debra DeLee, President and CEO of Americans for Peace Now, which works closely with Israeli groups seeking a peaceful settlement of tensions with the Palestinians, calls the bill "an exercise in overreaching that will undercut American national security needs, Israeli interests, and hope for the Palestinian people, if it's ever signed into law."
"We urged the House to craft legislation that was focused and flexible enough to allow the U.S. to respond to Hamas' election victory in a firm, yet responsible, manner," explained a frustrated DeLee. "But by failing to provide the president with a real national security waiver, by failing to include a sunset clause for draconian performance requirements that will stay on the books regardless of who is running the Palestinian Authority, and by failing to distinguish between Hamas and Palestinians who support a two-state solution, the supporters of this bill have missed that opportunity for now."
Despite its dramatic flaws, the bill drew bipartisan support, with House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Illinois, and Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California, lining up their respective caucuses behind it.
Of the 37 "no" votes, 31 came from Democrats, including senior members such as Michigan's John Conyers and John Dingell, Californians George Miller and Pete Stark and Wisconsin's David Obey. Ohio's Dennis Kucinich, a contender for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, also opposed the measure, as did California's Barbara Lee, a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus
The six Republican "no" votes came from Maryland's Wayne Gilchrest, North Carolina's Walter Jones, Arizona's Jim Kolbe, Illinois' Ray LaHood and Texans Ron Paul and Mac Thornberry.
As is frequently the case on votes involving Israel and Palestine, dozens of members did not participate. Nine House members, all of them Democrats, voted "present" Tuesday. Twenty-five members, eleven of them Democrats, fourteen of them Republicans, registered no vote.
Americans for Peace Now's DeLee says that, as the House and Senate seek to reconcile differing bills, her group will continue to work to alter the legislation so that it will not encourage extremism or worsen a humanitarian crisis. But there is no question that the task has been made more difficult by the overwhelming House vote in favor of this misguided measure.
Comment: Tell us, one more time, what the source of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is?
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Right-Wing Israel Lobby Seizes on Olmert Visit
By Jim Lobe
05/25/06
WASHINGTON - On his maiden visit to the United States as Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert received a first-hand look at the political muscle of the right-wing "Israel Lobby", part of which used the occasion to launch a campaign to deter him from following through on plans to unilaterally evacuate tens of thousands of settlers living in the occupied West Bank.
Even as Olmert met with President George W. Bush at the White House Tuesday, the House of Representatives voted by an overwhelming 361-37 margin to impose strict conditions on aid to Palestinians, as demanded by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Washington's most powerful pro-Israel lobby.
Bush had opposed the measure on the grounds that it reduced his administration's flexibility in dealing with the Palestinian Authority (PA) and prodding its Hamas-led government to meet conditions for the resumption of direct aid and diplomatic exchanges. Administration officials said they will support a less draconian Senate version of the bill.
Other, more even-handed Zionist groups, including Americans for Peace Now (APN) and the Israel Policy Forum (IPF), also opposed the measure, arguing that its conditions for restoring aid to the PA were likely to increase the chances of a humanitarian disaster in both Gaza and the West Bank and strengthen hardliners in the PA's Hamas-led government.
"The AIPAC leadership has its own agenda," said Lewis Roth, an APN spokesman, noting that the bill's conditions for restoring aid went beyond those set by Israel itself.
Olmert, whose Kadema party heads a coalition that includes the more-dovish Labour Party and two more right-wing parties, arrived in Washington in hopes of securing the strongest possible White House endorsement of his campaign pledge to dismantle more isolated West Bank settlements as part of a "realignment" designed to consolidate existing settlement blocs close to the "Green Line" and establish Israel's "permanent" borders over the next several years.
While Olmert has said -- as he did in an exceptionally well-attended and enthusiastically received speech to a joint session of Congress here Wednesday -- he prefers that such a process be carried out as a result of bilateral negotiations with the PA, particularly its president, Mahmoud Abbas, he has also insisted that Israel would implement it unilaterally, if necessary, just as former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon carried out Israel's "disengagement" from Gaza last summer.
"Should we realise that the bilateral track with the Palestinians is of no consequence, 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," he told Congress. "At that juncture, the time for realignment will occur."
But Bush, whose weak political position and preoccupation with Iraq and Iran's nuclear programme have made him uncharacteristically sensitive to the concerns of European and Arab allies, has been leery of explicitly endorsing any further unilateral measures. Instead, he has called for the revival of the three-year-old Road Map, which requires bilateral negotiations within a larger multilateral framework.
The problem, however, is that both Olmert and Bush have ruled out any negotiations with or aid to a Hamas-led PA until the Islamist party, which unexpectedly swept elections in January, meets three conditions: recognition of Israel, renunciation of terrorism, and endorsement of all previous agreements negotiated between the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO)/PA and Israel.
In the face of Hamas' refusal to date to do so, the administration has been pushing Olmert to start negotiations with Abbas. Despite Olmert's reported belief that the Palestinian president is politically far too weak to meaningfully commit the PA, his foreign minister met with Abbas for the first time last week, and he promised Bush to follow up with a summit soon.
"We hope he will have the power to be able to meet the requirements necessary for negotiations between us and the Palestinians," he said at the White House Tuesday.
In exchange, it appears that Olmert received a qualified endorsement for proceeding with an eventual unilateral "realignment" if the Palestinians fail to offer an adequate response. As noted by the New York Times, U.S. officials who last week labeled the plan merely "interesting" were more positive by the time the prime minister met Bush, who called it "bold" and "creative" during a joint press conference.
"Olmert got enough of a green light to go ahead with the planning and campaigning for the realignment when he returns to Israel," APN's Lewis Roth told IPS.
It was in this context, however, that the House took up the AIPAC-backed Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act whose provisions, according to its critics, are not only more likely to worsen the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the occupied territories, but also risks strengthening hardliners within Hamas.
The bill would cut off all U.S. aid to the PA and require all U.S. humanitarian aid to be channeled through non-governmental organisations (NGOs), including U.N. agencies which would be subject to a series of audits to ensure that Hamas was not benefiting directly or indirectly from their assistance.
The measure would also require the administration to shut down all Palestinian diplomatic offices in the U.S., deny visas to PA officials, and bar all diplomatic exchanges between U.S. and Palestinian officials. It also declares Palestinian territory to be a "terrorist sanctuary", which would make it far more difficult for U.S. companies to do business there, and instructs the U.S. representative to the World Bank to oppose humanitarian aid projects for Palestinians.
To restore aid, the president would have to certify that Hamas has not only met the three official U.S. conditions, but also has halted an anti-Israeli incitement and guaranteed financial transparency in its institutions.
"On this issue, Congress has shown its capacity for being totally irresponsible," the IPF's Stephen Cohen told Congressional Quarterly. "They're always passing bills that try to punish someone. They never think of anything they can do that offers anybody an incentive."
Ironically, the vote came on the same day that the head of the Israeli military. Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, fuelling a growing debate about the wisdom of Israel's efforts to isolate Hamas, told the Knesset that economic sanctions against the PA was unlikely to reduce popular support for the Islamists, let alone result in their ouster from power.
Even while the House approved the bill, however, hard-line neo-conservatives and leaders of the Christian Right here launched a strong attack on Olmert's "realignment" plans under the general theme that, in the words of one full-page Washington Times ad paid for by far-right Americans for a Safe Israel (ASI), "Friends don't let friends commit suicide."
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director James Woolsey warned that Israel's withdrawal from most of the West Bank would result in a "West Bank terrorist state", part of an "Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah-Hamas axis (that) is quite explicit about a genocidal objective" against the Jews. Similar themes were sounded in Washington Times op-eds by Centre for Security Policy president Frank Gaffney and the Heritage Foundation's Ariel Cohen.
ASI's ad was signed by half a dozen Christian Right groups -- a core constituency of Bush's. It warned that realignment would "reverse the victorious miracles of (the) 1967 (Arab-Israeli War)" and violate "God's promise to the Jewish people," asserting that "there is a moral duty for the United States to restrain the State of Israel from destroying itself".
Comment: Clearly, there is a unified consensus among the psychopaths in power in Washington and Tel Aviv. The Arabs of the Middle East must surrender completely or they will be annihilated.
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'How can people live, I wonder?'
Thursday May 25, 2006
The Guardian
Eight months ago, the Palestinians were celebrating the end of Israel's military occupation of Gaza. But the artillery shells keep falling, factions are fighting each other and the economy is on its knees as Israel blockades exports. Has anything changed for the better?
Mousa al-Sawarka lived in a small ramshackle house, watching over his camels and crops on the edge of Beit Lahia in the north of the Gaza strip, until the rain of Israeli artillery shells got too much. So the 68-year-old Bedouin farmer moved in with his son in town. Two days later a shell flattened Mousa's house. Three weeks after that, another shell killed him as he was trying to drive his camels away from artillery fire. "He was hit directly in the head," says his nephew, Fares al-Sawarka.
"We couldn't rescue him because of the shelling. It was 10 minutes before we could get to him. It was so difficult to see his face. When we got the body back from the hospital, we tried not to let his wife see it."
The next day, the family set up the traditional mourning tent within sight of the old man's flattened house. A stream of friends and neighbours arrived to pay their condolences and take coffee. "Then the shells started falling again," says another nephew, Adel al-Sawarka. "We heard screaming and shouting and it was Hassan al-Shafei. The shrapnel hit him in the back and almost cut him in half. There were so many shells, we had to crawl on the ground to escape."
Hassan al-Shafei, a 55-year-old fruit and vegetable farmer, died in hospital. His cousin, Ahmed al-Shafei, carries to the mourning tent five large pieces of shrapnel he picked up in the field. Each is more than six inches long, heavy and jagged. "Imagine this thing, so hot and fast. Just one piece would tear a person's body. It's horrible," he says.
After that, both families set up mourning tents on the other side of town where there were fewer shells, although still enough for the neighbouring American School to close its doors and move to Gaza City in January.
Since the beginning of last month, Israel has fired more than 5,100 shells into the Gaza strip from artillery just the other side of the border and from ships off the coast. The military says the bombardment is aimed at deterring Palestinian rocket attacks into Israel from open fields, but the artillery fire has killed six Palestinian civilians, including two children, eight-year-old Hadeel Ghaen and 15-year-old Mamdouh Obaid, and wounded 60 others, including 21 children.
The Israeli army changed its own rules to allow it to drop shells within 100 metres of built-up areas. On the afternoon that the Sawarka family was mourning the loss of Mousa, more than 300 shells fell in and around Beit Lahia, some so close that the explosions rocked the fragile homes.
"We are Bedouin and we live in homes with zinc roofs and it doesn't protect us," says Fares al-Sawarka. "The Israelis are dropping shells closer and closer. They can see that for 10 years we have been doing the same things, moving the camels at particular times. They know our names even. They know who they kill. Before, they targeted the fighters. Now they are targeting all of us. The Bedouin have no relationship with the fighters. This is collective punishment."
The two men are among about 110 Palestinians who have been killed by Israel since the beginning of the year, about half of them civilians. At the weekend, an Israeli missile strike on a car carrying an Islamic Jihad commander also killed three generations of a family driving by. The youngest victim, Muhannad Mohammed Aamen, was four years old.
This is not how Palestinians imagined life would be eight months after they danced on the ruins of Jewish settlements as Israel withdrew from the occupied Gaza strip. The scenes of soldiers hauling settlers, who declared that they were being forced to abandon land given to them by God, weeping from their homes, were greeted as a liberation by Palestinians 38 years after Israeli troops marched in. The bulldozing of Israel's sprawling colonies in the Gaza strip, and the dismantling of its fortified military posts around Palestinian towns and refugee camps, offered the prospect of a new beginning with freedom of travel, economic prosperity and, simply, peace.
Gazans have got some of that. The southern Gaza town of Rafah, the most bloodied and destroyed in the strip, is finally free from the daily terror of Israeli bullets and the misery of house demolitions by army bulldozers. It was regularly cut off from most of the rest of the territory by army checkpoints that separated people from their jobs and schools, and even forced some to move home.
Israeli settlements carved up the main highway running the length of the territory, and the army imposed the notorious Abu Houli checkpoint on the Palestinians. Abu Houli is named after the Palestinian whose land was used to build a bridge carrying Jewish settlers to their homes, and it is where Arabs waited for hours, even days, to cross. It came to symbolise for many Palestinians the pervasive oppression of occupation, and now all that remains are the concrete foundations.
Today Gazans are more or less free to move around inside the strip and to travel to Egypt and beyond. The settlements themselves are now mostly rubble, although the Jewish religious school in Gush Katif, constructed in the shape of a Star of David, is now used as a classroom for the Al-Aqsa university, and an Egyptian company is clearing Netzarim settlement to build a children's fairground in its place, to be called Lunar Park.
But Gazans are grappling with new problems imposed from without and within. Hamas's victory in the parliamentary election in January brought international sanctions - including the freezing of nearly $1bn a year in aid from the US and EU - and a power struggle that has spilled on to the streets as the victorious Islamists try to assert their control over the Palestinian Authority in the face of resistance from an embittered and defeated Fatah.
Hamas installed a prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, and a cabinet, but it is still far from exerting authority over the Gaza strip, where the core of its support lies, let alone the West Bank. Gun fights between Hamas and Fatah-controlled security forces are ever more frequent, and have claimed eight lives since the beginning of the month, as the rival groups attempt to assert control of the streets. On Monday, a Jordanian diplomat was shot dead driving past the Palestinian parliament as Hamas and Fatah militiamen unleashed grenades and bullets at each other.
Hamas has attempted to impose its authority by deploying a 3,000-strong security force on the streets to guard government ministries, banks and public buildings, but that has only exacerbated the tensions. The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has responded by declaring that his forces are in control of Gaza's borders and that only his policemen are permitted to carry weapons on the street.
It has been a maxim of Palestinian politics that no one would ever want civil war, as that would play into the hands of the Israelis. But many ordinary residents of Gaza are wondering if that is still true, especially since two assassination attempts took place at the weekend. One of them nearly claimed the life of the Palestinian intelligence chief in Gaza, a Fatah man, after a bomb exploded as he got into a lift in his own headquarters. It is still not clear who was responsible for the attack, but had it succeeded, many would have blamed Hamas.
But as dramatic as the scenes of fighting are, the bulk of Gazans will tell you their real problems are economic. When Israel pulled out in September, it said it wanted a free and prosperous Gaza. What the Palestinians have got instead are piles of rotting fruit once destined for European tables amid an Israeli blockade that has quashed attempts to build a flourishing agricultural trade and bankrupted businesses. With it has come a freezing of about $1bn in annual aid by the EU and US until Hamas meets demands for it to recognise Israel and renounce violence.
The withdrawal of aid has left the Palestinian Authority unable to pay its 160,000 workers, hospitals running dangerously short of medicines and the economy plunging into recession. The UN calculates that one PA salary paid to nurses, teachers and policemen supports seven people - more than one million in total, or one in four residents of the occupied territories.
The Palestinians had hoped to begin standing on their own feet. After the Israeli withdrawal, they took over the settlers' greenhouses with the promise of a flourishing export trade in fruit and vegetables that would create thousands of jobs and bring in tens of millions of dollars in revenues. They planted tomatoes and peppers, melons and strawberries, for harvest in January. This week, the greenhouses were finally closed, driven out of business by an Israeli economic blockade tightened after Hamas won the election.
The Israeli prime minister's closest adviser, Dov Weisglass, revealed that what Israel has in mind for Gaza is not prosperity but keeping it teetering on life support. "We need to make the Palestinians lose weight, but not to starve to death," he said.
At the mourning tent in Beit Lahia, I meet Ahmed al-Shafei, chairman of the Gaza Cooperative Association for Producing and Marketing Vegetables. "Two thousand families in this town depend on the strawberries," he says. "We used to get 12 shekels a kilo exporting. Now we get one or two shekels in the market here if we get anything at all. It's cost us $1.5m in lost strawberry sales."
Salim Abu Safiya is in charge of Gaza's borders for the Palestinian Authority working from an office near the main cargo crossing at Karni, with shells dropping periodically not far away. "If you add up all the hours that Karni has been open since the beginning of the year, it amounts to just three weeks," he says. "This is three or four hours a day and sometimes it's closed for weeks. Karni has the capacity to handle about 700 lorries a day. Now, if it is open, it handles only about 50."
On the day we speak, Karni is open for a little more than three hours for imports. Exports haven't been allowed in months. "Israel sends us what they want to send us, not what we need," he says. "They are sending fruit, construction material, frozen food, so Israel can save its face and not let us starve." What they need instead is medicine, tampons, washing powder, milk and baby formula.
The impact on some Palestinian industries has been devastating. Textile factories have thrown 75,000 people out of work because they can no longer get their garments out of Gaza. Safiya estimates that there are 700 lorry loads of furniture waiting to be sent to Israel. "Since the beginning of the second intifada, Israel has used the borders as a tool to pressure the Palestinians," he says. "The rest of the economy was destroyed as a result of the closure of the borders. A third of Palestinian industrialists have left for abroad. Twenty-two of the big Palestinian factories have sought a permit to move to Egypt or Sudan. Nineteen garment factories have closed in the past two months."
The unemployment rate in Gaza is 44%, although it rises at times when Israel bars Palestinian workers from entering Israel. Per capita income has dropped 40% in three years. About 70% of the population is defined as living in poverty.
The Israeli government has justified the persistent closure of Karni with what it said was intelligence about impending attacks. Others are sceptical. James Wolfensohn, the US-appointed special envoy to Israel and the occupied territories, who was critical of both sides before he resigned last month, expressed particular frustration at what he characterised as Israeli "foot-dragging" over the border crossings. He has accused the Israeli government of being "loath to relinquish control, almost acting as though there has been no withdrawal" from Gaza. Late last year, Wolfensohn threatened to quit unless Israel agreed to ease the blockade. The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, intervened and won a commitment from Israel to open Karni 24 hours a day by the end of 2005 and to permit regular convoys of buses and lorries to move people and goods between Gaza and the West Bank. Israel also promised to discuss reopening Gaza's airport, closed at the beginning of the intifada when army bulldozers tore up the runway, and the construction of a sea port to allow the territory to trade directly without going through Israel.
At the time, Wolfensohn told PBS television in the US that without relatively free movement across its borders, the Gaza strip will be "like a prison". He said that open borders are "crucial" to the future of the Gazan people, because they would provide "a sense of hope, a sense that they are able to earn money, that they can trade". "The balance is always between Israeli security and freedom and hope for the Palestinians."
Israel reneged on almost all of the agreement, with the exception of the crossing to Egypt, and buried the issue under the Hamas election victory.
"It's not a security decision to close the borders, it's a political decision," says Safiya. "This doesn't mean there are not attempts to attack Israel. I'm not denying it happens, but that is not the real reason for closing the border."
The new Israeli defence minister, Amir Peretz, said last week that he will allow exports to resume from Gaza, but the military then announced another security warning and nothing moved. Safiya is suspicious. "The Israeli trick is to get Palestinians to give up on their national demands and worry about the small thing of just surviving," he says. "We had great hope that the situation would improve after withdrawal, but hope is not reality. Our bit of luck is that we are very close to Israel so they cannot let us starve. Their misfortune is that we are so close so they cannot get rid of us."
Hamas offers little hope beyond planning for a siege economy. "We are planning to deal with the current situation and the siege so, yes, we're planning for a siege economy," says Yahir Mousa, a Hamas founder and member of the Palestinian parliament. "One example. We have 8,000 government cars, most of them in the hands of individuals. Every car costs us $20,000 a year. Instead of that I could give the same people money for public transport for less than $1,000 a year. We can stop the consumption of money for nothing."
Many of those who voted for the Islamist party did so because they wanted it to put an end to rampant corruption and mismanagement. What they have got is further economic misery, and Hamas is struggling to find answers. "Europe should not behave with double standards, calling for democracy and then going against the decision of the people," says Mousa. "Palestinians are aware of what is going on. Their reaction is going to support the government and their choice in the face of these pressures from America, Europe and, more importantly, Israel."
Among the few to benefit are the gold shops in the heart of Gaza City. Palestinians have traditionally put their money in to land and gold, and the family jewels are sold only as a last resort. "I assure you that there is no woman in Gaza who has not come to my shop to value her jewellery or sell it off," says Wael al-Sa'idi, who has been in the gold business for 22 years. "This started two months ago but it has increased dramatically over the past month. There are two factors, the difficult economic situation and the gold price is very high."
Sa'idi picks up a wedding ring sold to him that morning. It is a flimsy band of gold so thin that it has rippled from being pulled off the woman's finger. Sa'idi paid 45 shekels (£6) for it. "I'm not telling you she was crying when I bought it but when I looked her in the eye there was a ghost of a tear," he says. "The sad thing is they are not coming in with lots of gold. This morning a woman came in with an earring worth 40 shekels and I gave her 50 because I felt sorry for her because she has less than zero. There are new couples who are getting married and can't afford to buy a ring so they rent it from the shop for three weeks.
"All Gaza goes by my shop. No one gets a taxi any more. People are not going to restaurants. It's the result of the blockade. We don't want aid. We feel like beggars. The world wants us to be dependent on the occupation and aid. How can people live, I wonder?"
Rateeba Shihada, a 59-year-old widow, has kept the money coming in by smuggling cigarettes into Gaza from Egypt. She spends $150 on all the cartons she can carry from just over the border and resells them for double that. Egyptian cigarettes are popular because they are stronger and cheaper than Israeli ones, even with the smugglers' mark-up. "I bring in washing powder and cheese too. They are hard to get here. A lot of people do it," she says.
But on this day, Shihada is selling the gold bracelet her late husband gave her on their wedding day. She gets $1,500 for it, which she tucks into a pink bag around her neck that holds the last of her jewellery. "I sold my gold to buy flour for my children and to pay for my son to finish his education because this is his future. My son is in the last year of university. My dream is my son. He has to graduate whatever the price. He is an engineer," she says. "My bracelet was my dowry. It's a very black day to sell it but I hope it's my last black day."
The gold dealers are buying plenty but selling almost nothing. "We have all this gold," says Sa'idi. "There's only one thing to do with it. We smuggle it out of the country. We use the black market and send it to Egypt or Dubai to earn some money. All of Gaza's gold is disappearing." Earlier this month, a courier carrying gold to Dubai disappeared with the money.
More than 2,700 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict with Israel over the past five years. Nearly one-quarter of the dead are children aged 16 or younger. Some of the children were playing football in the street in full sight of the soldier who pulled the trigger, others were sitting at their desks in school when a stray bullet from an army post crashed into the classroom. About half of those children were shot in the Gaza strip, the bulk in two refugee camps in the south - Rafah and Khan Yunis. The killings were only part of it. Israel bulldozed the homes of thousands of Palestinians along the Egyptian border and around the settlements. It drove out many others with the daily, and more often nightly, barrage of fire into Rafah and Khan Yunis. Nowhere suffered more at the hands of occupation.
And it is here in the south of the Gaza strip that the benefits of withdrawal are felt. Zachia Abu Armana's story highlights how life has improved in Rafah since the Israeli army left. There is not a room in her home without pockmarks from bullets or shrapnel. The entire wall of the kitchen is dotted with holes. When she was lying in bed, she was hit by three pieces of hot flying metal. The family bricked up the windows and moved to the back of the house. When the bowl was smashed by a bullet in the toilet upstairs, they stopped using it. When the army said that everyone on the floors above would be shot, they all moved to the ground floor.
They stayed in their home after Armana's 15- year-old son, Bashir, was shot dead by a soldier while playing football in February 2004. And stayed too when the army killed three of the family's four horses that were used to pull the small wooden carts with which the family made a living hauling goods. But in the middle of 2004, another son, Wael, 20, was shot in the arm and the family finally moved out. Armana and her nine children found rooms in the heart of Rafah, where rents rocketed as families sought to escape the army posts.
"My fear was the house would be destroyed if we left it," says Armana. "It was everything we worked for in life."
The family is now back home. "This is not a house, it's a ruin," she says, but she is overwhelmed with relief. "Every hour I say thank God they are gone. I feel safe now. My children feel safe. I do not have to hear the army shooting and worry every time that one of my children is hit. Safe but there is no work. Safe but there is no money. You get rid of a problem but there are still others."
Comment: And we are asked to believe that it is Israel that has no "partner for peace".
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Erekat slams Israeli decision to allow Jews to enter al-Aqsa mosque
www.chinaview.cn
2006-05-25
RAMALLAH, May 25 (Xinhua) -- Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat Thursday denounced a decision of Israeli police to allow extremist Jews to enter the al-Aqsa mosque in East Jerusalem.
Guards of the Temple Mount, a Jewish group, has recently got permission from Israeli police to enter the al-Aqsa mosque in East Jerusalem.
"This dangerous development comes in the context of Israeli aggression and assassinations which aim to inflame the region and worsen the situation," Erekat told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
He said that the Palestinian National Authority will hold contacts with the international quartet to stop the Israeli escalation.
Meanwhile, The Fatah movement called on the Palestinians, basically Jerusalem residents, to travel to the al-Aqsa mosque and defend it.
Comment: Tell us again who is the impediment to peace between Israel and Palestine?
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Israeli military says it is expanding four (ILLEGAL) settlements in Qalqilia area
Imemc.org
25/05/2006
An Israeli military spokesperson says they are expanding four (ILLEGAL) settlements in the northwestern (OCCUPIED) West Bank area, including Oranit Settlement south of Qalqilia, built on lands of Sineria and Azzun Atma villages. (ILLEGAL) Settlers dredged 86 dunams of land belonging to farmer Ahmed Mahmoud Abu Sheikh.
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18,000 Palestinians in W. Bethlehem villages about to be enclosed into a 'ghetto'
IMEMC & Agencies
25 May 2006
In West Bethlehem, between al-Khader and the villages to be isolated in a ghetto on the west side of the Wall, Israeli forces have begun building a tunnel under the settler-only road. This construction and the associated land devastation will finalize the isolation of the villages into a ghetto, completely surrounded by the Israeli Wall and isolated from the rest of Palestine.
Previously, on November 21, 2005, Israeli forces confiscated 85 dunum from Battir, Beit Jala and al-Khader villages to build a tunnel under Road 60, which links the settlements in Jerusalem to those in Hebron district. Located close to al-Khader, the settlers-only road is an integral part of the Wall path and completes it.
On the other side of al-Khader is another segment of Wall, meant to separate the village from a high-speed train for Israelis-only that will speed past the village on the way to Tel Aviv. Commissioned by a French company, which has been been boycotted by various groups for their "business interest in the ghettoization of Palestine", the high speed train is being constructed directly on the land of Al Khader and other villages, annexing a large amount of the villagers land for Israel, and completing the circle that will enclose al Khader and neighboring villages into a ghetto.
Once the tunnel on the east side of the villages is completed, all other passages can be closed and the Palestinians who wish to leave their village for work, school, hospital, visits or any other reason will be channelled and controlled (and quite possibly spit on, stoned and shot at by Israelis on the Israelis-only road above, if the experience of Palestinians in Hebron, under a similar arrangement, hae found) under the Jewish-only bypass. 18,000 people in the villages of West Bethlehem will soon be completely isolated. Al-Khader, on the other side of the Wall, will be isolated from lands cultivated with vegetables, grapes and almonds that remain within the boundaries of the West Bethlehem ghetto. Not only will Nahallin, Battir, al-Walaje, Husan and Wadi Fuqin be completely imprisoned, but the Israeli government recently approved the expansion of Betar Illit settlement, which will confiscate much of the villages' remaining lands. The latest plans will expropriate 400 dunum from the Palestinian villages for the sake of Zionist settlers.
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Hamas withdraws security force
Last Updated Fri, 26 May 2006 08:08:11 EDT
CBC News
The streets of Gaza were quiet on Friday after Hamas withdrew a controversial security force in an effort to reduce tensions with the rival Fatah faction.
The militia, comprising 3,000 gunmen loyal to the militant group, was deployed a week ago over the objections of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah.
Ten people have been killed in fighting between Hamas and Fatah in the past week.
The rival factions were meeting on Friday in talks intended to reduce the friction between them and stop the violence.
Abbas, who was elected last year, has been in a power struggle with the Hamas government since Hamas won parliamentary elections in January. A key issue in that struggle has been control of the security forces in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
In response to Abbas's move to take authority over the security forces away from the Interior Ministry, Hamas formed the new security unit and placed a senior militant wanted by Israel in charge.
The friction sparked violence when the force was deployed in Gaza last week.
Tensions have been on the rise across the Palestinian territories since the Palestinian Authority's bank accounts have dried up. Many countries have cut off donations to the Authority, demanding that Hamas renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist.
The Hamas-led government hasn't been able to pay its 165,000 employees for nearly three months, causing widespread hardship.
Point of conflict
The other major point of conflict between Fatah and Hamas has been Abbas's insistence that he has the authority to negotiate a peace deal with Israel. On Thursday, Abbas said he would hold a national referendum on the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel if Hamas does not agree to the plan within 10 days.
A senior Hamas leader responded on Friday accusing Abbas of "blackmail."
Mohammad Nazzal, a member of the Hamas leadership in exile, didn't reject Abbas's proposal, but said Abbas shouldn't apply pressure in this way.
"We see this referendum as a tool of pressure on Hamas," Nazzal told Reuters, adding the proposal "cannot be used as a way to blackmail Hamas."
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Target: Iran
Russia to sell air defense systems to Iran
www.chinaview.cn 2006-05-26 22:32:47
MOSCOW, May 26 (Xinhua) -- Russia would fulfill a contract to supply its sophisticated Tor-M1 air defense systems to Iran, the Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said on Friday.
Ivanov, who is also vice prime minister, made the announcement after talks with the visiting German Defense Minister Franz Josef Yung in St. Petersburg, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.
"Russia has signed a contract with Iran for the supply of Tor-M1 close-range air defense systems to Iran," he said. "The contract will undoubtedly be fulfilled if no major factors interfere."
Up to 30 Tor-M1 units, will be used to defend key state and military facilities, foremost, nuclear facilities in Isfahan, Bushehr, Tehran and in the east of the country.
The contract, worth 1.4 billion U.S. dollars, is the biggest arms deal Iran and Russia have ever made.
Ivanov ruled out the possibility of terrorists using the Tor-M1air defense systems, saying, "By its technical parameters, the system cannot be used for terrorist activities."
"Russia is lagging far behind other countries in the volume of weapons supply to the Near and Middle East," he added.
The Tor-M1 unit is an all-weather air defense system intended for fulfilling air defense tasks at the battalion unit level. It ensures effective protection from cruise missiles, guided bombs, warplanes, helicopters, and pilotless and remotely controlled attack aircraft.
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Russia, Germany for diplomatic solutions to Iranian nuclear problem
www.chinaview.cn 2006-05-26 22:57:16
MOSCOW, May 26 (Xinhua) -- Both Russia and Germany come out for political and diplomatic settlement of Iran's nuclear crisis, Russian Vice-premier and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said on Friday in St. Petersburg after talks with visiting German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung.
"The world experience shows that sanctions prove ineffective, as a rule," Ivanov said in reply to a question whether a possible resolution on Iran if adopted by the UN Security Council might affect military-technical cooperation between Russia and Iran, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.
Ivanov said the two ministers focused on problems of nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction and missile technologies not only in respect to Iran.
"New threats that did not exist earlier have appeared which makes us focus more attention than before on the nonproliferation problem," Ivanov said.
"This is a very serious problem, international regimes should be strengthened, and in that sense the positions of Russia and Germany are fully identical," he said.
Ivanov said Russia will implement the contract to supply Tor-M1air defense systems to Iran in full. "Russia has signed a contract with Iran on supply of close-range air defense systems Tor-M1 to Iran. The contract will undoubtedly be fulfilled if no force major factors interfere."
"We strictly observe all our commitments, and if told that Russia allegedly helps in certain prohibited programs we say it is mere propaganda, " Ivanov added.
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Rafsanjani warns U.S., U.K. not to repeat Iraq mistakes in Iran
www.chinaview.cn 2006-05-26 23:02:21
TEHRAN, May 26 (Xinhua) -- Iran's ex-president Hashemi Rafsanjani on Friday warned the United States and Britain not to repeat their Iraq mistakes in Iran.
Rafsanjani made the warning one day after U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted during a press conference at the White House that "mistakes" and "missteps" had been made in Iraq.
"You see, two big leaders of two great occupying countries are making such important confessions," Rafsanjani said in his Friday prayer sermon, which was carried live on Iran's state radio. Rafsanjani said that the two would also make such confessions about Iran if they do not give up their hard stance toward Iran's nuclear program.
Rafsanjani's remarks came amid diplomats from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany are expected to have more talks on a decision to offer Iran a package of incentives in return for Iran's suspension of its nuclear activities, after their London talks on May 24 stopped short of making a final agreement.
Diplomats from the six nations have made encouraging progress over the package to Iran, as a compromise proposal, which would drop the automatic threat of military action but still pack the threat of sanctions if Iran remains defiant, was reached.
Washington has been accusing Tehran of using its civilian nuclear program as a cover to develop an atomic bomb, a charge denied by Iran, which insists its nuclear program is only for peaceful use.
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Bolton to resume work on UN resolution targeting Iran
WASHINGTON, May 25 (KUNA)
Although negotiations among the Permanent five members of the United Nations plus Germany regarding the Iran nuclear issue are ongoing, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton on Thursday said he planned to resume work on a Chapter 7 UN resolution that would legally require Iran to comply with demands that it freeze all uranium enrichment activities.
During testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bolton said that as soon as the committee released him, "I will be returning to New York to start working again on the Chapter 7 resolution that we had under discussion, because that track needs to move forward as well".
Bolton noted that political directors of the Permanent five plus Germany met in London on Wednesday in an effort to help delineate a package of incentives and disincentives aimed at persuading Iran to "seriously commit to suspend their uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing activities".
The incentives package will be an elaboration of what the EU-three -- Britain, France and Germany --have said to Iran in the past, combined with Russian offers to guarantee fuel supplies to Iran, Bolton said.
The disincentives package will "show clearly to the Iranians, if they choose not to suspend their progress toward acquiring a nuclear weapons capability, what that option will be for them as well," he added.
Bolton declined to discuss specifics of the package, saying that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "deserves a chance to assess the situation. I am sure she is going to be consulting with her counterparts in trying to determine the way ahead".
"As we announced yesterday, there was good progress in the discussions in London, but we really are in the middle of this effort that began with Secretary Rice's meeting with the other Perm 5 foreign ministers in New York about two weeks ago, setting in motion this process that is now under way," Bolton said.
The Iran issue "certainly could not be any higher on the priority list to try and get this resolved," he said. "And that is a subject of continuing conversations at the very highest levels".
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Iran Proposal to U.S. Offered Peace with Israel
By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON, May 24 IPS
Iran offered in 2003 to accept peace with Israel and to cut off material assistance to Palestinian armed groups and pressure them to halt terrorist attacks within Israel's 1967 borders, according to the secret Iranian proposal to the United States.
The two-page proposal for a broad Iran-U.S. agreement covering all the issues separating the two countries, a copy of which was obtained by IPS, was conveyed to the United States in late April or early May 2003. Trita Parsi, a specialist on Iranian foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies who provided the document to IPS, says he got it from an Iranian official earlier this year but is not at liberty to reveal the source.
The two-page document contradicts the official line of the George W. Bush administration that Iran is committed to the destruction of Israel and the sponsorship of terrorism in the region.
Parsi says the document is a summary of an even more detailed Iranian negotiating proposal which he learned about in 2003 from the U.S. intermediary who carried it to the State Department on behalf of the Swiss Embassy in late April or early May 2003. The intermediary has not yet agreed to be identified, according to Parsi.
The Iranian negotiating proposal indicated clearly that Iran was prepared to give up its role as a supporter of armed groups in the region in return for a larger bargain with the United States. What the Iranians wanted in return, as suggested by the document itself as well as expert observers of Iranian policy, was an end to U.S. hostility and recognition of Iran as a legitimate power in the region.
Before the 2003 proposal, Iran had attacked Arab governments which had supported the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The negotiating document, however, offered "acceptance of the Arab League Beirut declaration", which it also referred to as the "Saudi initiative, two-states approach."
The March 2002 Beirut declaration represented the Arab League's first official acceptance of the land-for-peace principle as well as a comprehensive peace with Israel in return for Israel's withdrawal to the territory it had controlled before the 1967 war.. Iran's proposed concession on the issue would have aligned its policy with that of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, among others with whom the United States enjoyed intimate relations.
Another concession in the document was a "stop of any material support to Palestinian opposition groups (Hamas, Jihad, etc.) from Iranian territory" along with "pressure on these organizations to stop violent actions against civilians within borders of 1967".
Even more surprising, given the extremely close relationship between Iran and the Lebanon-based Hizbollah Shiite organisation, the proposal offered to take "action on Hizbollah to become a mere political organization within Lebanon".
The Iranian proposal also offered to accept much tighter controls by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in exchange for "full access to peaceful nuclear technology". It offered "full cooperation with IAEA based on Iranian adoption of all relevant instruments (93+2 and all further IAEA protocols)".
That was a reference to protocols which would require Iran to provide IAEA monitors with access to any facility they might request, whether it had been declared by Iran or not. That would have made it much more difficult for Iran to carry out any secret nuclear activities without being detected.
In return for these concessions, which contradicted Iran's public rhetoric about Israel and anti-Israeli forces, the secret Iranian proposal sought U.S. agreement to a list of Iranian aims. The list included a "Halt in U.S. hostile behavior and rectification of status of Iran in the U.S.", as well as the "abolishment of all sanctions".
Also included among Iran's aims was "recognition of Iran's legitimate security interests in the region with according defense capacity". According to a number of Iran specialists, the aim of security and an official acknowledgment of Iran's status as a regional power were central to the Iranian interest in a broad agreement with the United States.
Negotiation of a deal with the United States that would advance Iran's security and fundamental geopolitical political interests in the Persian Gulf region in return for accepting the existence of Israel and other Iranian concessions has long been discussed among senior Iranian national security officials, according to Parsi and other analysts of Iranian national security policy.
An Iranian threat to destroy Israel has been a major propaganda theme of the Bush administration for months. On Mar. 10, Bush said, "The Iranian president has stated his desire to destroy our ally, Israel. So when you start listening to what he has said to their desire to develop a nuclear weapon, then you begin to see an issue of grave national security concern."
But in 2003, Bush refused to allow any response to the Iranian offer to negotiate an agreement that would have accepted the existence of Israel. Flynt Leverett, then the senior specialist on the Middle East on the National Security Council staff, recalled in an interview with IPS that it was "literally a few days" between the receipt of the Iranian proposal and the dispatch of a message to the Swiss ambassador expressing displeasure that he had forwarded it to Washington.
Interest in such a deal is still very much alive in Tehran, despite the U.S. refusal to respond to the 2003 proposal. Turkish international relations professor Mustafa Kibaroglu of Bilkent University writes in the latest issue of Middle East Journal that "senior analysts" from Iran told him in July 2005 that "the formal recognition of Israel by Iran may also be possible if essentially a 'grand bargain' can be achieved between the U.S. and Iran".
The proposal's offer to dismantle the main thrust of Iran's Islamic and anti-Israel policy would be strongly opposed by some of the extreme conservatives among the mullahs who engineered the repression of the reformist movement in 2004 and who backed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in last year's election.
However, many conservative opponents of the reform movement in Iran have also supported a negotiated deal with the United States that would benefit Iran, according to Paul Pillar, the former national intelligence officer on Iran. "Even some of the hardliners accepted the idea that if you could strike a deal with the devil, you would do it," he said in an interview with IPS last month.
The conservatives were unhappy not with the idea of a deal with the United States but with the fact that it was a supporter of the reform movement of Pres. Mohammad Khatami, who would get the credit for the breakthrough, Pillar said.
Parsi says that the ultimate authority on Iran's foreign policy, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was "directly involved" in the Iranian proposal, according to the senior Iranian national security officials he interviewed in 2004. Kamenei has aligned himself with the conservatives in opposing the pro-democratic movement.
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Sources: 'Iran believes Israel to strike within year'
Posted: May 24, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Aaron Klein
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
JERUSALEM - Iran estimates Israel will strike Tehran's nuclear facilities within a year, and has been planning retaliatory attacks against Israeli, American and British interests, according to senior Lebanese political sources.
The sources, speaking to WorldNetDaily on condition of anonymity, said Iran believes Israel has been practicing raids in Iraq. They said Tehran has held a series of meetings with leaders of the Hezbollah terror group - based along Lebanon's border with Israel - about attacking the Jewish state in the event of any Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear sites.
The sources said while Iran is expecting lone Israeli military action, Iranian intelligence estimates the Jewish state is coordinating a planned attack with the U.S.
"The Iranians currently are operating under the working assumption that Israel is going to strike in less than a year and that this strike is highly coordinated with America," said a senior Lebanese politician.
Lebanese political sources said Iran has been attempting to organize Shiite tribes in Iraq to stage repeated large-scale attacks against American and British forces stationed there during any Israeli strike. They said Iran believes attacks in Iraq, including hits against soft targets such as oil fields, will prompt a British or American retreat.
The Lebanese sources said Iran claims it has intelligence information indicating Israel has been carrying out military exercises related to an attack against it from bases in Kurdish sections of Iraq. Israeli security officials said the claims are baseless.
Iran has instructed Hezbollah to stage retaliatory raids and missile attacks against Israeli military and civilians targets during any Israeli strike against Tehran, the Lebanese political sources added.
Hezbollah is stationed alongside Israel's northern border and boasts it has over 10,000 missiles pointed at the country's civilian population centers.
Officially, Israel denies it is planning military action against Iran. Israeli leaders regularly call Iran a "world problem" and urge the international community to halt Iran's nuclear ambitions through diplomacy and the threat of economic sanctions.
At a joint press conference yesterday in Washington, President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said they still had faith in diplomacy. They stated Iran's nuclear ambitions must be halted.
"We have a variety options, one of which is of course the United Nations Security Council. Our primary objective is to solve this problem diplomatically. On all issues I'll try diplomacy first and exhaust diplomacy," said Bush.
Olmert called Iran a "major threat. This is something that must be stopped. There is a need to stop it and we reviewed the different ways to do it."
Iran is openly defying international calls to halt uranium enrichment activities. After Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was inaugurated last August, the country rejected European proposals aimed at curbing its nuclear programs and resumed nuclear projects, reopening a major uranium conversion plant in Isfahan. In January, Iran escalated the international confrontation by removing U.N. seals at one of its uranium-enrichment plants and resuming nuclear research.
So far, Tehran has scorned most diplomatic initiatives. Last week, it rejected an European Union proposal to cease uranium enrichment in exchange for economic incentives and the construction of a light-water energy reactor. Unlike the heavy-water plant Iran is building in the city of Arak, a light-water reactor wouldn't produce plutonium - another ingredient for weapons - as a waste product. Such a reactor would still need enriched uranium for fuel, though, which could be refined to weapons-grade material.
Knesset member: Strike Iran now
Last week, Israeli Knesset member Effie Eitam, a member of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said in a WND interview Israel and the international community should consider carrying out strategic strikes now against Iran's nuclear facilities to stall its suspected uranium-enrichment activities.
Eitam, a former Israeli army general, warned the Jewish state would need to attack Iran by itself if the international community led by the United States fails to successfully halt Tehran's nuclear program within about a year.
"With or without a world coalition, Israel will have to take action at some point when we are fully sure Iran's nuclear project is coming to a point of no return," he said. " I am worried all mechanisms of diplomacy used by the Iranians in response to the international movement against it are to buy time as they camouflage the real nature of their programs."
Asked to offer a timeline for the point at which he feels Israel would have to strike Iran by itself, Eitam replied, "We are talking about the period when Iran would have enough uranium to build a bomb. The information indicates this is not long away. Six months to a year or not much more.
"It is clear Iran is already starting to enrich uranium, and they are nearing the completion of technology necessary to assemble weapons. It is true they may leave quantities of uranium unpacked and not processed as weapons-grade for a time, but they can soon bring themselves to the point where they can make weapons within short periods of time."
Eitam deemed Iran "an international problem - by far not just an Israeli problem. The Iran leadership threatens the entire free world. It is a source of evil and not just a typical enemy. This evil will not compromise. It is best if it is destroyed physically. If the world doesn't act by a certain point, then Israel must."
Eitam said military action is the best assurance against Iran's nuclear program.
"With diplomacy and agreements you can never be sure unless the diplomacy comes to a point where the Iranians agree to dismantle their nuclear projects under intense international supervision. This looks extremely unlikely after so many years of negligence [by the U.S., Israel and Europe]. There is no second to physical destruction of Iran's facilities," said Eitam.
Eitam predicted Iran would also retaliate against Israeli and international interests in the event of a strike against its nuclear facilities, but he said Israel is prepared for the expected onslaught of violence.
"We are ready to defend ourselves against Hezbollah and are quite adept at dealing with terrorism," he said. "These Iranian threats are very cheap prices to pay relative to what an Iranian nuclear threat represents for the future of the state of Israel. The entire world may have some tough times while the Iranians try to retaliate by using terror internationally, hijacking embassies, targeting innocents like at nightclubs in Europe."
The Knesset member went on to blast Olmert and the current Israeli administration for what he said was "gross negligence" at failing to counter the Iranian threat.
"I am extremely skeptical as far as Olmert, [Defense Minister Amir] Peretz and [Foreign Minister Tzipi] Livni being able to revive and renew a credible Israeli policy toward Iran. So far they are paralyzed. They have no program. They are just waiting for a miracle or for someone else to act. In a very short time if Olmert fails to provide a new approach, the real question becomes whether he should continue to be allowed to govern."
Eitam recommended Israel make public a policy of deterrence he says would render an Iranian first strike against Israel useless.
"It is crucial to change Israel's current policy of vagueness to open deterrence. It needs to be made clear to the Iranians that Israel will not be the only country destroyed if it is attacked. Even if the Iranians have weapons, they wont enjoy any strategic advantage because Israeli deterrence will be clear and credible. They wont even think about destroying Israel because doing so will place them under the fear of being totally destroyed, too."
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Be wise, Iran cleric tells Bush and Blair
AFP
Fri May 26, 2006
TEHRAN - Top Iranian cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has called on the US president and the British prime minister to act "wisely" in their handling of Iran's controversial nuclear program.
"We still expect the world power seekers to have sense and not to create chaos and unrest in our region," Rafsanjani said to George W. Bush and Tony Blair in his Friday prayer sermon carried live on state radio.
Bush said Thursday that it was up to Iran to determine whether it remains isolated by the world community because of its nuclear program.
Referring to Bush and Blair's admission that mistakes were made in Iraq, the influential former president said: "You will make such confessions about Iran too. You will realize your mistakes".
Britain, France and Germany have prepared a package of incentives to try to persuade Iran to suspend enriching uranium.
The United States and its allies are also pushing for a UN Security Council resolution that could eventually trigger sanctions against Iran, which they accuse of secretly moving toward making a nuclear bomb.
Iran insists its nuclear program is for energy purposes and that it has a right to uranium enrichment as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
A process in the nuclear fuel cycle, uranium enrichment, can also make the core of an atom bomb.
"Iran's historic experience shows it will not allow anyone to deprive this country of its rights," said Rafsanjani, who still heads Iran's powerful Expediency Council.
The head of Iran's powerful ideological army, the Revolutionary Guards, vowed Friday that any US, British and Israeli "interference in Iran's affairs or attacks on its soil will be faced by an unpredictable response".
"The enemy forces in the region are vulnerable," General Yahya Rahim Safavi said before the sermon.
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Mottaki threatens retaliation in event of US strike
AFP
May 26, 2006
BAGHDAD - Iran will retaliate in the event of a US strike, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki warned during a visit to neighbouring Iraq where some 130,000 US troops are based.
"The risks of a confrontation are minimal," Mottaki told a joint news conference with Iraqi parliament speaker Mahmud Mashhadani.
"But in the event that America launches a strike from any place, Iran will retaliate by targeting that place."
US President George W. Bush has refused to rule out a military strike against Iran if negotiations fail to calm suspicions it is trying to develop a nuclear weapon.
But his chief Iraq ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, said in an interview released Thursday: "We don't want a conflict with Iran, we have got enough on our plate doing other things."
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Iraq respects Iran's right to nuclear program
AFP
May 26, 2006
BAGHDAD - Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said his country respected the right of Iran to develop nuclear technology but expressed concern over mounting tension in the region.
"We respect the right of the Islamic Republic to acquire scientific knowledge (in this area), in respect of international law, and we have confidence in the wisdom of the Iranian leaders to find a solution to this problem," Zebari said following discussions with his Iranian counterpart.
But he added: "We do not want any of our neighbors and of any friendly country possessing weapons of mass destruction."
"We confirm our respect for the right of Iran and all countries who (want nuclear power) with guarantees and promises to prevent an arms race in the region and deal transparently with the IAEA."
"We are against all tension in the region at this time because we think that everyone would lose in this case," he emphasized.
Chief Iranian diplomat Manouchehr Mottaki's trip is the first high-level visit to Iraq by an Iranian official since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election win in June of last year. Former Iranian foreign minister Kamal Kharazi visited Iraq in May 2005.
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Iran has the right to self-defence
By Ghali Hassan
05/25/06
Online Journal
"While claiming to be protecting the world from proliferation threats in Iraq, Libya, Iran and North Korea, American leaders not only have abandoned existing treaty restraints but also have asserted plans to test and develop new weapons, including anti-ballistic missiles, the earth-penetrating "bunker buster" and perhaps some new "small" bombs. They also have abandoned past pledges and now threaten first use of nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states." Former U.S. President, Jimmy Carter. [1]
The U.S. and Israel are in the process of manufacturing a "crisis" to justify a war of aggression against Iran in flagrant violations of international law and norms. The current crisis is reminiscent to the crisis which was manufactured to justify the illegal war of aggression against a defenceless Iraq.
On its part, Iran poses no threat to other nations. Nor is Iran in violation of international law and norms. Therefore, Iran has an inalienable right to self-defence against aggression.
Contrary to media reports and distortions, Iran is not engaged in the development of nuclear weapons and Iran is not threatening other nations. Like many other nations, Iran is pursuing legitimate peaceful nuclear research. Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran has the right to enrich uranium for peaceful uses. There is absolutely no evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program. The accusations that Iran has "nuclear weapon ambitions" are ridiculous at best.
Without any justification, the U.S. and Israel have threatened to attack Iran with nuclear weapons if Iran continues its nuclear program. Three members of the European Union, Britain, France and Germany, are being coerced by the U.S. to act against their interests and against the wishes of the vast majority of EU citizens.
Although Iran tried to negotiate a peaceful solution to the crisis, the U.S. has consistently rejected Iran's offers and showed that it is not interested in a peaceful solution. Iran has stated publicly that it is seeking a "security guarantee" and Iran is willing to participate in the establishment of a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. Instead of pursuing peaceful dialogue, the U.S. continues to follow Israel's ideology of war and expansion. Israeli leaders are publicly pushing the U.S. to attack Iran. The U.S. is acting as if the U.S. Army is Israel's proxy army and many young Americans are dying for Israel's Zionist ideology.
Israel has illegally attacked and invaded other nations. Israel is still occupying land in Lebanon and Syria in contravention of UN resolutions. Israel is currently arming and training Kurdish militias in northern Iraq and the Iranian Mujahideen el-Khalq (MEK) -- until recently listed as terrorist group by the U.S. State Department -- to carry out clandestine terror operations and surveillance inside Iran.
The U.S. goal is to overthrow the democratically elected government of Iran, enforce U.S. imperialist domination over the oil resources of the Middle East and support Israel's Zionist policy. It is important to bear in mind that during the murderous dictatorial regime of the shah, the U.S. and Israel supported Iran in its pursuit of developing nuclear weapons technology. The current Iranian program is a peaceful nuclear technology to produce energy.
Furthermore, Iran is not guilty of violations of international law. Iran has voluntarily signed the Additional Protocol. As stated by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report of 8 March, "Iran has continued to facilitate access under its Safeguards Agreement as requested by the Agency and, until 06 February 2006, implemented the Additional Protocol as if it were in force, including by providing, in a timely manner, the requisite declarations and access to locations."
The Director-General of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, has pointed out several times in the past that Iran is not in violation of the NPT or any agreement with the IAEA. However, Mr. ElBaradei has since been rewarded (with a Nobel Prize) by his masters and proves to be good at following orders. ElBaradei is making misleading statements accusing Iran of "non-compliance." As usual, the IAEA continues to politicise the situation, forcing Iran into the impossible. The statement that the IAEA is "unable to confirm the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities inside Iran" is the same misleading statement used by Hans Blix -- the UN accomplice -- to demonise Iraq and prepare the public for the illegal war of aggression that destroyed a vibrant nation and killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians. Now ElBaradei's role is "to keep providing the U.S. the ammunition for charges of 'non-compliance.' With time, the public will be prepared and persuaded to support a war on Iran.
Iran has stated publicly that it is willing to enter into dialogue with the U.S. to discuss all issues, including "security guarantees" -- assurance of non-aggression -- and demanded that the U.S. and Israel stop their threats and interference in Iran's affairs. The U.S. and its allies are using the nuclear issue as a pretext to justify war on Iran in the same way they used the discredited pretext of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) for illegal war on Iraq.
The U.S. has demanded that Iran abandons all it nuclear research, including the mining of its own uranium, and instead buy the enriched uranium fuel for the generation of electricity. This is unacceptable as many countries around the world do just the opposite. Like any country would do, Iran rejected the unfair U.S. demands, which would leave Iran dependent on outside technology and resources. On 16 May, the EU-3 demanded that Iran "suspend all enrichment related and reprocessing activity, including research and development." Iran responded by stating that; "No incentives are better than implementing the NPT and the IAEA rules without discrimination." The EU-3 demands are unrealistic and designed for propaganda purposes to enforce the case for war. By demanding the impossible, the U.S. and the EU-3 are increasing the possibility of conflict and aggression.
The U.S. and Israel's threat to Iran is alarming the civilised world. In anticipation of an attack on Iran and, in addition to Israel's own arsenal of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, the U.S. supplied Israel with F-15 and F-16 aircraft capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
Writing in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Avner Cohen and William Burr show that; "A U.S. nuclear attack [on Iran] would cause severe physical, social, economic, and political damage." Cohen and Burr added, "Five to ten nuclear explosions of 10 kilotons each a few meters below ground would destroy most buildings within 1-2 kilometres of each explosion; force prompt evacuation to save lives within about a hundred square kilometres of each explosion; contaminate buildings, grounds, livestock, and crops over thousands of square kilometres; and depending on wind and rain, cause fallout sufficient to cause evacuation and/or sheltering as far as thousands of kilometres downwind. Measurable radioactivity would be detected around the world." [2]
Given that most of Iran's research plants and facilities are situated in urban areas and near population centres, hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians would be killed. American citizens should think carefully before their government commits new crimes against humanity in their name.
Rather than working to eliminate the use of nuclear weapons, the U.S. is continuing to refine its own nuclear weapons, and considers them an integral part of its military forces. In violation of the NPT, the U.S. is pursuing more nuclear armaments and is encouraging other nations to develop nuclear weapons. In reality, the U.S. is in the process of making the use of the monstrous nuclear weapons more acceptable in future wars against nations with no nuclear weapons. We should not forget that the U.S. is the only nation to have ever used nuclear weapons against humanity.
If there is a country that constitutes a classic threat to international peace and security, it is the U.S. The U.S. has been involved in many conflicts and wars that resulted in unnecessary killings of millions of innocent people. From Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia to Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq, millions of innocent people have been massacred by U.S. forces.
No nation will surrender its rights and national independence in the face of the threats posed by the U.S. and Israel to Iran. If Iran is attacked without provacation, Iran has the right to retaliate in self-defence. Self-defence against aggression is Iran's inalienable right and deserves the support of people wordwide. Like North Korea, Iran has the right to pursue a self-defence policy of deterring a future U.S. attack.
[1] Jimmy Carter, 'Saving Nonproliferation,' Washington Post, 28 March, 2005.
[2] Avner Cohen & William Burr, 'Dangerous Doctrine' the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, vol. 61(2), March/April 2005.
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Living On The Edge
Bush says "bring 'em on" was big mistake
Fri May 26, 2006
Reuters
WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush admitted on Thursday that his bellicose "bring 'em on" taunt to Iraqi insurgents was a big mistake, as he and British Prime Minister Tony Blair carefully avoided setting a timetable for removing troops from Iraq. [...]
At a joint news conference with Blair, after three years of war that has killed more than 2,400 Americans and thousands of Iraqis, Bush was asked what mistake he most regretted.
The Texan said that he regretted saying "bring 'em on" when responding in July 2003 to a question about the Iraqi insurgency.
On Thursday, Bush said the remark was "kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong message to people."
"I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner, you know. "Wanted, dead or alive"; that kind of talk. I think in certain parts of the world it was misinterpreted," he said.
He also cited the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal as "the biggest mistake that's happened so far, at least from our country's involvement in Iraq ... We've been paying for that for a long period of time," he said. [...]
Comment: I know we have asked this before, but is there even one American who is NOT excruciatingly embarassed every time Bush opens his mouth? "Kind of tough talk"?? PLEASE! Someone remove this guy from public view before he makes an even bigger ass of himself in front of the entire world.
At the same freak show of a speech, Blair said:
"I think it's easy to go back over mistakes that we may have made. But the biggest reason why Iraq has been difficult is the determination by our opponents to defeat us. And I don't think we should be surprised at that,"
To which we can only reply, "No way! You really think so Tony? Please, explain to us further how frickin obvious it is that one of the 'difficulties' your invading army is encountering in Iraq is that the Iraqi people are fighting back. Wow! Thanks for that one Tony. Perhaps we should go and watch an episode of the Teletubbies for further incisive insights into the Iraqi invasion?"
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Bush and Blair make their Iraq war mea culpas
by Laurent Lozano
AFP
Fri May 26, 2006
WASHINGTON - US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair bluntly acknowledged that the Iraq war had been marked by "mistakes" and "missteps" but insisted that the world must support the new Baghdad government.
During an extraordinary 50-minute White House press conference Thursday, the political brothers-in-arms expressed distress at many aspects of the campaign which brought down Saddam Hussein but also undermined their own popularity.
Bush expressed regret for the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and some of his tough-talking comments.
Blair said the "de-Baathification" of Iraq -- the clearing out of Saddam followers -- had been badly handled.
There was none of the determined bravado that marked earlier press conferences after their regular meetings over the past three years.
"No question that the Iraq war has created a sense of consternation here in America," said Bush. "I mean, when you turn on your TV screens and see innocent people die day in and day out, it affects the mentality of our country."
"Not everything since liberation has turned out as the way we had expected or hoped. We've learned from our mistakes, adjusted our methods and have built on our successes," said the US president.
Bush said he should not have made gung-ho comments such as "bring 'em on" when refering to the insurgents in July 2003 as the attacks on US troops and Iraqi civilians mounted.
"I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner," he declared.
Both Bush and Blair have seen their public standings collapse over the past year, in large part because of the war, but both insist they were right to order the March, 2003 invasion.
"The decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power was controversial. We did not find the weapons of mass destruction that we all believed were there, and that's raised questions about whether the sacrifice in Iraq has been worth it," Bush said.
"Despite setbacks and missteps, I strongly believe we did and are doing the right thing," he added.
Bush refused to set a timetable for the withdrawal of the 135,000 US troops in Iraq, insisting "we will keep the force level there necessary to win".
With a majority of US public opinion now against the war, Bush said: "It's important for the American people to know that politics isn't going to make the decision as to the size of our force level."
The president said the world could not abandon Iraq. "Make no mistake about it: What you're seeing in Iraq could happen all over the world if we don't stand fast and achieve the objective."
Blair spoke of his optimism after a visit to Baghdad on Monday to meet the new Prime Minister Nur al-Maliki. He said he believed it would be possible for Iraqi forces to take over nearly all security duties by the end of 2007.
"I came away thinking that the challenge is still immense, but I also came away more certain than ever that we should rise to it."
Blair also acknowledged errors, but insisted there should be no regrets.
"I think it's easy to go back over mistakes that we may have made. But the biggest reason why Iraq has been difficult is the determination by our opponents to defeat us. And I don't think we should be surprised at that."
"I know the decision to remove Saddam Hussein was deeply divisive for the international community," said the prime minister, "and there's no point in rehearsing those arguments over and over again".
"I think that probably in retrospect, though at the time it was very difficult to argue this, we could have done de-Baathification in a more differentiated way than we did."
Many analysts have said the wholesale exclusion of members of Saddam's Baath Party from leadership roles during the post-invasion occupation fuelled the insurgency.
Blair said there was too much of a tendency to see "every piece of ghastly carnage on our television screens, every tragic loss of our own forces" as "a setback and as a failure."
The international community should see it as a warning "for us to rise to the challenge of defeating these people who are committing this carnage," he declared.
Comment: When somebody like George W. Bush - who has formerly declared that he takes his instructions from God and that he is the "decider" - starts talking openly about how he made have screwed up, you know he is worried. What he is counting on is that average Americans will be moved by his "honesty" and ignore his war crimes, massive spying operations against US citizens, and human rights violations.
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US support for war is down because war is "an ugly thing": Rumsfeld
by Jim Mannion
AFP
Fri May 26, 2006
WASHINGTON - American support for the war in Iraq is down because news from Iraq has been bad and "war is an ugly thing," US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said.
Rumsfeld would not say how much longer US troops are likely to remain in Iraq, saying that "depends on so many variables that nobody can know the answer to."
In a wide-ranging interview with CNN's Larry King, Rumsfeld defended the war and expressed confidence that the American people would persevere despite the souring public mood.
"Well, obviously, they hear a lot of bad news and it's not surprising. A war is an ugly thing. I don't think you'll ever find a popular war," he said.
"Why should war be popular. It's a vicious, horrible, ugly thing. But by golly, if we tossed in the towel every time we had a problem in this country we wouldn't have a country," he said.
"Turning over that country to violent extremists would destabilize that region, it would put at risk the neighboring Sunni regimes. If you were Iran, it would be the best thing in the world," he said.
Rumsfeld's interview was taped earlier Thursday but aired just after a press conference between President George W. Bush and visiting British Prime Minister Tony Blair who met to discuss the way forward in Iraq.
Rumsfeld said discussions with Iraq's new Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki on transferring responsibility to Iraqi forces would begin once he has named a defense and interior minister.
"The question is at what pace can we continue to go up to 325,000 Iraqi security force target goal, and what's the intensity of the insurgency, and how fast can they take over that responsibility.
"As far as we're concerned the faster the better, and I'm sure that's the case with the Iraqi people," he said.
Rumsfeld also cited the roles played by Syria and Iran, and the ability of Al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi to raise money as other factors in play.
But he said the problem was one not just of security, but how effective the new government is.
"If they engage in a reconciliation process and bring people in to support that government, then I think the future will be much brighter," he said without directly addressing the dangers of civil war.
On other questions, Rumsfeld said his biggest suprise was not the insurgency but the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
He said the criticism that too few troops were used in securing Iraq at the outset of the war was "a fair debate" but he insisted, as he has in the past, that the generals got the troops they asked for.
He said he was not pained by calls for his resignation by a group of retired generals and said he did not consider quitting.
"Before I could think about it the president came out and said you're not going to resign," he said.
Visiting the casualties of war and their families at military hospitals, he said, "can be heartbreak."
Asked how he dealt with it emotionally, Rumsfeld said he read US history to try to keep it in perspective.
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Enron's Lay and Skilling guilty
Reuters
May 25, 2006
Former Enron chief executives Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were found guilty on Thursday of lying about their company's crumbling finances in one of the biggest U.S. business scandals and could face years in prison.
The jury verdict in a trial that began January 30 capped a four-year-long government effort to get those responsible for a corporate collapse that cost investors billions of dollars, wiped out thousands of jobs and sent shockwaves through Wall Street and Washington.
Lay, 64, and Skilling, 52, who were once lauded as two of the world's top business leaders but later became poster boys for corporate deception, looked shaken when U.S. District Judge Sim Lake read the decision to a packed courtroom.
Skilling looked down as the verdict was read. Lay sighed heavily, as his wife Linda grabbed his arm.
Lay was convicted of all six counts of conspiracy and fraud and faces a maximum of 45 years in prison.
Skilling was found guilty of 19 counts of conspiracy, fraud, insider trading and making false statements which, combined, carry a maximum sentence of 185 years. He was not convicted on nine criminal counts.
In a separate trial for Lay, Judge Lake found Lay guilty of all four bank fraud charges for illegally using money from $75 million in personal loans to buy stock.
Each of those four charges carries a maximum of 30 years, but experts say he is unlikely to get a sentence more than six months for each because he paid off the loans and the lenders suffered no economic damage.
Surrender the passport
Skilling will remain free on a $5 million bond, while Lake said Lay must post a $5 million bond and give up his passport to stay out of jail until sentencing, set for Sept. 11.
"I'm not going to let him leave this building until his passport is surrendered," Lake said.
Skilling attorney Daniel Petrocelli promised to fight the convictions.
"We will have a full and vigorous appeal," he told reporters.
Enron, which at its height was the nation's seventh-largest company, collapsed in December 2001 into the biggest U.S. bankruptcy at the time amid disclosures it used off-the-books deals to hide billions of dollars in debt and inflate profits.
It also turned out that chief financial officer Andy Fastow had looted the company of $60 million while running the side deals.
Prosecutors charged that Lay and Skilling knew Enron's reports of booming profits were just financial trickery, but told the world all was well to keep the stock price up even as the Houston-based power trader slid toward its demise.
In testimony, Lay and Skilling said they painted a rosy picture of the company because they believed it was in great shape, not because they wanted to cover up problems.
Skilling suddenly resigned in August 2001 after just six months as chief executive officer and was replaced by board chairman Lay, who had been CEO before Skilling.
But the two men testified that Skilling left because he was burned out, not because of Enron's growing financial problems.
Political capital
They blamed media coverage and Fastow's thievery for a financial crisis that sank the firm they built from a quiet pipeline business into an international trading powerhouse.
Prosecutors said the two men milked Enron for hundreds of million of dollars and lived lives of luxury while driving the company into a bankruptcy.
Lay took home $220 million in compensation from the sale of Enron shares from 1999 through 2001, while Skilling got $150 million, Assistant U.S. Attorney John Hueston said in opening arguments.
Lay used his and the company's money to gain political power by donating heavily to candidates, particularly Republicans and especially the Bush family.
He was the biggest donor to President George W. Bush, who before the Enron scandal referred to him warmly as "Kenny Boy."
Their convictions bring to 19 the number of Enron executives who pleaded guilty or have been found guilty of crimes.
Prosecutors built their case by slowly going up the chain of command to secure guilty pleas and cooperation from key players, several whom testified that Lay and Skilling knowingly led Enron's giant scam.
The key witness was Fastow, who tearfully told the jury of his misdeeds and said Skilling and Lay were deeply involved in what he described as a massive cover-up of Enron's troubled finances.
He has pleaded guilty to conspiracy in exchange for a 10-year jail sentence which he likely will begin serving soon.
Enron's demise raised questions about the quality of corporate oversight and was quickly followed by similar scandals at firms such as HealthSouth, WorldCom, Global Crossing and Adelphia.
Enron auditor Arthur Andersen was convicted of June 2002 of obstruction of justice for its role in the Enron saga. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction a year ago, but Anderson is now virtually out of business.
After Enron, The U.S. Congress scrambled to pass the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002, toughening financial and auditing requirements for publicly owned companies.
Comment: Don't miss this part:"Lay used his and the company's money to gain political power by donating heavily to candidates, particularly Republicans and especially the Bush family.
He was the biggest donor to President George W. Bush, who before the Enron scandal referred to him warmly as 'Kenny Boy.'"
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Lay Convicted, Bush Walks (and Ahnold Gets Lay'd)
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
by Greg Palast
Don't kid yourself. If you think the conviction of Ken Lay means that George Bush is serious about going after corporate bad guys, think again.
First, Lay got away with murder -- or at least grand larceny. Like Al Capone convicted of failing to file his taxes, Ken Lay, though found guilty of stock fraud, is totally off the hook for his BIG crime: taking down California and Texas consumers for billions through fraud on the power markets.
Lay, co-convict Jeff Skilling and Enron did not act alone. They connived with half a dozen other power companies and a dozen investment banks to manipulate both the stock market and the electricity market. And though their co-conspirators have now paid $3 billion to settle civil claims, the executives of these other corporations and banks get a walk on criminal charges.
Furthermore, to protect our President's boardroom buddies from any further discomforts, the Bush Justice Department, just days ago, indicted Milberg, Weiss, the law firm that nailed Enron's finance industry partners-in-crime. The timing of the bust of this, the top corporation-battling law firm, smacks of political prosecution -- and a signal to Big Business that it's business as usual.
Lay and Skilling have to pay up their ill-gotten gains to Enron's stockholders, but what about the $9-plus billion owe electricity consumers? The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Bush's electricity cops, have slapped Enron and its gang of power pirates on the wrist. Could that have something to do with the fact that Ken Lay, in secret chats with Dick Cheney, selected the Commission's chairmen?
Team Bush had to throw the public a bone -- so they threw us Lay and Skilling -- for the crime, note, not of ripping off the public, but ripping off stockholders, the owner class.
This limited conviction, and the announcement of only one more indictment -- of the crime-busters at Milberg-Weiss -- is Team Bush's "all clear!" signal for the sharks to jump back into the power pool.
That leaves one question: if Bush's Justice Department let Ken and company keep the California loot, what about that state's own government? If you want to know how Californian's $9 billion went bye-bye, read on ...
WHEN AHNOLD GOT LAY'D
Peninsula Hotel, Beverly Hills. May 17, 2001. The Financial Criminal of the twentieth century, not long out of prison, meets with the Financial Criminal of the twenty-first century who feared he may also have to do hard time. These two, bond-market manipulator Mike Millikin and Ken Lay, not-yet-indicted Chairman of Enron Corporation, were joined by a selected group of movers and shakers -- and one movie star.
Arnold Schwarzenegger had been to such private parties before. As a young immigrant without a nickel to his name, he put on private displays of his musculature for guests of his promoter. As with those early closed gatherings, I don't know all that went on at the Peninsula Hotel meet, though I understand Ahnold,_ this time, did not have to strip down to his Speedos. Nevertheless, the moral undressing was just as lascivious, if you read through the 34 page fax that arrived at our office.
Lay, who convened the hugger-mugger, was in a bit of trouble. Enron and the small oligopoly of other companies that ruled California's electricity system had been caught jacking up the price of power and gas by fraud, conspiracy and manipulation. A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon it was real money - $6.3 billion in suspect windfalls in just six months, May through December 2000, for a half-dozen electricity buccaneers, at least $9 billion for the year. Their skim would have been higher but the tricksters thought they were limited by the number of digits the state's power-buying computers could read.
When Ken met Arnold in the hotel room, the games were far from over. For example , in June 2003, Reliant Corporation of Houston simply turned off several power plants, and when California cities faced going dark, the company sold them a pittance of kilowatts for more than gold, making several million in minutes.
Power-market shenanigans were nothing new in 2000. What was new was the response of Governor Gray Davis. A normally quiet, if not dull, man, this Governor had the temerity to call the energy sellers "pirates_" -- in public! -- and, even more radically, he asked them to give back all the ill-gotten loot, the entire $9 billion. The state filed a regulatory complaint with the federal government.
The Peninsula Hotel get-together was all about how to "settle"_ the legal actions in such a way that Enron and friends could get the state to accept dog food instead of dollars. Davis seemed unlikely to see things Ken's way. Life would be so much better if California had a governor like the muscle guy in the Speedos.
And so it came to pass that, in 2003, quiet Gray Davis, who had the cojones to stand up to the electricity barons, was thrown out of office by the voters and replaced by the tinker-toy tough guy. The Governator_ performed as desired. Soon after Schwarzenegger took over from Davis, he signed off on a series of deals with Reliant, Williams Company, Dynegy, Entergy and the other power pirates for ten to twenty cents on the dollar, less than you'd tip the waitress. Enron paid just about nothing.
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Smoking Gun Proof: G.W. Bush Is An Accessory To Key Lay's Crimes
APFN
25/05/2006
While the White House has repeatedly described former Enron chairman Kenneth Lay as simply a "supporter" of George W. Bush, extensive correspondence between the two men paints a far cozier picture of their relationship, according to copies of letters obtained this afternoon (2/15) by The Smoking Gun.
The pages of correspondence, exchanged during the years Bush served as governor of Texas, were released today in Austin by the state archives in response to Freedom of Information requests filed by TSG and other news organizations.
The Bush-Lay material touches on both personal matters (birthday greetings and Bush's knee surgery) and public concerns of Lay and Enron, such as energy legislation and tort reform, and reflects the kind of jocular relationship that reportedly saw the nickname-happy Bush call the Enron boss "Kenny Boy." The Houston-based energy firm, Bush's leading career political contributor, is now bankrupt and the target of a multitude of criminal and congressional probes.
We've arranged the Bush-Lay letters into several batches and, where applicable, have followed an original letter with the recipent's reply. TSG will upload the correspondence as quickly as we can scan the documents. You'll find the first 15 letters below along with links that will get you to the additional pages.
See this link for more
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Intelligence Czar Can Waive SEC Rules
By Dawn Kopecki
BusinessWeek Online
May 23, 2006
Now, the White House's top spymaster can cite national security to exempt businesses from reporting requirements
President George W. Bush has bestowed on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations. Notice of the development came in a brief entry in the Federal Register, dated May 5, 2006, that was opaque to the untrained eye.
Unbeknownst to almost all of Washington and the financial world, Bush and every other President since Jimmy Carter have had the authority to exempt companies working on certain top-secret defense projects from portions of the 1934 Securities Exchange Act. Administration officials told BusinessWeek that they believe this is the first time a President has ever delegated the authority to someone outside the Oval Office. It couldn't be immediately determined whether any company has received a waiver under this provision.
The timing of Bush's move is intriguing. On the same day the President signed the memo, Porter Goss resigned as director of the Central Intelligence Agency amid criticism of ineffectiveness and poor morale at the agency. Only six days later, on May 11, USA Today reported that the National Security Agency had obtained millions of calling records of ordinary citizens provided by three major U.S. phone companies. Negroponte oversees both the CIA and NSA in his role as the administration's top intelligence official.
FEW ANSWERS.
White House spokeswoman Dana M. Perino said the timing of the May 5 Presidential memo had no significance. "There was nothing specific that prompted this memo," Perino said.
In addition to refusing to explain why Bush decided to delegate this authority to Negroponte, the White House declined to say whether Bush or any other President has ever exercised the authority and allowed a company to avoid standard securities disclosure and accounting requirements. The White House wouldn't comment on whether Negroponte has granted such a waiver, and BusinessWeek so far hasn't identified any companies affected by the provision. Negroponte's office did not respond to requests for comment.
Securities-law experts said they were unfamiliar with the May 5 memo and the underlying Presidential authority at issue. John C. Coffee, a securities-law professor at Columbia University, speculated that defense contractors might want to use such an exemption to mask secret assignments for the Pentagon or CIA. "What you might hide is investments: You've spent umpteen million dollars that comes out of your working capital to build a plant in Iraq," which the government wants to keep secret. "That's the kind of scenario that would be plausible," Coffee said.
AUTHORITY GRANTED.
William McLucas, the Securities & Exchange Commission's former enforcement chief, suggested that the ability to conceal financial information in the name of national security could lead some companies "to play fast and loose with their numbers." McLucas, a partner at the law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr in Washington, added: "It could be that you have a bunch of books and records out there that no one knows about."
The memo Bush signed on May 5, which was published seven days later in the Federal Register, had the unrevealing title "Assignment of Function Relating to Granting of Authority for Issuance of Certain Directives: Memorandum for the Director of National Intelligence." In the document, Bush addressed Negroponte, saying: "I hereby assign to you the function of the President under section 13(b)(3)(A) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended."
A trip to the statute books showed that the amended version of the 1934 act states that "with respect to matters concerning the national security of the United States," the President or the head of an Executive Branch agency may exempt companies from certain critical legal obligations. These obligations include keeping accurate "books, records, and accounts" and maintaining "a system of internal accounting controls sufficient" to ensure the propriety of financial transactions and the preparation of financial statements in compliance with "generally accepted accounting principles."
Comment: "The timing of Bush's move is intriguing. On the same day the President signed the memo, Porter Goss resigned as director of the Central Intelligence Agency amid criticism of ineffectiveness and poor morale at the agency."
Speaking of the CIA...
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US Congress office building on alert after shots reported
AFP
May 26, 2006
WASHINGTON - Reports of gunfire at a US House of Representatives office building have prompted officials to lock down part of the Capitol complex.
"There are reports of gunfire in the building," Congressman Peter Hoekstra told a hearing of the House Intelligence Committee on Friday, saying that a message was sent to him on a portable e-mail device.
"It's a little unsettling to get a Blackberry message in front of you that says there's gunfire in the building," he added.
An AFP reporter at the Rayburn House Office Building, where the reported shots were heard, saw armed Capitol police surrounding the complex. No one was being allowed to enter the building and at least four ambulances were parked outside.
The gunfire reportedly was heard in a garage of the Rayburn building.
The House was not in session at the time, while debate in the Senate continued uninterrupted.
Comment: And what was the Senate doing at the time? See next article...
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Senate confirms Hayden to lead embattled CIA
AFP
May 26, 2006
WASHINGTON - The US Senate confirmed Air Force General Michael Hayden as the new director of the CIA, which has been in turmoil over intelligence failures leading up to the September 11 attacks and the 2003 Iraq invasion.
Hayden, 61, was approved to run the embattled CIA by a vote of 78 to 15, despite questions raised during Senate hearings over his oversight of the National Security Agency's controversial domestic wiretap program.
He was nominated on May 8 by President George W. Bush to replace Porter Goss, who stepped down after a year and a half as the Central Intelligence Agency director amid criticism that morale in the agency had deteriorated under his watch.
After rising up in the Pentagon intelligence bureaucracy starting from the Cold War, Hayden ran the electronic-spying-focused NSA from 1999 to 2005.
In Senate committee hearings, he promised to defend the key civilian spy agency, which has been battered by intense criticism and infighting since the September 11, 2001 attacks and the US invasion of Iraq.
But he was criticized for the White House-authorised NSA telephone wiretapping program, which some lawmakers have branded as illegal.
In 2005, Hayden was named deputy to National Intelligence Director John Negroponte, who himself was charged in the new position with shaking up the entire national intelligence apparatus in the wake of the failure to detect the September 11 plot.
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Is The Capitol Building Next, Or Do The Tunnels Go Deeper?
Joe Quinn
Signs of the Times
07/04/2006
In light of the 'insider' fingerprints left all over the 9/11 attacks, a few recent stories made us sit up and take notice. On Monday, the U.S. Capitol building (seat of the great American Democracy inaction) experienced a 'power out' that caused an evacuation for about an hour. Strangely enough, a spokeswoman for Potomac Electric Power Co., said the electricity shut off automatically after there was "a momentary drop in voltage due to customer operations up the lines" away from the Capitol.
"The protective equipment sensed the significant change in voltage and tripped," she said.
U.S. Capitol police however said a power spike that affected much of the metropolitan area "knocked out power to the Capitol building and caused lights and cable TV reception to flicker throughout the Capitol complex." In response, police evacuated the building and investigated, along with architect of the Capitol and fire officials.
Normally, this apparently innocuous event would not be interesting, except for the fact that, on the weekend prior to the 9/11 attacks, power to the WTC complex was also shut off, allowing, as is now expected, the conspirators to enter the complex and 'prep' the buildings for the very obvious demolition that occured just a few days later.
Added to that, we have the following very interesting story from "The Hill", a newspaper "for and about the U.S. Congress":
Some officers are trained to patrol tunnels, police say
A select group of U.S. Capitol Police have undergone special training to access the miles of utility tunnels underneath the Capitol complex, according to a police spokeswoman.
The spokeswoman, however, would not provide further detail about how the tunnels are protected because of national-security concerns.
"Specific information regarding our capabilities in this area cannot be discussed, as this is a security-related matter," said the spokeswoman, Sgt. Kimberly Schneider.
The Washington, D.C., fire department, which serves the Capitol campus, also says it is equipped to respond to any emergency involving the tunnels. Alan Etter, a spokesman for the department, said firefighters possess the training and equipment necessary should they need to enter the tunnel system.
"We have just completed training involving the large underground steam tunnels that run throughout the city," he said. "We have had limited exposure to the tunnels under the Capitol; however, they are the same as the [General Services Administration] tunnels."
The comments came in response to questions about what the U.S. Capitol Police are doing to secure the tunnels.
Ten Architect of the Capitol employees who work in the Capitol Power Plant tunnels asserted that there is no police presence in the underground tunnels in a letter sent to four members of Congress nearly two weeks ago.
The tunnels provide steam to heat and cool the Capitol campus and run from the Capitol Power Plant to the House and Senate office buildings, the Capitol and other, surrounding buildings.
The letter contends that the police are not permitted to patrol the tunnels because of their dangerous conditions, which include crumbling concrete that could fall at any time and large amounts of carcinogenic asbestos.
"The United States Capitol Police has made the entire tunnel system off limits to their staff because of the safety conditions as well as the lack of communication because phones and radios do not work in the tunnels," the workers wrote.
When asked about the concerns raised in the letter, the police spokeswoman said only that some members of the force have undergone special training and that the training allows them to access the tunnel system. Rank-and-file officers, however, are forbidden from entering utility tunnels because of the hazardous conditions.
In the letter, the workers said that the police policy presents a security problem.
"This should be a real concern to the Congress and Senate as all buildings on the complex can be entered through the steam tunnels," they wrote. "Realize that it is on a regular basis [that] we see people in the tunnels that we don't know why they are down there."
Citing documents received from the police, the letter adds: "The Capitol police not only won't go down there [but] they stated 'We won't let our dogs down.'"
Safety precautions regarding the tunnels have been taken in the past for special events, according to Eva Malecki, a spokeswoman for the Architect of the Capitol (AoC), the office responsible for managing the buildings and utilities on the Capitol campus. To prepare for inaugurations or State of the Union speeches, manholes are sealed to prevent unauthorized entry.
"After Sept. 11, 2001, there was more emphasis on securing [the tunnels] for security purposes," Malecki said. "The AoC has started replacing the old hatches with new ones that have emergency-release features that secure the hatches from the outside, but allow egress from inside the tunnels in an emergency."
D.C. firefighters already use self-contained breathing apparatuses, or breathing masks, that protect them from asbestos and other particles.
Did you know that there are miles of tunnels underneath the Capitol complex?
Is it really believable that these tunnels have been left in such a poor state of repair that they could collapse at any minute?
Is it really believable that the Washington Police Department cannot obtain phones or walkie talkies that would work in these tunnels?
Is the claim that only select teams of officers can patrol these tunnels because of the health threats really believable when D.C. firefighters already have self-contained breathing masks that protect them from asbestos and other particles?
After this news report, we tend to conclude that if there ever was a plan to detonate a nuke in these tunnels and take out all of Congress and lots of DC citizens and open the path to an overt political coup by way of the Continuity of Government group , then these plans have now been shelved. What is perhaps even more interesting is the other possible reasons why no one is allowed to go down into these tunnels.
After all, it's not like the U.S. is a stranger to burrowing into other people's business.
And just in case you are dismissing all of this as "secret government conspiracy nonsense", then understand that to hold such a view you will also have to accept the fact that the mainstream press and government is in on this little plot along with us, which brings you to the startling conclusion that it's all one big conspiracy to try and make you, the ordinary person, think that conspiracies exist! How's that for conspiratorial?
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War = Peace
Blair outlines his world vision
26/05/2006
Telegraph
Tony Blair has called for reform of the United Nations, and has asked the international community to unite to promote the "global values" of liberty, democracy, tolerance and justice.
His comments at a high-profile appearance at Georgetown University in Washington come a day after he and George W Bush, the American president, admitted to errors over Iraq.
Mr Blair today conceded that the war in Iraq had "split the world" but said that now was the time for the world to come together and support the emerging democracy.
"This should be a moment of reconciliation not only in Iraq but in the international community," Mr Blair said. "The war split the world. The struggle of Iraqis for democracy should unite it."
The Prime Minister also called for a new impetus in the Middle East peace process and the reform of global institutions such as the UN.
A UN Security Council with no permanent seats for India, Japan, Germany or representatives from Latin America and Africa was no longer "legitimate in the modern world" and must be reformed, he said.
"To meet effectively the challenge that faces us, we must fashion an international community that both embodies, and acts in pursuit of global values - liberty, democracy, tolerance, justice," Mr Blair said.
He said the case for merging the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank should be looked at, to foster a more effective response to global problems like terrorism, climate change, poverty and unfair trade.
Mr Blair's address comes at the end of a 48-hour visit to Washington during which he and Mr Bush admitted that "mistakes" and "mis-steps" had been made in Iraq.
During a White House press conference, the President and Prime Minister expressed distress at many aspects of the campaign which brought down Saddam Hussein but also undermined their own popularity.
They refused to be drawn on a timetable for troop withdrawal, but Mr Blair said he believed it would be possible for Iraqi forces to take over nearly all security duties by the end of 2007.
Mr Bush expressed regret for the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and some of his tough-talking comments. Mr Blair said the "de-Ba'athification" of Iraq - the clearing out of Saddam followers - had been badly handled.
Mr Bush said he should not have made gung-ho comments such as "bring 'em on" when refering to insurgents in July 2003 as attacks on US troops and Iraqi civilians mounted.
"I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner," he said.
Both Mr Bush and Mr Blair have seen their public standings collapse over the past year, in large part because of the war, but both insist they were right to order the invasion of March 2003.
The Prime Minister said: "I think it's easy to go back over mistakes that we may have made. But the biggest reason why Iraq has been difficult is the determination by our opponents to defeat us. And I don't think we should be surprised at that."
Comment: Note the tactics of the psychopath: As he commits murder on a massive scale, he portrays himself as a man of peace, calling on all to "unite to promote the "global values" of liberty, democracy, tolerance and justice". Nice cover, eh?
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Bush, Blair won't give timetable for troop reductions in Iraq
Last Updated Thu, 25 May 2006 22:46:42 EDT
CBC News
The leaders of Britain and the United States refused Thursday to say if or when they will reduce the number of foreign troops in Iraq.
"We're going to work with our partners in Iraq, the new government, to determine the way forward," said U.S. President George W. Bush. "An Iraq that can govern itself and sustain itself and defend itself [is the ultimate goal]," he said.
But Bush wouldn't discuss reports that the Pentagon is hoping to reduce the number of U.S. troops from 131,000 to about 100,000 by the end of 2006.
"We'll keep the force level there necessary to win," he told reporters attending an early evening news conference in the White House.
For his part, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said after his recent visit to Iraq he came away with the expectation the Iraqis would "take control progressively of their own country."
"[But] for that to happen, the first thing obviously we need is a strong government in Baghdad," said Blair.
"It is our duty," said the British prime minister, "it is also the duty of the whole of the international community, to get behind this government and support it. "
The two leaders will continue their discussions on Thursday evening and then resume their meetings on Friday.
Both leaders have praised the formation of Iraq's new government of Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds. But it remains unclear whether that will lead to a reduction of U.S., British and other foreign troops in the country.
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Afghan civilian deaths in U.S. attack double official toll: rights group
09:05:39 EDT May 26, 2006
NOOR KHAN
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) - An Afghan human rights group said Friday an estimated 34 civilians were killed in a U.S. air strike on a southern village earlier this week - far higher than the official toll.
Abdul Qadar Noorzai, director of the Kandahar office of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, said Afghans who had fled their small village of Azizi told him that about 25 family members were killed in one mud-brick home and that nine were killed in the village's religious school, or madrassa.
About 11 civilians were wounded in total, he said, and villagers reported burying about 35 "unknown people" - meaning militants from outside their area.
The estimate of 34 deaths more than doubles the number of dead civilians given by the governor of Kandahar and President Hamid Karzai, who said that 16 people had died. The U.S.-led coalition has said their estimate of the number of deaths was in line with the governor's.
Haji Ikhlaf, a resident of Azizi who was wounded in the attack, told The Associated Press earlier this week that villagers had buried 26 civilians.
The coalition has said that up to 80 insurgents were killed, although 60 of those fatalities were unconfirmed. It appeared to be one of the deadliest air strikes since U.S.-led forces ousted Afghanistan's hardline Taliban government in late 2001.
Karzai has called for an investigation into the air strike and on Wednesday urged the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan to make "every effort" to ensure the safety of civilians.
The U.S. military has said it takes "extraordinary measures" to protect Afghan civilians, but that Taliban rebels were firing on coalition forces from inside the villagers' homes, and that troops had the right to return fire in defence.
Noorzai said he hasn't been able to visit Azizi to take a survey of the civilian deaths because security forces surrounding the area won't let anyone in.
Meanwhile, fighting broke out Friday between insurgents and Afghan security forces in Ghazni province, Gov. Sher Alam said. He didn't know the numbers of fighters involved or any casualty numbers.
The insurgents have stepped up attacks the last several months in Afghanistan's southern and eastern regions near the border with Pakistan. The U.S. military says it has seen an increase in the number of Taliban fighters, particularly in the south.
As many as 339 people have died in violence since May 17, mostly militants, according to Afghan and coalition figures. Because of the difficulty of accessing the scenes of combat, those figures could not be confirmed independently.
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Afghanistan in Turmoil: 330+ Killed in One Week, U.S. Bombing Raids Continue, Taliban Seizing Control in Southern Region
Democracy Now!
May 25th, 2006
In Afghanistan, more than 330 people have died over the past week in some of the heaviest fighting since the war began almost five years ago.
On Monday U.S. A-10 fighter jets and Apache helicopter gunships bombed homes in the village of Azizi, west of Kandahar.
The air strikes, which lasted for hours, killed about 100 people including as many as 30 civilians. U.S. officials said the raids targeted Taliban fighters who were involved in a series of deadly attacks last week.
The increase in fighting comes just two months before the United States is scheduled to hand over command of southern Afghanistan to NATO forces.
Fighting has greatly increased in Southern Afghanistan as the Taliban have moved out of the mountains and seized large areas of the region.
Last week the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Army Gen. Karl Eikenberry, admitted that the Taliban are now better trained, armed and organized than in the past. He said the Taliban has adopted tactics used in Iraq including suicide attacks and roadside bombs.
Meanwhile the Afghan government has accused Pakistan of recruiting, training and coordinating attack missions for the Taliban.
Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, said, "Pakistani intelligence gives military training to people and then sends them to Afghanistan with logistics." The Pakistani government has rejected the charge.
For more we are joined by Habib Rahiab - he is an Afghan-born human rights activist. Up until two years ago he lived in Afghanistan where he helped "Human Rights Watch" document human rights abuses committed by U.S. forces -- including some similar to those that later surfaced in the Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq. He is now a fellow at Harvard Law School.
Click here for interview
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MPs refuse to cut life sentence for deserters
23/05/2006
Scotsman
SOLDIERS who desert the armed forces because they refuse to serve in a foreign military occupation could still face life in prison after a bid to cut the sentence was rejected by MPs.
An amendment to the Armed Forces Bill that would have reduced the maximum jail term for deserters to two years was overwhelmingly rejected. Instead, MPs voted 442-19 to keep life imprisonment.
Left-wing Labour MPs joined forces with the SNP to try to reduce the tariff.
John McDonnell, the chairman of Labour's Campaign Group, claimed the plans were part of a government crackdown on servicemen and women opposed to the war in Iraq. He said the punishment was "inhuman and barbaric".
Angus MacNeil, the SNP MP for Na h-Eileanan an Iar, said those who "besmirched parliament" and sold peerages faced a maximum of two years, while soldiers could be punished with a life sentence. "Two years is enough for somebody who has, arguably, followed their own conscience," he said.
But Patrick Mercer, a Tory MP and former army officer, said desertion was a grave offence and added that the life sentence had not been applied widely in recent times.
Chris Bryant, a Welsh Labour MP, said reducing the life sentence would "undermine many of our operations" and bring "ethical chaos" to the armed forces.
Comment: From Political Ponerology:
[...] the biological, psychological, moral, and economic destruction of the majority of normal people becomes, for the pathocrats, a "biological" necessity. Many means serve this end, starting with concentration camps and including warfare with an obstinate, well-armed foe who will devastate and debilitate the human power thrown at him, namely the very power jeopardizing pathocrats rule: the sons of normal man sent out to fight for an illusionary "noble cause." Once safely dead, the soldiers will then be decreed heroes to be revered in paeans, useful for raising a new generation faithful to the pathocracy and ever willing to go to their deaths to protect it.
Pathocracy has other internal reasons for pursuing expansionism through the use of all means possible. As long as that "other" world governed by the systems of normal man exists, it inducts into the non-pathological majority a certain sense of direction. The non-pathological majority of the country's population will never stop dreaming of the reinstatement of the normal man's system in any possible form. This majority will never stop watching other countries, waiting for the opportune moment; its attention and power must therefore be distracted from this purpose, and the masses must be "educated" and channeled in the direction of imperialist strivings. This goal must be pursued doggedly so that everyone knows what is being fought for and in whose name harsh discipline and poverty must be endured. The latter factor? creating conditions of poverty and hardship - effectively limits the possibility of "subversive" activities on the part of the society of normal people.
The ideology must, of course, furnish a corresponding justification for this alleged right to conquer the world and must therefore be properly elaborated. Expansionism is derived from the very nature of pathocracy, not from ideology, but this fact must be masked by ideology. Whenever this phenomenon has been witnessed in history, imperialism was always its most demonstrative quality.
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Witness: Dogs' use urged at Abu Ghraib
By DAVID DISHNEAU
Associated Press
Fri May 26, 2006
Summary: An Army dog handler was right to release his canine on an Abu Ghraib prisoner who ran at and struck a military policeman, a defense witness testified. [...]
A general visiting the prison urged guards and interrogators to use dogs "as much as possible" with detainees, a former supervisor testified earlier Thursday.
FORT MEADE, Md. - An Army dog handler was right to release his canine on an Abu Ghraib prisoner who ran at and struck a military policeman, a defense witness testified.
Sgt. 1st Class Melvin J. Avis, a dog-handler certification trainer at Fort McPherson, Ga., said Thursday that Sgt. Santos A. Cardona freed his Belgian shepherd to bite Mohammed Bollendia because no one else moved to restrain the prisoner.
"The other MPs failed to do anything about the situation," Avis said. "They had the ability to control the situation; whether they hesitated or not, no one will ever know."
Avis said Cardona used the minimum amount of force necessary to gain control, the standard set forth in his training. Prosecutor Maj. Matthew Miller suggested under cross-examination that Cardona violated that standard. Testimony was to resume Friday.
Cardona, 32, of Fullerton, Calif., is charged with assault, dereliction of duty, maltreatment of detainees, conspiracy to maltreat detainees and lying to investigators. He faces up to 16 1/2 years in prison if convicted on all nine counts.
Cardona is accused of letting his dog, Duco, bite Bollendia and of competing with another dog handler to frighten detainees into soiling themselves in late 2003 and early 2004. He also is accused of using his dog to harass and threaten detainee Kamel Miza'l Nayil in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Prosecutors contend Cardona harassed the prisoners for his enjoyment and the entertainment of other MPs who have been convicted of abuses at Abu Ghraib.
A general visiting the prison urged guards and interrogators to use dogs "as much as possible" with detainees, a former supervisor testified earlier Thursday.
The statement by Lt. Col. Jerry Phillabaum, a military police reservist who ran the Iraq prison in summer 2003, differed from Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller's testimony a day earlier that he encouraged the use of dogs only for custody and control of detainees.
Phillabaum, a defense witness, said under cross-examination that Geoffrey Miller "encouraged the use of dogs as much as possible in the normal operations of the confinement operations."
Neither Phillabaum nor Geoffrey Miller testified that the general ever recommended using dogs for interrogations. The use of muzzled dogs in interrogations was permitted by a memo signed by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, then commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, on Sept. 14, 2003, five days after Miller's visit.
A prosecution witness, former Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick II, who is serving an eight-year prison sentence for abusing detainees, testified earlier in the week that the MPs had taken Bollendia from his cell so the dogs could search it for weapons. The dog handlers had their animals bark at Bollendia when he refused to lie on the hallway floor, Frederick said.
The frightened prisoner jumped on former Cpl. Charles A. Graner Jr., striking him with his hands, Frederick said. He said Cardona told Graner to push Bollendia away and then released his dog, which bit the prisoner's right leg, grazing the skin. Bollendia again jumped on Graner and Cardona again released the dog, which bit the prisoner's left leg deep enough to draw blood, Frederick said.
Ten low-ranking soldiers have been convicted of abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib, in many cases by forcing them to assume painful or sexually humiliating positions.
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"Victory"? Forget it
By Sidney Blumenthal
05/25/06 "Salon"
When new Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Kamel al-Maliki unveiled his government last week, five months after his country's elections, and was unable to appoint ministers of defense and interior, President Bush hailed it as a "turning point." And that was just one month after Maliki's mentor, former Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafaari, to whom he had been loyal deputy, installed in the position through the support of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, was forced to relinquish his office through U.S. pressure.
Bush has been proclaiming Iraq at a turning point for years. "Turning point" is a frequent and recurring talking point, often taken up by the full chorus of the president ("We've reached another great turning point," Nov. 6, 2003; "A turning point will come in less than two weeks," June 18, 2004), vice president ("I think about when we look back and get some historical perspective on this period, I'll believe that the period we were in through 2005 was, in fact, a turning point," Feb. 7, 2006), secretary of state and secretary of defense, and ringing down the echo chamber.
This latest "turning point" reveals an Iraqi state without a social contract, a government without a center, a prime minister without power and an American president without a strategy. Each sectarian group maintains its own militia. Each leader's influence rests on these armed bands, separate armies of tens of thousands of men. The militias have infiltrated and taken over key units of the Iraqi army and local police, using them as death squads, protection rackets and deterrent forces against enemies. Reliable statistics are impossible, but knowledgeable reporters estimate there are about 40 assassinations a day in Iraq. Ethnic cleansing is sweeping the country. From Kirkuk in the north to Baghdad in the middle to Basra in the south, Kurds are driving out Turkmen and Arabs, Shiites are killing Sunnis, and the insurgency enjoys near unanimous support among Sunnis. Contrary to Bush's blanket rhetoric about "terrorists" and constant reference to the insurgency as "the enemy," "foreign fighters are a small component of the insurgency," according to Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Patrick Cockburn, one of the most accurate and intrepid journalists in Iraq, wrote last week in the Independent of London that "the overall security situation in Iraq is far worse than it was a year ago. Baghdad and central Iraq, where Shia, Sunni and Kurd are mixed, is in the grip of a civil war fought by assassins and death squads. As in Bosnia in 1992, each community is pulling back into enclaves where it is the overwhelming majority and able to defend itself."
While Prime Minister Maliki has declared his intention to enforce an unused militia-demobilization decree proclaimed by the now disbanded Coalition Provisional Authority in 2004, he has made no gesture beyond his statement, and no Iraqi leader has volunteered to be the first test case of demobilization. The New York Times Wednesday cited an American official on the absence of action on this front: "'They need to begin by setting examples,' an American official in Baghdad said of the Iraqi government. 'It is just very noticeable to me that they are not making any examples.' 'None,' the official said. 'Zero.'"
Maliki's inability to fill the posts of minister of defense and minister of the interior reflects the control of the means of violence by factions and sects unwilling to cede it to a central authority. Inside the new government, ministries are being operated as sectarian fiefdoms. The vacuum at the Defense and Interior ministries represents a state of civil war in which no one can be vested with power above all.
In his speech on Monday referring to another "turning point," President Bush twice spoke of "victory." "Victory" is the constant theme he has adopted since last summer, when he hired public opinion specialist Peter Feaver for the National Security Council. Feaver's research claims that the public will sustain military casualties so long as it is persuaded that they will lead to "victory." Bush clings to this P.R. formula to explain, at least to himself, the decline of his political fortunes. "Because we're at war, and war unsettles people," he said in an interview with NBC News last week. To make sense of the disconcerting war, he imposes his familiar framework of us vs. them, "the enemy" who gets "on your TV screen by killing innocent people" against himself.
In his Monday speech, Bush reverted yet again to citing Sept. 11, 2001, as the ultimate justification for the Iraq war. Defiant in the face of terrorists, he repeated whole paragraphs from his 2004 campaign stump speech. "That's just the lessons of September the 11th that I refuse to forget," he said. Stung by the dissent of the former commanders of the U.S. Army in Iraq who have demanded the firing of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Bush reassured the audience that he listens to generals. "I make my mind up based not upon politics or political opinion polls, but based upon what the commanders on the ground tell me is going on," he said.
Yet currently serving U.S. military commanders have been explicitly telling him for more than two years, and making public their view, that there is no purely military solution in Iraq. For example, Gen. John Abizaid, the U.S. commander, said on April 12, 2004: "There is not a purely U.S. military solution to any of the particular problems that we're facing here in Iraq today."
Newsweek reported this week that the U.S. military, in fact, is no longer pursuing a strategy for "victory." "It is consolidating to several 'superbases' in hopes that its continued presence will prevent Iraq from succumbing to full-flown civil war and turning into a failed state. Pentagon strategists admit they have not figured out how to move to superbases, as a way of reducing the pressure -- and casualties -- inflicted on the U.S. Army, while at the same time remaining embedded with Iraqi police and military units. It is a circle no one has squared. But consolidation plans are moving ahead as a default position, and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has talked frankly about containing the spillover from Iraq's chaos in the region."
Yet Bush continues to declare as his goal (with encouragement from his polling expert on the NSC) the victory that the U.S. military has given up on. And he continues to wave the banner of a military solution against "the enemy," although this "enemy" consists of a Sunni insurgency whose leadership must eventually be conciliated and brought into a federal Iraqi government and of which the criminal Abu Musab al-Zarqawi faction and foreign fighters are a small part.
Bush's belief in a military solution, moreover, renders moot progress on a political solution, which is the only potentially practical approach. His war on the Sunnis simply agitates the process of civil war. The entire burden of progress falls on the U.S. ambassador, whose inherent situation as representative of the occupying power inside the country limits his ability to engage in the international diplomacy that might make his efforts to bring factions together possible. Khalilzad's tentative outreach to Iran, in any case, was shut down by Washington. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, for her part, finds herself in Bulgaria, instead of conducting shuttle diplomacy in Amman, Jordan; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Ankara, Turkey; and Tehran. The diplomatic vacuum intensifies the power vacuum in Iraq, exciting Bush's flights of magical thinking about victory: I speak, therefore it is.
Bush doesn't know that he can't achieve victory. He doesn't know that seeking victory worsens his prospects. He doesn't know that the U.S. military has abandoned victory in the field, though it has been reporting that to him for years. But the president has no rhetoric beyond "victory."
Bush's chance for a quick victory in Iraq evaporated when the neoconservative fantasy collapsed almost immediately after the invasion. But the "make-believe" of "liberation" that failed to provide basic security set in motion "fratricidal violence," as Nir Rosen writes in his new book, "In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq," based on firsthand observation of the developing insurgency in the vacuum created by U.S. policy.
Indeed, Bush's nominee for director of the CIA, Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency, in his confirmation hearings, acknowledged the neoconservative manipulation of intelligence to make the case for the Iraq war and disdained it. Asked by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., about the administration's efforts to tie Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida, Hayden replied: "Sir, I -- as director of NSA, we did have a series of inquiries about this potential connection between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government. Yes, sir."
The exchange continued:
Levin: Now, prior to the war, the undersecretary of defense for policy, Mr. [Douglas] Feith, established an intelligence analysis cell within his policy office at the Defense Department. While the intelligence community was consistently dubious about links between Iraq and al Qaeda, Mr. Feith produced an alternative analysis, asserting that there was a strong connection. Were you comfortable with Mr. Feith's office's approach to intelligence analysis?
Hayden: No, sir, I wasn't. I wasn't aware of a lot of the activity going on, you know, when it was contemporaneous with running up to the war. No, sir, I wasn't comfortable.
Hayden then explained at length the difference between working from the facts and trying to cherry-pick data to support a hypothesis. He made clear that the administration had engaged in the latter. Levin asked: "Now, I believe that you actually placed a disclaimer on NSA reporting relative to any links between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. And it was apparently following the repeated inquiries from the Feith office. Would you just tell us what that disclaimer was?" Hayden answered: "Yes, sir. SIGINT neither confirms nor denies -- and let me stop at that point in the sentence so we can stay safely on the side of unclassified. SIGINT neither confirms nor denies, and then we finished the sentence based upon the question that was asked. And then we provided the data, sir." In the language of the agency, in other words, Hayden would not lend support to the Bush's administration's twisting of intelligence.
On May 15, Karl Rove, Bush's chief political advisor, gave a speech revealing one of his ideas about politics. "I think," he said, "there's also a great utility in looking at game changers. What are the things that will allow us to fundamentally change people's behavior in a different way?" Since Sept. 11, Rove has made plain that terrorism and war are the great game changers for Bush.
But while war may be the game changer for Bush's desire to put in place a one-party state, forge a permanent Republican majority, redefine the Constitution and the relationships of the branches of the federal government, and concentrate power in the executive, Bush has only the rhetoric of "victory." He has not stated what would happen the day after "victory." Although a victory parade would be his political nightmare, now the absence of victory is his nightmare. With every proclaimed "turning point," "victory" becomes ever more evanescent. He has no policy for victory and no politics beyond victory.
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Bush Targets Chavez and Morales
By ROGER BURBACH
May 26, 2006
George W. Bush has come out with harsh words for the governments of Bolivia and Venzeuela."Let me just put it bluntly--I'm concerned about the erosion of democracy in the countries you mentioned,'' Bush said in response to a question put to him about Venezuela and Bolivia. "I am going to continue to remind our hemisphere that respect for property rights and human rights is essential for all countries," he added.
While Bush's hostility towards Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is well known, his critical comments about Bolivia came as somewhat of a surprise, given that Evo Morales has served only four months as the country's first Indian president and has done nothing to thwart the democratic process. As Bolivian foreign minister David Choquehuanca noted: "We are creating a participatory democracy and the world knows it. I don't understand how the United States can say democracy is eroding..."
Bush's true agenda is reflected in his call for "respect for property rights." A change is taking place in South America as Morales and Chavez move to exert greater control of their energy resources and challenge US plans for a hemispheric free trade zone. As the president of the Bolivian Senate, Santos Ramirez, noted: "Bolivia and Latin America are no longer the servile democracies that tolerate...poverty and the surrendering of sovereignty."
Early in May Morales announced that Bolivia would nationalize its energy resources, particularly its natural gas exports. While no foreign corporations were expropriated out right, Morales made it clear that "the looting of our natural resources by foreign enterprises is over."
At the same time Morales is moving to reshape the country's commercial relations, particularly with Venezuela. This week Hugo Chavez flew to Bolivia, declaring "we are going to concretize the People's Trade Treaty," an accord that was recently signed between Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba. It is openly pitched as an alternative to the US-backed Free Trade Area of the Americas, a trade zone based on neo-liberal principles that facilitates the expansion of multinational corporations.
Bolivia and Venezuela have signed eight different accords dealing with 200 different projects concerning energy, mining, education, sports and cultural exchanges. Most importantly Venezuela has agreed to invest over $1 billion to help industrialize Bolivia's natural gas production, including the construction of a petrochemical complex.
Venezuela is also providing diesel fuel, which Bolivia does not produce, in exchange for the sale of soybeans. This comes at an opportune moment for Bolivia as most of its soy exports have gone to Colombia which just signed a free trade agreement with the United States. The US-Colombian accord means that cheap, subsidized US grains will flood Colombia, driving out Bolivian soybeans.
In Bolivia Morales took Chavez on a visit to Chipare, the semi- tropical region where he rose to prominence as the leader of the coca growers' confederation. There they announced their intention to build a factory to process coca leafs for herbal teas, medicinal products, and cosmetics. This is certain to arouse the ire of the United States which for years has pursued a policy of forced eradication of coca in Chipare, leading to the virtual militarization of the region.
The burgeoning economic alliance between Venezuela and Bolivia also helps offset the difficulties that have arisen with Brazil and Argentina over Morales' determination to exert greater control over natural gas exports. Both neighboring countries have significant investments in Bolivia's gas fields, and both are importing gas for domestic use at prices well below the world market. At a recent international gathering of Latin American and European leaders in Vienna, Austria, Morales and President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil exchanged harsh words over efforts to draft a new accord over natural gas. While the two leaders formally made up before they left Austria, there is little doubt that Chavez' support provides Bolivia with leverage in its negotiations with its two more powerful neighbors.
Venezuela is also signing a financial accord aimed at bolstering Bolivia's banking and monetary system. This is intended to strengthen Morales' hand vis-à-vis the United States and international financial institutions. The Bolivian government at the end of March announced that it would not solicit any new loans from the International Monetary Fund. The fund has aroused a great deal of antipathy in recent decades as it restricted social spending and forced the privatization of state enterprises, particularly in the tin mining industry.
The visit of Chavez to Bolivia coincides with the opening of the Exchange Fair, a project of the People's Trade Treaty between Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba. Enterprises from all three countries participated with the goal of expanding commerce and sharing technical expertise. At the fair the vice-president of Bolivia, Alvaro Garcia Linera, criticized the US neo-liberal trade regime, asserting: "It is not necessary for small producers and entrepreneurs to subordinate themselves to financial capitalThere are other forms of interdependence, other forms of globalization, other ways to generate regional exchanges of products, ideas, and necessities." Garcia Linera concluded, "Bolivia needs the world, and it will produce for the world."
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Tense calm in East Timor as Australia takes control of security
by Victor Tjahjadi and Neil Sands
AFP
Fri May 26, 2006
DILI - Tense calm prevailed in the capital of East Timor as Australian troops took control of security to stop a bloodbath between the Timorese military and rebel soldiers.
After a day that saw at least 15 people killed as houses were torched and unarmed men gunned down, Foreign Minister Jose Ramos-Horta said Friday that his own Timorese forces were being ordered back to their barracks.
He said Australian troops that landed on Thursday would take over security in Dili, the capital of East Timor -- which has been independent only since 2002.
"Now the Australian troops are the ones holding the reins of security," Horta told AFP in an interview.
Sporadic gunfire could still be heard in parts of Dili a day after the worst violence since the unrest began last month over alleged discrimination in the army against soldiers from the east of the tiny country.
The government sacked 600 of the 1,400-strong military after they went on strike and sporadic clashes escalated this week with gangs roaming the streets and both sides opening fire on each other.
Australia deployed troops following East Timor's urgent appeal for international help to quell the growing violence.
"When it comes to people running around the street and using guns and machetes and so on, the task will be for our military to make sure that sort of behaviour doesn't continue," Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said.
"That won't be easy for them, but they will try to achieve that," he said.
In the worst reported attack Thursday, soldiers opened fire on unarmed police after a stand-off, killing nine and wounding another 27, said Sukehiro Hasegawa, who heads the UN mission in the country.
Meanwhile an AFP reporter saw the charred bodies of five women and a child inside a burnt-out house near Dili's international airport.
Local residents said four men had smashed the windows of the house overnight Thursday, poured petrol inside and set it ablaze. Some of the bodies were crammed into a cupboard, where the victims had apparently fled to try to escape the flames.
"It's just like 1999," resident Jose Moucho told AFP.
East Timor was wracked by violence that year after a vote for independence from Indonesia, which had ruled the territory since 1975 -- and the bloodshed was finally brought under control with the help of Australian soldiers.
Australia's military said the troops' main task was to help the two sides in the current conflict to negotiate but warned they would return fire if attacked.
Acting commander Lieutenant Colonel Michael Mumford said he dreaded the prospect of fighting rebel troops that Australia had helped to train but was determined to restore order after days of bloodshed.
"We are certainly able to defend ourselves and any innocent parties that might fall victim to the conflict," he told reporters.
About 180 more Australian soldiers landed early Friday morning, with around 1,300 are expected in all.
Dozens of terrified but curious East Timorese gathered to watch the Australians policing their strife-torn town.
But most stayed out of the way and the usually busy streets were virtually deserted.
In the Caicoli area, where small groups of people watched the manoeuvres of two Australian ships in the bay, Sonia Gusmao, 30, a sanitation worker, welcomed the incoming troops.
"I am very happy because with their arrival, I hope East Timor can be peaceful again," she said.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard said he would expect to see political reforms in exchange for the military assistance.
"The way in which the country has been governed in the last few years has left a lot to be desired," Howard said. "The government obviously has lost a lot of authority and confidence."
Timorese Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri said the clashes between security forces and the disgruntled soldiers amounted to an attempted coup.
But the rebel leader, Major Alfredo Reinado, said on Thursday that his fighters did not want to topple the government and would not give the Australian forces any trouble.
"I'm with Australia. I'm with peacekeeping forces. I'm ready to cooperate with them based on any agreement that will be reached by our president," Reinado said.
Along with Australia, the government asked Malaysia, New Zealand and Portugal, the former colonial power, to send police or soldiers. All said they would contribute, and the first Malaysian troops were seen on Friday morning.
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America Out Of Control
The safety of Tasers is questioned again
By Alex Berenson
The New York Times
May 25, 2006
The safety of Tasers, the electric pistols that are widely used by police, is under new scrutiny after a study by a Wisconsin scientist showed that shocks from the guns cause the hearts of healthy pigs to stop beating.
The finding contradicts previous studies that showed that Taser shocks did not cause heart disturbances in pigs, whose hearts are similar to those in humans.
John G. Webster, a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Wisconsin who conducted the new study, said the earlier studies contained serious errors because they did not account for the fact that pigs have a thick layer of muscle insulating their hearts from their skin. Humans do not.
Webster removed the muscle from the pigs' chests and placed Taser barbs close to their hearts before shocking the animals.
"The previous research made a mistake," Webster said. "I was a little surprised. But I believe this research more accurately reflects the anatomy of humans."
While most Taser shots land too far from the heart to be lethal, barbs that penetrate the spaces between the ribs that surround the heart may have the potential to cause electrocution, he said.
Steve Tuttle, a spokesman for Taser International, which makes the weapons, said Webster's research was flawed and did not reflect the way that Tasers were used in humans. The current from a Taser shock is dispersed through the body rather than running directly into the heart, Tuttle said in an e-mail statement.
The earlier studies on pigs were financed by Taser International. The Justice Department paid for Webster's study, which is not yet completed. An abstract is posted on Webster's Web site.
Not a firearm
Tasers are pistol-shaped weapons that fire barbs up to 35 feet, delivering a 50,000-volt shock. Because they propel the barbs with compressed nitrogen instead of gunpowder, Tasers are not considered firearms and are not regulated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms or any other federal agency.
Dr. Ted Chan, a professor of clinical medicine at the University of California at San Diego who has studied the effect of Taser shocks on human volunteers, said Webster's research did not prove that Tasers could cause lethal heart disturbances.
In his research, which is also financed by the Justice Department, Chan has shocked more than 100 people and not found any changes in heart rhythms. More sophisticated tests conducted on about a dozen people have also failed to find damage, Chan said.
"Animal studies can point in certain directions, but ultimately you have to look at humans," he said.
Chan did add that most of the volunteers he tested were not shocked directly over their hearts.
More than 150 people have died after being shocked by Tasers, according to data compiled by Amnesty International, which has called for a moratorium on use of the guns. The weapons are used by almost 10,000 police departments in the United States and internationally, as well as the military. Tasers have been used or tested on volunteers about 200,000 times, Tuttle said.
Coroners have attributed most of the deaths to causes other than the Taser shock, like cocaine overdoses. But in a handful of cases Tasers have been listed as the primary or contributing cause.
Doctors and scientists have questioned whether Tasers can cause ventricular fibrillation, a lethal heart rhythm disturbance, as well as acidosis, a dangerous change in blood chemistry. Taser International says that many of the deaths have resulted from drug overdoses and that its weapons are safer than most other ways that police officers can use to restrain people.
Limited use recommended
Since 2002, Tasers have become popular with police departments because they offer officers a way to incapacitate people without having to touch them and because most people do not appear to suffer long-term injury after being shocked. Concerns about safety hurt Taser sales last year, but they have picked up in 2006, with Taser International reporting $14 million in sales in the first quarter.
In October, the Police Executive Research Forum, a nonprofit group that is dedicated to improving police tactics and strategies, recommended that officers be allowed to use the weapons only on suspects who are actively resisting arrest. Some police departments have allowed officers to use Tasers on people who are simply refusing to follow their orders.
The forum's recommendations are not binding. But police departments that do not follow them could face greater legal liability.
Webster shocked 10 anesthetized pigs with a Taser after removing the skin and muscle over their hearts. On average, the pigs suffered ventricular fibrillation when a Taser barb was placed within 0.7 inch of their heart, according to the abstract of the clinical trial posted on Webster's Web site. In humans, the heart is situated 0.4 to 2 inches under the skin, Webster said.
Ventricular fibrillation is an electrical disturbance that causes the heart to beat irregularly and be unable to pump blood. It causes death within minutes unless the heart's normal rhythm is restored.
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Officer cleared after Tasering student
By MATT STEWART
The Gainesville Times
May 26, 2006
A Hall County School Resource Officer investigated for using a Taser on a student involved in a fight earlier this month has been cleared of any wrongdoing, authorities said.
Officer Jeff Hooper, school resource officer at Flowery Branch High School, was cleared by an internal affairs investigation and reinstated to work, Hall County Sheriff's Maj. Jeff Strickland said.
Authorities said Hooper was forced to subdue 17-year-old Paige Chandler, a student at Flowery Branch High, with the Taser during a fight at the school on May 4.
Hooper was placed on administrative leave pending the internal affairs investigation. Strickland said it was common procedure to review incidents involving the use of force by an officer.
Chandler and a male student involved in the fight, 17-year-old Stacey Rucker, both were arrested.
Chandler waived her right to a preliminary hearing that had been previously scheduled for Friday and the case has been sent to Superior Court, said Lee Darragh, district attorney for the Northeastern Judicial Circuit.
The district attorney's office is considering the case for possible indictment.
Chandler is charged with affray, or fighting, disrupting a public school, obstruction and making terroristic threats, authorities said.
Strickland said Hooper, who is trained to use a Taser, has nearly 20 years of experience without a reprimand or citation. Hooper's record remains without a blemish after he was cleared of any wrongdoing.
Chandler and Rucker's altercation allegedly began over an incident in which one of their vehicles was keyed.
Authorities said both began arguing and then fought in the hallway of the school about 10 a.m.
Chandler made "threatening comments toward (Rucker)," authorities said. Hooper attempted to dissolve the altercation by giving verbal commands, but those were ignored by Chandler, Strickland said.
Chandler had recently returned from a five-day suspension for a prior incident at the school, he said.
Both Chandler and Rucker were suspended five days for the May 4 fight, which took place about two weeks before the end of the school year.
Rucker also was arrested on charges of affray and disrupting a public school, authorities said.
He was released from the Hall County Detention Center the same day of the fight on $1,700 bond.
Chandler was released from jail the next day after posting a bond of $4,500.
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Unveiling the invisible cloak
Last Updated Thu, 25 May 2006 14:45:49 EDT
CBC News
In an engineering breakthrough that is still to be seen, scientists have unveiled a blueprint to make an invisibility cloak, like the one worn by author J.K. Rowling's boy wizard Harry Potter.
A team of British and American researchers outlined the materials they say would be needed to make such a cloak in Thursday's online issue of the journal Science.
The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, sponsored the research because of its potential military applications in the field of stealth technologies.
A cloak made of a "metamaterial" wouldn't reflect light or cast a shadow.
All light or other electromagnetic waves would be steered around the object, making it invisible, said study author David Smith, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke University in Durham, N.C.
"The theory has only now become relevant because we can make metamaterials with the properties we are looking for," Smith said in a release.
No such cloak exists yet, but the first versions for masking radiation such as microwaves could be made in about 18 months, said study co-author John Pendry, a physicist at Imperial College London.
The cloak could also have applications for wireless communications, the team said.
"This is very interesting science and a very interesting idea and it is supported on a great mathematical and physical basis," Nader Engheta, a professor of electrical and systems engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, told the Associated Press.
Engheta was not involved in the study, but he is also working on metamaterials.
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Mysterious glowing clouds targeted by NASA
17:07 26 May 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Maggie McKee
Glowing, silvery blue clouds that have been spreading around the world and brightening mysteriously in recent years will soon be studied in unprecedented detail by a NASA spacecraft.
The Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) mission will be the first satellite dedicated to studying this enigmatic phenomenon. Due to launch in late 2006, it should reveal whether the clouds are caused by global warming, as many scientists believe.
"Noctilucent" clouds, which glow at night, form in the upper atmosphere, at an altitude of about 80 kilometres, and their glow can be seen just after sunset or just before sunrise.
"Even though the Sun's gone down and you're in darkness, the clouds are so high up, the Sun is still illuminating them," explains AIM principal investigator James Russell at Hampton University in Virginia, US. Russell described the mission on Thursday at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Baltimore, Maryland, US.
Bigger and brighter
The clouds were first observed above polar regions in 1885 - suggesting they may have been caused by the eruption of Krakatoa two years before. But they have spread to latitudes as low as 40° in recent years. "They're also getting brighter, and each year there are more of them than in the previous year," Russell told New Scientist.
Many researchers believe this proliferation is down to human activities. "You need three things for clouds to form: particles that water can condense onto; water; and cold temperatures," says Russell. He says pollution and global warming are thought to be responsible for two of those factors.
Atmospheric water may be boosted by livestock farming and the burning of fossil fuels, which spew methane into the atmosphere: sunlight breaks down the methane, releasing hydrogen that can bond with oxygen to form water.
And greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide actually help to cool the upper atmosphere, where the clouds form. That is because the atmospheric density is so low at that altitude that the gases cannot trap heat as they do closer to the Earth's surface, and the heat is simply radiated into space.
Alien ice
As yet, it is not clear what the source of the particles that "seed" the clouds is. The clouds form during the local summer months, when the pole is bathed in perpetual sunlight. So one possibility is that warm air rising above the pole could carry dust upwards from lower atmospheric altitudes, onto which water can condense.
But the dust could also have a cosmic source, dropping into the atmosphere from space. "It may be there's a constant supply of particles but a changing temperature and water environment makes the conditions right to grow ice particles," says Russell.
AIM will use three instruments to study the clouds. One is a suite of four cameras that will provide panoramic views of the poles and clouds. Another, called the Solar Occultation for Ice Experiment (SOFIE), will study the chemistry of the ice particles and clouds - measuring molecules such as methane. It will also observe the Sun through the atmosphere to measure how much sunlight is dimmed by dust in the atmosphere.
The third instrument, called the Cosmic Dust Experiment, is a plastic film that sits on top of the spacecraft. It will record every "hit" from a dust particle that rains down on it from space.
Cloud umbrella
"We want to know why the clouds form and why they vary," says Russell. "If there is a human connection, it'll tell us that we're doing something to the atmosphere and that we need to determine what the long-term consequences are."
Some scientists speculate that the clouds might actually help mitigate global warming, says Russell. "If these clouds were to continue to grow and cover broad areas of Earth, they would form something like a thin, semi-transparent umbrella," he told New Scientist. "They would reduce the amount of solar rays making it to the ground, so they could actually reduce the effects of global warming."
The AIM satellite will launch into a polar orbit from California's Vandenburg Air Force Base. Russell says it may lift off in December, but its exact launch date has not been set because mission planners are still working to minimise vibration forces on the spacecraft due to its Pegasus XL launch rocket.
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NYC Mayor Advocates U.S. Worker Database
By SARA KUGLER
Associated Press
May 24, 2006
NEW YORK - Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg thrust himself into the national immigration debate Wednesday, advocating a plan that would establish a DNA or fingerprint database to track and verify all legal U.S. workers.
The mayor also said elements of the legislation moving through Congress are ridiculous and said lawmakers who want to deport all illegal immigrants are living in a "fantasy."
In an editorial for The Wall Street Journal and two nationally televised interviews, the mayor reiterated his long-standing belief that the 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States should be given the opportunity for citizenship, saying that deporting them is impossible and would devastate the economy.
Aides said Bloomberg believes his views are relevant because he has a rare perspective as a former businessman who ran a company for two decades before he became mayor, in charge of enforcing the laws in a city with an estimated half-million illegal immigrants. They said that the editorial was his idea and that CNN and Fox News approached him to discuss his views on the air.
In the article and on air, Bloomberg slammed lawmakers who want to deport all illegal immigrants, saying on Fox News that "they are living in a fantasy world."
Asked in that interview whether his opinions put him at odds with his political party, the mayor, a former Democrat, shot back: "With which party?
"I'm not a partisan guy," Bloomberg said. "I am a mayor who has to deal with 500,000 people who are integral to our economy but are undocumented."
Bloomberg compared his proposed federal identification database to the Social Security card, insisting that such a system would not violate citizens' privacy and was not a civil liberties issue.
"You don't have to work _ but if you want to work for a company you have to have a Social Security card," he said. "The difference is, in the day and age when everybody's got a PC on their desk with Photoshop that can replicate anything, it's become a joke."
The mayor said DNA and fingerprint technology could be used to create a worker ID database that will "uniquely identify the person" applying for a job, ensuring that cards are not illegally transferred or forged.
Donna Lieberman, director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said a DNA or fingerprint database "doesn't sound like the free society we think we're living in."
"It will inevitably be used not just by employers but by law enforcement, government agencies, schools and all over the private sector," she said.
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Bush hails House bill opening Alaska wildlife refuge to drilling
WASHINGTON, May 25 (AFP) May 26, 2006
US President George W. Bush on Thursday hailed a vote in the House of Representatives to allow oil drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
"I applaud todays vote in the House to allow for environmentally responsible energy exploration in a small part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge," the president said in a statement, saying the the new oil source should help make America less dependent on imported oil.
"A reliable domestic supply of energy is important to America's security and prosperity," Bush said.
"This project will keep our economy growing by creating jobs and ensuring that businesses can expand. And it will make America less dependent on foreign sources of energy, eventually by up to a million barrels of crude oil a day -- a nearly 20 percent increase over our current domestic production," he said, calling on the US Senate to pass a similar bill.
The Senate has blocked previous attempts to permit oil drilling in the area, and environmental groups say scores of rare and endangered wildlife species would be put at risk by the proposal.
The House bill, which passed by a vote of 225 to 201, directs the US Secretary of the Interior to begin leasing a portion of the refuge along Alaskas northern coast for oil exploration.
Republicans have lobbied for years to allow exploration of Alaska's environmentally-sensitive wildlife refuge.
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Belarus to ban Canadian, U.S. flights from its airspace
Last Updated Thu, 25 May 2006 11:22:59 EDT
CBC News
Weeks after Ottawa refused to let a plane from Belarus stop for refuelling, the former Soviet state plans to ban Canadian and U.S. flights over its territory.
On April 20, a plane carrying Belarusian Prime Minister Sergei Sidorsky was on its way to Cuba for an official visit when both Canada and the United States refused to let it land and refuel. Ottawa cited human rights concerns.
The Belarusian Foreign Ministry announced the ban on Thursday, after it was proposed this week by President Alexander Lukashenko.
"Belarus strictly observes symmetry in adopting any sort of retaliatory measures," a foreign ministry spokesman, Andrei Popov, told a news conference.
"These restrictions will apply only to two countries: the United States and Canada."
Popov said it hasn't been decided whether to ban all Canadian and American flights or only flights carrying official delegations.
It's not clear how many flights would be affected by the move. Canada and the United States pay roughly $200,000 to Belarus each year for the use of its airspace, west of Russia and north of Ukraine.
Foreign Affairs has not commented on the decision.
Stopover refused because of crackdowns
Ottawa refused to let the plane land on April 20 because of concerns about "the current regime's commitment to democratization and human rights," a foreign affairs spokeswoman, Pamela Greenwell, said at the time.
Lukashenko has come under increased international criticism following his controversial election win in March and subsequent crackdown on protests against the vote, which critics claim was rigged.
Hundreds of demonstrators have been arrested since Lukashenko's victory. The European Union has called on governments around the world to refuse to recognize the vote.
In early April, a Canadian journalist spent 15 days in prison while covering an anti-Lukashenko demonstration.
"In light of these concerns, we were not prepared to facilitate the entry of senior-level representatives of the Belarusian regime onto Canadian soil," Greenwell told CBC News Online.
Greenwell said she didn't know what alternate arrangements the plane made in order to land safely. The Cuban newspaper Granma said the plane had been carrying Sidorsky and a number of other government officials.
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US, France back to squabbling over WTO terms
WASHINGTON, May 25, 2006 (AFP)
The United States Thursday attacked a hard-line position taken by French President Jacques Chirac on the WTO's deeply troubled campaign to free up world trade.
US officials said remarks made by Chirac during a visit to Brazil were unhelpful to the World Trade Organisation's uphill battle to forge a global deal this year.
The European Union has given conflicting signals in recent days on its willingness to make further concessions on the WTO's "Doha" round, said Jason Hafemeister, the US Trade Representative's chief WTO negotiator.
But for Chirac to argue that the EU has done everything it can on agricultural trade "would be a problem, as that's not going to be adequate" to unblock the Doha round, he told reporters.
The EU has been cast as the villain in the WTO talks due to its refusal to go further in cutting the generous subsidies it gives to its farmers.
Big developing countries such as Brazil and India, however, are also under pressure from the EU and United States to bring down their commercial barriers in return for farming reform in the rich blocs.
The French leader, the EU's most ardent defender of the farming lobby, said after talks with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva that the 25-nation bloc could go no further without concessions from others.
Europe "is not in a position to take a single step further" on agricultural reform when others "haven't made a single step towards Europe on industry and services", Chirac told a joint news conference in Brasilia with Lula.
Chirac also called on Brazil to join with Europe "to levy friendly pressure on the Americans to make them more reasonable" over the "excessive" export support given to US farmers.
"In reality it is the United States that holds the key to the problem. The key is neither in Europe, nor in Brazil, nor in emerging countries," he said.
The United States, however, says it has made a "bold" proposal on agriculture that exceeded its Doha requirements and is willing to go still further.
The offer contrasts with what Hafemeister called the "take-it-or-leave-it stance" of the EU on agriculture, and the "puny" cuts to industrial tariffs offered by some developing countries.
At talks in Paris this week, EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson signalled that the bloc would be prepared to improve its offer on farm products if others are willing to cede ground.
Hafemeister argued that no formal or informal proposals had been presented in Paris.
"Just a minor move at the last minute is not going to make it," he added. "Until we see real serious proposals from other countries, there's a big void in the negotiations here."
US officials say that Crawford Falconer, New Zealand's WTO ambassador who is chairing the agricultural talks in Geneva, is preparing to submit new outlines of a deal around mid-June.
But that will leave precious little time to sign, seal and deliver a global package to dismantle world trade barriers by the end of the year.
The US government would then have just months to get a WTO deal through Congress before it loses its 'fast-track' trading authority at the start of July 2007.
Once the administration's 'Trade Promotion Authority' expires, Congress will regain the right to amend any trade agreement. At present, US lawmakers can only give a straight 'yes' or 'no' vote to an agreement.
Without a serious effort this summer, "you just start running out of time", Hafemeister said.
"It's true that Europe really is going to have to set the standard. We can't expect developing countries to cut their tariffs deeper than the European Union. That's why everybody is focussed on Europe," he said.
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Human "Progress"
Robot hand controlled by thought alone
16:31 26 May 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Will Knight
A robotic hand controlled by the power of thought alone has been demonstrated by researchers in Japan.
The robotic hand mimics the movements of a person's real hand, based on real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of their brain activity. It marks another landmark in the advance towards prosthetics and computers that can be operating by thought alone.
The system was developed by Yukiyasu Kamitani and colleagues from the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, and researchers from the Honda Research Institute in Saitama.
Subjects lay inside an MRI scanner and were asked to make "rock, paper, scissor" shapes with their right hand. As they did this, the MRI scanner recorded brain activity during the formation of each shape and fed this data to a connected computer. After a short training period, the computer was able to recognise the brain activity associated with each shape and command the robotic appendage do the same.
Magnetic field
An fMRI machine probes activity within the brain by monitoring blood flow to different regions. It uses a powerful magnetic field combined with radiofrequency pulses to probe the magnetic state of hydrogen atoms in water molecules within body tissue.
An alternative and more portable method is to measure electrical activity inside the brain using electrodes either implanted in brain tissue or attached to the scalp. US researchers have previously used brain implants to allow monkeys to remotely operate robotic arms.
Electrodes attached to a person's skull can also be used to control the movement of a cursor across a computer screen. Klaus-Robert Mueller at the Fraunhofer Institute in Berlin, Germany, has developed such a system. He says the fMRI technique is cumbersome and expensive but could help scientists better understand how the brain works because it provides higher resolution.
Reading intent
"From a practical point of view the technology is too costly and slow," he told New Scientist. "But it's very interesting that you can do something as complicated as this."
Kamitani and colleagues have previously shown that fMRI scanning can be used to distinguish between simple images that a subject is looking at and thinking about.
One day, Kamitani believes, the robot hand could be made to respond faster than a user's real one. "The next step for me is to decode faster, even before the person moves their hand, by reading the brain activity related to intention," he told New Scientist.
But he admits that fMRI scanning technology must be improved dramatically before this could be possible, and before the system could be used practically. "We will need several breakthroughs in related technologies, including those for brain scanning hardware, before this type of non-invasive systems will be used in daily life," he says.
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Deserts Expanding With Jet Stream Shift
By ANDREW BRIDGES
Associated Press
May 25, 2006
WASHINGTON - Deserts in the American Southwest and around the globe are creeping toward heavily populated areas as the jet streams shift, researchers reported Thursday.
The result: Areas already stressed by drought may get even drier.
Satellite measurements made from 1979 to 2005 show that the atmosphere in the subtropical regions both north and south of the equator is heating up. As the atmosphere warms, it bulges out at the altitudes where the northern and southern jet streams slip past like swift and massive rivers of air. That bulging has pushed both jet streams about 70 miles closer to the Earth's poles.
Since the jet streams mark the edge of the tropics, in essence framing the hot zone that hugs the equator, their outward movement has allowed the tropics to grow wider by about 140 miles. That means the relatively drier subtropics move as well, pushing closer to places like Salt Lake City, where Thomas Reichler, co-author of the new study, teaches meteorology.
"One of the immediate consequences one can think of is those deserts and dry areas are moving poleward," said Reichler, of the University of Utah. Details appear in Thursday's Science Express, the online edition of the journal Science.
The movement has allowed the subtropics to edge toward populated areas, including the American Southwest, southern Australia and the Mediterranean basin. In those places, the lack of precipitation already is a worry.
Additional creep could move Africa's Sahara Desert farther north, worsening drought conditions that are already a serious problem on that continent and bringing drier weather to the countries that ring the Mediterranean Sea.
"The Mediterranean is one region that models consistently show drying in the future. That could be very much related to this pattern that we are seeing in the atmosphere," said Isaac Held, a senior research scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He was not connected with the research.
A shift in where subtropical dry zones lie could make climate change locally noticeable for more people, said Karen Rosenlof, a NOAA research meteorologist also unconnected to the study.
"It is a plausible thing that could be happening, and the people who are going to see its effects earliest are the ones who live closer to the tropics, like southern Australia," said Rosenlof. Her own work suggests the tropics have actually compressed since 2000, after growing wider over the previous 20 years.
Reichler suspects global warming is the root cause of the shift, but said he can't be certain. Other possibilities include variability and destruction of the ozone layer. However, he and his colleagues have noted similar behavior in climate models that suggest global warming plays a role.
Moving the jet streams farther from the equator could disrupt storm patterns, as well as intensify individual storms on the poleward side of the jet streams, said lead author Qiang Fu, a University of Washington atmospheric scientist.
In Europe, for example, that shift could mean less snow falling on the Alps in winter. That would be bad news for skiers, as well as for farmers and others who rely on rivers fed by snowmelt.
"This definitely favors or enhances the frequency of droughts," Fu said of such a shift.
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Human-to-human infection of bird flu taking place in Indonesia, expert
www.chinaview.cn 2006-05-26 19:10:49
JAKARTA, May 26 (Xinhua) -- Indonesian bird flu researcher CA Nidom MS said he was convinced that human-to-human bird flu infection had been taking place in Indonesia, official news agency Antara reported on Friday.
"I am convinced human-to-human infection has been taking place because studies have found the development of H3N2 and H1N1 strains of bird flu virus which originated from H5N1 virus. Much more, fowl-to-human infection cannot yet be proven since the death of Iwan in Tangerang," he said on the sidelines of a seminar on bird flu in Surabaya, East Java, on Friday.
Nidom, a researcher of the Tropical Disease Centre (TDC) of theUniversity of Airlangga (Unair)'s Medical School, made the remarks in response to a statement by a World Health Organization official that bird flu infection from human to human had been found in the village of Kubu Sembelang, Tanah Karo district, North Sumatra, Indonesia.
According to Nidom, who is also a lecturer at the Unair's Medical School, the WHO official's statement was logical because the avian influenza was just like a common flu so that there was no need to be panicked.
"I have disclosed this conclusion in Pontianak last April," he added.
Seven of the nine dead victims were cluster victims who suffered from the same symptoms, WHO spokesman Peter Cordingley said in Manila on Thursday.
But the WHO conclusion was denied by Health Minister Siti Fadila Supari.
"The cluster bird flu case in Tana Karo cannot yet be said a human-to-human bird flu case because proof on the mutation of virus DNA which is identical with the H5N1 strain of virus that infected the nine victims has not yet been found. And there is no proof of epidemiological human-to-human infection," the minister said.
As the disease expands all over the world, experts fear that the virus can mutate into a certain form that easily transmits from human to human, which will kill millions of people.
Some 27 out of 33 provinces in Indonesia have been contracted with bird flu, while human fatality stands at 32 and infections at 43, according to the WHO.
All over the world, the WHO has raised the confirmed human death toll from the H5N1 bird flu strain to 122, while the total number of confirmed human infections since the current outbreak began in 2003 has reached 216.
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Boston reports first measles outbreak in 7 years
By Belinda Yu
Reuters
Thu May 25, 2006
BOSTON - Boston health officials worked on Thursday to contain the city's first outbreak of measles in seven years after four people in a downtown office tower were diagnosed with the highly infectious disease.
The Boston Public Health Commission opened a second emergency health clinic at the 60-story John Hancock Tower after it became known that hundreds of workers may be at risk of developing measles.
Measles was long considered a normal childhood disease, but the virus can cause severe complications in otherwise healthy children and adults, including sometimes fatal encephalitis, pneumonia and diarrhea.
The four who were diagnosed with the disease all worked at Investors Bank & Trust, a financial services firm. Three of the workers caught the disease from a contract worker who recently traveled from India.
An initial emergency clinic was set up on May 11 after the first case emerged.
Only 37 measles cases were reported in the United States in 2004, an all-time low, according to the most recent data.
But a few cases are still imported from countries with lower vaccination rates and the disease occurs domestically as well, health officials say.
John Auerbach, Boston Public Health Commission's executive director, said hundreds of workers at Investors Bank & Trust had received vaccinations to prevent an outbreak.
While measles is very rare, Auerbach said, "there are still pockets of the population that aren't immunized."
A month ago U.S. Public health officials expressed concern about an outbreak of mumps in the Midwest and said some people may have been infected on airline flights.
John Riley, head of marketing and communications at Investors Bank & Trust -- a firm with 1,500 employees in Boston -- said all four workers had recovered.
Measles is a highly contagious illness that begins with a high fever, runny nose and watery, red eyes, and develops into a rash that spreads over the body. The illness is spread through the air when a sick person coughs, sneezes or even talks, according to a Massachusetts Department of Public Health fact sheet.
Most developed countries routinely vaccinate children against measles but the virus still killed 500,000 people, mostly children, around the world in 2003, according to the World Health Organization.
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Diagnosis: Mysterious rock really just asphalt
May 25, 2006
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Some of the mysteries surrounding Steve Gleicher's curious rock probably will never be solved.
But Gleicher, an administrator at Diagnostic Imaging Southern Nevada, had at least one suspicion confirmed on Wednesday.
The object that was launched Saturday through a skylight thick enough to withstand the weight of a human and into a wall at the medical center is asphalt.
He had planned to take the rock to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas for analysis but opted not to once an amateur meteor expert examined it Tuesday night and confirmed it was not from outer space. Also, a planetary science professor at the Community College of Southern Nevada on Wednesday said the rock was asphalt, Gleicher said.
But his other theory that an airplane dropped the rock onto the building was laid to rest.
"We're not really in a flight path," Gleicher said. "We're pretty far away from any plane traffic."
Gleicher said he plans on filing a police report and now believes the rock was a tool for a break in that was thwarted by the fire alarm that was set off by the incident.
"It's a very heavy rock, I'm going to guess it is at least 15 pounds. With enough velocity it's possible," he said of the projectile's trajectory through two fiberglass panels.
Nothing was stolen from Diagnostic Imaging.
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Pope offends Poland's Jews
Correspondents in Warsaw
May 27, 2006
THE Pope has upset the Jewish community in Poland by not stopping to pay tribute to the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising against the Nazis.
The heavily guarded Popemobile sped from Warsaw airport towards the Old Town district and the former ghetto area but barely slowed when it passed the memorial to the Jewish fighters.
Chief Rabbi of Warsaw Michael Schudrich, the Israeli ambassador and a handful of Jewish dignitaries were left standing as Benedict XVI flashed past with a wave.
Church officials said there had been no space in the schedule for a spontaneous stop.
Another consideration is that the ultra-nationalist Polish Government might have considered it a slight if the Pope had singled out slaughtered Jews rather than Polish partisans for special tribute on the first day of his visit.
Benedict, 79, has undertaken his four-day tour to honour his friend and mentor, the late John Paul, and build a rapport with Poland, a deeply Catholic country that both he and his Polish predecessor have said could help revive Christian beliefs and values in an increasingly secular Europe.
His visit is thought to also beaimed at breaking down lingering distrust in Poland towards him and Germany, which occupied the country during World War II and killed vast numbers of Poles and Jews.
In deference to Polish and Jewish sensitivities, Benedict will avoid speaking German except for when he prays tomorrow at the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, were killed in World War II.
The concentration camp trip is fraught with significance for Catholic-Jewish relations, a favourite cause of John Paul, who also visited there in 1979.
In his memoirs, Benedict described being enrolled in the Hitler Youth against his will, then risking execution by deserting the army as a draftee days before the war ended.
At the airport, Benedict said of his Auschwitz visit: "There I hope especially to meet the survivors of Nazi terror who come from different countries, all of whom suffered under that tragic tyranny.
"Together we will pray that thewounds of the past century will heal, thanks to the remedy that God in his mercy has prescribed for us by calling us to forgive each other."
He drew a roar of applause at the airport when he launched into his welcoming speech in Polish, later switching to Italian.
"I have very much wanted to make this visit to the native land and people of my beloved predecessor, the servant of God, John Paul II," he said. "I have come to follow in the footsteps of his life."
Poles like Benedict's emphasis on continuing John Paul's legacy, but on the streets yesterday the view was that he did not quite match up to his predecessor.
"It's not the same as with our pope," said 75-year-old Wanda Nowicka, who was waiting on a city street to watch Benedict pass by as the pontiff headed to his first stop at Warsaw's Cathedral of StJohn the Baptist.
Aniela Kalisz, a 72-year-old who carried a small Vatican flag bearing Benedict's photo, said: "I don't mind if he is German. He is very friendly and he's learning Polish and he was a friend of John Paul."
Thousands of people lined the motorcade route from the airport to central Warsaw - a large crowd by European standards for a visit by the Roman Catholic leader, but small compared with the hundreds of thousands who turned out when John Paul flew into Warsaw in 1979 for the first time since assuming the papacy.
And pilgrims in their thousands poured into Warsaw's Pilsudski Square yesterday for Benedict's first, huge open-air mass, due to be held there last night. It is the same square in which John Paul inspired the Solidarity movement with his landmark appearance in 1979 during communist rule.
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Russia Faces Problems with Europe Unless it Abolishes Death Penalty - Senior MP
Created: 26.05.2006 18:36 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 18:36 MSK
MosNews
PACE may take "extreme measures" against Russia if it fails to abolish death penalty by 2007, Sate Duma's international affairs committee Konstantin Kosachyov has said.
Russia adopted a moratorium on death penalty ten years ago, but it has not so far ratified a document on its abolition.
"If by the beginning of next year Moscow has not ratified the sixth protocol of the European convention for human rights on the abolition of death penalty, we can expect any extreme measures from Europe, up to divesting Russian delegation in PACE of authority freezing its membership" Kosachyov was quoted by RIA Novosti as saying at a press conference in Moscow.
Russia was supposed to ban death penalty not later than 1999, Kosachyov added.
"We expect to be able to ratify the sixth protocol," Kosachyov said, adding however that most MPs were against the ratification.
When asked whether Russia will apply death penalty after trial by jury has been established in Chechnya, Kosachyov said the Russian courts are now entitled to deliver capital punishment verdicts, but not apply them.
According to the Russian constitution, a capital punishment verdict cannot be applied unless trial by jury is introduced in every subject of federation.
However "if a capital punishment verdict is delivered, Russia will have a serious conflict with Europe" he said.
Comment: We wonder why Europe isn't raising this issue with the United States of America.
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Facts should be taskmasters, and there is no exemption for fiction
Simon Jenkins
Friday May 26, 2006
The Guardian
I confess to a near-faith experience in the foyer of my local Odeon this week. As the crowd streamed from The Da Vinci Code, the muttered comments did not query the plot, the acting or the narrative. They asked about the facts. Which bits were really true?
The foreword of Dan Brown's book, on which the film is based, hits the reader straight between the eyes. It states, "Fact: the Priory of Sion - a European secret society founded in 1099 - is a real organisation." Its members allegedly included Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo and our old friend Leonardo da Vinci. Members of the society held that Jesus was married with a child and appointed themselves guardians of His descendants, despite many of them being gruesomely butchered by Opus Dei.
I have no doubt that this glancing appeal to truth forms the basis of the book's phenomenal appeal: 50m copies sold to date, of which 10m are in Britain. Da Vinci purports to rewrite a central tenet of western civilisation, inculcated in most Britons since birth. Hence the audience's craving to know whether the parts of the book and film asserted as facts indeed merit the term.
They do not. The use of the word "fact" to open The Da Vinci Code is a lie. The "priory" was a well-attested hoax by a French con man in the 1950s. The hoax was given credence by a misguided BBC Chronicle programme and then by the writers of a 1982 bestseller, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. It was then lifted lock, stock and drivel by Brown and called a fact. This was not some reality uplift of the sort beloved of modern fiction. It is the fact around which the whole story spins its suspense.
At this point we see bearing down on us the amalgamated union of novelists, screenwriters and film publicists, all claiming ancestral licence to make things up. Their job, they say, is to create their own reality. Facts can be boring and will vanish faster from the shelves with a little help from fiction. Besides, art has always made history its slave, not its master. Did not Henry James refer to the "fatal futility of fact"? How could the fair maid, hypothesis, survive if constantly raped by the ogre, fact? At this point the union invariably calls in aid its honorary president, Shakespeare.
In which case, why was my film audience so confused and even worried? The answer is that Brown was not just undermining received religious wisdom - there is no harm and nothing new in that - he was using a specific tool. He was manipulating what should be a different object of veneration, his audience's understanding of truth, its instinctive reverence for facts.
Journalists have one thing in common with historians, a residual obligation to truth. It may seem hard to credit, but if a serious journalist gets a fact wrong it hurts. (Last week I regrettably confused Maundy Gregory with Horatio Bottomley.) Facts should be taskmasters. They must be sought out and checked, not just made up. An entire profession is supposedly devoted to gathering and assessing them. As Tom Stoppard joked, "Comment is free but facts are on expenses."
I resent fiction hijacking this activity and cheapening it. Historical novels have the easiest tunes because their fabrication imposes harmony on the cacophony of facts. This need not destroy the latter's integrity, but novelists should surely accept the same discipline as history and journalism. They should not put the Battle of Hastings in 1067 or Waterloo in 1816. It is inaccurate. At the very least they should try. When Tolstoy described the Battle of Borodino he meticulously sought to get dates and events in order. Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie would despair if their readers could not rely on their facts being more reliable than their villains.
Film-makers fall victim most easily to this failing. One of the silliest remarks made of art was by Jean-Luc Godard, that "cinema is truth 24 times a second". Oliver Stone in JFK, Jim Sheridan in In The Name of the Father and Stephen Spielberg in Schindler's List made similar claims. In these films, usually prefaced with the seal of approval, "based on fact", it is impossible to disentangle truth from fabrication.
What in overt propaganda might be dismissed as false, in a pseudo-documentary has potency. The prewar Hollywood film Birth of a Nation was plausibly blamed for the revival of the Ku Klux Klan. Daniel Boorstin, a cultural historian of America, remarked that early movies "claimed the power to be mistaken for reality ... to make us walk more confidently on the precarious ground of the imagination." That must explain why The Da Vinci Code has sent thousands to seek out the "real" sites from the book and has, bizarrely, boosted Opus Dei membership. These people clearly do not think the book is make-believe.
Because I love films I find it depressing when they lapse from grace. I have never believed them to be uninfluential, whether peddling love, politics, sex, violence or corruption. That is not how their makers see them. Ask Costa Gavras, ask Michael Moore. As Woody Allen pleaded, "If I've made one more person feel miserable, I have done my job." But faction can make its point without exploiting public credulity with a lie. Good biopics struggle to present a truth, if not the truth, about their subjects. They are plainly "based on true events" yet do not set out to deceive. Fiction can anyway do its own propaganda. The best film about Bill Clinton was Primary Colors and the best about Watergate was Washington Behind Closed Doors, neither of which pretended to fact.
The phenomenal success of Da Vinci renders it the apotheosis of the lie. The Catholic church understandably asked that the film open with a disclaimer for Opus Dei, similar to that used for "any similarity to living persons ...". This was refused since it might blunt the film's phoney verisimilitude. Hence the irritation that drove the religious historian Bart Ehrman to write his debunking Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code. It should be compulsory reading alongside the original, before Rosslyn Chapel is entirely wrecked by tourists. Yet the high court judge in the recent Holy Grail plagiarism trial was unconcerned as to whether the book was calculated to mislead or defamed persons or institutions. His sole concern was to find honour among these thieves of truth (and at our expense!).
Journalism already has a tough time guarding Fortress Fact from marauders (including its own) until the historians can arrive. To find novelists and film-makers getting in round the back and stealing the treasure is galling. Despite Humpty Dumpty, words do not mean anything we choose. Facts are still facts wherever they are used, and should be honoured in fiction as in history. The dictionary offers no exemption to novelists. They have the entire range of the human imagination at their disposal. They can play with light and shade, fantasy and magic, dancing free of reality to conjure their tales from the air. But facts are sacred. If writers use them to disguise their fabrications, I call them liars.
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The Real World
A glimpse of freedom
By John Pilger
Out of the new spirit in Latin America, the Bolivians (with the Venezuelans) have come closest to forging revolutionary change. The government of "Evo" is on notice.
The long, wide, bleak streets of cobblestones and tufts of petrified grass reach for the sacred mountain Illimani, whose pyramid of snow is like a watchtower. There was almost no life here when I first came to Bolivia as a young reporter - only the freezing airport and its inviting oxygen tent; now almost a million people live in El Alto, the highest city in the world, the creation of modern capitalism.
El Alto is as symbolic of Latin America today as Cerro Rico is of the past. A hill almost solid with silver, it was mined by slave labour and served to bankroll the Spanish empire for three centuries. Both places are in the poorest country on a continent of 225 million inhabitants, half of whom are poor. Debt bondage, even slavery, still exists secretly in Bolivia, whose hill of silver now takes second place to other natural treasures of gas and water.
I arrived in El Alto in the early hours of the morning. Through skeins of fog, the moonlit streets were deserted save for silhouettes of hunched men swaying in the cold, framed in doorways, waiting, hoping, for the morning's first auctioned work.
Bolivia was second only to Chile as a laboratory of "neoliberalism", the jargon for capitalism in its pure, Hobbesian form. The Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs designed the "shock therapy" that the IMF and World Bank administered in Bolivia, adding another dimension of poverty and suffering. With the privatisation of the mines, tin finally collapsed, and the miners and their families headed for La Paz, settling on the bitter plain at El Alto, a thousand feet above the capital, without water and power and with little food. Farmers forced off their land by IMF diktats followed them, and their mass migration was typical of that of millions driven out of secure work by the foreign managers of the "Washington consensus", a fanaticism conceived at Bretton Woods in 1944 as a tool of empire. (Sachs sees himself as a liberal and is mentor to the gormless Bono, of Live Aid et cetera fame.)
Until now, Bolivia's modern presidents have all been rich, white men who ran the country on behalf of a tiny wealthy minority. Owners of vast tracts of land control the lowlands around Santa Cruz, reminiscent of their equivalent in South Africa. The pre-Inca indigenous majority were the "blacks" who were politically invisible, except as occasionally troublesome workers, especially the miners. People chewed coca leaves to relieve hunger; many died in their early middle years and their children were stunted. "My mother was worked to death on a big estate near Santa Cruz," a campesino told me. "If she was found learning to read, she was severely punished."
The last president but one, Sánchez de Lozada, a multimillionaire mine-owner now exiled in Maryland, had grown up in the United States and spoke better English than Spanish. He was known as "El Gringo". In colluding with the IMF and selling off the country's gas and water at knock-down prices to Brazilian, American and European multinationals, he fulfilled his role, like so many Latin American presidents, as Washington's viceroy. Indeed, Richard Nixon's contemptuous remark about Latin America - "People don't give a shit about the place" - was quite wrong; America's imperial design was inscribed on the lives of the people in its "backyard".
Last year I interviewed Pablo Solón, son of the great Boliv- ian muralist Walter Solón, in an extraordinary room covered by his father's epic brush strokes. More visceral than Diego Rivera's images of the Mexican revolution, the pictures of injustice rage at you; the barbaric manipulation of people's lives shall not pass, they say. Pablo Solón, now an adviser to the government of Evo Morales, said: "The story of Bolivia is not unlike so many resource-rich countries where the majority are very poor. It is the story of the government behind the government and what the American embassy allows, for in that building is the true source of power in this country. The US doesn't have major investments here; what they fear is another Chávez; they don't want the 'bad example' to spread to Ecuador and beyond - even to Nigeria, which might be inspired to tax the oil companies as never before. For the US, any genuine solution to poverty spells trouble."
"How much would it cost to solve the poverty of Bolivia?" I asked.
"A billion dollars; it's nothing. It's the example that matters, because that's the threat."
I drove out of El Alto with Juan Delfín, an indigenous church deacon, taxi driver and artist, who spoke about the conquistadores as if they were within his memory. This is a society where a half-millennium of history is a presence and its subjugation and impoverishment are understood with anger. With Illimani looming ahead of us, a cemetery consumed the horizon. On the other side of the road was a small hill not of silver, but rubbish: a stinking, smoking, acrid hell of dust and dead dogs and wild pigs and women in traditional bowler hats digging with pickaxes for something, anything. "Here you have the symbol of everything we live and reject," said Delfín.
He took me to a plaque with the names of 24 people shot to death by the army in October 2003 when de Lozada tried to stop the people of El Alto marching down to La Paz in protest against his selling-off of gas. Juan Delfín linked their deaths to the lines of ordinary graves, many of them children, "who also died violently, from poverty". A shepherd boy emerged from a pile of stones where he lived, looking too small for his age.
After de Lozada was driven from Bolivia, his successor Carlos Mesa capitulated to the demands of the social movements, such as El Alto's Federation of Neighbourhood Committees. These are a new phenomenon of Latin America; the Landless People's Movement in Brazil is the best known, but the most effective, politically, have been in Bolivia. For more than five years, the movements included almost the entire population of the city of Cochabamba as they fought the "water wars" against a foreign consortium led by a subsidiary of the American multinational Bechtel, which de Lozada had handed the city's public water supply, causing water bills to consume a third of meagre incomes. Even the right to collect rainwater belonged to Bechtel. With an annual revenue of more than $17bn, the company's power is such that it expected and got (without the inconvenience of bidding) the contract to rebuild the US fortress in occupied Iraq. Yet, not only was Bechtel driven out of Bolivia in 2000, shortly followed by its mentor de Lozada, but the company has now dropped its compensation action against the government. It is a victory of huge significance, because it warns other multinationals in Bolivia (such as British Gas) that even if the government is prepared to compromise the wrath of the people, the movements are not.
It is also a warning to Evo Morales, whose electoral victory in December remains largely symbolic here. An indigenous man now leads Bolivia for the first time; the chequered pre-Inca flags are proudly on high everywhere. "The elections aren't something we asked for, ever," said Oscar Olivera, the Cochabamba union leader who led the anti-Bechtel revolt. "What the social movements need to do now is to continue accumulating popu- lar forces, to build up our ability to pressure whatever government that comes. A Morales government would be less difficult to love, but it will still be difficult."
Unlike his absurd caricature abroad - a previous American ambassador to Bolivia likened Morales to Osama Bin Laden and his party (MAS) to an Andean Taliban - "Evo", as he is known here, is not a "radical", not yet. His theatrical announcement of "nationalisation" on 1 May did not mean expropriation, and he made it clear the multinationals would not lose any rights. What they will lose is their grotesque share of profits and benefits; they will now have to pay true market prices for Bolivia's gas, along with a proper rate of tax. His vice-president, Álvaro García Linera, has said "capitalism will last for 50 years in Bolivia". Before the election he told me: "In a small country like Bolivia, you can't be heroes."
But many have been heroes, in the blockade of Cochabamba, in the surge of people from El Alto down into La Paz, facing bullets and expelling their El Gringo president. Out of the new spirit abroad in Latin America, perhaps the Bolivians and Venezuelans have brought true revolutionary change closest. The contrast is with the "left-wing" Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil, who agreed to IMF terms even before he took office and who has distributed less land than his right-wing predecessor.
The likeable Evo is on notice above all with his own people, but also with the Americans, the "government behind the government". Unless Washington can "lobotomise him" (as it did with Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti), it is likely to encourage a secessionist movement in the landowners' heartland of Santa Cruz, where the gas is and where the government has promised to redistribute unused land. Bolivia, like Venezuela, has glimpsed its freedom and demands our support.
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Galloway says murder of Blair would be 'justified'
Independent.co.uk
26 May 2006
The Respect MP George Galloway has said it would be morally justified for a suicide bomber to murder Tony Blair.
In an interview with GQ magazine, the reporter asked him: "Would the assassination of, say, Tony Blair by a suicide bomber - if there were no other casualties - be justified as revenge for the war on Iraq?"
Mr Galloway replied: "Yes, it would be morally justified. I am not calling for it - but if it happened it would be of a wholly different moral order to the events of 7/7. It would be entirely logical and explicable. And morally equivalent to ordering the deaths of thousands of innocent people in Iraq - as Blair did."
The Labour MP Stephen Pound, a persistent critic of Mr Galloway during previous controversies, told The Sun that the Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow in east London was "disgraceful and truly twisted".
He said: "These comments take my breath away. Every time you think he can't sink any lower he goes and stuns you again. It's reprehensible to say it would be justified for a suicide bomber to assassinate anyone."
The Stop the War Coalition criticised Mr Galloway: "We don't agree with Tony Blair's actions, but neither do we agree with suicide bombers or assassinations."
Just hours after four bomb attacks killed 52 people on London's transport system last July, Mr Galloway said the city had "paid the price" for Mr Blair's decision to go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Ten thousand Osama bin Ladens have been created at least by the events of the last two years," he told MPs in the Commons that day.
Mr Pound said at the time: "I thought George had sunk to the depths of sickness in the past but this exceeds anything he has done before." The Armed Forces minister, Adam Ingram, accused the Respect MP of "dipping his poisonous tongue in a pool of blood".
Mr Galloway yesterday made a surprise appearance on Cuban television with the Caribbean island's Communist dictator, Fidel Castro - whom he defended as a "lion" in a political world populated by "monkeys".
Mr Galloway shocked panellists on a live television discussion show in Havana by emerging on set mid-transmission to offer passionate support for Castro. Looking approvingly into each others' eyes, the pair embraced.
Comment: It is an interesting question. Like Kurt Nimmo, we feel that murder is never morally justifed, save in an extreme situation of self-defence or the defence of the lives of one's family. If we leave out the details, particularly the idea that it would be a "suicide bomber", which is an emotionally charged image, we can then ask the question:
Would an Iraqi civilian be justified in attempting to kill Tony Blair as the source of the thousands of deaths of Iraqi civilians and likely the source of many more to come? If an Iraqi believed that by killing Blair he could prevent the deaths of more of his fellow Iraqis and perhaps even his own family members, would this be justification enough for the attempt?
More to the point, is the murder, by British and American soldiers, under orders from Blair and Bush, of up to 200,000 innocent Iraqi civilians justified? And if not, and if it is the war crime that it appears to be, then what punishment should be administered to Blair and Bush?
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No Cancer Link For Pot Smokers
by Kate Walker
Oxford, England (UPI) May 26, 2006
A study led by Donald Tashkin, a professor at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine in Los Angeles, has shown no direct link between heavy marijuana smoking and cancer.
Not only did heavy marijuana smoking not appear to be linked with lung cancer in later life, but there was also no apparent link with other head and neck cancers, including those of the esophagus, mouth and throat.
The study was comprised of 611 people who had developed lung cancer, 601 who had developed cancers of the head or neck, and 1,040 without cancer who had been selected on the basis of age, gender and neighborhood. All of the subjects were under 60, as it was assumed that those born prior to 1940 would have been unlikely to have been regular consumers of marijuana in their teens and 20s, the time heavy consumption is most frequent.
Eighty percent of those with lung cancer and 70 percent of those with head and neck cancers had smoked tobacco, while approximately half of all patients with cancer had smoked marijuana heavily.
Heavy marijuana smokers were not found to have an increased risk of lung cancer over those who smoked tobacco; surprisingly, nor were they found to have an increased risk of lung cancer over moderate marijuana smokers and those who had never partaken of the drug.
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Woopee! We're All Gonna Die!
Swedes in Streets After 2.0 Earthquake
By Anadolu News Agency
Friday, May 26, 2006
Residents of Sweden's capital Stockholm poured into the streets thinking an earthquake measuring 2.0 on the Richter scale was an explosion.
Reynir Bodvarsson, seismologist at Uppsala University, stated that although the magnitude of the earthquake was 2, it was still unusual for the Stockholm region since there have only been a few earthquakes at that magnitude in the last several centuries.
Police also said that people mistook the earthquake, which struck the southeast of Stockholm at 1:00 a.m. yesterday, for an explosion and dialed emergency numbers.
Meanwhile, police helicopters and security vehicles investigated the location of the "explosion" in Stockholm throughout the night, though the investigation failed to produce evidence of any such explosion.
No casualties or damages were reported in the earthquake.
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La Nina threatens Thailand with more rains
By Nopporn Wong-Anan
Reuters
Fri May 26, 2006
BANGKOK - An expected La Nina wet weather pattern is likely to bring worse than usual floods to Thailand this year, a top disaster official said on Friday after the worst deluge in 60 years killed at least 48 people in the north.
La Nina, Spanish for "the girl," had already brought an early start to the monsoon, lashing much of the country with rain, even the rubber-growing south where the wet season was not due until October, Samith Dhamasaroja said.
"It will be a year of heavy rains and floods in Thailand," said Samith, a former Meteorological Department chief who raised the alarm about the danger of a tsunami striking Thailand -- and was ignored -- well before the Indian Ocean disaster of 2004.
"October to December will be the most critical period for the central region and Bangkok," said Samith, now head of the national disaster warning center.
Bangkok, a city of 10 million people built on a river delta is no stranger to floods. One of its worst was in September 1942, when waist-high waters took two months to recede.
The city would have to hope there was not excessive rain in the north as the amount of flooding it suffers depends these days on three dams fed by rivers flowing south.
"If there isn't too much rain in the north and these dams can hold all the water, Bangkok is likely to escape," Samith said.
But the hilly north has rarely suffered flash floods and mudslides on the scale it has this week.
The Meteorological Department -- which says the La Nina phenomenon is weakening -- said more rain was on the way as rescuers slogged through mud and debris looking for at least 66 people still missing.
DEFORESTATION A FACTOR
Scientists and relief officials attributed the disaster to a rare collision of low-pressure areas from the Pacific and Indian Oceans causing unusually heavy rain to fall on deforested hills, particularly in Uttaradit province bordering Laos.
The hills, stripped by illegal loggers of the tree cover which could have held them together, or turned into orchards, could not absorb the water and sections slid away as mudslides.
The slides and flash floods destroyed houses, cut roads and damaged dams as well as inundating towns and forcing thousands to flee their homes. Large areas were littered with trees, making access to more remote communities difficult.
Samith said the collision of low-pressure areas was the result of La Nina -- a pattern of usually cold surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific that leads to greater rainfall in the west.
It would increase Thailand's average rainfall -- around 2,400 mm (94.5 inches) -- sharply, he said.
"This year we will have much more than the average," he said.
Uttaradit, 500 km (300 miles) north of Bangkok, was the worst-hit province with 41 known dead after a deluge that dumped 330 mm (13 inches) in one 24-hour period.
Tens of thousands of people were affected as houses were torn apart by flash floods bearing uprooted trees, or buried under heaps of mud. The military was distributing food and water by truck and helicopter.
In some hilly areas, however, the only way to get food and water into villages where stores had been destroyed was to carry it in on foot or by airlift, officials said.
Among the dead was a 40-year-old man who won 4 million baht ($105,000) in a government lottery on April 1, Bangkok newspapers reported. He was found under his newly refurbished house.
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Ark's Quantum Quirks
Ark
Signs of the Times
May 26, 2006
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As The World Burns
37 million expected to travel this weekend despite gas prices
AP
Fri May 26, 2006
NEW YORK - As millions of Americans prepare for the first big holiday of the summer season, the price of gasoline is the talk of the town. Despite prices hovering above $2.85 a gallon, AAA says it expects a slight increase in the number of travelers this year.
The auto club has estimated that 37.6 million Americans will travel 50 miles or more this Memorial Day weekend, up about one percent from last year.
But many people don't seem to be canceling plans, especially those who love the water.
A study by the Recreational Marine Research Center shows 94 percent of boaters will be out this summer, even if fuel prices rise another dollar a gallon.
But like other travelers, the mariners say they'll try to save fuel and cut back in other ways. Only 25 percent say they'll reduce their boating time.
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Core prices mostly tame but consumers worry
By Tim Ahmann
Reuters
May 26, 2006
WASHINGTON - Core U.S. prices rose 0.2 percent in April, but consumers became more fretful of future inflation in May, according to reports on Friday that kept the prospect of future Federal Reserve interest-rate hikes alive.
The rise in the Fed's favorite gauge of core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, matched expectations on Wall Street, but came close to being rounded up to a 0.3 percent increase that would have set off alarm bells.
Separately, the University of Michigan said that its index of consumer sentiment fell in May to 79.1 from April's revised 87.4, according to sources who saw the subscription-only report.
"It doesn't say, 'Yes, the Fed must tighten.' But it doesn't assure them the luxury of a pause," William Sullivan, chief economist at JVB Financial Group in Boca Raton, Florida, said of the core prices data.
"Against that backdrop we have to sit back and await more information on inflation and the economy," he said.
In addition, expectations of inflation five years out rose to 3.2 percent, matching October's post-hurricane reading in a troubling sign for Fed policy-makers.
The report on April prices from the Commerce Department showed overall prices up a steep 0.5 percent, with inflation once again eroding gains in personal income.
But Fed officials and financial markets focus more on core price gauges. On that count, the government data were mixed.
Over the past 12 months, the core price index for consumer spending accelerated to a 2.1 percent gain from the 2 percent rise in the period through March. It was the largest 12-month increase since March 2005 and just outside the Fed's perceived "comfort zone" for inflation.
Still, traders in financial markets breathed a sign of relief that the data, which followed a surprisingly strong reading in the popular core consumer price index, did not show even more inflation pressure.
Prices for both stocks and government bonds were up modestly in late morning trade. However, the dollar, which initially weakened on inflation relief, also gained.
The Fed has raised interest rates in 16 straight meetings since mid-2004, taking benchmark overnight borrowing costs to an even 5 percent, and has warned that credit might have to be tightened further given inflation risks.
TOUGH CALL
Both reports on Friday underscored the tough call Fed officials are facing in considering whether to push interest rates higher. Inflation pressures appear somewhat elevated, but signs of cooler economic growth ahead are emerging.
In a letter to a lawmaker released on Thursday, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said the central bank had to be forward-looking. But he also said it could only keep inflation expectations low by showing a commitment to stable prices.
The Commerce Department said consumer spending rose a solid 0.6 percent in April on the back of a 0.5 percent March gain. But after the bite from inflation, spending was up just 0.1 percent for a second straight month.
Personal income rose 0.5 percent, the same as in March, but after inflation and taxes, income was down 0.1 percent.
"Even if real spending rebounds by 0.3 percent in both May and June, the quarter as a whole will see spending up just 2.4 percent," said Ian Shepherdson of High Frequency Economics. That would be less than half of the first quarter's pace.
While more hard-earned dollars going to pay for gasoline, Americans continued to tap savings to make purchases.
The personal saving rate -- saving as a percentage of disposal income -- fell to negative 1.6 percent in April, the 11th straight monthly negative reading.
Economists said lofty gasoline prices continued to damp consumer sentiment in May and could lead them to cut spending.
"The decline in consumer sentiment in the month of May is likely to weigh heavily against consumer spending in May, and for the second quarter as a whole," said Brian Bethune, U.S. economist at Global Insight in Lexington, Massachusetts.
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