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Signs Editorials
Editorial: The True Identity of Fulcanelli and The Da Vinci Code
by Laura Knight-Jadczyk
February 19, 2005
At the present time, when millions of people have read the Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown, it seems that the awareness that man's true history has been hidden is growing apace with the thirst for the truth. In my book, The Secret History of the World, I deal with many branches of the "hidden stream" of knowledge that have periodically emerged into the world during recorded history as the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Orphic Tradition, Gnosticism, Gurdjieff's Fourth Way or "Esoteric Christianity," Catharism, which went underground as the stories of the Holy Grail and Alchemy, etc, linking them to the most ancient traditions from pre-history, including Siberian Shamanism, the "Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy," as Mircea Eliade refers to the matter.
Thus, it
is only fair that I warn the reader that this series of remarks will be
comprehensible only to individuals well versed in studies of esoteric
history and comparative religions, including Gnosticism, Sufism,
the Holy Grail, Alchemy, (particularly the mysteries surrounding
Fulcanelli), and hermeticism in general. This article plunges directly
and immediately into the great mystery. Those who are immersed in Fourth
Way Work and who have actually begun to "see" will also recognize
the deeper implications of Gurdjieff's work.
For the novice,
wishing to gain a foundational understanding, to avoid the glaring misrepresentations
of such populist works as The Da Vinci Code, please refer to my
other articles: The Grail Quest,
particularly the sections that discuss Alchemy
and Saint Germain, The Fulcanelli Phenomenon,
Rennes-le-Chateau and the Accursed Treasure,
The Priory of Sion, and The
Ark of the Covenant and the Temple of Solomon. Further reading would
include Truth Or Lies, Jupiter,
Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce, and the Return of the Mongols, and Commentary
on Boris Mouravieff's Gnosis.
Click Here to read the entire article with photos
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Editorial: The Grail Quest and The Destiny of Man
Series by Laura Knight-Jadczyk
The Quest for the Holy Grail has been the subject of innumerable books, essays, movies, scholarly papers, and assorted other treatments since its formal delineation in the twelfth century AD; its popularity has not diminished one bit in almost 800 years. It is an utterly fascinating subject with something for everyone! There are kings and queens; there is loyalty and betrayal; there are gallant knights coming to the rescue of damsels in distress; evil monsters; cryptic clues to an elusive mystery that can "save the world;" and a whole host of major and minor characters sure to excite the senses, delight the mind, and feed the soul!
When one seriously begins to examine all of this literature, the complicated approaches of the various works and their contradictory results, one tends to hesitate to add anything to so vast a body of erudite composition. There is almost nothing that hasn't been said or written about it from one perspective or another.
The present writer was always attracted to the stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. This was only natural, considering my patronymic of birth: Knight. Thus, a great many books on the subject were read and digested at a very early age. But, my general opinion of them was that they were fantasies or children's stories. There was no "real" grail; it was just a pretty tale. They were nice to read and imagine in times of idleness, but I felt that I needed to get about the REAL work of "finding God." I didn't realize that, in a very real sense this is the true nature of the Grail quest.
In any event, I concentrated many years on this "finding God" business. For me it was as essential a thing to do as it was necessary to breathe.
I started in pretty basic ways: believing nothing, testing everything; and over the years I gradually worked my way through the hard sciences to the "soft" sciences to the "para-sciences." I analyzed and categorized everything as I went and, at the "end," I thought I had pretty well run the gamut. My categories were more varied and extensive than those of many people, but they were categories nonetheless - and I was pretty satisfied with them. At the end, I had more or less reconciled myself to never really knowing God except through "mind" - in a sense that is broader than "thinking" and includes transcendant emotional states - and mind was, after all, as far as I could see, the beginning and end point of everything. Cogito ergo sum. And because I think, I feel. That was all we could know.
And that is where matters rested until the events described in Amazing Grace (available from Amazon.com). It was through the interaction with "myself in the future" that the most important clues began to manifest. I will be presenting many of these clues and the discoveries they pointed to as we go along. But just for the moment, let me highlight one of the more interesting "break-throughs."
Click here to read the Grail Series
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Editorial: A War of Nerves
by Lisa Guliani
WingTV.net
June 1, 2006
On May 31, 2006 at 4:30 pm I received an unexpected phone call from Patsy Smullin, owner of KOBI-TV Channel 5 in Medford, Oregon. If you read my latest article entitled, Jeff Rense: A Reinvention of What?, then you know that Patsy Smullin is Jeff Rense's former employer. This was our third conversation in a weeks' time, and regrettably it wasn't as cordial as our previous exchanges.
Ms. Smullin began the conversation by asking, "Have you heard from the Eugene attorney yet?" She sounded extremely nervous and agitated and her voice was shaking.
I responded with, "An attorney; for what? No, I haven't heard from anybody. What is this about?"
Smullin was having great difficulty expressing herself, and I was trying to put together the gist of what she was attempting (but unable) to say.
Smullin: You called me asking for Jeff Rense's dates of employment and I had to do a lot of work to get that information for you. I had to go into another building to get that information for you."
Me: "Yes, and I thank you. But what are you talking about now? What attorney? I don't understand what you mean."
Smullin: "You need to remove those two sentences from your article."
Me: "Which sentences?"
Smullin: "The ones about Jeff Rense being a compulsive liar, and about him not being known for his honesty. You need to remove those."
Me: "Why should I remove them? I didn't misquote you at all. I wrote down exactly what you said. I have it in my notes. You knew I was writing an article."
Smullin: (in a low voice): "That's not the way I remember it." (A pause, then excitedly) "You don't seem to understand. I'm trying to help you."
Me: "No, I don't understand, because you haven't told me what you're talking about. That's not the way you remember it? We just spoke YESTERDAY. What are you saying? Are you now suddenly denying that you made those comments? Are you calling me a liar? I wrote exactly what you told me." No response to my questions. (Another pause.)
Smullin: "I'm saying you need to be very careful. I can't say anymore."
Me: "I need to be careful? Careful of what? Are you saying somebody's going to sue me? If so; for what ... for quoting you?"
Smullin: "No, no. I really can't say anymore. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have called, I'm sorry. I can't say anymore." Click.
Well, well, well; isn't this interesting? Patsy Smullin seemed frightened - not at all the way she had sounded during our first two conversations. Previously, she'd sounded upbeat, friendly and more at ease. We'd had two very pleasant phone conversations; one on Friday, May 26, 2006 and the second on Tuesday, May 30, 2006. Ms. Smullin was indeed very helpful in providing the requested dates of employment as I'd requested. She was also quick to respond to my questions, and related recollections of Jeff Rense, her former employee.
At this point, I'd like to be very clear: Patsy Smullin knew perfectly well why I had contacted her. I fully identified myself right from the start, both with her secretary/assistant and to her personally. It is not my tendency to beat around the bush with people, so I told her that I'm an independent freelance writer and the purpose for my call was fact checking. In addition, I laid it out in no uncertain terms (within the first two minutes of our initial contact on May 26, 2006) that I was working on an article about Jeff Rense, and that this fact-checking was necessary in order to verify some information contained in online bios referencing his previous broadcast journalism career.
Let's get this straight: Nobody forced Ms. Smullin to return my phone messages, to respond to my inquiries, or to answer any single question posed to her. Nobody tricked her, lied to her, or twisted her arm to do any of the above, and no one made her call on May 30th to provide me with the dates of Jeff Rense's previous term of employment at KOBI-TV. She did these things of her own free will. To be honest, I didn't expect her to call me back at all. I suspect that others in her position simply would not.
Moreover, I quoted Smullin's responses precisely, as in verbatim-word-for-word regarding every single statement attributed to her in my article. Any and all of those comments she did make, voluntarily, and without embellishment, exaggeration or assistance from me.
Apparently, 24 hours after my article hit the Internet, "Somebody" had a real problem with the fact that I talked to Patsy Smullin. It is my distinct impression that "Somebody" wasn't expecting this particular connection to happen. Surprise, surprise, Jeff. "Somebody" was undoubtedly blindsided by this piece - and I'm telling you right now, it wasn't Patsy Smullin. My impression is that Smullin is a very nice lady, and someone is trying to intimidate her based upon this peculiar phone call I've just described "for the record".
Thus far, I have not been contacted by the aforementioned "Eugene attorney," but if this does happen, I'll certainly apprise everyone of the situation. I'm a little amused at how little time it took for "Somebody" to completely unravel and start throwing their weight around behind the scenes over this latest article I've written. I'll give you three guesses as to who is driving the intimidation machine. Nah, this one's a no-brainer. Make that one guess. Question: Is this how Jeff Rense intends to respond to my article? By putting the "thumb" on people? Fine, Jeff. If that's how you want to play, then so be it.
Just so everybody; and particularly "Somebody" knows: I stand behind every single word written in my article - completely, and 110%. Furthermore, I do not intend to remove anything, including and particularly, the two sentences in which I quoted Patsy Smullin during our conversations. The two sentences that allegedly needed removal addressed the "honesty" of Jeff Rense and were the personal opinion of someone who actually knew him, as related to me over the course of two separate phone discussions. Patsy Smullin's statements were quoted by me accurately, verbatim, and in their proper context; and it should be noted that she would be considered a very credible source of information.
Let it be known that I have never once in my life removed or retracted truthful information from any of my articles, and I am not going to be intimidated into such a cowardly act now by anybody, including a convoy of legal guns from Eugene, Oregon. I stand by EVERY SINGLE WORD in that piece. Patsy Smullin should be commended for telling the truth. Maybe the monkey should get off her back. She didn't write the article. I did.
Message to Jeff Rense: You know exactly where I am and how to contact me. So, if you've got something to say to me, then be a man and do it directly, if you have the cajones. Unlike you, I don't cower in shadows, wear wigs to disguise my identity, or put the squeeze on people - whether overtly or behind the scenes. Furthermore, it is not in my nature to shrink from cowards, hypocrites, liars, bullies, or from truth. I confront each of these squarely head-on, and will most certainly not shrink from the likes of you or any of your "legal thugs". One would hope you're adult enough to do the same.
I do not - and never will - fear the truth. Interestingly enough, it appears that you do. If you want to come after someone, well, here I am.
It's your move.
Original
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Wooly Bully
Marines to Face Charges in Iraqi's Death
By SETH HETTENA
AP
June 1, 2006
SAN DIEGO - Military prosecutors plan to file murder, kidnapping and conspiracy charges against seven Marines and a Navy corpsman in the shooting death of an Iraqi man in April, a defense lawyer said Thursday.
The eight men are being held in the brig at Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base north of San Diego, said Jeremiah Sullivan III, who represents one of the men.
The men served in Iraq with the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, and are members of the battalion's Kilo Company. The highest-ranking among them is a staff sergeant.
Sullivan said he learned from Marine Corps attorneys that the charges have been drafted and official charging documents could be given to the men as early as Friday.
Separately, another group of five Marines in Kilo Company, including a lieutenant who commanded the platoon, are under investigation for injuring a suspect in their custody, according to a defense attorney who has been contacted by the family of one of the Marines. He spoke Thursday only on condition of anonymity because he has not taken on the case.
The Iraqi man was killed west of Baghdad on April 26. His death was unrelated to the shootings of as many as two dozen civilians in the western Iraqi city of Haditha. The Pentagon is investigating troops from the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment in that case.
The Marine Corps and Pentagon spokesmen have refused to comment on any aspect of the Iraqi's death since an investigation was announced May 24.
However, a Pentagon official said Thursday that charges are expected to be brought "very soon." The official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss charges before they are filed, could not confirm the specific counts.
Sullivan said the eight men are being held in solitary confinement.
"There's concern about the publicity of Haditha having a detrimental impact on the case," he said. "My concern is that the whole politics of this. There's an assumption that these guys are guilty before there's been an opportunity for a thorough, impartial investigation."
Under military law, after charges are served defendants have the right to an Article 32 hearing, the military equivalent of a civilian grand jury investigation.
An investigating officer presides over the hearing and makes a recommendation to the Marine general who directed the investigation. The general has the final say whether to order a court-martial and what charges, if any, the defendants will face.
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'Please stop the American troops killing any more people'
Reaction
Michael Howard Irbil
Friday June 2, 2006
The Guardian
Reaction
The news that US soldiers are to be investigated for the alleged killing of civilians in Haditha six months ago has done little to allay the scepticism of many ordinary Iraqis.
Thaer Juma, a lawyer and director of a non-government organisation in Baghdad, said: "These crimes are happening every day in [the western Iraqi cities of] Haditha and Ramadi, but the international community knows nothing about them because there are media blackouts on the operations, and there are no international humanitarian NGOs to record these transgressions."
Omar Saed, 55, a university lecturer in Baghdad, said: "We'd like to send a brief letter to all the world: 'Please stop the American troops killing any more people.' We need full cooperation from all to help us avoid any more incidents like what happened in Haditha and Ramadi and all the [other] Iraqi cities."
Omar al-Hadi, a businessman in Baghdad's affluent Mansour district, said: "Why are the Americans making a big deal of this now? Don't they know how many thousands of Iraqis have died at the hands of the foreign forces, the terrorists and the militias, and how nothing is ever done about it - apart from occasional expressions of regret?"
Hussein al-Jassim, a baker in the capital's Karrada district, said: "I don't care who was responsible - the Americans or the terrorists. All I know is their deaths and all the deaths are for nothing.
"Iraq was finished the minute Saddam took over, and then the minute the Americans thought they could come and save us from him."
Reports of the killings at Haditha had been circulating since March but the reaction of Iraqi politicians and the media had been relatively muted. And it was not until Tuesday that the new Iraqi prime minister chose to comment. "We emphasise that our forces, that multinational forces, will respect human rights, the rights of the Iraqi citizen," Nouri al-Maliki said in an interview with the BBC.
But Mahmood Talib, a Haditha trader who moved to Baghdad a year ago, said: "Weekly, the American troops and the terrorists surprise us by aggressive operations against our people in the Sunni triangle."
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Troops told Geneva rules don't apply to Taliban
PAUL KORING
The Globe and Mail
May 31, 2006
WASHINGTON - Canadian troops in Afghanistan have been told the Geneva Conventions and Canadian regulations regarding the rights of prisoners of war don't apply to Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters captured on the battlefield.
That decision strips detainees of key rights and protections under the rules of war, including the right to be released at the end of the conflict and not to be held criminally liable for lawful combat.
"The whole purpose of those regulations is to know if Geneva applies," said Amir Attaran, a law professor at the University of Ottawa who has been pressing the Defence Department for details of its detainee policy for months.
The 1991 Canadian regulations - developed during the Persian Gulf war - included provisions to hold tribunals to determine a detainee's status under Geneva if there is any doubt.
Captured fighters don't deserve these rights because this isn't a war between countries, says Lieutenant-General Michel Gauthier, who commands the Canadian Expeditionary Forces Command and thus oversees all Canadian Forces deployed abroad.
"They are not entitled to prisoner-of-war status but they are entitled to prisoner-of-war treatment," he said, asserting that all detainees are humanely treated.
"The regulations apply in an armed conflict between states, and what's happening in Afghanistan is not an armed conflict between states. And therefore there is no basis for making a determination of individuals being prisoners of war," he said.
Since Ottawa first sent fighting forces to Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the government has said that anyone captured by Canadian Forces is treated humanely. For years, detainees were quickly turned over to the U.S. military. But, since last December, a new agreement with Kabul means Canadian troops now turn detainees over to the Afghan military, a move some have criticized because of the Afghans' uneven record of observing human rights.
The decision to ignore the regulations without a legal test of whether detainees in Afghanistan are entitled to PoW status puts Canada "in a very odd situation. It's completely irregular," Prof. Attaran says.
He believes the government's position that Geneva doesn't apply may be correct but it needs to be tested in court.
According to Canada's Prisoner-of-War Status Determination Regulations, "the commanding officer of a unit or other element of the Canadian Forces shall ensure that each detainee is screened as soon as practicable after being taken into custody to determine whether or not the detainee is entitled to prisoner-of-war status."
Last updated before Ottawa sent a field hospital to Saudi Arabia in the middle of the Persian Gulf war, the regulations are designed to make sure Canadian soldiers understand and correctly apply the 1949 Geneva Conventions with respect to detainees.
But Canada, following the Bush administration's lead in the United States, had decreed that there are no lawful combatants among the enemy in the current conflict and no screening was required.
Gen. Gauthier concedes that the change in policy could open the door to criminal charges being laid against Taliban fighters.
If a captured enemy fighter is implicated in killing a Canadian soldier - for instance, the Taliban fighter who launched the rocket-propelled grenade that killed Captain Nichola Goddard on May 17 - Ottawa might order him charged with murder and tried.
"I would seek guidance that clearly would come from outside the Defence Department if we wished to pursue this any further from a prosecutorial basis," the general said.
The change aligns Canada's position on the criminal culpability for battlefield violence with that of the United States. Omar Khadr, the only Canadian held at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is charged with murder for allegedly throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. Special Forces soldier.
Canada has provided few details on the fate of detainees its forces have handed over to U.S. authorities since 2002; neither the number nor the names have been made public. All the government has said is that none are currently at Guantanamo Bay. But it's unknown whether they have been released, or are being held at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or in secret prisons in Eastern Europe.
Similar secrecy cloaks what happens to detainees handed over to Afghan authorities by Canadian Forces fighting in Kandahar province. Gen. Gauthier indicated such transfers occur regularly, if not daily then several times a week. But no numbers are publicly available.
"Our default setting is transfer," he said. "We haven't held anybody for more than a few hours and we would prefer not to."
Canadian troops do screen detainees - determining on the spot whether a captive poses a threat and should be handed over to the Afghan authorities or should be freed. Gen. Gauthier said the decision to release those not considered dangerous happens routinely. Both decisions are checked up the chain of command, he said.
Prof. Attaran says the military's policy on transfers doesn't absolve Canada if detainees are then mistreated, tortured or killed.
He argues that if the government wants to be involved in this conflict, then it should take responsibility for those its soldiers detain, at least until a court or tribunal determines it can properly transfer them.
"It seems like they want to treat them as though they are radioactive," he said.
But Gen. Gauthier said there is no risk that ordinary soldiers or junior officers could face war-crimes charges, even if detainees handed over to the Afghans were tortured or killed.
"Our intention certainly isn't to leave junior folks hanging out to dry at all on this," he said. "We are on firm legal ground we have no worries about the possibility of prosecution or allegations of criminal wrongdoing for having transferred detainees."
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Bush Links Energized Enron
Robert Scheer
Truthdig.com
05.31.2006
The Bush family consistently acted to put Enron and its longtime CEO, Ken Lay, into a position to rip off investors and taxpayers. Why is the mass media ignoring that fact now that Lay has been convicted in arguably the most egregious example of white-collar fraud in U.S. history?
Until he hooked up with the Bushes, Lay was just another mid-level energy trader complaining endlessly about being hemmed in by onerous government regulations and those terrible consumer lawyers who prevent free market hustlers from doing their thing. But after he and his company became top supporters of the Bushes -- eventually giving $3 million in total to various Bush electoral campaigns and the Republican Party -- doors opened for them in a big way. In particular, once Bush the father got rid of key energy industry regulations, Lay was a made man and Enron's fortunes soared.
This program of corporate welfare led Lay to dub the first President Bush "the energy president" in a column supporting his reelection because "just six months after George Bush became president, he directed ... the development of a new energy strategy," which, in effect, compelled local utility companies to carry Enron electricity on their wires. It was, Lay crowed, "the most ambitious and sweeping energy plan ever proposed."
Another huge gift from the first Bush regime came in the form of a ruling by Wendy Gramm, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, that permitted Enron to trade in energy derivatives, making possible the company's exponential growth. Five weeks after that ruling, Gramm resigned and joined the Enron board of directors, serving on its subsequently much criticized audit committee. Six years later, Gramm's husband, U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas), further enabled Enron greed by pushing through additional anti-regulation legislation.
A long list of members of George H.W. Bush's Cabinet and inner circle, including Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Commerce Secretary Robert A. Mosbacher, went to work for Enron after his 1992 defeat. An even greater number of Enron officials returned the favor by joining the George W. Bush administration in 2001 shortly before the Enron scandal exploded.
The close connections between President Bush and Lay began when they both worked on the 1992 Bush père presidential reelection campaign. In fact, a long paper trail of their friendly and collaborative correspondence has been made public through Freedom of Information Act requests. "Dear Ken, one of the sad things about old friends is that they seem to be getting older -- just like you!" wrote then-Texas Gov. Bush in April 1997. "Thank goodness you have such a young beautiful wife." In Lay's typed responses -- some are handwritten -- he sometimes crossed out Bush's formal titles to scrawl a friendly "George," emphasizing their personal history before he urged the governor to, for example, help Enron secure foreign energy contracts with regimes in Romania and Uzbekistan, or called for so-called tort reform designed to protect corporations from lawsuits.
Typical was Bush's role in Enron lobbying of Pennsylvania's governor to permit Enron to enter his state's energy market. As Lay wrote in a letter dated Oct. 7, 1997: "I very much appreciated your call to Gov. Tom Ridge a few days ago. I am certain that will have a positive impact on the way he and others in Pennsylvania view our proposal." After the Enron crash, Bush attempted to distance himself from the "Bush pioneer," who had sent more than $2 million in Enron funds George W.'s way, as well as supplying him with the Enron company jet on at least eight occasions. "I have not met with him personally," Bush said after the scandal broke.
What Bush left out was not only his hundreds of personal encounters with Lay before he assumed the presidency but, more important, Lay's key role in drafting the Bush administration's energy policy. Lay met with energy task force chairman Dick Cheney at least six times. It was Lay who submitted a key memo opposing price caps in response to the energy crisis in California that Enron had helped engineer. Lay was also instrumental in the abrupt dismissal of Curtis Hebert Jr. as Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chairman. The neutered FERC later conveniently refused California's loud pleas for help.
So far, California has recouped some of the billions in taxpayer and pension funds it lost, and several of Enron's top dogs are looking at hard time. Perhaps, after this November, if the opposition party can retake at least one branch of government, the connections between these corporate criminals and their buddy in the White House can be more fully investigated as well.
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Proposal to Implant Tracking Chips in Immigrants
By Bill Christensen
LiveScience.com
31 May 2006
Scott Silverman, Chairman of the Board of VeriChip Corporation, has proposed implanting the company's RFID tracking tags in immigrant and guest workers. He made the statement on national television on May 16.
Silverman was being interviewed on "Fox & Friends." Responding to the Bush administration's call to know "who is in our country and why they are here," he proposed using VeriChip RFID implants to register workers at the border, and then verify their identities in the workplace. He added, "We have talked to many people in Washington about using it...."
The VeriChip is a very small Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag about the size of a large grain of rice. It can be injected directly into the body; a special coating on the casing helps the VeriChip bond with living tissue and stay in place. A special RFID reader broadcasts a signal, and the antenna in the VeriChip draws power from the signal and sends its data. The VeriChip is a passive RFID tag; since it does not require a battery, it has a virtually unlimited life span.
RFID tags have long been used to identify animals in a variety of settings; livestock, laboratory animals and pets have been "chipped" for decades. Privacy advocates have long expressed concerns about this technology being used in human beings.
In a related story, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe allegedly remarked that microchips could be used to track seasonal workers to visiting U.S. senators Jeff Sessions (Alabama) and Arlen Specter (Pennsylvania). "President Uribe said he would consider having Colombian workers have microchips implanted in their bodies before they are permitted to enter the US for seasonal work," Specter told Congress on April 25. [...]
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World facing a wave of forced evictions: UN housing rights expert
AFP
Thu Jun 1, 2006
GENEVA - The international community must stop turning a blind eye to a wave of forced evictions of shanty-town dwellers around the world caused by prestige construction projects, a United Nations human rights monitor said.
Miloon Kothari, the UN's watchdog on housing rights, said he was deeply concerned by a rising tide of slum clearance which was worsening the situation for millions of the poorest people despite being presented as urban improvement.
"We're seeing an unprecedented wave of evictions across the world," Kothari told journalists.
"We're talking about millions," he said.
"Not because of armed conflict, not because of ethnic conflict, not because of other forms of displacement, but because of so-called development-based projects and plans."
"It's a situation that's grave enough to require global attention. Unfortunately it does not get the kind of attention that armed conflict, ethnic conflict or refugee situations get," he said.
Kothari, a Indian architect and specialist on land rights who reports to the UN's top human rights body, has repeatedly spoken out against evictions in a string of countries.
He said there is a common pattern of human rights abuse involved: residents are rarely consulted or even informed about plans, there is little or no search for alternatives to demolitions, and police and private security firms use violence and intimidation with impunity.
Kothari raised the alarm a year ago about a campaign in Zimbabwe which saw 700,000 people driven from their slums in what the government billed as a necessary urban clean-up.
Today, many of the victims are today still homeless or badly-housed, but the issue has dropped out of the spotlight, Kothari complained.
"The international community, after a flurry of activity last year, seems to have forgotten the people of Zimbabwe," he said.
"There is a silence at the highest levels of the United Nations, there is a silence from bilateral donors, there is a deafening silence from senior African leaders including Mbeki from South Africa and Obasanjo from Nigeria, and there's a shocking silence even from influential individuals like Nelson Mandela."
Kothari's recent targets have included: a highway project in the Pakistani megacity of Karachi which could eventually leave 250,000 shanty-town dwellers homeless and a ongoing urban renewal programme in Mumbai, India, that has razed the homes of an estimated 350,000 people.
They also included other programmes affecting hundreds of thousands of people in Angola, Cambodia and the Philippines.
"We're seeing the formation of apartheid cities all over the world," said Kothari, as a result of efforts to drive the poor from what has often turned into prime urban real estate, particularly in countries which are emerging from conflict.
"I think that is a very grave portent for the future because it will certainly lead to more conflict," he said.
Kothari has spotlighted the impact on rural residents of high-profile dam construction projects in China and India.
The developed world is also at fault -- and not just because of its investments or aid which can end up being used for development projects that hurt the poor -- Kothari said.
He pointed to expulsions of Roma communities in Russia, as well as the evictions from and demolition of public housing in Canada and the United States.
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Auditors fault missile defense plans
By Andrea Shalal-Esa
Reuters
Thu Jun 1, 2006
WASHINGTON - The United States has spent about $91 billion since the mid-1980s to defend against enemy ballistic missiles, but it has no clear criteria for deciding to use the system and its operational costs remain unclear, the
Government Accountability Office said on Thursday.
The missile defense system, which the Bush administration had hoped to have ready by 2004, is designed to help protect the United States against missiles that could carry nuclear, chemical or germ warheads.
The GAO, the non-partisan, investigative arm of Congress, urged the Pentagon to draw up standards that each component and the overall ballistic missile defense system must meet before they can be used, just as other major weapons programs do.
It also recommended that the Department of Defense (DOD) set up a new structure to identify all the costs of operating the missile defense system, some of which are now being funded with research money, and report them to Congress.
Underscoring the cost and significance of the program to U.S. national defense, GAO suggested that lawmakers pass legislation requiring the Pentagon to actually act on its recommendations.
GAO said that was needed because Pentagon officials agreed or partially agreed with its recommendations, but did not say if they planned to adopt the changes.
"Without the ability to identify and assess total ballistic missile defense operational costs, neither DOD nor Congress has complete information to make funding and trade-off decisions among competing priorities," the report said.
The Bush administration asked Congress for $10.4 billion in fiscal 2007 for all missile defenses, up from about $8.8 billion for the current year.
Combined spending on missile defense projects remained the costliest item in the defense budget.
Missile Defense Agency Director Lt. Gen. Henry Obering in March said U.S. efforts to develop a layered defense against enemy missiles had "turned a major corner" after two interceptor tests failed in late 2004 and early 2005.
Military commanders have not yet determined it is ready.
John Isaacs, a critic of the missile defense system, said the GAO report was the latest in a string of critical reviews by various watchdog agencies. All see "serious deficiencies" with the program, he said.
"They're spending a lot of money, but no one has an idea of what it will do and ... whether it will work," said Isaacs at the Council for a Livable World.
Even Republican Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, a key member of the House Armed Services Committee, recently said he feared the missile defense program would become a billpayer for other unfunded weapons programs, Isaacs said.
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Picture me rolling
Tanigaki: Currencies alone can't solve imbalances
Reuters
Thu Jun 1, 2006
TOKYO - Japanese Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki said on Friday countries should not rely just on currencies to address global imbalances.
"To rely only on currencies is not the right path to take," Tanigaki told a news conference. "Each country should focus on structural reforms, and (the G7 countries) have agreed on that."
He also said high oil prices and their impact on the global economy are likely to be a topic for discussion at a meeting of the Group of Eight finance chiefs in St. Petersburg on June 9-10.
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Oil prices rise above $71 a barrel
AP
June 2, 2006
WASHINGTON - Oil prices jumped by more than $1 a barrel on Friday after it was reported that eight foreigners working on a drilling rig off the coast of Nigeria had been kidnapped, reigniting concerns about the stability of supplies flowing from the oil-rich African nation.
Analysts said anxiety over Iran's nuclear ambitions continued to support crude futures. U.S. data showing gasoline demand on the rise at the start of the summer driving season and a refinery snag in Texas also added strength to the rally.
Light sweet crude for July delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange rose $1.26 to $71.60 a barrel. In London, Brent crude traded on the ICE Futures exchange gained 50 cents to $69.89 per barrel.
Nymex gasoline futures gained more than 4 cents to $2.17 a gallon.
The kidnapped workers, six British, one American and one Canadian, were aboard the drilling rig Bulford Dolphin when it was attacked during the night, Olsen Energy ASA, the rig's Norwegian owner, said in a news release.
The company said Nigerian and other authorities were working to resolve the situation, and drilling from the rig has been suspended.
Nigerian militants have blown up oil pipelines and kidnapped foreign oil workers to press their demands for local control of oil revenues by inhabitants of the oil-producing south, who feel cheated out of the wealth produced in their backyards.
The violence in Nigeria has led to the shut-in of more than 500,000 barrels per day, though new production in other areas has offset much of that loss, analysts say.
Still, the threat of output disruptions looms and it is exacerbated by the fact that the world's oil producers have less than 2 million barrels per day of spare production capacity that could be called upon in an emergency. Global consumption is expected to average roughly 85 million barrels per day in 2006.
On Wednesday, the United States said it was ready to join talks with Iran over its disputed nuclear program on the condition that Iran first suspend enrichment activities. However, Iran's foreign minister Manouchehr Muttaki on Thursday rejected any conditions for talks.
Some traders took the development as a cooling off of tensions between Washington and Tehran, but analysts said the market remained concerned about the possibility of disruptions to supply out of
OPEC's second-largest producer.
"There is no resolution over the issue and so the situation will continue to support high prices," said Victor Shum, energy analyst with Purvin & Gertz in Singapore.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries decided, as expected, on Thursday to leave its output quotas steady at 28 million barrels a day. Most cartel members are already producing all they can to take advantage of high prices, though oil ministers said they are watching the global economy closely for any signs of weakness, hinting that a pullback in production was possible later in the year.
While global oil demand is growing more slowly than usual, it is still strong. The Energy Department reported Thursday that U.S. gasoline demand over the past four weeks was up nearly 1 percent compared with the same time last year.
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May job growth much weaker than expected
Reuters
June 2, 2006
WASHINGTON - U.S. employers added only 75,000 new workers to their payrolls last month, far fewer than expected and the weakest gain since hurricane-depressed October, but the unemployment rate slipped to a five-year low of 4.6 percent, the Labor Department said on Friday.
Outside of the drop in the unemployment rate, however, the overall tone of the jobs report, which showed employment growth slowing for the third straight month, was weaker than economists had expected.
Average hourly earnings edged up just 1 cent, or 0.1 percent, the length of the average workweek dropped back from a 3-1/2 year high struck in April, and the job growth for the prior two months was revised down by a net 37,000.
The report could sooth inflation fears on Wall Street and lead financial markets to trim bets that the U.S.
Federal Reserve will raise interest rates for the 17th consecutive time when policy-makers gather later this month.
Market economists had been expecting a gain of about 175,000 jobs, although some had trimmed their forecasts this week after other data suggested a little more softness. In addition, earnings were expected to move up a stiffer 0.3 percent.
The mild gain in average hourly earnings pulled down the 12-month rise in worker pay to 3.7 percent from 3.8 percent in April.
The drop in the unemployment rate, which slipped from April's 4.7 percent to reach its lowest point since July 2001, was unexpected.
A loss of 27,000 retail jobs and 14,000 factory jobs weighed on the overall May nonfarm payroll count. Construction payrolls edged up by a meager 1,000 workers.
The length of the workweek slipped back to 33.8 hours from 33.9 hours in April, the longest since September 2002.
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Extra $92 mln sought for Exxon Valdez spill
By Chris Baltimore
Reuters
Thu Jun 1, 2006
WASHINGTON - The U.S. government on Thursday said it will pursue $92 million in extra damage claims against Exxon Mobil Corp. for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, the worst in U.S. history.
Four U.S. agencies including the Justice Department and the state of Alaska say it will cost that much more to clean up lingering environmental damage from when the Exxon Valdez supertanker ran aground in Alaska's Prince William Sound and spilled about 11 million gallons of crude oil.
Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil, the world's largest publicly traded oil company, has already paid $900 million in a 1991 civil settlement.
But a "reopener" provision in the deal allowed the government to seek up to $100 million extra for unforeseen damages. Exxon reported a $36 billion profit last year.
The government sent the new cleanup plan to Exxon on Thursday. If Exxon refuses to pay, the government faces a September 1 deadline to file an official claim in court.
Exxon will study the government's request but "nothing we have seen so far ... indicates that this request for further funding from Exxon is justified," company spokesman Mark Boudreax said in a statement.
Exxon agrees that there are "small pockets" of lingering oil, but those are limited to less than two-tenths of 1 percent of the Prince William Sound shoreline, Boudreax said.
"There is no scientific evidence that this oil ... could cause damage to any population or species," he said.
Trustees overseeing Exxon's previous $900 million payment still have about $145 million on hand and that money should be used for additional cleanup, he said.
But government studies done since 2001 have found that there is still oil residue left just below the surface of Alaska's beaches from the spill.
"After extensive review it is clear that populations and habitat within the oil spill area have suffered substantial and unanticipated injuries that are attributable to the Exxon Valdez oil spill," said Alaska Attorney General David Marquez.
Marquez said he was disappointed by Exxon's initial comments. "I hope they will take a long and serious look at our proposal," he said.
Crude oil from the grounded Exxon tanker spread to 1,087 miles of coastline, including the Chugach National Forest, three national parks, four national wildlife refuges and five state parks.
Oil from the spill killed about 250,000 marine birds, 2,800 sea otters, and wreaked havoc on shellfish, mussels and killer whales, according to government estimates.
Exxon is still fighting about $5 billion in punitive damages from the spill in a civil case brought by about 32,000 fishermen, Alaska natives and property owners. That case is still pending in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
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NYSE to buy Euronext for $10 billion
By Megan Davies
Reuters
June 2, 2006
NEW YORK - NYSE Group Inc. struck a deal to buy European bourse operator Euronext for 7.78 billion euros ($9.96 billion), beating out rival bidder Deutsche Boerse AG and putting it on track to create the first transatlantic stock exchange.
Termed a merger of equals by the pair, the new company will be called NYSE Euronext and will have U.S. headquarters in New York, international headquarters in Paris and Amsterdam and its derivatives business located in London. NYSE's CEO John Thain will be chief executive of the combined group.
Pressure has been building on stock exchanges globally to combine to cut costs and increase execution speed. But despite consolidation within Europe and the United States, there has not so far been a major deal linking exchanges in both continents.
The race kicked off earlier this year when Nasdaq Stock Market Inc., the No. 2 U.S. equities exchange, bid for the London Stock Exchange, which was rebuffed. It has since built a stake of more than 25 percent in the LSE, but under U.K. takeover rules it cannot launch a takeover bid for six months.
Under the terms of Thursday's deal, Euronext shareholders will have the right to exchange each of their shares for 0.98 NYSE Euronext shares and 21.32 euros cash. Based on Thursday's close, the deal values Euronext at 7.78 billion euros.
Euronext will also pay a previously announced extraordinary distribution of 3 euros per share.
The companies said NYSE Euronext would have a market capitalization of about 15 billion euros ($20 billion), putting it ahead of futures mart Chicago Mercantile Exchange Holdings Inc., currently the U.S.'s biggest publicly-traded exchange valued at about $15 billion.
WHERE NEXT FOR DEUTSCHE BOERSE?
The NYSE unveiled its proposed offer for Euronext on May 22, but faced a competing cash-and-share proposal from Deutsche Boerse worth around 8.6 billion euros that day. Euronext executives favored the NYSE deal.
Deutsche Boerse was not immediately available for comment on Thursday about what its next move might be.
Jan Michiel Hessels, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Euronext, who will be chairman of the new company, said in a statement that Euronext's Supervisory and Management Boards had gone through an "extensive process of identifying the best consolidation opportunity for our shareholders, issuers, and users, and we strongly believe NYSE is the best partner."
Thain said in a statement: "A partnership with Euronext fulfills our shared vision of building a truly global marketplace with great breadth of product and geographic reach that will benefit all investors, issuers, and our shareholders and stakeholders."
Thain said earlier on Thursday at the NYSE's first annual shareholder meeting -- it became a public company in March -- that a definitive agreement with Euronext would not stop the Paris-based exchange from entertaining other offers.
He also said a deal with Euronext could take six months to complete amid regulatory hurdles and possible competition from other bids, but said regulators in the United States and France were supportive of a potential NYSE/Euronext tie-up.
In an e-mailed statement, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox said: "We are working with our counterparts in Paris and Amsterdam to establish a cooperative approach to the type of combination being proposed. We have every expectation that a transaction can take place that will benefit investors in all of the affected countries."
NYSE and Euronext said on Thursday they expect to generate pre-tax annual cost and revenue synergies of 295 million euros ($375 million) through the deal.
NYSE shares closed 4 percent higher at $62.45. Euronext rose 2.8 percent to 68.90 euros.
Earlier on Thursday, it emerged that the CEO of NYSE's arch-rival Nasdaq, Bob Greifeld, on Wednesday held a meeting with the chief executive of the LSE, Clara Furse, according to people close to the matter -- although they said that takeover talks were not on the agenda.
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French market heats up for solar power
AFP
June 1, 2006
PARIS - The market for solar water heaters in Europe grew by 18 percent in 2005 compared with 2004 measured by installed equipment, according to provisional figures published on Thursday by Tecsol, a French consultancy that monitors the solar energy market.
A total of 14 million square metres of solar panels for water heaters were operating in Europe at the end of last year, a rise of 18 percent or 1.9 million square metres over 2004.
Germany is by far the biggest market, accounting for 5.6 million square metres, although France saw the biggest year-on-year gain - an increase of 134 percent in 2005 over 2004.
Solar heaters are tanks, usually placed on roofs, that use
solar energy to heat pipes that contain water or a convective fluid whose heat is then transferred to water.
The heated water is used for baths, showers or swimming pools.
The surge in European sales coincided with a sharp rise last year in prices for fossil fuels, coupled to a boost in tax incentives in many countries for energy conservation.
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Oh, that's not right
Wealthy woman accused of swiping baby
AP
June 2, 2006
LOS ANGELES - Police say a wealthy woman kidnapped a 7-week-old baby after the infant's teenage mother refused a $6,000 offer for the child. Annette Pinkard, a 47-year-old real estate professional from the Dallas area, was being held in Texas along with her cousin, Sylvia Nunn, 53.
Authorities say the women saw the baby, Devon Calloway, with his 17-year-old mother at a store last month and offered to buy the child. Dominique Calloway said she refused their offer but let the women drive her home.
Two days later, the women returned, and when Calloway allowed them to hold Devon, they took the baby a drove off, authorities said.
Pinkard's attorney, Scottie Allen, disputed that account, saying Calloway agreed to let the boy go and even signed a form relinquishing her parental rights.
He said his client and Nunn, who lives in Compton, came across Devon's 2-year-old sister "unaccompanied and running around outside." They found the mother, went home with her to a fetid duplex and offered to adopt both children, he said.
Pinkard was "scared to death" when she learned about the kidnapping investigation while driving back to Texas with Devon, he said. He said she had planned to return to California to apply to a court for adoption.
Dominique Calloway denied allowing her baby to be taken.
"I didn't sign no papers. They lie," she said.
Pinkard and Nunn are charged with one count each of kidnapping and child stealing, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney's office. They were arrested May 24.
Los Angeles Police Detective Maria Rivas said other mothers, also black and poor, had come forward to say that Pinkard had previously tried to buy their babies.
Pinkard had been convicted of forgery in 2000, which her attorney acknowledged. Nunn's attorney said his client also has a criminal record but not an extremely serious one.
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Ark's Quantum Quirks
Ark
Signs of the Times
June 2, 2006
Probability 1/2
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Duck X-ray reveals 'alien head'
AP
Thu Jun 1, 2006
CORDELIA, Calif. - The International Bird Rescue Research Center in Cordelia plans to raise funds with an unusual duck X-ray. The bird came in with a broken wing, but when Marie Travers, assistant manager of the center, radiographed the duck, she was stunned to see a very clear image of what appeared to be the face, or head, of an extraterrestrial alien in the bird's stomach.
"Marie looked at it and all she could say was 'unbelievable,'" said Karen Benzel, public affairs director for the rescue center, which has been rescuing sick and injured birds for more than three decades.
Unfortunately, the duck died quickly and quietly of its injuries.
Initial reports from the center claimed the cause of the alien face was never determined, but Benzel said she was still awaiting results of a necropsy.
Either way, the center has come up with a way to turn its alien encounter into a fundraiser for the center. It will auction off the X-ray on eBay.
The one-of-a-kind image, which measures 17-by-14 inches, will be sold along with a certificate of authenticity. All proceeds will go toward funding the center's rehabilitation programs.
The auction begins Sunday.
Click here to see the X-ray
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For Younger Readers, Blogs Neck and Neck With Newspaper Web Sites
By Greg Sandoval
CNET News.com
June 1, 2006
Explosive college basketball coach Bobby Knight once summed up his views on journalists, and in doing so may have unintentionally explained why newspapers are struggling to deal with Internet bloggers.
"All of us learn to write in the second grade," Knight said while the coach at Indiana University, according to a 1983 story in the Washington Post. "Most of us go on to greater things."
With bloggers and newspaper Web sites attracting about equal numbers of readers in the 18-to-24 age bracket, newspapers have been trying to attract more readers from that demographic by adding blogs to their list of online offerings.
Blogs written by so-called citizen journalists are increasingly challenging newspapers for readers. According to a recent study by Forrester Research, blogs and newspaper Web sites now have the same audience share--about 17 percent--among Internet users between the ages of 18 and 24.
"Newspapers still have a larger overall audience," says Charlene Li, a Forrester analyst. "But blogs are catching up quickly."
Initially caught off guard by blogs, newspapers and old-guard news agencies are now racing to present their own. So far, the results have been mixed. While papers such as the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman are using blogs to give readers a news voice they never had before, other papers like the Washington Post are struggling with everything from charges of plagiarism in their blogs to being labeled with the word every editor dreads--boring.
Last week, the Associated Press, the century-old news agency, signed a cross-marketing deal with Technorati, a search-engine for blog postings. Technorati agreed to scan for blogs that include links to AP stories. The search engine will then create a Web page where it will display the blogs in addition to original AP stories.
The deal follows similar agreements between Technorati and Washington Post Co., owner of the Washington Post and Newsweek magazine.
Also in recent weeks, the Arizona Republic, Des Moines Register and San Jose Mercury News were among a group of publishers that signed up for BlogBurst, a blog syndication service. Under the terms of the agreement, newspapers can publish any of the more than 1,500 blogs featured by the service.
The Austin (Texas) American-Statesman rounds out the newspaper's travel coverage with one of BlogBurst's travel blogs. Jim Debth, who manages the Statesman's Web site, said connecting with a paper's readers now means including their voice. Besides BlogBurst, which is operated by Austin-based Pluck, The American-Statesman also offers tools on its Web site that enable readers to create their own blogs, which can then be posted on the paper's Web site.
Since starting the latter service last September, the newspaper has seen readers create 875 blogs, which are recording about 2,500 page views a day, according to Debth. He acknowledges that the blogs have yet to attract huge audiences, but the point is to offer readers a chance to connect with likeminded folks.
"The idea behind this is to create more of a community," Debth said. "You create community and you'll increase traffic and loyalty."
Ethical stumbles, journalistic detritus
Publishing content produced by nonprofessionals comes after scores of newspapers asked their own editorial staffs to write blogs. At many publications, the results were mixed. In March, the Washington Post was heavily criticized for hiring Ben Domenech, a former Bush administration aide, to write a blog for Washingtonpost.com without doing more to check his writing credentials.
Three days after hiring Domenech, the 24-year-old resigned amid charges that he plagiarized material he had written for other publications. Domenech denied that he knowingly committed plagiarism, the Post reported.
The Los Angeles Times, meanwhile, announced recently that it was discontinuing the column and Internet blog of Michael Hiltzik, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, because he posted comments on his blog and other online sites under assumed names. The newspaper said that while Hiltzik did not commit any ethical violations or print any inaccuracies, he violated the Times' policy of writing under pseudonyms.
Another hurdle for newspapers is making sure that their blogs don't bore readers, said Patrick Williams, managing editor of the Dallas Observer, a weekly publication. He says that too often newspaper blogs are filled with leftovers from stories too long to fit in the paper that day.
"They're filled with all the news not fit for print," Williams wrote. "They're a place where writers go when reporting is just too hard. Let us pray...that blogs can go back to what they should be: teenagers and college students talking about sex and music."
Despite his distaste for news blogs, Williams says he values news and he believes that news stories are what drive the need for blogs and not the other way around.
"If I were the king of journalism, I'd force newspapers to stop publishing for a month," Williams said. "Then let's see what would happen to blogs. Facts have to be the basis of opinion at some point. And if a blogger is collecting facts, then at what point does the publication cease being a blog and become an Internet news site?"
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Brigadier catches Nine off guard
The Sydney Morning Herald
May 30, 2006
An Australian military commander has tried to ensure truth does not become a casualty of conflict in East Timor, but embarrassed a TV network in the process.
Australian commander in East Timor Brigadier Michael Slater appeared this morning in a live cross from Dili to the Nine Network's Today show, with helmeted and heavily armed Australian soldiers standing behind him.
He was pressed by Today host Jessica Rowe about whether Dili really was as safe as the Australian military claimed, given the presence of armed soldiers at his shoulder.
Pausing briefly, Brig Slater replied: "Jessica I feel quite safe, yes, but not because I've got these armed soldiers behind me that were put there by your stage manager here to make it look good."
"I don't need these guys here."
"It is not safe on the streets, as it is back home in Sydney or Brisbane - no it's not, if it was we wouldn't be here. But things are getting better every day."
Rowe apologised, saying she didn't realise the guards had been placed specifically for the interview.
But Rowe ran into more trouble when she persisted with her line of questioning, and referred to footage of looting and violence.
Brig Slater told her the pictures were a "couple of days old".
TV rival the Seven Network gleefully circulated grabs of the interview this morning, enjoying an element of revenge after Nine's taunting over its exclusive interview with the Beaconsfield mine survivors.
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Saturn's Moon Did Cosmic Flop
By Robert Roy Britt
Space.com
31 May 2006
Saturn's moon Enceladus might have rolled over on its side sometime in the past, a suggestion that would account for a strange finding made by the Cassini spacecraft.
The moon has a hot spot at its south pole, an area of low density where water vapor shoots into space, Cassini discovered. Heat from within is likely created by the varying tugs of Saturn's gravity as Enceladus' distance from the giant planet changes during the course of its orbit.
But why is there a hot spot only at the south pole?
"When we saw the Cassini results, we were surprised that this hot spot was located at the pole," said Francis Nimmo of the University of California, Santa Cruz. "So we set out to explain how it could end up at the pole if it didn't start there."
Remember Weebles? They wobble but the don't fall down? A similar imbalance seems to have caused Enceladus' cosmic flop, but with a twist.
in the June 1 issue of the journal Nature, Nimmo and colleagues explain that hot material from within Enceladus welled up in one location. Hot material expands and is less dense.
Like all rotating bodies, the moon would be more stable if low-density areas were at the poles and regions of high density were at the equator. So the moon reoriented itself in that manner, the thinking goes.
There is a way to possibly confirm that the moon flipped. Its former leading hemisphere should have had more impact craters than the trailing hemisphere. If it flipped 90 degrees, the pattern of craters now present would reveal as much.
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AOL suffering e-mail glitch
By Greg Sandoval
CNET News.com
June 1, 2006
AOL e-mail users were prevented from sending or receiving most of their e-mail for at least three hours Thursday morning, the online portal said.
"An e-mail software issue started to cause delays in the sending and receiving of AOL e-mails for our members and AOL.com users, said company spokesman Nicholas Graham. "We are in the process of implementing a fix and investigating its cause."
Graham said all the e-mail will eventually be delivered once the glitch is corrected. Meanwhile, some users will receive messages intermittently. However, Graham couldn't say when the software problem might be completely fixed.
"We're working hard on it right now," he said.
E-mail has been a source of public relations setbacks for AOL over the past few months. In April, the company was accused of blocking e-mail in an attempt to thwart the circulation of a petition against the company's certified e-mail program. The company blamed the blockage of e-mail on a glitch.
Opponents of the program, which requires marketers to pay to ensure delivery of e-mail messages, argue that the payment is an "e-mail tax." AOL has said that the service helps prevent spam.
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Virus cruise passengers speak of 'holiday from hell'
The Daily Mail
2nd June 2006
More than 1,700 Britons got off a cruise ship today after "a holiday from hell" saw some passengers stuck in their cabin with a virus.
The Sea Princess, part of the Princess Cruises fleet, left Southampton for a seven-night European tour last Saturday.
A virus affected about 200 passengers and the ship was forced to cancel its planned visit to Lisbon.
The vessel docked in her home port of Southampton, Hampshire, this morning, one day ahead of schedule.
Passenger Philip Wilson, 50, said: "It was a holiday from hell. That's not even describing it. It was worse than that."
Mr Wilson, his wife Suzanne, 44, 15-year-old daughter Emily and 12-year-old son James all went down with suspected norovirus.
Mr Wilson, from Radstock, near Bath, said the ship's staff could not cope as many of the crew also fell ill.
"It was just a nightmare," he said.
"The World Health Organisation recommend 48-hour isolation but they released me after 24 hours and told me to go back into circulation.
"My wife then went down with it after 24 hours and they isolated her for 48 hours. They told me they didn't think it was serious at first to keep us isolated for 48 hours."
He added: "The ship became under-staffed. It was obvious crew members were sick. Our cabin steward was sick, the nurse admitted she was sick.
"It was quite obvious that they just couldn't cope with the situation at all and that's what forced them to make the decision to come back early."
Mr Wilson said: "They never told any passengers that they had norovirus on the previous cruise.
"The captain then told everyone. He said 'We tried to disinfect the ship in Southampton and obviously we didn't do a good enough job'. He said that over the Tannoy to all the passengers."
Mr Wilson said: "How would you feel if you had paid £2,000 for a cruise and spent seven days in a cabin with very limited food and drink? "It was like being in a prison cell, except prisoners get treated better."
He said he wanted a full refund for the cruise but Carnival has offered all passengers a refund of 30% off the cruise fare and a £150 per person voucher towards a future cruise with Princess.
A spokeswoman for parent company Carnival UK said passengers suffered from acute gastroenteritis, with the illness strongly suspected to be the highly-contagious norovirus.
They were told to stay in their cabins to avoid further spread of the illness. Eight people were still affected by the virus.
The ship will be disinfected over the next 30 hours and Sea Princess will sail as scheduled on her next cruise departing Southampton tomorrow at 5pm, Carnival said.
A Carnival spokeswoman said: "We brought the ship in 24 hours early so we could sanitise the ship and eradicate the illness to stop the spread to future passengers."
In a statement, the company added: "The number of cases increased during the early part of the cruise. However, due to our extensive disinfection efforts during the sailing, the case numbers have dramatically decreased."
Passengers were being helped with their onward travel arrangements and a customer services team was at the terminal.
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The penguins made me do it
Police: 7 killed in Indianapolis home
By CHARLES WILSON
Associated Press
June 2, 2006
INDIANAPOLIS - Seven family members, including three children, were shot to death in their home on the city's east side, and police said Friday they were seeking two suspects.
The children, ages 5, 8 and 11, were found in a bed late Thursday, while the adults were found throughout the home, police said.
Indianapolis Police Chief Michael Spears said authorities were seeking Desmond Turner, 28, of Indianapolis, for questioning. Another suspect who was not identified also was being sought.
Deputy Chief Tim Foley said Turner had a history of arrests on charges including assault with bodily fluids and had served more than a year for a gun violation.
Police identified the adult victims as Emma Valdez, 46; her husband, Alberto Covarrubias, 56; Flora Alderran, 22, Valdez' daughter; and Magno Aldarran, 29, Flora's husband.
The children were identified as Luis Aldarran, 5, Flora Alderran's son; and Alberto Covarrubias, 11, and David Covarrubias, 8 or 9.
Officers were called to the home in a residential neighborhood near the Indiana Women's Prison about 10 p.m. when someone reported shots being fired. Officers arrived to find a young woman screaming that her mother had been shot, police Sgt. Steve Staletovich said.
Dozens of police officers blocked off streets in the neighborhood Thursday and were talking to the numerous residents who were watching from nearby yards in a steady rain. A wind chime hung in one window and an iron security door stood open as officers passed in and out.
Police continued to canvass the neighborhood Friday morning.
"We haven't seen anything like this in Indianapolis in recent memory," Deputy Mayor Steve Campbell said. "The IPD folks are saying you have to go back 20, 30 years to find anything like this."
Police said they did not believe the slayings were random but would not discuss a possible motive. They said there was no history of police runs to the home apart from one to check on an alarm.
Foley said it appeared the weapon used was an assault rifle but said it was not necessarily an automatic weapon. There was no indication the slayings were gang-related, he said.
Evan Lewis, whose mother lives next door to the shooting scene, said he was visiting friends who live on the block and went outside when he heard screaming.
Neighbors said the area had declined in recent years and that drug crimes and muggings had become common.
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Four Pakistani soldiers die in suicide car-bombing
AFP
Fri June 2, 2006
MIRANSHAH, Pakistan - Four Pakistani soldiers were killed and eight wounded in a suicide car-bombing in a troubled tribal region near the Afghan border, officials said.
Two militants also died in the blast targeting two military vehicles from a convoy which had stopped to deal with mechanical problems in the tribal North Waziristan region.
"It was a suicide attack," a security official said.
The injured soldiers have been taken to a military hospital nearby, he said.
Pakistan has deployed 80,000 troops on its porous border with Afghanistan to hunt militants who sneaked into tribal regions after Afghanistan's Taliban regime was toppled by US-led forces in late 2001.
Friday's attack at Bacca Khel village was the second suicide bombing in the area within a week.
On Sunday a soldier and a policeman were killed and three paramilitary soldiers were injured when a car exploded at a checkpoint, officials said.
The lone occupant of the vehicle also died in the blast in Datta Khel, 24 kilometers (15 miles) west of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan.
A man claiming to be a spokesman for pro-Taliban militants in the region said it was a suicide attack and threatened further violence against troops in the region.
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Man Shot During London Anti-Terror Raid
By JENNIFER QUINN
Associated Press
Jun 02, 2006
LONDON - Police shot a man during a raid in east London early Friday and later arrested him on suspicion of terrorism.
Neighbors said police quietly swooped down on a racially mixed neighborhood before dawn and surrounded the home of a man, his wife and their four teenage children. They described seeing a man wearing a bloodstained T-shirt being carried out of the house.
Metropolitan Police said the wounded man is suspected of instigating, preparing, and committing terrorist acts. Another man was arrested in the raid but police did not say on what grounds.
The terror suspect was taken to a hospital, but his injuries were not life-threatening, police said. Two other people in the house during the raid were treated at the hospital and released. It was not clear what they were treated for.
"An examination of the officers' firearms confirms that a single shot was discharged in circumstances which are currently under investigation," said Deborah Glass of the Independent Police Complaints Commission. She declined to say whether the shooting victim had been armed.
Dimple Hirani, 21, who lives nearby, said she saw "loads of police and loads of vans." The police had special uniforms, gloves and equipment, she said.
Police said raid came after consultations with biochemical experts.
Shopkeeper Salim Mala, 42, said the streets were sealed off when he arrived for work and plain-clothes police and officers wearing protective suits were combing the area.
He described the residents as a mixture of Bengalis, Pakistanis, eastern Europeans and Britons.
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Dog handler convicted of Abu Ghraib abuse
By DAVID DISHNEAU
Associated Press
Fri June 2, 2006
FORT MEADE, Md. - The abuse of Abu Ghraib prisoners undermines U.S. efforts to bring democracy to Iraq, an Army prosecutor told a military jury tasked with sentencing a dog handler for using his animal to torment a detainee.
Army Sgt. Santos A. Cardona was convicted Thursday of dereliction of duty and aggravated assault for allowing his Belgian shepherd to bark within inches of a prisoner's face. Sentencing deliberations were scheduled to resume Friday.
Cardona became the 11th soldier convicted of crimes stemming from the abuse of inmates at the prison in late 2003 and early 2004. He faces a maximum penalty of 3 1/2 years in prison, a dishonorable discharge and forfeiture of all pay and allowances.
During a two-hour sentencing hearing Thursday, prosecutor Maj. Matthew Miller recommended confinement of 12 months and a bad conduct discharge. Cardona's military lawyer, Capt. Kirsten M. Mayer, asked for no prison time and a return to duty.
Miller said abuse of prisoners hurts the war on terrorism by damaging America's image.
"You can win all kinds of battles and end up losing the whole dang war basically for boneheaded decisions and misjudgments," he told the jury.
But Mayer said Miller was exaggerating.
"What we have here is a soldier who let his dog get too close to a detainee, and the dog barked," she told the panel.
Cardona was acquitted of other serious charges he faced, including unlawfully having his dog bite a detainee, conspiring with another dog handler to frighten prisoners into soiling themselves and lying to investigators about the alleged game.
He was convicted of allowing his dog to bark within inches of the face of a kneeling detainee, Kamel Miza'l Nayil, in December 2003 at the request of another soldier who wasn't an interrogator.
Prosecutors portrayed Cardona as part of a small group of corrupt soldiers who enjoyed tormenting prisoners.
But Cardona's civilian defense lawyer, Harvey J. Volzer, said his client did what his training and senior officers demanded: protect fellow soldiers and scare inmates.
Although none of the offenses was alleged to have occurred during interrogations, Cardona's defense team focused on interrogation policies, including three memos issued in a month's time by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, then commander of U.S. forces in Iraq.
The memos authorized harsher interrogation techniques such as stress positions, sleep deprivation and dogs at Abu Ghraib - but only with written authorization.
The changing policies confounded Col. Thomas M. Pappas, an intelligence officer who assumed the prison's management in late 2003. Pappas was reprimanded last year for approving a request to use dogs in an interrogation without Sanchez' approval - something Pappas testified he believed at the time the policy allowed.
"We were all confused at one time or another," Pappas testified.
Comment: And what was Cardona's sentence? He was demoted and ordered to perform 90 days of hard labor.
Justice will not be done until the leaders in the White House and Pentagon are brought to justice for ordering the abuse.
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At least 11 killed in new Somalia fighting as elders press truce
by Ali Musa Abdi
AFP
Fri Jun 2, 2006
MOGADISHU - At least 11 people were killed and dozens wounded as fighters with a US-backed warlord alliance battled suspected Islamic gunmen outside the lawless Somali capital, witnesses said.
As elders pressed for a truce in Mogadishu, alliance members attacked a group believed to have defected to the Islamists in Balad, about 30 kilometers (19 miles) north of the city, where clashes erupted on Thursday, they said.
Residents said the fighting involved gunmen loyal to warlord Musa Sudi Yalahow, a leading member of the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT) and those of a former ally-turned-rival, Moalim Ashi.
"The alliance killed nine rival fighters belonging to Ashi and lost two," said one resident, who saw the engagement unfold but declined to give his name for security concerns.
The new fatalities brought to at least 89 the death toll from the latest round of fighting between the two sides that began last week and have seen the Islamists make steady gains in territory.
Gunmen loyal to Mogadishu's 11 Islamic courts have moved into Balad over the past several days to cut off the alliance's key supply route to the town of Jowhar, about 90 kilometers (55 miles) north of the capital.
Mogadishu proper was tense but relatively calm on Friday, although the two sides were reinforcing positions even as elders scurried to secure an elusive ceasefire.
"We are contacting both sides involved in the conflict and they say they want peace, but to the contrary, the commanders are preparing themselves for war," said mediator Ali Hassan.
"If this dangerous trend continues, Mogadishu will be very bad and the situation will get out of control," he told AFP.
Witnesses said the factions deployed hundreds of reinforcements and scores of machine gun-mounted pick-ups in volatile areas in and around northern and southern Mogadishu, where the most intense violence has been centered.
And, there were fears that Muslim calls for mass anti-alliance and anti-US demonstrations after Friday's prayers could spark fresh clashes, they said.
The new fatalities in Balad brought the death toll from three months of battles to 327 with more than 1,500 wounded, many of them civilians, and on Friday the two sides traded blame for the violence.
The ARPCT was set up in February with US support to curb the growing influence of Mogadishu's 11 Islamic courts and track down extremists and foreign fighters, including Al-Qaeda members, they are allegedly harboring.
The courts, which have declared a holy war against the alliance, deny the accusations and claim the warlords are fighting for the "enemy of Islam."
"We are loved by the community, but we are also under constant attack by uncouth elements paid by the enemy of Islam," said a senior Islamist official. But ARPCT spokesman Hussein Gutale Raghe blamed the courts for starting the fighting in a bid to impose Sharia law across the war-shattered nation.
"The Islamic court leaders who started this fighting, represent nobody in Somalia," he said. "They are funded and supported by foreign fighters. They are not spreading the message of Allah, but a message of hatred."
Somalia has been without a functioning central authority since 1991 and its largely powerless transitional government has blamed both the alliance and the United States for the fighting.
The United States denies responsibility for the clashes although it has refused to confirm or deny its support for the ARPCT.
But US officials and informed Somali sources have told AFP that Washington has given money to the ARPCT, one of several groups it is working with to curb what it says is a growing threat from radical Islamists in Somalia.
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The Clearstream net tightens around EADS informant
AFP
June 2, 2006
PARIS - Jean-Louis Gergorin, a former EADS executive and ally of the French prime minister, is under judicial investigation in the dirty tricks scandal rocking the government, sources close to the case said Friday.
A former associate of Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, the 60-year-old foreign affairs expert, who resigned last month as a vice-president of the European defence company EADS, is the first to face charges in the case.
After a late-night judicial hearing, Gergorin, who had been in custody near Paris since Tuesday, was placed under investigation - one step short of indictment - for making false accusations and forgery.
He was granted 80,000-euro bail after a judge denied a prosecution request for him to be jailed.
Gergorin has admitted that in 2004 he sent a French judge a list of alleged account-holders at the Clearstream bank of Luxembourg, sparking a complex scandal which escalated into an affair of state.
He told investigators he had acted without informing Villepin - who has been accused of seeking to exploit the lists to harm his arch-rival Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.
The Clearstream letters named a string of French businessmen and politicians including Sarakozy as having received illegal commissions from a defence contract via the bank.
The letters turned out to be bogus and Sarkozy believes he was the victim of a smear campaign ahead of the 2007 presidential elections in which he is a leading candidate.
The investigation to pin down the poison-pen at the origin of the letters has led in recent months to searches at EADS and its subsidiary Airbus, as well as at the French defence ministry and the offices of the secret services.
According to his lawyer, Gergorin refused to reveal the identity of the "secret source" who provided him with the data.
His former colleage at EADS Imad Lahoud - a computer expert widely believed to be the source in question - has been summoned for questioning by the national fraud squad DNIF on Wednesday, sources close to the case said.
Gergorin - who denies having fabricated the lists - says he initially sent them to a French judge probing illegal commissions paid in the sale of French warships to Taiwan in order to ensure they would be fully investigated.
He continued to affirm through his lawyer on Friday that he believed they could be genuine and deserved a more thorough investigation.
"This is a man who remains convinced that the Clearstream affair is a real case, and that the lists correspond to a reality," said his lawyer Paul-Albert Iweins.
The centre-right government has been badly shaken by weeks of claims and counterclaims, fuelled by judicial leaks to the media, exposing a fratricidal battle between its two top figures, Villepin and Sarkozy.
Villepin had to fight off calls for his resignation after being accused of asking a spy chief - on President Jacques Chirac's orders - to secretly check whether the claims against Sarkozy were true. Both Chirac and Villepin deny the accusation.
Retired spymaster Philippe Rondot - whose leaked testimony has implicated both the president and prime minister - was escorted by police before investigating magistrates for further questioning last week but refused to answer their questions.
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Scorchio!
By 2020, kiss the snows of Kilimanjaro goodbye
By Michael Kanellos
CNET News.com
May 23, 2006
BERKELEY, Calif.--There are a lot of projections about global warming, and almost all of them are scary.
Scientists who've studied the issue now almost unanimously agree that the ocean levels will likely rise at least a half a meter by 2100, and possibly more if current temperature trends and energy use continue, according to John Harte, professor of energy and resources at the University of California, Berkeley, speaking at the U.S.-China Symposium on Climate Change taking place at the school this week.
The half-meter rise in sea levels, caused by a 3 to 5 degree increase in average global temperature, will lead to the loss of a few small island nations and severe impacts for places like Hong Kong. More intense and longer heat waves will lead to larger death counts than those seen in Europe during the summer in the past few years, Harte predicted. Polar bears will likely die off as their habitat vanishes.
"By 2020, the snows of Kilimanjaro could be no more," he added.
And that's the good news, he pointed out. A broad consensus of scientists also believe the world will experience increased intensity of hurricanes, reduced crop yields and a rash of major fires. More data is needed on these projections, however.
Under more dire projections, tropical diseases like malaria could spread to more developed parts of the globe as temperatures climb, he added. Mass extinction of species on par with what happened prehistorically could occur as animals fail to keep pace with climate change.
Solar power and biofuels could help curb greenhouse gases and temperature increases, but some change is likely unavoidable. Carbon dioxide doesn't leave the atmosphere quickly, and swapping out current industrial technology will take time, noted Inez Fung, a researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a lab operated by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy.
The ecological chain reaction is also difficult to reverse. The melting of glaciers means darker earth, which absorbs more sunlight, which in turn accelerates the melting of the glaciers. Similarly, warming leads to less rainfall in certain regions. This can lead to forest fires and more warming carbon dioxide.
Today, carbon dioxide exists in a concentration of about 380 parts per million in the atmosphere, Fung said. The Earth's atmosphere had a carbon dioxide level of 275 parts per million prior to the industrial revolution.
If carbon dioxide levels remained constant for the century, a near impossible best case scenario, the temperature will rise about 2 degrees Celsius, said Fung. If normal consumption trends continue and substantial changes aren't made with regard to fossil fuel use, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will rise to 580 parts per million, she said. That in turn would lead to a rise in global temperatures of about 3 to 5 degrees Celsius.
Quadrupling emissions would raise temperatures in the U.S. by 6 to 10 degrees Celsius on average and create dire problems, said Steve Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley lab.
"Six to 10 degrees is the difference between the temperature today and the temperature of the deepest ice age," Chu said.
Even though solar energy is gaining momentum, and policy leaders even in China have begun to create programs to curb pollution, fossil fuels aren't going away. Several companies have already committed to building new coal plants over the next 25 years. If technology to sequester the carbon dioxide that comes out of these plants underground isn't developed, these new plants will spew 145 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere.
That's as much as humanity put into the air through coal between 1750 and 2000, said David Hawkins of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
"We can do it if we store the carbon in geologic formations," he said. "Conventional coal plants cannot effectively capture it."
While much of the global warming debate has taken place among scientists, businesses are already looking at ways to calculate the risks of rising warming, added Gary Guzy, senior vice president at Marsh USA, which advises insurers on the future risks.
"If you are about to build a hydroelectric dam, you want to think about the long-term impact on the snow pack," Guzy said.
If the sea levels rise 6 meters, possible under some models, everything south of Ft. Meyers in Florida along with the Orlando-Daytona corridor will be underwater, Guzy added.
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Wildfire destroys 4 buildings in Arizona
AP
June 2, 2006
SEDONA, Ariz. - Firefighters battled a 1,500-acre wildfire Friday that had burned at least four buildings and forced the evacuation of about 30 homes near this scenic northern Arizona town.
Investigators said early Friday that the fire appeared to have been started by sparks from the grinder of a fencing company that was working on a fence post Thursday afternoon.
U.S. Forest Service officials said the company could be held responsible for some of the cost of fighting the blaze.
Thirty homes out of about 200 in the Pine Valley subdivision near the Village of Oak Creek were evacuated because of the fire, which quickly grew from 40 acres. Some homeowners were allowed to return midmorning Friday.
"It could have been much worse," said Sedona Fire District Chief Matt Shobert. "Once it hit the forest, it took off."
Two homes, a small shed and an outbuilding burned before the fire moved into the wilderness Thursday night, Shobert said.
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Head of France's nuclear watchdog 'lied over Chernobyl fallout'
By John Lichfield in Paris
The Independent
02 June 2006
Twenty years after the explosion at the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl in the Ukraine, the legal fallout has just reached France.
Professor Pierre Pellerin, who was the head of France's nuclear safety watchdog 20 years ago, has been formally accused of deliberately concealing the seriousness of contamination of parts of the French countryside from the French people.
An investigation is continuing into the responsibilities of politicians in the alleged cover-up, including the role of Jacques Chirac, who was the prime minister. But for the time being, anti-nuclear campaigners and a group of 500 thyroid cancer sufferers are celebrating a first victory in a marathon legal campaign.
Professor Pellerin, now 82, has been placed under formal investigation for "aggravated deception", but a potentially more serious accusation of causing "involuntary bodily harm" was dropped on Wednesday.
At the time of the explosion at the Chernobyl reactor on 26 April 1986, the professor was head of the agency, attached to the Health Ministry, which reported on risks to health. As the "cloud" of contamination passed over France between 30 April and 5 May that year, Professor Pellerin issued a series of reassuring statements. He published low average findings of radiation across whole regions. Campaigners have long protested that this deliberately concealed the fact that there were pockets of contamination which suffered high rainfall as the Chernobyl cloud moved westwards.
In a four-hour interrogation by a judge on Wednesday, Professor Pellerin said that he had issued accurate and balanced information to the public. The investigation is likely to continue for several years and the case may never come to trial.
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UN says quake relief could take six months
AFP
Friday June 2, 2006
As thousands of Indonesian earthquake survivors held their first prayers since the disaster, the United Nations warned the relief effort could take up to six months.
The faithful crammed into mosques or lined up in the scorching sun for weekly prayers across the area where more than 6,200 people were killed, and many said they believed the catastrophe was a warning from God.
"We want to make peace inside by praying and being closer to God," said local merchant Iskak, 40, at a mosque in the village of Giwangan on the southern outskirts of Yogyakarta, the main city in the quake zone.
"The earthquake is because God would like to give a warning to people, that it is the fault of humankind."
In Jati-Wonokromo in hard-hit Bantul district south of the city, others prayed under makeshift canopies because their mosques had been razed in the disaster.
"I feel that my life is more valuable because my life has been given to me by God. I feel much closer to God and I can face the situation in a more peaceful way," said Sukasdi, a 51-year-old police officer.
As the call to prayer sounded across Central Java, hospitals remained overwhelmed and some survivors spent a seventh day awaiting badly needed food and medicines.
The United Nations said aid was moving more freely but that the emergency response was far from over.
"The height of the emergency phase will continue, I would expect, for another week to two weeks, and at the most be completed in a month," Charlie Higgins, the UN's area humanitarian coordinator in Java, told reporters.
The UN plan was "to continue relief in one form or another for up to six months," Higgins said.
"By the end of that six months, you could consider that we would be into the recovery process. Certainly this transition (to the recovery phase) will occur fairly quickly in this emergency."
Saturday's 6.3-magnitude quake killed at least 6,234 people, injured some 46,000 and damaged or destroyed more than 139,000 homes across large swathes of Central Java and Yogyakarta provinces.
As area hospitals spilled over with patients, Georg Petersen, the World Health Organization (WHO) country representative in Indonesia, warned that the threat of infection and disease was growing.
"The risk of infectious diseases has increased and there needs to be a surveillance system in place and a reporting system," he said.
Aid efforts were being hindered by looters, a disaster relief official said.
The official from the government's National Coordinating Board for Disaster Management said increasingly impatient Indonesians were resorting to "stupid acts" in the wake of the disaster.
"If there are trucks with only civilians guarding them, then they will stop and extort bags of rice and boxes of noodles," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
"Right now it's the people who are living near the roads who are getting all the goods. Once you go inside the villages, inside the small roads, there are places that have nothing," he said.
A semblance of normality resumed in some parts of the quake zone as shops reopened and traumatised students went back to classes.
But authorities said more than 1,200 schools had been too badly damaged to hold lessons.
"Whatever the disaster is like, education should never stop. So we're trying our best in this emergency situation to keep the schools running," said Sugito, who heads the education office for Yogyakarta province.
"The most urgent thing we have to do is deal with the trauma among teachers as well as students," he told AFP in an interview.
"We're all sad. We can't study any more," said 16-year-old Ari Katoni, one of an estimated 250,000 students without a school.
"We were supposed to have started yesterday, but it was delayed."
As nearby Mount Merapi volcano spewed lava and heat clouds for a seventh consecutive day since the quake, aid workers said authorities were ready to help villagers living on the slopes if it erupted.
"The government has most certainly not lost sight of this. It's not been forgotten at all," said the UN's Higgins.
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53 dead as early monsoon hits India
AFP
Friday June 2, 2006
The death toll from lightning strikes and powerful storms has risen to 53 as annual summer monsoon rains tore through India ahead of schedule, authorities said.
Seventeen more deaths were reported since late Thursday night in three Indian states on top of the 36 people who died earlier in the week.
Lightning killed three people while three others died overnight after gusting winds wrecked homes at Allahabad, in northern Uttar Pradesh, police spokesman Manish Awasthi told AFP in the state capital Lucknow.
Thirty-two of the deaths have been reported from Uttar Pradesh since May 18 when the monsoon hit India's Andaman archipelago and then swirled up the west coast states of Kerala, Maharashtra and Gujarat.
In Gujarat's Narmada, Dahod and Sabarkanta districts, six people were killed and four sustained burns in lightning strikes while two teenagers died in Ahmedabad as the first monsoon rains lashed the state Thursday, police said.
Gujarat alerted disaster management units to possible floods as the local meteorological department warned of heavy rains in coming days.
The Press Trust of India (PTI) reported three rain-related deaths in the southern Indian state of Kerala, where the monsoon arrived a week earlier than usual but has already left a trail of destruction.
The Kerala coastguard was searching for the second straight day Friday for two missing boats with 22 fishermen aboard, PTI said.
In Mumbai, the early monsoon caused travel chaos this week and brought back memories of last year's devastating floods that left 400 dead.
Municipal workers fanned out across the city to clear clogged drains and gutters blamed for the flooding.
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Everybody's singin "la la la lala"
Oliver Stone to make Chávez film
Reuters, Caracas
Tuesday May 23, 2006
Hugo Chávez has announced that director Oliver Stone is planning to make a film of the attempt to oust the Venezuelan president in 2002. US officials deny Mr Chávez's claim that American officials were behind the botched coup.
Oscar-winner Stone, who in 2003 directed Comandante, a documentary of his meeting with Fidel Castro, the Cuban president and Chávez ally, is teaming up with British producer John Daly, Mr Chávez said. He added that they would announce the film at the Cannes festival.
An alliance of politicians and dissident military officers took power on April 12 2002, after reports that Mr Chávez resigned when people were killed at an opposition march. He insists he never resigned, and he was put back in power on April 14.
The coup has been a theme in Mr Chávez's war of words with Washington.
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Ky. lieutenant gov. refuses to resign
By JOE BIESK
Associated Press
Thu Jun 1, 2006
Summary: Kentucky's governor, under indictment in a state hiring scandal, asked Lt. Gov. Steve Pence to resign after Pence announced he would not run for re-election with the governor next year. Pence said Thursday he had declined the request to step down.
Fletcher, Kentucky's first Republican governor since 1971, is facing misdemeanor charges alleging he broke state law by rewarding political supporters with protected state jobs after he took office in 2003. Last summer, he issued a blanket pardon for anyone in his administration who might face charges in the probe - except himself.
FRANKFORT, Ky. - Kentucky's governor, under indictment in a state hiring scandal, asked Lt. Gov. Steve Pence to resign after Pence announced he would not run for re-election with the governor next year. Pence said Thursday he had declined the request to step down.
"The lieutenant governor's office does not belong to me, nor to the governor. I temporarily occupy it," said Pence, a former U.S. attorney with a reputation as a corruption fighter. "The citizens elected me for four years to occupy that office, and my inclination is to serve my entire term."
Governor's spokesman Brett Hall said Pence had "left the door open" to run for governor after telling the governor he would not seek re-election.
"There's still honor left in this business called politics," Hall said.
Fletcher, vacationing in Florida, released a written statement Thursday, saying Pence "has his own separate agenda from this administration."
"He is entitled to that. However, any administration functions best when everyone works together," Fletcher said, insisting that he called for Pence's resignation because it is "in the best interest of Kentucky."
Pence announced Wednesday that he would leave the lieutenant governor's office after his term expires next year.
He would not say if the hiring investigation weighed in that decision, though he did say: "I believe it's held the commonwealth back more than anything on things that could have been done."
"The conversation I had with the governor is a private one and I won't get into all the details of that," Pence said. "But I did tell him that I did not have any plans at this point to run for governor or any other office. But I have to face the reality that circumstances may change."
Fletcher, Kentucky's first Republican governor since 1971, is facing misdemeanor charges alleging he broke state law by rewarding political supporters with protected state jobs after he took office in 2003. Last summer, he issued a blanket pardon for anyone in his administration who might face charges in the probe - except himself.
This is not the first time Fletcher has called for a resignation and was snubbed. Last September, Fletcher asked for the resignation of Kentucky Republican Party Chairman Darrell Brock. Brock and party leaders ignored the request.
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Educators promote weighing students
By JILL ZEMAN
Associated Press
Thu Jun 1, 2006
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - It's been two years since Arkansas schools started sending letters home to parents with their kids' report cards - letters telling them if their children were fat.
Plenty of parents weren't happy. But a lot of them did something about it.
Suddenly there were more visits to the pediatrician for talks about weight problems. Fitness class attendance is up. Diet pill use by high-schoolers is down.
And more states are following Arkansas' lead, including California, Florida and Pennsylvania, which have adopted similar programs.
Dr. Karen Young, medical director for the pediatric fitness clinic at Arkansas Children's Hospital, told of a mother upset when she got word from school that her child was overweight. The mother wanted a second opinion from Young, but in the meantime, she cut sweets from the family diet and slimmed the child down before the appointment.
"Even though she was upset with the letter and felt it was wrong, she still changed the family's lifestyle," Young said. "A lot of positive things have come out of those letters."
The letters record each child's body-mass index, the same weight-height formula used to calculate adult obesity. The first batch went out in the 2003-04 school year.
Across the state 57 percent of doctors said they had at least one parent bring in their child's letter from the school for discussion during the last school year.
Young said she's had more visits from parents seeking help for the entire family.
"I don't care what size their siblings are or their parents, everyone in the family should eat healthy and exercise," she said. "What's good for them is good for everybody."
A local TV news report on Young's clinic led Marsha Simon-Younger to enroll her 11-year-old daughter Nasirah in fitness classes. Since Nasirah joined this spring, she's felt better and is eating healthier, her mother said.
"At first, my daughter was really reluctant to go because she thought of it as a fat camp," said Simon-Younger. But once Nasirah arrived, she saw a friend from church and Girl Scouts and felt at ease.
"She has more self-esteem," and she tries different foods, the mother said. "Sometimes we might fall off the wagon, but we get right back on."
It's still a little early to see big results from the state's weigh-in program. After the first year, the percentage of overweight schoolchildren remained where it was at the start - 38 percent.
"We think probably, since there's been no change, that's probably good news," said Jim Raczynski, dean of the College of Public Health at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. "We may have stopped the increase."
And the state has found that most parents and children are comfortable with the weigh-in program - 71 percent of parents and 61 percent of adolescents, according to a survey.
"Once they realized we didn't hand (the letters) to kids to wave around the schoolyard ... a lot of the original concerns were alleviated," said Gov. Mike Huckabee, who has championed healthy diets after dropping more than 100 pounds himself. "This was not an invasive procedure where a child is asked to lift a shirt and be pinched with calipers."
Raczynski noted that only a tiny percentage of parents - 6 percent - have put their overweight children on diets that aren't medically supervised.
Schools are reacting, too. Following state Board of Education guidelines, schools in the last two years have banned using food as a reward, are offering more fruits and vegetables on lunch menus, have removed deep fryers and increased low-fat and low-sugar drinks and snacks.
Huckabee and former President
Bill Clinton - known for his Big Mac excursions while Arkansas governor - helped announce this year that soft drink manufacturers had voluntarily agreed to remove sugary sodas from school vending machines.
Childhood obesity, Huckabee said, is "a real serious health and economic issue."
Arkansas' effort provides a scientific baseline to look for progress. Over time, "we'll honestly be able to know if this is something that has lasting value."
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Russia's Putin removes chief prosecutor
By Christian Lowe
Reuters
Fri Jun 2, 2006
MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin removed his hawkish chief prosecutor on Friday in what analysts said was a tactical victory for moderates over hardliners in a Kremlin power struggle.
Prosecutor-General Vladimir Ustinov, who played a key role in prosecuting Mikhail Khodorkovsky, billionaire founder of the YUKOS oil firm, was removed from his post by the upper house of parliament acting on a request from Putin.
Officials said Ustinov -- linked to the so-called "siloviki" hardliners -- had himself asked to be relieved of his duties but no detailed explanation was offered.
"This decision (to remove Ustinov) is technical in nature, there is no politics involved here," said Sergei Mironov, the speaker of the upper house.
But analysts linked the move to a turf war between the "siloviki" -- a group of officials with security or military backgrounds who favor tough central rule -- and a more liberal faction led by First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.
"(Ustinov's removal) is the latest skirmish in the battle inside Putin's entourage," said analyst Stanislav Belkovsky. "In this case Medvedev has delivered a serious blow (to the rival faction)."
The rivalry between the factions has intensified because Putin, limited by law to two terms, has to step down in 2008. The factions are competing to have their candidate anointed as Putin's heir apparent, say the analysts.
Ustinov, a 53-year-old who squeezes his burly frame into a bright blue prosecutor's uniform, became a household name in Russia when his office oversaw Khodorkovsky's prosecution on fraud and tax evasion charges.
Once Russia's richest man, the tycoon is serving eight years in a Siberian prison.
The campaign against Khordokovsky and his company alarmed markets and prompted concerns that the Kremlin was using the judicial system to bring down its opponents.
POSSIBLE REPLACEMENTS
Russian news agencies floated two names as possible successors to Ustinov -- Dmitry Kozak and Alexander Konovalov.
A tough-talking former Kremlin chief of staff close to Putin, Kozak is in charge of bringing order to the violent North Caucasus region. Konovalov, a former prosecutor, is Putin's envoy to the Volga region.
Other analysts linked Ustinov's departure to a drive by Putin to clamp down on corruption.
Putin told his subordinates in a speech last month they had to redouble their efforts to stamp out graft. The prosecutor's office, which initiates prosecutions, is likely to play a central role in any anti-corruption campaign.
Several senior officials in Ustinov's office were sacked in a purge of law enforcement agencies two days after Putin's speech.
Ustinov's son is married to the daughter of Igor Sechin, Putin's deputy chief of staff who is seen by many observers as the leader of the "siloviki" faction.
Ustinov served as chief prosecutor for over six years -- as long as Putin has been in power. Last year the upper house voted him another five years in office on Putin's recommendation.
Ustinov's tough rhetoric on crime and corruption has drawn protests from human rights groups.
After the September 2004 Beslan hostage siege in which 330 people died -- half of them children -- he said that in future Russian forces could put pressure on hostage-takers by seizing their relatives.
Russian financial markets were unchanged on the news of Ustinov's departure.
The move does not mean a change in policy or a softening of the Kremlin's tough line on law and order, Russian news agencies quoted Kremlin officials as saying.
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Peru set for polls that could return unpopular former leader
Dan Glaister
Friday June 2, 2006
The Guardian
· Surge in support puts García well ahead
· Critics accuse Venezuelan president of meddling
Peruvians will go to the polls this weekend for a back-to-the-future election that could see an unpopular former president swept into office.
Alan García, who led the country during a turbulent five years in the 1980s, is ahead in the polls with surveys predicting a winning margin of between 4 and 20 percentage points.
But for many in the Andean nation the key to his remarkable rehabilitation is not the greater unpopularity of his opponent - former army officer Ollanta Humala. Instead it is the shadow of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez who has provoked outrage among many for provocatively interfering in the run up to Sunday's poll.
Peru set for polls that could return unpopular former leader
· Surge in support puts García well ahead
· Critics accuse Venezuelan president of meddling
Dan Glaister
Friday June 2, 2006
The Guardian
Peruvians will go to the polls this weekend for a back-to-the-future election that could see an unpopular former president swept into office.
Alan García, who led the country during a turbulent five years in the 1980s, is ahead in the polls with surveys predicting a winning margin of between 4 and 20 percentage points.
But for many in the Andean nation the key to his remarkable rehabilitation is not the greater unpopularity of his opponent - former army officer Ollanta Humala. Instead it is the shadow of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez who has provoked outrage among many for provocatively interfering in the run up to Sunday's poll.
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This week he labelled the country's sitting president, Alejandro Toledo, a "cry baby". The charge came after Toledo had called on the Organisation of American States to curb Chávez's meddling in the election. Both countries have already recalled their respective ambassadors in a diplomatic spat.
Mr Chávez has also described Mr García as a thief, while extolling the virtues of his opponent.
That support however has only appeared to benefit Mr Garcia. He has gained 20 points in the past month.
Mr García, a charismatic leader dubbed "Latin America's Kennedy", was elected president in 1985 at the age of 35. Within two years his presidency was mired in hyperinflation, a failing economy and a potent guerrilla movement. In 1992, two years after leaving office, he went into exile for nine years in France and Colombia, before returning to stand again for president, narrowly losing to Mr Toledo.
Mr García has a dreadful reputation in Peru, the legacy of his mismanagement of the country earning him a 61% disapproval rating with today's voters. But, as he himself noted in a recent interview, he is the "least worst" choice of the two candidates. "Fifteen per cent of the electorate will go to vote holding its nose," he said this week. He has promised he has learned from his errors and become more mature.
Mr Humala, meanwhile, represents a leap into the unknown. Like presidents Chávez and Evo Morales in Bolivia he has strong support among the country's rural poor: 50% of Peru's population of 27.2 million live on less than $2 per day. But Mr Humala grew up in a middle-class neighbourhood, and hails from a family with a history of political involvement. His father espoused "etnocacerismo", a dogma that exhorts the nation's "copper-skinned" natives to rise up against the white elite; his mother called for homosexuals to be shot; his brother led an armed takeover of a police station last year. But Mr Humala has been able to capitalise on his status as a man of the people and a political outsider and in the first round of voting finished ahead, with 30.6% of the vote.
While Mr Humala and Mr García agree on the need to reform the country's energy sector - including, like Mr Morales, renegotiating contracts with foreign companies - they disagree over much more: state control of the economy, education reform, poverty, particularly in the south, and a surge in kidnappings.
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Women gaining on men in advanced fields
By BEN FELLER
AP Education Writer
Thu Jun 1, 2006
WASHINGTON - Women now earn the majority of diplomas in fields men used to dominate - from biology to business - and have caught up in pursuit of law, medicine and other advanced degrees.
Even with such enormous gains over the past 25 years, women are paid less than men in comparable jobs and lag in landing top positions on college campuses.
Federal statistics released Thursday show that in many ways, the gender gap among college students is widening. The story is largely one of progress for women, stagnation for men.
Women earn the majority of bachelor's degrees in business, biological sciences, social sciences and history. The same is true for traditional strongholds such as education and psychology.
In undergraduate and graduate disciplines where women trail men, they are gaining ground, earning larger numbers of degrees in math, physical sciences and agriculture.
"Women are going in directions that maybe their mothers or grandmothers never even thought about going," said Avis Jones-DeWeever, who oversees education policy for the Institute of Women's Policy Research.
"We're teaching girls that they need to be able to explore every opportunity that they are interested in. It's good to see that is happening," she said.
The findings were part of a 379-page report, "The Condition of Education," a yearly compilation of statistics that give a picture of academic trends.
Women now account for about half the enrollment in professional programs such as law, medicine and optometry. That is up from 22 percent a generation ago.
The number of women enrolled in undergraduate classes has grown more than twice as fast as it has for men. Women outnumber men on campus by at least 2 million, and the gap is growing.
In business, by far the most popular degree field among undergraduates, women earn slightly more than half of all bachelor degrees; it was one-third in 1980.
"You have a large number of women in the administrative work force, and in the past, they were never able to be the managers and the vice presidents," said Claire Van Ummersen of the American Council on Education. "Now they have those opportunities, and they are taking advantage of them. They can be something other than an administrative assistant."
The U.S. population is 51 percent female, the same as it was three decade ago. Yet legal and cultural barriers have fallen during that time, creating opportunities for women, experts say.
Women also have become savvy about boosting their income for themselves and their families by recognizing the value of advanced degrees, Jones-DeWeever said.
Women who work full time earn about 76 percent as much as men, according to the Institute of Women's Policy Research. Women are underrepresented in full-time faculty jobs, particularly in fields such as physical sciences, engineering and math.
"We clearly have a long way to go," said Van Ummersen, vice president for the council's Center for Effective Leadership. She said some universities are replacing retiring professors, giving women a chance to move into tenured positions.
The enrollment of men in professional degree programs is declining.
"There's every reason to celebrate the success of women. And one has to be concerned about what's happening with men," said Russ Whitehurst, director of the Institute of Education Sciences, a research arm of the Education Department.
Researchers say that men, for different reasons, are not enrolling in or completing college programs with the same urgency as women.
One reason is a failure by schools to teach boys well at en early age, leading to frustration by high school. A second is a recognition by young men that they can land, if only temporarily, some decent-paying jobs without a college degree.
Boys need to have their aspirations raised just as girls have, said Tom Mortenson, senior scholar for The Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education. By middle school, he said, many boys are tuning out and the problem is only getting worse.
"Women have been making educational progress, and the men are stuck," he said. "They haven't just fallen behind women. They have fallen behind changes in the job market."
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Crashing the Wiretapper's Ball
By Thomas Greene
Wired News
Jun, 01, 2006
CRYSTAL CITY, Virginia -- The dingy hotel corridor was populated with suits, milling about and radiating airs of defensive hostility. They moved in close-knit groups, rounding a stranger or a rival group conspicuously, the way cats do. They spoke in whispers. They glanced nervously over their shoulders as they took calls on their cell phones, then darted swiftly into alcoves.
They were government officials, telephone company honchos, military officers, three-letter-agency spooks and cops, all brought together by salesmen dealing in the modern equipment of surveillance. It was my job to learn what they were up to.
They'd gathered for the ISS World Conference, a trade show featuring the latest in mass communications intercept gear, held in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Crystal City, Virginia. Situated conveniently between Reagan National Airport and the Pentagon, Crystal City is an artificial place dominated by conference centers and hotels, set up to accommodate the endless, and often secret, intercourse between the U.S. military and its myriad itinerant contractors, lobbyists, consultants and trainers. They rotate in and out, civilians using the airport, military personnel taking the subway from the Pentagon, with Crystal City as the intersection in a figure-eight circuit of constant activity.
Back in the narrow hotel corridor, vendors manned their booths, exhibiting the latest gadgets for mass electronic surveillance: machines capable of scouring the data streams of millions of subscribers -- industrial-strength kits for packet interception and analysis, RF interception, and voice and keyword recognition.
These devices are a bonanza for the communications hardware industry, vouchsafed by the U.S. Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act of 1994, or CALEA, which mandates that all new telephone company gear must be wiretap-friendly, or "CALEA compliant," according to the popular euphemism. This has led to a seller's market with equipment makers pushing their dual-use kits with exceptional confidence. The sales pitch has evolved beyond the traditional points of reliability, scalability, total cost of ownership and ease of deployment to exploit the hard-sell undercurrents of mass-scale commerce that's mandated by law and funded by taxpayers who are powerless to review the deals and evaluate their various costs and benefits to society.
While U.S. telephone companies are well accustomed to CALEA requirements (designed originally to make mobile phone networks as wiretap-friendly as land-line systems), the Federal Communications Commission has declared itself competent to expand the act to cover voice over internet protocol outfits and internet service providers as well. This expansion has been challenged in federal court, and the conflict has boiled down to a simple phrase in the law, exempting providers of "information services" (as opposed to communications services) from CALEA obligations. The Department of Justice, ever eager for opportunities to plug law enforcement into the internet at the most basic levels, claims that ISPs, like telephone companies, are communications services, on grounds that instant messaging, VOIP and e-mail constitute a significant replacement for traditional telecommunications.
The FCC is in complete agreement with the Justice Department, and has issued its demand for compliance by May 14, 2007. The case, currently on appeal, is pending in a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., where, comically, one judge characterized the FCC's legal arguments as "gobbledygook." Thus it's possible that only VOIP services that use the public switched telephone network will be covered by the CALEA, leaving peer-to-peer VOIP outfits and ISPs in the clear. A decision should arrive in a few months' time.
Despite this uncertainty, ISPs (and universities) have become new sales targets for the surveillance equipment industry -- fresh leads, so to speak -- and the hustle is uniform and loud: "CALEA is coming, and you'd better be ready."
In the conference rooms, salesmen pitched their solutions for "lawful interception." In attendance were the generally responsible representatives of North American and Western European government and law enforcement, but also numerous representatives of naked state control in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. The phrase "lawful interception" might have meaning in the United States, Canada and Europe, but this was the ISS world conference, after all, with attendees from more than 30 countries.
Narus was there, maker of the kit fingered by Mark Klein and allegedly used with impunity by the National Security Agency at numerous AT&T facilities for mass, domestic internet surveillance, and, the company boasts, used by Shanghai Telecom "to block 'unauthorized' internet calls."
There were European heavyweights like Ericsson and Siemens, American giants like Raytheon and light-heavyweights like VeriSign and Agilent, along with a vast host of leaner, more specialized, surveillance outfits such as Verint, Narus and the like. They offered equipment and services capable of every manner of radio frequency and packet interception, with user interfaces and database structures designed to manage and deliver not just information but "actionable data," properly organized and formatted for easy prosecutions.
Certain conference sessions, according to the schedule, were "open to sworn law enforcement agents only." But there was no discrimination between the more punctilious law enforcement agencies of democratic nations and those hailing from quarters where darker practices are commonplace.
The last thing anyone involved wanted was publicity. Unfortunately, I had a job to do, although it would be difficult; the press had been strenuously dis-invited, and Wired News' efforts to get credentialed for the event firmly rebuffed. I spent my first day lurking in public areas of the hotel. In the lobby, two nattily dressed men with Caribbean accents were being hustled by an American salesman. The Caribbean fellows stiffened upon my approach, and warily lowered their voices. I buried my nose in the paper and listened.
I could hear little of what the two potential customers said, but the salesman, God bless him, was a loudmouth, and I was able to piece together parts of the conversation from his various announcements. It seemed elements of the deal that he was attempting to close were challenging. This may have had to do with his customers' qualifications to take delivery of surveillance equipment, perhaps because they weren't legitimate government representatives, or the government that employed them was subject to U.S. export restrictions. I never learned the exact problem with getting the equipment into the customers' hands, but it was obvious that there was one.
The salesman concluded with a hearty recap. "I'm glad we had the chance to meet in person; this is not a conversation I'd want to have on the phone, for obvious reasons," he roared. Everyone laughed heartily.
Later, at the bar, I sat beside three Americans: two cops and a civilian police employee. They bitched about how difficult RF interception is, how the equipment is complicated and its user interfaces mysterious, and the difficulty of getting adequate funds and properly trained personnel to carry out surveillance effectively.
Grant money is to be avoided, they agreed. It's got strings attached -- strings like performance milestones and complicated reporting demands. And on top of that, there's such an assload of damned frequencies, and it's such a trial just to get the kit dialed in. You can waste hours listening to TV instead of the subject's cell phone. But all the brass understands is hard evidence leading to arrests, they whined.
This was suggestive stuff, but it's not what I came for. On day two, it was time to make a move. I went to the registration booth and requested a pass and a press fee waiver. "The conference isn't open to the press," a receptionist explained with a fluty tone of voice and an android smile. A uniformed security guard took a step closer, for emphasis.
I withdrew, bloodied but unbowed.
In the bar that night, things got interesting. A group of men associated with the Pen-Link and Lincoln electronic surveillance systems came in. I exchanged small talk with them for a bit, then moved to their table. Although I had identified myself as a journalist, an enthusiastic reseller of the equipment decided to hold forth. We drank a great deal, so I won't name him.
"I'm not much concerned about wiretaps in America and Europe," I'd been saying to one of the Pen-Link engineers, "but I wonder if it bothers you to consider what this technology can do in the hands of repressive governments with no judicial oversight, no independent legislature."
Our man interrupted. "You need to educate yourself," he said with a sneer. "I mean, that's a classic journalist's question, but why are you hassling these guys? They're engineers. They make a product. They don't sell it. What the hell is it to them what anyone does with it?"
"Well, it's quite an issue," I said. "This is the equipment of totalitarianism, and the only things that can keep a population safe are decent law and proper oversight. I want to know what they think when they learn that China, or Syria, or Zimbabwe is getting their hands on it."
"You really need to educate yourself," he insisted. "Do you think this stuff doesn't happen in the West? Let me tell you something. I sell this equipment all over the world, especially in the Middle East. I deal with buyers from Qatar, and I get more concern about proper legal procedure from them than I get in the USA."
"Well, perhaps the Qataris are conscientious," I said, "and I'm prepared to take your word on that, but there are seriously oppressive governments out there itching to get hold of this stuff."
He sneered again. "Do you think for a minute that Bush would let legal issues stop him from doing surveillance? He's got to prevent a terrorist attack that everyone knows is coming. He'll do absolutely anything he thinks is going to work. And so would you. So why are you bothering these guys?"
"It's a valid question," I insisted. "This is powerful stuff. In the wrong hands, it could ruin political opponents; it could make the state's power impossible to challenge. The state would know basically everything. People would be getting rounded up for thought crimes."
"You're not listening," he said. "The NSA is using this stuff. The DEA, the Secret Service, the CIA. Are you kidding me? They don't answer to you. They do whatever the hell they want with it. Are you really that naïve? Now leave these guys alone; they make a product, that's all. It's nothing to them what happens afterward. You really need to educate yourself."
On day three, the last day of the conference, I had nothing left to gain from working the periphery, hence nothing to lose from being tossed out, so I strolled past the android and the uniformed guard. No one challenged me. I chatted with vendors. I grabbed brochures from their tables and handouts in the conference rooms. I hung out on the veranda and smoked with fellow tobacco addicts.
The best conversation I had was with Robert van Bosbeek of the Dutch National Police. I asked him if he was tempted to buy anything.
"Not really," he said with a laugh. "But it's always good to see what's on offer. Basically, we're three or four years ahead of all this."
He said that in the Netherlands, communications intercept capabilities are advanced and well established, and yet, in practice, less problematic than in many other countries. "Our legal system is more transparent," he said, "so we can do what we need to do without controversy. Transparency makes law enforcement easier, not more difficult."
By noon on day three, the conference had wound down. The final thing I needed was the forbidden packet, with its CD of the slides from the presentations. I would have it in spite of the android. Indeed, because of the android.
I waited in the lobby. A group of Koreans came down the stairs. I know this because they spoke Korean, and few outsiders speak it. It's not a popular language, like French or English.
As it happens, I can speak it a little. Most Koreans are charmed by foreigners who can mutter even a few words of their mother tongue, so I chatted for a bit, and asked if I might copy the conference CD onto my notebook computer. They were happy to oblige.
Naturally, this forbidden object contained nothing that could justify keeping it from a journalist. There were no stunning revelations about new intercept equipment designs, capabilities or techniques. Making it unavailable was just another expression of the conference director's small-minded attitude of hostility toward the press.
An attendee told me that during one presentation, a discussion arose about whether the press should be invited to future ISS conferences. Some of those present believed that secrecy only leads to speculation, which is usually worse for trade than the facts. Others believed that reporters are too ignorant to write competently about the secret intercourse between big business and law enforcement, and should be told as little as possible in hopes that they'll have nothing to write. Judging by my own experiences, it was clear that the second line of reasoning had prevailed.
But it's foolish to be secretive: A determined reporter can't be thwarted, and it's better that one should have more rather than less information to work with.
It's ironic that spooks so often remind us that we've got nothing to fear from their activities if we've got nothing nasty to hide, while they themselves are rarely comfortable without multiple layers of secrecy, anonymity and plausible deniability. While there was little or nothing at the conference worth keeping secret, the sense of paranoia was constant. The uniformed guard posted to the entrance was there to intimidate, not to protect. The restrictions on civilians attending the law enforcement agency sessions were, I gather, a cheap marketing gesture to justify their $6,500-per-head entrance fee with suggestions of secret information that the average network-savvy geek wouldn't have known.
In the end, all this surveillance gear and attendant hype becomes meaningless with simple precautions like encrypted VOIP, a good implementation of virtual private networks, and proxies and SSH for web surfing, IM, internet relay chat, webmail and the like. Skype's VOIP service is encrypted but closed-source. Still, there's SpeakFreely, a peer-to-peer, open-source VOIP app; Zfone, an open-source VOIP crypto plug-in from PGP honcho Phil Zimmermann; Invisible IRC, an open-source IRC proxy implementation that includes anonymization and encryption features, plus other dodges too numerous to mention.
The popular law enforcement myth is that crooks are getting ever more sophisticated in their use of modern technology, so the police have got to acquire more "sophisticated" point-and-drool equipment to catch them. We find versions of this incantation in virtually every Justice Department press release or speech related to CALEA. But these tools -- especially in the IP realm -- are not so much sophisticated as complicated and very expensive. They're a bad alternative to old-fashioned detective work involving the wearing down of shoes and dull stakeout sessions in uncomfortable quarters such as automobiles. The chief impulse behind this law enforcement gizmo fetish is laziness, and it's a bad trend: The more policemen we have fiddling with computer equipment, the fewer we have doing proper legwork.
The windup is that garden-variety crooks will remain those most susceptible to remote, electronic surveillance, while sophisticated, tech-savvy bad guys will continue operating below the radar. CALEA and its most potent technological offspring are inadequate to catch the people who most need catching. The project of "lawful interception" is huge, grotesquely expensive, controversial, infused with unnecessary secrecy and often useless against the most important suspects it purports to target.
It poses a tremendous threat to human rights and dignity in countries without adequate legal safeguards, and still invites occasional abuses in countries with them. Its costs are paid by citizens who are deliberately kept in the dark about how much they're paying for it, how effective it is in fighting crime and how susceptible it is to abuse. And that's the way the entire cast of characters involved wants to keep it.
Which, of course, is exactly why the public needs to know much more about it, even if it requires rude tactics like crashing the spooks' soirée.
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Isn't it ironic? Dontcha think?
Giant Crater Found: Tied to Worst Mass Extinction Ever
Robert Roy Britt
SPACE.com
Thu June 1, 2006
An apparent crater as big as Ohio has been found in Antarctica. Scientists think it was carved by a space rock that caused the greatest mass extinction on Earth, 250 million years ago.
The crater, buried beneath a half-mile of ice and discovered by some serious airborne and satellite sleuthing, is more than twice as big as the one involved in the demise of the dinosaurs.
The crater's location, in the Wilkes Land region of East Antarctica, south of Australia, suggests it might have instigated the breakup of the so-called Gondwana supercontinent, which pushed Australia northward, the researchers said.
"This Wilkes Land impact is much bigger than the impact that killed the dinosaurs, and probably would have caused catastrophic damage at the time," said Ralph von Frese, a professor of geological sciences at Ohio State University.
How they found it
The crater is about 300 miles wide. It was found by looking at differences in density that show up in gravity measurements taken with NASA's GRACE satellites. Researchers spotted a mass concentration, which they call a mascon-dense stuff that welled up from the mantle, likely in an impact.
"If I saw this same mascon signal on the Moon, I'd expect to see a crater around it," Frese said. (The Moon, with no atmosphere, retains a record of ancient impacts in the visible craters there.)
So Frese and colleagues overlaid data from airborne radar images that showed a 300-mile wide sub-surface, circular ridge. The mascon fit neatly inside the circle.
"And when we looked at the ice-probing airborne radar, there it was," he said today.
Smoking gun?
The Permian-Triassic extinction, as it is known, wiped out most life on land and in the oceans. Researchers have long suspected a space rock might have been involved. Some scientists have blamed volcanic activity or other culprits.
The die-off set up conditions that eventually allowed dinosaurs to rule the planet.
The newfound crater is more than twice the size of the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan peninsula, which marks the impact that may have ultimately killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The Chicxulub space rock is thought to have been 6 miles wide, while the Wilkes Land meteor could have been up to 30 miles wide, the researchers said.
Confirmation needed
Postdoctoral researcher Laramie Potts assisted in the discovery.
The work was financed by NASA and the National Science Foundation. The discovery, announced today, was initially presented in a poster paper at the recent American Geophysical Union Joint Assembly meeting in Baltimore.
The researchers say further work is needed to confirm the finding. One way to do that would be to go there and collect rock from the crater to see if its structure matches what would be expected from such a colossal impact.
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Japanese asteroid team reports on ball of rubble
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
Reuters
June 1, 2006
WASHINGTON - A Japanese spacecraft that landed on an asteroid found a ball of rubble held loosely together by its own gravity, unlike other asteroids that have been visited, according to reports from the mission published on Thursday.
The spacecraft Hayabusa, whose name means "falcon" in Japanese, hovered over the near-Earth asteroid Itokawa last autumn, taking several measurements before landing briefly on the orbiting gravel pile.
Itokawa has two parts resembling the head and body of a sea otter, according to Akira Fujiwara and his colleagues in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
Previously studied asteroids appeared to be lumps of solid rock, but Itokawa is made up of loosely packed bits of sand and boulders, they said.
Their findings could have implications for deflecting asteroids that might pass too closely to the Earth in the future.
"We've never had a close-up look at such a small asteroid until now," said Takahiro Hiroi of Brown University in Rhode Island, who worked on the study, a joint U.S.-Japanese effort.
"Large asteroids such as Eros are completely covered with a thick regolith - a blanket of looser material created by space weathering. With Itokawa, we believe we have witnessed a developing stage of the formation of this regolith."
Itokawa is very small, just 500 yards (metres) long. But it is close, orbiting just 321 million miles away from Earth. Although it does not threaten to collide with Earth, it makes a tempting scientific target.
NEAR MISS
Hayabusa very nearly did not make it.
The little spacecraft, now bringing a capsule of samples back to Earth, uses an electronic ion propulsion system, whose efficiency should be critical to future missions in deep space.
At one point, Hayabusa lost communication with its controllers, wrote Erik Asphaug of the University of California, Santa Cruz in a commentary in Science.
"Its hydrazine (fuel) had leaked away shortly after the second sample collection attempt. Two of the reaction wheels had failed and the battery was dead. Adding insult to injury, Minerva - intended to be the first asteroid surface robot - had been released during an unexpected maneuver and was lost to space," he added.
"Yet despite these heartbreaking setbacks, Hayabusa has been a stunning success both for asteroid science and for deep space concept testing."
Asphaug said information delivered by the spacecraft "enhances our understanding of near-Earth objects. Near-Earth objects are not only important scientifically - our planet formed from them - but have also become political hot potatoes, given the growing pressure to do something to mitigate the risks they may pose to Earth."
The spacecraft, launched in 2003, is expected to glide back to Earth in 2010 and crash-land in the Australian desert.
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Investigator cites Safavian contradiction
By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN
Associated Press
Thu Jun 1, 2006
WASHINGTON - A Senate investigator testified Thursday that Bush administration official David Safavian contradicted himself last year on whether or not he accepted free travel from disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff for a golf trip to Scotland.
Bryan Parker, an investigator for the Senate Indian affairs committee, told a U.S. District Court jury that early last March Safavian told him by telephone that "he had paid for his part on the ground but not including the air fare."
Parker was to be the last witness for the prosecution.
Abramoff chartered a Gulfstream jet for the August 2002 trip to the famed St. Andrews golf course in Scotland and on to London.
Parker said Safavian, who was chief of staff at the General Services Administration in 2002, also volunteered that GSA ethics officers had authorized him to take the trip because his ex-partner Abramoff had no business dealings with GSA.
Safavian is charged with concealing from the Senate and GSA officials the extent of his assistance to Abramoff, particularly just weeks before the trip on the lobbyist's efforts to acquire a piece of GSA land in Maryland for a school he started and to give an Indian tribe client a leg up on winning a GSA contract to redevelop the Old Post Office here.
But Parker said Safavian told a different story when he sent the Senate panel the ethics ruling on his trip and other documents March 17, 2005. In that letter, Safavian said even though the GSA ethics office said he could accept the free air travel - as Safavian had initially requested - he nevertheless gave Abramoff a check for the full cost, including air fare.
This $3,100 check was delivered to Abramoff at the beginning of the 2002 trip and Safavian's lawyer, Barbara Van Gelder, has said that Abramoff told Safavian that was his full share of all costs.
Prosecutors have scoffed at that notion and introduced evidence of $500-a-night hotel rooms, $100 rounds of drinks and $400 rounds of golf to suggest that it was obvious that each traveler's costs were much higher.
Parker also testified that Safavian never mentioned his contacts with Abramoff about the two GSA properties in three telephone calls, a letter and a packet of documents that purported to respond to the committee's request for any material related to the golf trip.
He testified he would have wanted to know about those for the Senate investigation because investigators had learned that some client fees from Indian tribes to Abramoff had helped pay for the trip.
Among others on the golf trip were Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, and two of his aides. Prosecutors have introduced evidence that Ney was helping Abramoff in his efforts to obtain the land in Maryland.
Prosecutors also introduced a copy of a handwritten note on White House stationery that Safavian attached to his letter and packet of documents offering any additional assistance needed. In the intervening years, Safavian had been promoted from GSA to chief federal procurement officer at the Office of Management and Budget in the White House.
Van Gelder tried to suggest that Parker's interest in Safavian was outside the committee's jurisdiction, implying that if Safavian paid his way no Indian money benefited him.
She also pointed out that Parker never pursued the matter with Safavian, but he said he would have gotten to Safavian eventually had he not been indicted first.
Previously, two GSA ethics lawyers and an inspector general investigator said they too never heard from Safavian about his aid to Abramoff on the two GSA properties, would have wanted to know that and that it could have affected their decision to approve his trip and to close a later investigation of it.
Abramoff entered guilty pleas early this year in Washington and Florida.
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Eight Westerners kidnapped on offshore oil rig in Nigeria
AFP
June 2, 2006
LAGOS - Eight Westerners -- six British, one American and one Canadian -- were kidnapped while working on an offshore oil rig in Nigeria, the platform's owners said.
Nigerian police confirmed the abductions, the latest in a series, saying they were hunting for the perpetrators, and no claim of responsibility or demands had been made.
Jan Peter Valheim, financial director of Norwegian company Fred Olsen Energy, told AFP, "The drilling rig was attacked this morning at 0400 GMT, eight members of the crew were kidnapped, one American, one Canadian, six British, the rest of the crew is safe"
"There were about 40 to 50 people on the rig" when the attack came, he said by telephone from Oslo, adding, "The emergency procedures are on."
A company statement said a group of people had boarded the Bulford Dolphin facility off Nigeria's southern coast and seized the employees.
"National and other authorities are co-operating in solving the situation... The drilling operation has been temporarily terminated. The incident has not caused any pollution nor damage to the rig," the company said.
Nigerian national police spokesman Haz Iwendi said, "Eight workers of TEC petroleum company were kidnapped from an oilfield where they were working. They are six Britons, one American and one Canadian."
"Nobody has claimed responsibility yet and no ransom asked," he added. "We combine the efforts of the security agents and we are on their trail and trying to secure their release as soon as possible."
Iwendi said the incident "took place at Bilabre near Dodo river in Ekeremor local government area" of southern Bayelsa State.
A spokesman for the Foreign Office in London said, "These types of situations are not unusual in Nigeria, and we take them very seriously.
"Our colleagues in Nigeria are contacting local officials in order to discover what has happened."
A US diplomat said, "We are investigating, but right now we don't have any element or information."
The rig, some 20 kilometres (12 miles) off the coast, is operated by Fred Olsen Energy's subsidiary, Dolphin Drilling, based in the Scottish city of Aberdeen, the spokesman for the firm said.
Kidnappings of foreign workers have become increasingly frequent occurrences in the oil-rich Niger Delta.
Nine were seized on February 18 by heavily-armed militants fighting for control of the delta's oil resources.
Hostage-takers the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) released six after just a week but three others -- a Briton and two Americans -- were held for more than five weeks.
The kidnappers demanded that Nigeria pulls all its military forces out of the delta, which is home to the 14-million-strong Ijaw ethnic group, most of whom live in abject poverty despite the vast wealth created by the oil and gas industry.
Nigeria, Africa's largest oil producer and world's sixth oil exporter with around 2.6 million barrels a day, derives more than 95 percent of its foreign exchange earnings from oil.
The continuing attacks on the oil industry, however, have cut production by more than a fifth.
Despite its massive income from oil, most of the country's population lives on the poverty line.
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Ain't nothin changed but my limp
Bush is worst president since 1945, US poll finds
Associated Press in Hamden
Friday June 2, 2006
The Guardian
Americans believe George Bush is the worst president since 1945, while Ronald Reagan was the best, according to a Quinnipiac University telephone poll of 1,500 registered voters nationwide released yesterday.
Of those surveyed, 34% ranked Mr Bush as the worst, 17% said Richard Nixon and 16% picked Mr Clinton. The poll found that 58% of voters disapprove of the job Mr Bush is doing. Reagan was ranked as the best president since 1945 by 28% of those surveyed, while 25% thought Mr Clinton was the best, although 40% of voters aged 18-29 ranked him at the top.
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Was the 2004 Election Stolen?
BY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.
Rolling Stone Magazine
Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.
Like many Americans, I spent the evening of the 2004 election watching the returns on television and wondering how the exit polls, which predicted an overwhelming victory for John Kerry, had gotten it so wrong. By midnight, the official tallies showed a decisive lead for George Bush -- and the next day, lacking enough legal evidence to contest the results, Kerry conceded. Republicans derided anyone who expressed doubts about Bush's victory as nut cases in ''tinfoil hats,'' while the national media, with few exceptions, did little to question the validity of the election. The Washington Post immediately dismissed allegations of fraud as ''conspiracy theories,''(1) and The New York Times declared that ''there is no evidence of vote theft or errors on a large scale.''(2)
But despite the media blackout, indications continued to emerge that something deeply troubling had taken place in 2004.
Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad(3) never received their ballots -- or received them too late to vote(4) -- after the Pentagon unaccountably shut down a state-of-the-art Web site used to file overseas registrations.(5) A consulting firm called Sproul & Associates, which was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six battleground states,(6) was discovered shredding Democratic registrations.(7) In New Mexico, which was decided by 5,988 votes,(8) malfunctioning machines mysteriously failed to properly register a presidential vote on more than 20,000 ballots.(9) Nationwide, according to the federal commission charged with implementing election reforms, as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled by faulty voting equipment -- roughly one for every 100 cast.(10)
The reports were especially disturbing in Ohio, the critical battleground state that clinched Bush's victory in the electoral college. Officials there purged tens of thousands of eligible voters from the rolls, neglected to process registration cards generated by Democratic voter drives, shortchanged Democratic precincts when they allocated voting machines and illegally derailed a recount that could have given Kerry the presidency. A precinct in an evangelical church in Miami County recorded an impossibly high turnout of ninety-eight percent, while a polling place in inner-city Cleveland recorded an equally impossible turnout of only seven percent. In Warren County, GOP election officials even invented a nonexistent terrorist threat to bar the media from monitoring the official vote count.(11)
Any election, of course, will have anomalies. America's voting system is a messy patchwork of polling rules run mostly by county and city officials. ''We didn't have one election for president in 2004,'' says Robert Pastor, who directs the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University. ''We didn't have fifty elections. We actually had 13,000 elections run by 13,000 independent, quasi-sovereign counties and municipalities.''
But what is most anomalous about the irregularities in 2004 was their decidedly partisan bent: Almost without exception they hurt John Kerry and benefited George Bush. After carefully examining the evidence, I've become convinced that the president's party mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people in 2004. Across the country, Republican election officials and party stalwarts employed a wide range of illegal and unethical tactics to fix the election. A review of the available data reveals that in Ohio alone, at least 357,000 voters, the overwhelming majority of them Democratic, were prevented from casting ballots or did not have their votes counted in 2004(12) -- more than enough to shift the results of an election decided by 118,601 votes.(13) (See Ohio's Missing Votes) In what may be the single most astounding fact from the election, one in every four Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots.(14) And that doesn?t even take into account the troubling evidence of outright fraud, which indicates that upwards of 80,000 votes for Kerry were counted instead for Bush. That alone is a swing of more than 160,000 votes -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.(15)
''It was terrible,'' says Sen. Christopher Dodd, who helped craft reforms in 2002 that were supposed to prevent such electoral abuses. ''People waiting in line for twelve hours to cast their ballots, people not being allowed to vote because they were in the wrong precinct -- it was an outrage. In Ohio, you had a secretary of state who was determined to guarantee a Republican outcome. I'm terribly disheartened.''
Indeed, the extent of the GOP's effort to rig the vote shocked even the most experienced observers of American elections. ''Ohio was as dirty an election as America has ever seen,'' Lou Harris, the father of modern political polling, told me. ''You look at the turnout and votes in individual precincts, compared to the historic patterns in those counties, and you can tell where the discrepancies are. They stand out like a sore thumb.''
I. The Exit Polls
The first indication that something was gravely amiss on November 2nd, 2004, was the inexplicable discrepancies between exit polls and actual vote counts. Polls in thirty states weren't just off the mark -- they deviated to an extent that cannot be accounted for by their margin of error. In all but four states, the discrepancy favored President Bush.(16)
Over the past decades, exit polling has evolved into an exact science. Indeed, among pollsters and statisticians, such surveys are thought to be the most reliable. Unlike pre-election polls, in which voters are asked to predict their own behavior at some point in the future, exit polls ask voters leaving the voting booth to report an action they just executed. The results are exquisitely accurate: Exit polls in Germany, for example, have never missed the mark by more than three-tenths of one percent.(17) ''Exit polls are almost never wrong,'' Dick Morris, a political consultant who has worked for both Republicans and Democrats, noted after the 2004 vote. Such surveys are ''so reliable,'' he added, ''that they are used as guides to the relative honesty of elections in Third World countries.''(18) In 2003, vote tampering revealed by exit polling in the Republic of Georgia forced Eduard Shevardnadze to step down.(19) And in November 2004, exit polling in the Ukraine -- paid for by the Bush administration -- exposed election fraud that denied Viktor Yushchenko the presidency.(20)
But that same month, when exit polls revealed disturbing disparities in the U.S. election, the six media organizations that had commissioned the survey treated its very existence as an embarrassment. Instead of treating the discrepancies as a story meriting investigation, the networks scrubbed the offending results from their Web sites and substituted them with ''corrected'' numbers that had been weighted, retroactively, to match the official vote count. Rather than finding fault with the election results, the mainstream media preferred to dismiss the polls as flawed.(21)
''The people who ran the exit polling, and all those of us who were their clients, recognized that it was deeply flawed,'' says Tom Brokaw, who served as anchor for NBC News during the 2004 election. ''They were really screwed up -- the old models just don't work anymore. I would not go on the air with them again.''
In fact, the exit poll created for the 2004 election was designed to be the most reliable voter survey in history. The six news organizations -- running the ideological gamut from CBS to Fox News -- retained Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International,(22) whose principal, Warren Mitofsky, pioneered the exit poll for CBS in 1967(23) and is widely credited with assuring the credibility of Mexico's elections in 1994.(24) For its nationwide poll, Edison/Mitofsky selected a random subsample of 12,219 voters(25) -- approximately six times larger than those normally used in national polls(26) -- driving the margin of error down to approximately plus or minus one percent.(27)
On the evening of the vote, reporters at each of the major networks were briefed by pollsters at 7:54 p.m. Kerry, they were informed, had an insurmountable lead and would win by a rout: at least 309 electoral votes to Bush's 174, with fifty-five too close to call.(28) In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair went to bed contemplating his relationship with President-elect Kerry.(29)
As the last polling stations closed on the West Coast, exit polls showed Kerry ahead in ten of eleven battleground states -- including commanding leads in Ohio and Florida -- and winning by a million and a half votes nationally. The exit polls even showed Kerry breathing down Bush's neck in supposed GOP strongholds Virginia and North Carolina.(30) Against these numbers, the statistical likelihood of Bush winning was less than one in 450,000.(31) ''Either the exit polls, by and large, are completely wrong,'' a Fox News analyst declared, ''or George Bush loses.''(32)
But as the evening progressed, official tallies began to show implausible disparities -- as much as 9.5 percent -- with the exit polls. In ten of the eleven battleground states, the tallied margins departed from what the polls had predicted. In every case, the shift favored Bush. Based on exit polls, CNN had predicted Kerry defeating Bush in Ohio by a margin of 4.2 percentage points. Instead, election results showed Bush winning the state by 2.5 percent. Bush also tallied 6.5 percent more than the polls had predicted in Pennsylvania, and 4.9 percent more in Florida.(33)
According to Steven F. Freeman, a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in research methodology, the odds against all three of those shifts occurring in concert are one in 660,000. ''As much as we can say in sound science that something is impossible,'' he says, ''it is impossible that the discrepancies between predicted and actual vote count in the three critical battleground states of the 2004 election could have been due to chance or random error.'' (See The Tale of the Exit Polls)
Puzzled by the discrepancies, Freeman laboriously examined the raw polling data released by Edison/Mitofsky in January 2005. ''I'm not even political -- I despise the Democrats,'' he says. ''I'm a survey expert. I got into this because I was mystified about how the exit polls could have been so wrong.'' In his forthcoming book, Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count, Freeman lays out a statistical analysis of the polls that is deeply troubling.
In its official postmortem report issued two months after the election, Edison/Mitofsky was unable to identify any flaw in its methodology -- so the pollsters, in essence, invented one for the electorate. According to Mitofsky, Bush partisans were simply disinclined to talk to exit pollsters on November 2nd(34) -- displaying a heretofore unknown and undocumented aversion that skewed the polls in Kerry's favor by a margin of 6.5 percent nationwide.(35)
Industry peers didn't buy it. John Zogby, one of the nation's leading pollsters, told me that Mitofsky's ''reluctant responder'' hypothesis is ''preposterous.''(36) Even Mitofsky, in his official report, underscored the hollowness of his theory: ''It is difficult to pinpoint precisely the reasons that, in general, Kerry voters were more likely to participate in the exit polls than Bush voters.''(37)
Now, thanks to careful examination of Mitofsky's own data by Freeman and a team of eight researchers, we can say conclusively that the theory is dead wrong. In fact it was Democrats, not Republicans, who were more disinclined to answer pollsters' questions on Election Day. In Bush strongholds, Freeman and the other researchers found that fifty-six percent of voters completed the exit survey -- compared to only fifty-three percent in Kerry strongholds.(38) ''The data presented to support the claim not only fails to substantiate it,'' observes Freeman, ''but actually contradicts it.''
What's more, Freeman found, the greatest disparities between exit polls and the official vote count came in Republican strongholds. In precincts where Bush received at least eighty percent of the vote, the exit polls were off by an average of ten percent. By contrast, in precincts where Kerry dominated by eighty percent or more, the exit polls were accurate to within three tenths of one percent -- a pattern that suggests Republican election officials stuffed the ballot box in Bush country.(39)
''When you look at the numbers, there is a tremendous amount of data that supports the supposition of election fraud,'' concludes Freeman. ''The discrepancies are higher in battleground states, higher where there were Republican governors, higher in states with greater proportions of African-American communities and higher in states where there were the most Election Day complaints. All these are strong indicators of fraud -- and yet this supposition has been utterly ignored by the press and, oddly, by the Democratic Party.''
The evidence is especially strong in Ohio. In January, a team of mathematicians from the National Election Data Archive, a nonpartisan watchdog group, compared the state's exit polls against the certified vote count in each of the forty-nine precincts polled by Edison/Mitofsky. In twenty-two of those precincts -- nearly half of those polled -- they discovered results that differed widely from the official tally. Once again -- against all odds -- the widespread discrepancies were stacked massively in Bush's favor: In only two of the suspect twenty-two precincts did the disparity benefit Kerry. The wildest discrepancy came from the precinct Mitofsky numbered ''27,'' in order to protect the anonymity of those surveyed. According to the exit poll, Kerry should have received sixty-seven percent of the vote in this precinct. Yet the certified tally gave him only thirty-eight percent. The statistical odds against such a variance are just shy of one in 3 billion.(40)
Such results, according to the archive, provide ''virtually irrefutable evidence of vote miscount.'' The discrepancies, the experts add, ''are consistent with the hypothesis that Kerry would have won Ohio's electoral votes if Ohio's official vote counts had accurately reflected voter intent.''(41) According to Ron Baiman, vice president of the archive and a public policy analyst at Loyola University in Chicago, ''No rigorous statistical explanation'' can explain the ''completely nonrandom'' disparities that almost uniformly benefited Bush. The final results, he adds, are ''completely consistent with election fraud -- specifically vote shifting.''
II. The Partisan Official
No state was more important in the 2004 election than Ohio. The state has been key to every Republican presidential victory since Abraham Lincoln's, and both parties overwhelmed the state with television ads, field organizers and volunteers in an effort to register new voters and energize old ones. Bush and Kerry traveled to Ohio a total of forty-nine times during the campaign -- more than to any other state.(42)
But in the battle for Ohio, Republicans had a distinct advantage: The man in charge of the counting was Kenneth Blackwell, the co-chair of President Bush's re-election committee.(43) As Ohio's secretary of state, Blackwell had broad powers to interpret and implement state and federal election laws -- setting standards for everything from the processing of voter registration to the conduct of official recounts.(44) And as Bush's re-election chair in Ohio, he had a powerful motivation to rig the rules for his candidate. Blackwell, in fact, served as the ''principal electoral system adviser'' for Bush during the 2000 recount in Florida,(45) where he witnessed firsthand the success of his counterpart Katherine Harris, the Florida secretary of state who co-chaired Bush's campaign there.(46)
Blackwell -- now the Republican candidate for governor of Ohio(47) -- is well-known in the state as a fierce partisan eager to rise in the GOP. An outspoken leader of Ohio's right-wing fundamentalists, he opposes abortion even in cases of rape(48) and was the chief cheerleader for the anti-gay-marriage amendment that Republicans employed to spark turnout in rural counties(49). He has openly denounced Kerry as ''an unapologetic liberal Democrat,''(50) and during the 2004 election he used his official powers to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Ohio citizens in Democratic strongholds. In a ruling issued two weeks before the election, a federal judge rebuked Blackwell for seeking to ''accomplish the same result in Ohio in 2004 that occurred in Florida in 2000.''(51)
''The secretary of state is supposed to administer elections -- not throw them,'' says Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat from Cleveland who has dealt with Blackwell for years. ''The election in Ohio in 2004 stands out as an example of how, under color of law, a state election official can frustrate the exercise of the right to vote.''
The most extensive investigation of what happened in Ohio was conducted by Rep. John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.(52) Frustrated by his party's failure to follow up on the widespread evidence of voter intimidation and fraud, Conyers and the committee's minority staff held public hearings in Ohio, where they looked into more than 50,000 complaints from voters.(53) In January 2005, Conyers issued a detailed report that outlined ''massive and unprecedented voter irregularities and anomalies in Ohio.'' The problems, the report concludes, were ''caused by intentional misconduct and illegal behavior, much of it involving Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell.''(54)
''Blackwell made Katherine Harris look like a cupcake,'' Conyers told me. ''He saw his role as limiting the participation of Democratic voters. We had hearings in Columbus for two days. We could have stayed two weeks, the level of fury was so high. Thousands of people wanted to testify. Nothing like this had ever happened to them before.''
When ROLLING STONE confronted Blackwell about his overtly partisan attempts to subvert the election, he dismissed any such claim as ''silly on its face.'' Ohio, he insisted in a telephone interview, set a ''gold standard'' for electoral fairness. In fact, his campaign to subvert the will of the voters had begun long before Election Day. Instead of welcoming the avalanche of citizen involvement sparked by the campaign, Blackwell permitted election officials in Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo to conduct a massive purge of their voter rolls, summarily expunging the names of more than 300,000 voters who had failed to cast ballots in the previous two national elections.(55) In Cleveland, which went five-to-one for Kerry, nearly one in four voters were wiped from the rolls between 2000 and 2004.(56)
There were legitimate reasons to clean up voting lists: Many of the names undoubtedly belonged to people who had moved or died. But thousands more were duly registered voters who were deprived of their constitutional right to vote -- often without any notification -- simply because they had decided not to go to the polls in prior elections.(57) In Cleveland's precinct 6C, where more than half the voters on the rolls were deleted,(58) turnout was only 7.1 percent(59) -- the lowest in the state.
According to the Conyers report, improper purging ''likely disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters statewide.''(60) If only one in ten of the 300,000 purged voters showed up on Election Day -- a conservative estimate, according to election scholars -- that is 30,000 citizens who were unfairly denied the opportunity to cast ballots.
III. The Strike Force
In the months leading up to the election, Ohio was in the midst of the biggest registration drive in its history. Tens of thousands of volunteers and paid political operatives from both parties canvassed the state, racing to register new voters in advance of the October 4th deadline. To those on the ground, it was clear that Democrats were outpacing their Republican counterparts: A New York Times analysis before the election found that new registrations in traditional Democratic strongholds were up 250 percent, compared to only twenty-five percent in Republican-leaning counties.(61) ''The Democrats have been beating the pants off us in the air and on the ground,'' a GOP county official in Columbus confessed to The Washington Times.(62)
To stem the tide of new registrations, the Republican National Committee and the Ohio Republican Party attempted to knock tens of thousands of predominantly minority and urban voters off the rolls through illegal mailings known in electioneering jargon as ''caging.'' During the Eighties, after the GOP used such mailings to disenfranchise nearly 76,000 black voters in New Jersey and Louisiana, it was forced to sign two separate court orders agreeing to abstain from caging.(63) But during the summer of 2004, the GOP targeted minority voters in Ohio by zip code, sending registered letters to more than 200,000 newly registered voters(64) in sixty-five counties.(65) On October 22nd, a mere eleven days before the election, Ohio Republican Party Chairman Bob Bennett -- who also chairs the board of elections in Cuyahoga County -- sought to invalidate the registrations of 35,427 voters who had refused to sign for the letters or whose mail came back as undeliverable.(66) Almost half of the challenged voters were from Democratic strongholds in and around Cleveland.(67)
There were plenty of valid reasons that voters had failed to respond to the mailings: The list included people who couldn't sign for the letters because they were serving in the U.S. military, college students whose school and home addresses differed,(68) and more than 1,000 homeless people who had no permanent mailing address.(69) But the undeliverable mail, Bennett claimed, proved the new registrations were fraudulent.
By law, each voter was supposed to receive a hearing before being stricken from the rolls.(70) Instead, in the week before the election, kangaroo courts were rapidly set up across the state at Blackwell's direction that would inevitably disenfranchise thousands of voters at a time(71) -- a process that one Democratic election official in Toledo likened to an ''inquisition.''(72) Not that anyone was given a chance to actually show up and defend their right to vote: Notices to challenged voters were not only sent out impossibly late in the process, they were mailed to the very addresses that the Republicans contended were faulty.(73) Adding to the atmosphere of intimidation, sheriff's detectives in Sandusky County were dispatched to the homes of challenged voters to investigate the GOP's claims of fraud.(74)
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BBC airs footage of more alleged US massacre victims in Iraq
AFP
Fri Jun 2, 2006
LONDON - The US military was investigating allegations made by Iraqi police that American troops rounded up and shot dead civilians in March, the BBC reported, after airing video footage it obtained of dead adults and children.
The alleged incident in Ishaqi, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of Baghdad, comes on the heels of allegations that US Marines killed unarmed Iraqi civilians.
The report by the British Broadcasting Corporation on Thursday quoted a spokesman for US forces in Iraq as saying that an inquiry was under way into the events in Ishaqi on March 15 this year.
The BBC, which said it had received the video from a Sunni Muslim group opposed to US forces, said the evidence appeared to contradict the US version of events.
US officials said at the time that four people died when US troops became involved in a firefight after a tip-off that an al-Qaeda supporter was visiting a house in Ishaqi, the BBC said.
US officials, it added, said that the home collapsed under heavy fire, killing one suspected militant, two women and a child.
But a report filed by Iraqi police accused US troops of rounding up and deliberately shooting 11 people in the house, including five children and four women, before blowing up the building.
The BBC aired video footage of several bodies, including those of three children, one of them covered in blood. The BBC's John Simpson said the images clearly show the dead adults and children suffered gunshot wounds.
The BBC's Ian Pannell in Baghdad said the footage has been cross-checked with other images taken at the time of events and is believed to be genuine.
The video aired by the BBC follows news of an alleged massacre in Haditha, where US Marines are suspected of killing up to 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians last November.
Experts with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) hope to exhume the bodies of several Haditha victims in search of evidence, The Washington Post reported Friday, citing defense officials familiar with the probe.
The forensic evidence was disregarded at first because the deaths on November 19 last year were reported as caused by a roadside bomb and not treated as crimes.
"There's plenty of shoulds, woulds, coulds to go around in this case. We have lots of disadvantage going in, but we will re-create the incident as best as we can," one official who spoke on condition of anonymity told the Post.
The independent NCIS probe, the largest homicide investigation since the Iraq war began involving up to 50 special agents, could lead to charges of murder, dereliction of duty and obstruction of justice.
US President George W. Bush promised Thursday that "the world will see" the results of the ongoing investigation into the alleged Haditha killings, which could rival the Baghdad Abu Ghraib prison scandal of last year.
The Haditha shootings came to light in a Time magazine report in last March which cited an Iraqi human rights group and Haditha residents.
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US troops ordered to undergo ethical training after killing of Iraqi civilians
Julian Borger Washington
Friday June 2, 2006
The Guardian
Senior officers failed to scrutinise Haditha reports Bush promises 'world will see full investigation'
US troops in Iraq were ordered yesterday to take a crash course in battlefield ethics, as Washington braced for the conclusion of two investigations into the killing of Iraqi civilians by American marines in Haditha. Troops will take the course on "core warrior values" within a month, which will include a slideshow on ethical standards under fire.
George Bush described it as "a reminder for troops in Iraq, or throughout our military, that there are high standards expected of them and that there are strong rules of engagement". Announcing the training scheme, the US military commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli, did not mention last November's incident in which 24 Iraqis were killed at Haditha, 125 miles north-west of Baghdad, but said: "The challenge for us is to make sure the actions of a few do not tarnish the good work of the many."
The incident, and several other reported cases involving US troops in Iraq, threaten the most serious scandal involving the occupying force since Abu Ghraib, and have aggravated tension between the Americans and the new Iraqi government.
Last night, the BBC broadcast footage that it said came from a second incident in March, in which US soldiers were accused of executing 11 Iraqis, including four children, near the city of Balad. The Americans say they were hunting an al-Qaida suspect, but Iraqi police say they executed an entire family in a house which they then demolished.
The Iraqi government said last night it was launching its own inquiry into all the incidents. "It appears to be a horrible crime," said the prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, of the Haditha case. "A large number of women, men and children have been eliminated because of an explosion that targeted a vehicle of the multinational forces." He criticised the Americans for displaying "no respect for citizens, driving over vehicles and killing on suspicion or a hunch. It's unacceptable".
The US has launched two inquiries into the Haditha killings. A criminal investigation led by navy officials is still under way, but military officials predicted it would lead to murder charges against some members of the marine unit involved.
A parallel army investigation into an alleged cover-up of the incident is due to be delivered today. The Washington Post reported yesterday that this inquiry had found that senior officers had failed to scrutinise false reports of the deaths filed by the marines involved and those who removed the bodies of the victims the next day. Those battlefield reports claimed that the civilian victims were killed by an insurgents' roadside bomb and a subsequent gunfight. Evidence later unearthed by journalists and military investigators showed instead that the civilians were rounded up and shot in their houses in a rampage by marines furious over the death of a member of their unit from a bomb attack.
A military official declined to say whether the negligence displayed by senior officers after the incident amounted to a cover-up, but Eugene Fidell, an expert on military law, said senior officers could face charges of dereliction of duty or obstruction of justice.
Today's report will also argue that the training of troops sent to Iraq has put too much emphasis on traditional fighting skills and not enough on the requirements of the counter-insurgency.
"The world will see the full and complete investigation," President Bush said yesterday. "The United States has got a willingness to deal with issues like this in an upfront way and correct problems. And that's what you're going to see unfold."
Some human rights activists argue that Haditha illustrates an inherent reluctance of the chain of command to confront abuses by soldiers. "The issue here is the military's capacity to police itself," John Sifton, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, said. "We've talked to Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who have tried to report abuses and have been rebuffed by senior officers."
A coalition spokesman in Baghdad, Major General William Caldwell, said "about three or four" inquiries into civilian deaths were being carried out in Iraq, but he would not provide details.
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Army Corps Takes Blame for New Orleans Flooding
By CAIN BURDEAU
AP
June 1, 2006
NEW ORLEANS - A contrite U.S. Army Corps of Engineers took responsibility Thursday for the flooding of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina and said the levees failed because they were built in a disjointed fashion using outdated data.
"This is the first time that the Corps has had to stand up and say, 'We've had a catastrophic failure,'" Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the Corps chief, said as the agency issued a 6,000-page-plus report on the disaster on Day 1 of the new hurricane season.
The Corps said it will use the lessons it has learned to build better flood defenses.
"Words alone will not restore trust in the Corps," Strock said, adding that the Corps is committed "to fulfilling our important responsibilities."
The $19.7 million report includes details on the engineering and design failures that allowed the storm surge to overwhelm New Orleans' levees and floodwalls Aug. 29.
Many of the findings and details on floodwall design, storm modeling and soil types have been released in pieces in recent months as the Corps sought to show it was being open about what went wrong. But the final report goes into greater depth.
The Corps, Strock said, has undergone a period of intense introspection and is "deeply saddened and enormously troubled by the suffering of so many."
Katrina damaged 169 miles of the 350-mile hurricane system that protects New Orleans and was blamed for more than 1,570 deaths in Louisiana alone.
Robert Bea, a University of California at Berkeley engineer and Corps critic, called Strock's comments and the report signs of "a leadership in growth."
"They're catching up with the 1,000 years of progress of the Dutch," Bea said, referring to the Netherlands' long, and mostly successful, history of battling the North Sea.
The much-anticipated report - prepared by the 150-member Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force, assembled and headed by the Corps - is intended to serve as a road map for engineers as they seek to design and build better levees and floodwalls.
Serious work began on New Orleans' hurricane protection system in the 1960s after Hurricane Betsy flooded the city in 1965. But over the decades, funding slackened and many parts of the system were not finished by the time Katrina hit.
The result was a disjointed system of levees, inconsistent in quality, materials and design, that left gaps exploited by the storm, the report said.
Also, engineers did not take into account the poor soil quality underneath New Orleans, the report said, and failed to account for the sinking of land, which caused some sections to be as much as 2 feet lower than other parts.
Four breaches in canals that run through New Orleans were caused by foundation failures that were "not considered in the original design of these structures," the report said. Those breaches caused two-thirds of the city's flooding.
Thursday's report urged the Corps to shift its formulaic cost-benefit approach on how it decides what projects are worthwhile. The agency was urged to look at potential environmental, societal and cultural losses, "without reducing everything to one measure such as dollars."
The report did not directly address questions raised in other studies regarding the Corps' organizational mindset.
Last month, a report by outside engineers said the Corps was dysfunctional and unreliable. That group, led by experts from the University of California at Berkeley, recommended setting up an agency to oversee the Corps' projects nationwide.
In response to criticism after Katrina, the Corps has made fixing New Orleans' flood protection system a top priority and tried to incorporate the task force findings.
The Corps already has spent about $800 million for repairs and improvements and plans to spend $3.7 billion over the next four years to raise and strengthen levees, increase pumping capacity and install more flood gates.
A thorough assessment of the region's current flood defenses found no "glaring weaknesses," said Col. Richard Wagenaar, the Corps' district chief in New Orleans.
The Atlantic hurricane season runs through Nov. 30. William Gray, a leading hurricane forecaster, said Wednesday that the 2006 season should not be as destructive as 2005, which set records with 28 named storms and four major hurricanes hitting land. Gray's team is forecasting 17 named storms this year, nine of them hurricanes.
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Schwarzenegger to order troops to border
By AARON C. DAVIS
Associated Press
Thu Jun 1, 2006
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger agreed Thursday to send the California National Guard to the Mexican border, ending a 17-day standoff with the Bush administration.
The two sides had been at odds over whether California Guardsmen would join the effort to bolster the Border Patrol and who would pay for it.
They reached an agreement under which California will contribute about 1,000 Guardsmen for border duty and the federal government will pick up the full cost, Schwarzenegger said.
"It is not my preference to send the National Guard, but there's an important need to protect the border," he said.
However, in a separate act that was not part of the agreement with the federal government, Schwarzenegger will sign an executive order that ends the California National Guard's participation on Dec. 31, 2008, state officials said.
Schwarzenegger intends for the mission to be carried out mostly by troops who volunteer for six- to 12-month assignments. The Bush plan called for sending Guardsmen on border duty instead of their annual two-and-three week training exercises.
The state would have to pay for normal training sessions, while long-term assignments are funded by the federal government.
Altogether, President Bush has proposed sending 6,000 National Guardsmen to the U.S. border with Mexico. The overall cost of the multiyear deployment has been put at more than $1 billion.
In California, National Guard officials have said the mobilization could begin immediately.
A planning force could reach the border within days and the full deployment could be in place by July 15, but California Guard officials said they would not send anyone until Congress approves funding for the operation.
Schwarzenegger said he would sign a memorandum of understanding between the federal government and the governors of the four southern border states. It serves as a federal promise to repay the cost of the deployment.
It also establishes rules of engagement prohibiting Guardsmen from handling detainees, but allowing them to carry guns. The rules are similar to those the California Guard follows when deploying to a riot, officials said.
The document also contains a provision allowing the border governors to decline to participate in any part of the mission they deem inappropriate.
Schwarzenegger's decision ended an awkward period for the Republican governor. He held out longer than Democratic governors in Arizona and New Mexico before saying he would send troops.
He also had risked alienating voters in a state that has repeatedly backed a tough approach on immigration - although his reluctance to send troops had been seen as popular among Hispanics.
Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano signed an agreement Thursday for her state to participate in Bush's plan, with 300 Arizona National Guard soldiers set to take part beginning in mid-June.
National Guard troops will be used for engineering, road and fence building, transportation, logistics and surveillance, reconnaissance and port-of-entry duties but not direct law enforcement.
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Let's Bomb a Flock of Seagulls
War Whore Rice Warns Iran It Doesn't Have Much Time
By GEORGE JAHN and ANNE GEARAN
AP
June 2, 2006
VIENNA, Austria - The United States warned Iran it will not have much time to respond once it is offered an international package of rewards to encourage it to suspend uranium enrichment, suggesting that the window could soon close and be replaced by penalties.
"It really needs to be within weeks," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told NBC's "Today" show, referring to the six-power package of perks or penalties aimed at halting Iran's enrichment activities.
In separate comments on National Public Radio, Rice suggested she was ready to meet her Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki, if Tehran agreed to suspend the activity that can be used to make nuclear arms and negotiate the details of the deal.
The package agreed on Thursday carries the threat of U.N. sanctions if Tehran remains defiant over what the West calls a rogue nuclear program that could produce a bomb. The United States, in a major policy shift, conditionally agreed this week to join those talks. It would be the first major public negotiations between the two countries in more than 25 years.
Rice met with the foreign ministers from the European nations that led talks with Iran, which stalled last year. European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, Russia's foreign minister and a deputy Chinese foreign minister also attended.
Russia and China might join in any future talks with Iran. Both hold vetoes in the U.N. Security Council, and the United States needs their cooperation to seek sanctions or other harsh measures.
The formal offer of talks are expected to be made by France, Britain and Germany - the three nations that previously negotiatiated with Tehran. A senior U.S. state department official said he expected Tehran would be invited to begin new negotiations "within a matter of days."
A short statement issued by foreign ministers from the six powers and the European Union did not mention economic sanctions, which the U.S. wants and Iran has tried hard to avoid.
The powers agreed privately, however, that Iran could face tough Security Council sanctions if it failed to give up unranium enrichment and other disputed nuclear activities, U.S. officials said.
U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns called the meeting's outcome "a step forward in our quest to deny Iran nuclear weapons capability."
The U.S. intelligence director, meanwhile said Tehran could reach that status in as little as four years.
"This is a matter of assessment, we don't have a clear-cut knowledge," National Intelligence Director John Negroponte told British Broadcasting Corp. "But the estimate we have made is that some time between beginning of the next decade and the middle of the next decade they might be in a position to have a nuclear weapon."
Diplomats feared Iran would reject any offer of talks if the threat of sanctions was explicit, officials involved in the discussions said on condition of anonymity because the seven-party negotiations were private.
The foreign ministers' statement threatens unspecified "further steps" in the Security Council.
The group's statement contained no details of incentives Iran could be offered. Diplomats previously have said the package includes help to develop legitimate nuclear power plants and various economic benefits.
"We are prepared to resume negotiations should Iran resume suspension of all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities," as previously required by the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, said British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett.
If Iran returns to the talks, "we would also suspend action in the Security Council," Beckett said.
The Security Council, which can levy mandatory global sanctions and support its mandates with military force, has been reviewing Iran's case for two months. Its permanent, veto-holding members have been at odds over the possibility of sanctions, with Russia and China opposed.
"At this crucial stage, it is very important that none of the sides involved in the situation makes any sharp movements that would create a threat to the real prospect of using the chance to reach agreement," ITAR-Tass quoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as saying before talks began in Vienna.
Iran insists its nuclear work is peaceful and aimed at developing a new energy source.
Mottaki, Iran's foreign minister, welcomed the idea of direct talks but rebuffed the U.S. condition that Tehran must suspend uranium enrichment before talks can begin.
At the White House, President George W. Bush warned that the confrontation would go to the Security Council should Iran continue to enrich uranium.
"If they continue their obstinance, if they continue to say to the world, 'We really don't care what your opinion is,' then the world is going to act in concert," Bush said.
Bush said he got a "positive response" in a telephone conversation Tuesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, adding, "We expect Russia to participate in the United Nations Security Council. We'll see whether or not they agree to do that."
Bush also spoke about Iran on Thursday with Chinese President Hu Jintao. He revealed little about that conversation, saying, "They understood our strategy."
The shift in U.S. tactics was meant to offer the Iranians a last chance to avoid punishing sanctions and to let the United States assert that it was willing to exhaust every opportunity to resolve the Iranian impasse without force.
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Iran 'could have bomb in 10 years'
The Guardian
Friday June 2, 2006
Iran could have a nuclear bomb within 10 years, the Bush administration's head of intelligence said today.
John Negroponte, the US national intelligence director, said Iran remains the world's principal state sponsor of terrorism.
"They seem to be determined to develop nuclear weapons," he said.
"We don't have a clear-cut knowledge but the estimate we have made is some time between the beginning of the next decade and the middle of the next decade they might be in a position to have a nuclear weapon, which is a cause of great concern."
Mr Negroponte told the BBC's Today programme that lessons had been learned from the use of intelligence in the run-up to the war on Iraq but that it was "not for him to say" if the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq made dealing with Iran more difficult.
"At the moment there's an initiative on the table with respect to Iran and we will have to watch the government of Iran's reaction to that. In the meanwhile, we have to recognise that they are the principle state sponsor of terrorism in the world. "Their behaviour has been a cause of concern, not only in Lebanon and Israel and in the Palestinian states but also in Iraq."
Asked when the war of terror would end, he said: "I think that's a hard thing to estimate. I think we are talking about something that might go on for some period of time. It may alter in its form somewhat over time.
"This is a global problem and it's gong to have to be dealt with in the many, many different countries where it occurs."
Western nations - especially the US - fear Iran is enriching uranium to create a nuclear weapon, not for civil energy use as Tehran claims.
Mr Negroponte's comments come after members of the UN security council agreed "far-reaching proposals" to persuade Iran to halt its nuclear programme.
The foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, announced in Vienna last night that Iran would be offered the opportunity to reach agreement with the international community through negotiation and cooperation.
But it could expect "further steps" to be taken by the security council if it refused to come to the negotiating table, Ms Beckett said.
"We are prepared to resume negotiations should Iran resume suspension of all enrichment and reprocessing activities, as required by the International Atomic Energy Agency, and we would also suspend action in the security council.
"We have also agreed that if Iran decides not to engage in negotiation further, steps would have to be taken in the security council.
"So there are two paths ahead. We urge Iran to take the positive path and consider seriously our substantive proposals, which would bring significant benefits to Iran. We will now be talking to the Iranians about our proposals."
She was speaking following talks between the foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the security council - Britain, the US, France, Russia and China - plus Germany, aimed at finding a diplomatic breakthrough with Iran.
Britain, France and Germany have been pressing for measures designed to end the deadlock. The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, announced on Wednesday that the US would join direct talks with Iran if it halted nuclear activities.
But Russia and China, which both wield vetoes at the security council, have made clear they would not accept any implicit threat of the use of force.
Comment: So you see, Bush just HAS to bomb the heck out of Iran today because they MIGHT have a nuke TEN YEARS from now... Makes a lot of sense, doesn't it??
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If Iran is ready to talk, the US must do so unconditionally
Jonathan Steele
Friday June 2, 2006
The Guardian
It is absurd to demand that Tehran should have made concessions before sitting down with the Americans
Jonathan Steele
Friday June 2, 2006
The Guardian
It is 50 years since the greatest misquotation of the cold war. At a Kremlin reception for western ambassadors in 1956, the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev announced: "We will bury you." Those four words were seized on by American hawks as proof of aggressive Soviet intent.
Doves who pointed out that the full quotation gave a less threatening message were drowned out. Khrushchev had actually said: "Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you." It was a harmless boast about socialism's eventual victory in the ideological competition with capitalism. He was not talking about war.
Now we face a similar propaganda distortion of remarks by Iran's president. Ask anyone in Washington, London or Tel Aviv if they can cite any phrase uttered by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the chances are high they will say he wants Israel "wiped off the map".
Again it is four short words, though the distortion is worse than in the Khrushchev case. The remarks are not out of context. They are wrong, pure and simple. Ahmadinejad never said them. Farsi speakers have pointed out that he was mistranslated. The Iranian president was quoting an ancient statement by Iran's first Islamist leader, the late Ayatollah Khomeini, that "this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time" just as the Shah's regime in Iran had vanished.
He was not making a military threat. He was calling for an end to the occupation of Jerusalem at some point in the future. The "page of time" phrase suggests he did not expect it to happen soon. There was no implication that either Khomeini, when he first made the statement, or Ahmadinejad, in repeating it, felt it was imminent, or that Iran would be involved in bringing it about.
But the propaganda damage was done, and western hawks bracket the Iranian president with Hitler as though he wants to exterminate Jews. At the recent annual convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a powerful lobby group, huge screens switched between pictures of Ahmadinejad making the false "wiping off the map" statement and a ranting Hitler.
Misquoting Ahmadinejad is worse than taking Khrushchev out of context for a second reason. Although the Soviet Union had a collective leadership, the pudgy Russian was the undoubted No 1 figure, particularly on foreign policy. The Iranian president is not.
His predecessor, Mohammad Khatami, was seen in the west as a moderate reformer, and during his eight years in office western politicians regularly lamented the fact that he was not Iran's top decision-maker. Ultimate power lay with the conservative unelected supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Yet now that Ahmadinejad is president, western hawks behave as though he is in charge, when in fact nothing has changed. Ahmadinejad is not the only important voice in Tehran. Indeed Khamenei was quick to try to adjust the misperceptions of Ahmadinejad's comments. A few days after the president made them, Khamenei said Iran "will not commit aggression against any nation".
The evidence suggests that a debate is going on in Tehran over policy towards the west which is no less fierce than the one in Washington. Since 2003 the Iranians have made several overtures to the Bush administration, some more explicit than others. Ahmadinejad's recent letter to Bush was a veiled invitation to dialogue. Iranians are also arguing over policy towards Israel. Trita Parsi, an analyst at Johns Hopkins University, says influential rivals to Ahmadinejad support a "Malaysian" model whereby Iran, like Islamic Malaysia, would not recognise Israel but would not support Palestinian groups such as Hamas, if relations with the US were better.
The obvious way to develop the debate is for the two states to start talking to each other. Last winter the Americans said they were willing, provided talks were limited to Iraq. Then the hawks around Bush vetoed even that narrow agenda. Their victory made nonsense of the pressure the US is putting on other UN security council members for tough action against Iran. Talk of sanctions is clearly premature until Washington and Tehran make an effort to negotiate. This week, in advance of Condoleezza Rice's meeting in Vienna yesterday with the foreign ministers of Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia, the factions in Washington hammered out a compromise. The US is ready to talk to Tehran alongside the EU3 (Britain, France and Germany), but only after Tehran has abandoned its uranium-enrichment programme.
To say the EU3's dialogue with Tehran was sufficient, as Washington did until this week, was the most astonishing example of multilateralism in the Bush presidency. A government that makes a practice of ignoring allies and refuses to accept the jurisdiction of bodies such as the International Criminal Court was leaving all the talking to others on one of the hottest issues of the day. Unless Bush is set on war, this refusal to open a dialogue could not be taken seriously.
The EU3's offer of carrots for Tehran was also meaningless without a US role. Europe cannot give Iran security guarantees. Tehran does not want non-aggression pacts with Europe. It wants them with the only state that is threatening it both with military attack and foreign-funded programmes for regime change.
The US compromise on talks with Iran is a step in the right direction, though Rice's hasty statement was poorly drafted, repeatedly calling Iran both a "government" and a "regime". But it is absurd to expect Iran to make concessions before sitting down with the Americans. Dialogue is in the interests of all parties. Europe's leaders, as well as Russia and China, should come out clearly and tell the Americans so.
Whatever Iran's nuclear ambitions, even US hawks admit it will be years before it could acquire a bomb, let alone the means to deliver it. This offers ample time for negotiations and a "grand bargain" between Iran and the US over Middle Eastern security. Flanked by countries with US bases, Iran has legitimate concerns about Washington's intentions.
Even without the US factor, instability in the Gulf worries all Iranians, whether or not they like being ruled by clerics. All-out civil war in Iraq, which could lead to intervention by Turkey and Iraq's Arab neighbours, would be a disaster for Iran. If the US wants to withdraw from Iraq in any kind of order, this too will require dialogue with Iran. If this is what Blair told Bush last week, he did well. But he should go all the way, and urge the Americans to talk without conditions.
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Why it's over for America
By Noam Chomsky
The Independent
05/30/06
The selection of issues that should rank high on the agenda of concern for human welfare and rights is, naturally, a subjective matter. But there are a few choices that seem unavoidable, because they bear so directly on the prospects for decent survival. Among them are at least these three: nuclear war, environmental disaster, and the fact that the government of the world's leading power is acting in ways that increase the likelihood of these catastrophes. It is important to stress the government, because the population, not surprisingly, does not agree.
That brings up a fourth issue that should deeply concern Americans, and the world: the sharp divide between public opinion and public policy, one of the reasons for the fear, which cannot casually be put aside, that, as Gar Alperowitz puts it in America Beyond Capitalism, "the American 'system' as a whole is in real trouble - that it is heading in a direction that spells the end of its historic values [of] equality, liberty, and meaningful democracy".
The "system" is coming to have some of the features of failed states, to adopt a currently fashionable notion that is conventionally applied to states regarded as potential threats to our security (like Iraq) or as needing our intervention to rescue the population from severe internal threats (like Haiti). Though the concept is recognised to be, according to the journal Foreign Affairs, "frustratingly imprecise", some of the primary characteristics of failed states can be identified. One is their inability or unwillingness to protect their citizens from violence and perhaps even destruction. Another is their tendency to regard themselves as beyond the reach of domestic or international law, and hence free to carry out aggression and violence. And if they have democratic forms, they suffer from a serious "democratic deficit" that deprives their formal democratic institutions of real substance.
Among the hardest tasks that anyone can undertake, and one of the most important, is to look honestly in the mirror. If we allow ourselves to do so, we should have little difficulty in finding the characteristics of "failed states" right at home.
No one familiar with history should be surprised that the growing democratic deficit in the United States is accompanied by declaration of messianic missions to bring democracy to a suffering world. Declarations of noble intent by systems of power are rarely complete fabrication, and the same is true in this case. Under some conditions, forms of democracy are indeed acceptable. Abroad, as the leading scholar-advocate of "democracy promotion" concludes, we find a "strong line of continuity": democracy is acceptable if and only if it is consistent with strategic and economic interests (Thomas Carothers). In modified form, the doctrine holds at home as well.
The basic dilemma facing policymakers is sometimes candidly recognised at the dovish liberal extreme of the spectrum, for example, by Robert Pastor, President Carter's national security adviser for Latin America. He explained why the administration had to support the murderous and corrupt Somoza regime in Nicaragua, and, when that proved impossible, to try at least to maintain the US-trained National Guard even as it was massacring the population "with a brutality a nation usually reserves for its enemy", killing some 40,000 people. The reason was the familiar one: "The United States did not want to control Nicaragua or the other nations of the region, but it also did not want developments to get out of control. It wanted Nicaraguans to act independently, except when doing so would affect US interests adversely."
Similar dilemmas faced Bush administration planners after their invasion of Iraq. They want Iraqis "to act independently, except when doing so would affect US interests adversely". Iraq must therefore be sovereign and democratic, but within limits. It must somehow be constructed as an obedient client state, much in the manner of the traditional order in Central America. At a general level, the pattern is familiar, reaching to the opposite extreme of institutional structures. The Kremlin was able to maintain satellites that were run by domestic political and military forces, with the iron fist poised. Germany was able to do much the same in occupied Europe even while it was at war, as did fascist Japan in Man-churia (its Manchukuo). Fascist Italy achieved similar results in North Africa while carrying out virtual genocide that in no way harmed its favourable image in the West and possibly inspired Hitler. Traditional imperial and neocolonial systems illustrate many variations on similar themes.
To achieve the traditional goals in Iraq has proven to be surprisingly difficult, despite unusually favourable circumstances. The dilemma of combining a measure of independence with firm control arose in a stark form not long after the invasion, as mass non-violent resistance compelled the invaders to accept far more Iraqi initiative than they had anticipated. The outcome even evoked the nightmarish prospect of a more or less democratic and sovereign Iraq taking its place in a loose Shiite alliance comprising Iran, Shiite Iraq, and possibly the nearby Shiite-dominated regions of Saudi Arabia, controlling most of the world's oil and independent of Washington.
The situation could get worse. Iran might give up on hopes that Europe could become independent of the United States, and turn eastward. Highly relevant background is discussed by Selig Harrison, a leading specialist on these topics. "The nuclear negotiations between Iran and the European Union were based on a bargain that the EU, held back by the US, has failed to honour," Harrison observes.
"The bargain was that Iran would suspend uranium enrichment, and the EU would undertake security guarantees. The language of the joint declaration was "unambiguous. 'A mutually acceptable agreement,' it said, would not only provide 'objective guarantees' that Iran's nuclear programme is 'exclusively for peaceful purposes' but would 'equally provide firm commitments on security issues.'"
The phrase "security issues" is a thinly veiled reference to the threats by the United States and Israel to bomb Iran, and preparations to do so. The model regularly adduced is Israel's bombing of Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981, which appears to have initiated Saddam's nuclear weapons programs, another demonstration that violence tends to elicit violence. Any attempt to execute similar plans against Iran could lead to immediate violence, as is surely understood in Washington. During a visit to Tehran, the influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr warned that his militia would defend Iran in the case of any attack, "one of the strongest signs yet", the Washington Post reported, "that Iraq could become a battleground in any Western conflict with Iran, raising the spectre of Iraqi Shiite militias - or perhaps even the US-trained Shiite-dominated military - taking on American troops here in sympathy with Iran." The Sadrist bloc, which registered substantial gains in the December 2005 elections, may soon become the most powerful single political force in Iraq. It is consciously pursuing the model of other successful Islamist groups, such as Hamas in Palestine, combining strong resistance to military occupation with grassroots social organising and service to the poor.
Washington's unwillingness to allow regional security issues to be considered is nothing new. It has also arisen repeatedly in the confrontation with Iraq. In the background is the matter of Israeli nuclear weapons, a topic that Washington bars from international consideration. Beyond that lurks what Harrison rightly describes as "the central problem facing the global non-proliferation regime": the failure of the nuclear states to live up to their nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligation "to phase out their own nuclear weapons" - and, in Washington's case, formal rejection of the obligation.
Unlike Europe, China refuses to be intimidated by Washington, a primary reason for the growing fear of China on the part of US planners. Much of Iran's oil already goes to China, and China is providing Iran with weapons, presumably considered a deterrent to US threats. Still more uncomfortable for Washington is the fact that, according to the Financial Times, "the Sino-Saudi relationship has developed dramatically", including Chinese military aid to Saudi Arabia and gas exploration rights for China. By 2005, Saudi Arabia provided about 17 per cent of China's oil imports. Chinese and Saudi oil companies have signed deals for drilling and construction of a huge refinery (with Exxon Mobil as a partner). A January 2006 visit by Saudi king Abdullah to Beijing was expected to lead to a Sino-Saudi memorandum of understanding calling for "increased cooperation and investment between the two countries in oil, natural gas, and minerals".
Indian analyst Aijaz Ahmad observes that Iran could "emerge as the virtual linchpin in the making, over the next decade or so, of what China and Russia have come to regard as an absolutely indispensable Asian Energy Security Grid, for breaking Western control of the world's energy supplies and securing the great industrial revolution of Asia". South Korea and southeast Asian countries are likely to join, possibly Japan as well. A crucial question is how India will react. It rejected US pressures to withdraw from an oil pipeline deal with Iran. On the other hand, India joined the United States and the EU in voting for an anti-Iranian resolution at the IAEA, joining also in their hypocrisy, since India rejects the NPT regime to which Iran, so far, appears to be largely conforming. Ahmad reports that India may have secretly reversed its stand under Iranian threats to terminate a $20bn gas deal. Washington later warned India that its "nuclear deal with the US could be ditched" if India did not go along with US demands, eliciting a sharp rejoinder from the Indian foreign ministry and an evasive tempering of the warning by the US embassy.
The prospect that Europe and Asia might move toward greater independence has seriously troubled US planners since World War II, and concerns have significantly increased as the tripolar order has continued to evolve, along with new south-south interactions and rapidly growing EU engagement with China.
US intelligence has projected that the United States, while controlling Middle East oil for the traditional reasons, will itself rely mainly on more stable Atlantic Basin resources (West Africa, western hemisphere). Control of Middle East oil is now far from a sure thing, and these expectations are also threatened by developments in the western hemisphere, accelerated by Bush administration policies that have left the United States remarkably isolated in the global arena. The Bush administration has even succeeded in alienating Canada, an impressive feat.
Canada's minister of natural resources said that within a few years one quarter of the oil that Canada now sends to the United States may go to China instead. In a further blow to Washington's energy policies, the leading oil exporter in the hemisphere, Venezuela, has forged probably the closest relations with China of any Latin American country, and is planning to sell increasing amounts of oil to China as part of its effort to reduce dependence on the openly hostile US government. Latin America as a whole is increasing trade and other relations with China, with some setbacks, but likely expansion, in particular for raw materials exporters like Brazil and Chile.
Meanwhile, Cuba-Venezuela relations are becoming very close, each relying on its comparative advantage. Venezuela is providing low-cost oil while in return Cuba organises literacy and health programs, sending thousands of highly skilled professionals, teachers, and doctors, who work in the poorest and most neglected areas, as they do elsewhere in the Third World. Cuba-Venezuela projects are extending to the Caribbean countries, where Cuban doctors are providing healthcare to thousands of people with Venezuelan funding. Operation Miracle, as it is called, is described by Jamaica's ambassador to Cuba as "an example of integration and south-south cooperation", and is generating great enthusiasm among the poor majority. Cuban medical assistance is also being welcomed elsewhere. One of the most horrendous tragedies of recent years was the October 2005 earthquake in Pakistan. In addition to the huge toll, unknown numbers of survivors have to face brutal winter weather with little shelter, food, or medical assistance. One has to turn to the South Asian press to read that "Cuba has provided the largest contingent of doctors and paramedics to Pakistan", paying all the costs (perhaps with Venezuelan funding), and that President Musharraf expressed his "deep gratitude" for the "spirit and compassion" of the Cuban medical teams.
Some analysts have suggested that Cuba and Venezuela might even unite, a step towards further integration of Latin America in a bloc that is more independent from the United States. Venezuela has joined Mercosur, the South American customs union, a move described by Argentine president Nestor Kirchner as "a milestone" in the development of this trading bloc, and welcomed as opening "a new chapter in our integration" by Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Independent experts say that "adding Venezuela to the bloc furthers its geopolitical vision of eventually spreading Mercosur to the rest of the region".
At a meeting to mark Venezuela's entry into Mercosur, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez said, "We cannot allow this to be purely an economic project, one for the elites and for the transnational companies," a not very oblique reference to the US-sponsored "Free Trade Agreement for the Americas", which has aroused strong public opposition. Venezuela also supplied Argentina with fuel oil to help stave off an energy crisis, and bought almost a third of Argentine debt issued in 2005, one element of a region-wide effort to free the countries from the control of the US-dominated IMF after two decades of disastrous effects of conformity to its rules. The IMF has "acted towards our country as a promoter and a vehicle of policies that caused poverty and pain among the Argentine people", President Kirchner said in announcing his decision to pay almost $1 trillion to rid itself of the IMF forever. Radically violating IMF rules, Argentina enjoyed a substantial recovery from the disaster left by IMF policies.
Steps toward independent regional integration advanced further with the election of Evo Morales in Bolivia in December 2005, the first president from the indigenous majority. Morales moved quickly to reach energy accords with Venezuela.
Though Central America was largely disciplined by Reaganite violence and terror, the rest of the hemisphere is falling out of control, particularly from Venezuela to Argentina, which was the poster child of the IMF and the Treasury Department until its economy collapsed under the policies they imposed. Much of the region has left-centre governments. The indigenous populations have become much more active and influential, particularly in Bolivia and Ecuador, both major energy producers, where they either want oil and gas to be domestically controlled or, in some cases, oppose production altogether. Many indigenous people apparently do not see any reason why their lives, societies, and cultures should be disrupted or destroyed so that New Yorkers can sit in SUVs in traffic gridlock. Some are even calling for an "Indian nation" in South America. Meanwhile the economic integration that is under way is reversing patterns that trace back to the Spanish conquests, with Latin American elites and economies linked to the imperial powers but not to one another. Along with growing south-south interaction on a broader scale, these developments are strongly influenced by popular organisations that are coming together in the unprecedented international global justice movements, ludicrously called "anti-globalisation" because they favour globalisation that privileges the interests of people, not investors and financial institutions. For many reasons, the system of US global dominance is fragile, even apart from the damage inflicted by Bush planners.
One consequence is that the Bush administration's pursuit of the traditional policies of deterring democracy faces new obstacles. It is no longer as easy as before to resort to military coups and international terrorism to overthrow democratically elected governments, as Bush planners learnt ruefully in 2002 in Venezuela. The "strong line of continuity" must be pursued in other ways, for the most part. In Iraq, as we have seen, mass nonviolent resistance compelled Washington and London to permit the elections they had sought to evade. The subsequent effort to subvert the elections by providing substantial advantages to the administration's favourite candidate, and expelling the independent media, also failed. Washington faces further problems. The Iraqi labor movement is making considerable progress despite the opposition of the occupation authorities. The situation is rather like Europe and Japan after World War II, when a primary goal of the United States and United Kingdom was to undermine independent labour movements - as at home, for similar reasons: organised labour contributes in essential ways to functioning democracy with popular engagement. Many of the measures adopted at that time - withholding food, supporting fascist police - are no longer available. Nor is it possible today to rely on the labour bureaucracy of the American Institute for Free Labor Development to help undermine unions. Today, some American unions are supporting Iraqi workers, just as they do in Colombia, where more union activists are murdered than anywhere in the world. At least the unions now receive support from the United Steelworkers of America and others, while Washington continues to provide enormous funding for the government, which bears a large part of the responsibility.
The problem of elections arose in Palestine much in the way it did in Iraq. As already discussed, the Bush administration refused to permit elections until the death of Yasser Arafat, aware that the wrong man would win. After his death, the administration agreed to permit elections, expecting the victory of its favoured Palestinian Authority candidates. To promote this outcome, Washington resorted to much the same modes of subversion as in Iraq, and often before. Washington used the US Agency for International Development as an "invisible conduit" in an effort to "increase the popularity of the Palestinian Authority on the eve of crucial elections in which the governing party faces a serious challenge from the radical Islamic group Hamas" (Washington Post), spending almost $2m "on dozens of quick projects before elections this week to bolster the governing Fatah faction's image with voters" (New York Times). In the United States, or any Western country, even a hint of such foreign interference would destroy a candidate, but deeply rooted imperial mentality legitimates such routine measures elsewhere. However, the attempt to subvert the elections again resoundingly failed.
The US and Israeli governments now have to adjust to dealing somehow with a radical Islamic party that approaches their traditional rejectionist stance, though not entirely, at least if Hamas really does mean to agree to an indefinite truce on the international border as its leaders state. The US and Israel, in contrast, insist that Israel must take over substantial parts of the West Bank (and the forgotten Golan Heights). Hamas's refusal to accept Israel's "right to exist" mirrors the refusal of Washington and Jerusalem to accept Palestine's "right to exist" - a concept unknown in international affairs; Mexico accepts the existence of the United States but not its abstract "right to exist" on almost half of Mexico, acquired by conquest. Hamas's formal commitment to "destroy Israel" places it on a par with the United States and Israel, which vowed formally that there could be no "additional Palestinian state" (in addition to Jordan) until they relaxed their extreme rejectionist stand partially in the past few years, in the manner already reviewed. Although Hamas has not said so, it would come as no great surprise if Hamas were to agree that Jews may remain in scattered areas in the present Israel, while Palestine constructs huge settlement and infrastructure projects to take over the valuable land and resources, effectively breaking Israel up into unviable cantons, virtually separated from one another and from some small part of Jerusalem where Jews would also be allowed to remain. And they might agree to call the fragments "a state". If such proposals were made, we would - rightly - regard them as virtually a reversion to Nazism, a fact that might elicit some thoughts. If such proposals were made, Hamas's position would be essentially like that of the United States and Israel for the past five years, after they came to tolerate some impoverished form of "statehood". It is fair to describe Hamas as radical, extremist, and violent, and as a serious threat to peace and a just political settlement. But the organisation is hardly alone in this stance.
Elsewhere traditional means of undermining democracy have succeeded. In Haiti, the Bush administration's favourite "democracy-building group, the International Republican Institute", worked assiduously to promote the opposition to President Aristide, helped by the withholding of desperately needed aid on grounds that were dubious at best. When it seemed that Aristide would probably win any genuine election, Washington and the opposition chose to withdraw, a standard device to discredit elections that are going to come out the wrong way: Nicaragua in 1984 and Venezuela in December 2005 are examples that should be familiar. Then followed a military coup, expulsion of the president, and a reign of terror and violence vastly exceeding anything under the elected government.
The persistence of the strong line of continuity to the present again reveals that the United States is very much like other powerful states. It pursues the strategic and economic interests of dominant sectors of the domestic population, to the accompaniment of rhetorical flourishes about its dedication to the highest values. That is practically a historical universal, and the reason why sensible people pay scant attention to declarations of noble intent by leaders, or accolades by their followers.
One commonly hears that carping critics complain about what is wrong, but do not present solutions. There is an accurate translation for that charge: "They present solutions, but I don't like them." In addition to the proposals that should be familiar about dealing with the crises that reach to the level of survival, a few simple suggestions for the United States have already been mentioned: 1) accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and the World Court; 2) sign and carry forward the Kyoto protocols; 3) let the UN take the lead in international crises; 4) rely on diplomatic and economic measures rather than military ones in confronting terror; 5) keep to the traditional interpretation of the UN Charter; 6) give up the Security Council veto and have "a decent respect for the opinion of mankind," as the Declaration of Independence advises, even if power centres disagree; 7) cut back sharply on military spending and sharply increase social spending. For people who believe in democracy, these are very conservative suggestions: they appear to be the opinions of the majority of the US population, in most cases the overwhelming majority. They are in radical opposition to public policy. To be sure, we cannot be very confident about the state of public opinion on such matters because of another feature of the democratic deficit: the topics scarcely enter into public discussion and the basic facts are little known. In a highly atomised society, the public is therefore largely deprived of the opportunity to form considered opinions.
Another conservative suggestion is that facts, logic, and elementary moral principles should matter. Those who take the trouble to adhere to that suggestion will soon be led to abandon a good part of familiar doctrine, though it is surely much easier to repeat self-serving mantras. Such simple truths carry us some distance toward developing more specific and detailed answers. More important, they open the way to implement them, opportun- ities that are readily within our grasp if we can free ourselves from the shackles of doctrine and imposed illusion.
Though it is natural for doctrinal systems to seek to induce pessimism, hopelessness, and despair, reality is different. There has been substantial progress in the unending quest for justice and freedom in recent years, leaving a legacy that can be carried forward from a higher plane than before. Opportunities for education and organising abound. As in the past, rights are not likely to be granted by benevolent authorities, or won by intermittent actions - attending a few demonstrations or pushing a lever in the personalised quadrennial extravaganzas that are depicted as "democratic politics". As always in the past, the tasks require dedicated day-by-day engagement to create - in part recreate - the basis for a functioning democratic culture in which the public plays some role in determining policies, not only in the political arena, from which it is largely excluded, but also in the crucial economic arena, from which it is excluded in principle. There are many ways to promote democracy at home, carrying it to new dimensions. Opportunities are ample, and failure to grasp them is likely to have ominous repercussions: for the country, for the world, and for future generations.
This is an edited extract from Failed States by Noam Chomsky (Hamish Hamilton)
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Endgame in Iran
By Mike Whitney
Information Clearing House
06/01/06
"The US is updating contingency plans for a strike to cripple Iran's atomic weapon program if international diplomacy fails....The plan calls for a rolling, five-day bombing campaign against 400 key targets, including 24 nuclear-related sites, 14 military airfields and radar installations, and Revolutionary Guard headquarters." Ian Bruce, "US spells out plan to bomb Iran", The UK Herald
The Bush administration has no intention of peacefully resolving the nuclear dispute with Iran. They have consistently blocked all attempts by Iran to negotiate in good faith or to establish diplomatic channels for discussion. The current offer by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to talk directly with Iran is less a departure from the normal US' belligerence than it is a means of enlisting support from Russia and China for future punitive action. In one particularly ominous comment, Rice said that the negotiations would give Iran "one last excuse" to resist American demands. This tells us that US diplomacy is a just a smokescreen for the eventual hostilities.
It took the United States months of behind the scenes wrangling to persuade the UN Security Council to even consider Iran's "alleged" nuclear weapons programs. Iran tried to prevent this by offering to allow surprise inspections on any facility suspected of covert nuclear activity. Iran is not required to do this under the terms of the NPT, but volunteered as a way of building confidence among the member states. The Bush administration, which made this a vital part of earlier demands, rejected the offer outright saying that Iran's concession would not be enough to end the standoff.
A similar incident took place just weeks earlier when Iran was finalizing the details of an agreement with Russia to enrich uranium outside of the country. Iran figured that this would allay US fears that it was secretively developing nuclear weapons.
Again, the Bush administration rejected this "good will" gesture as insufficient, while Condi Rice scoffed at the idea as a trick. These are just latest examples of Iran's efforts to find a peaceful way to placate Washington. The administration is not interested in concessions or settlements. It is simply building the case for punitive action or war.
Despite growing pressure from the administration, the Security Council has not agreed on a resolution condemning Iran's nuclear programs. So far, Iran has cooperated fully with the IAEA and there's simply no evidence of non compliance. It took an enormous effort by the Bush administration to push a feeble "non-binding presidential statement" through the Council. The statement neither endorses economic sanctions nor military action. It is a toothless declaration that is utterly meaningless except for its use in fueling the propaganda campaign against the Islamic regime.
The administration has hit a road-block at the Security Council. Their appeal for decisive action is going nowhere.
Last week, Secretary of State Rice said, "Security guarantees for Iran were off the table". Her announcement reveals the true depth of America's inflexibility and the unlikelihood of a peaceful solution. If the United States refuses to sign a "non aggression pact", then what incentive is there for Iran to abandon its nuclear programs? After all, Iran has the "inalienable right" to enrich uranium under the NPT. Shouldn't that at least be a bargaining chip for negotiations with the US?
The administration's hardnosed approach precludes any future compromise. Their stubbornness only makes sense if the ultimate objective is war, which appears to be where Washington is headed.
If we compare the present situation to the lead up to the war in Iraq, we can assume that the war plans are already underway. The maneuverings at the UN are just a facade to conceal the movement of military hardware and troops. Once the logistical work is done, the administration will create a pretext for attacking Iran just as it did with Iraq. Rice's globe-trotting diplomacy means nothing; it's Cheney and Rumsfeld who will decide when the time is right.
The administration sees non-aggression treaties as a sign of weakness unworthy of a superpower. As stated in its National Security Strategy (NSS) the United States reserves the right to attack any nation that may challenge its national interests or its global supremacy. Iran is the next domino to establishing permanent American hegemony. Controlling the oil resources of the Caspian Basin and removing regional rivals to Israel remain the fundamental goals of Bush's global resource war. This makes a military confrontation with Iran inevitable. It is absurd to expect the Bush administration will seriously negotiate when their final purpose is regime change.
In a recent article in Counterpunch, "Embedded Journalism and the Disinformation Campaign for War on Iran", Gary Leupp notes that the same cadres of neocons who misled the nation into war with Iraq have been reassembled in the Pentagon to repeat their success against Iran. Under the rubric of "The Office of Iranian Affairs"; Abram Shulsky, Elizabeth Cheney and other far-right hawks fill out a roster of pro-war advocates. Their task is to prepare the country for war by generating fear and suspicion of Iran's imaginary weapons programs. The group's influence is probably similar to that of Judith Miller who was allowed to spout her bogus claims about Iraqi WMD from headlines across the country. In this case, however, the intention is to omit the critical facts about Iran's activities rather than simply inventing false allegations.
For example, the media invariably excludes the important details about Iran's programs that would allow American's to form an educated opinion. These are:
1 The IAEA has consistently said that there is "no evidence" that Iran has a nuclear weapons program or is diverting nuclear material from its research.
2 Iran has been in full compliance with all its treaty obligations for 3 years although it has undergone the most intensive inspection regime in the history of the IAEA.
3 The UN Security Council reaffirmed Iran's "inalienable right" to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and did not order Iran to suspend nuclear enrichment as was falsely reported in the news.
4 The United States has violated its obligations under the NPT by developing a new regime of "bunker busting" low yield nuclear weapons.
5 That the United States is violating the UN Charter by unilaterally threatening a sovereign nation which is not in breach of any UN resolution.
These are the fundamental facts that the American people need to know to make an informed judgment about the present confrontation. Instead, the media simply reiterates the specious claims of government officials without regard to either international law (NPT) or the findings of the UN watchdog agency, the IAEA. We must assume that the media is working with high-ranking officials in The Office of Iranian Affairs to produce news that is so obviously skewed in favor of the administration. After all, their entire raison d'etre is to create the rationale for moving the country to war.
A growing number of American elites are uneasy with the precipitous decline of American prestige as well as the reckless approach to foreign policy. Henry Kissinger has joined Madeleine Albright, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Chuck Hegel and other CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) luminaries to pressure the Bush administration to open a direct dialogue with Iran. Until today, Bush showed no sign that he would do so. Despite the many setbacks in Iraq, the "war president" still appears to be entirely under the spell of VP Dick Cheney and Sec-Def Donald Rumsfeld. Regrettably, there's no indication that Rumsfeld or Cheney are the least bit affected by the widening divisions in elite-opinion. They are in complete control of the policy-making apparatus and should be expected to execute their war plan regardless of its unpopularity or its long-term consequences.
In a recent article by Gareth Porter "Iran Proposal to US offered Peace with Israel", the author reports that in 2003 Iran not only offered "to accept peace with Israel and cut off material assistance to Palestinian armed groups" but made a "two-page proposal for a broad US-Iran agreement covering all the issues facing the two countries". The secret document that was provided to IPS proves that Iran is neither committed to the destruction of Israel nor to the continued sponsorship of terrorist groups.
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"What the Iranians wanted in return," Porter says, " was an end to U.S. hostility and recognition of Iran as a legitimate power in the region" They want to see a "halt in hostile US behavior and rectification of status of Iran in the US" as well as "recognition of Iran's legitimate security interests in the region with according defense capacity." (ISP)
Respect and security; the same demands that one expects from any reasonable sovereign nation.
"In 2003, Bush refused to allow any response to the Iranian offer to negotiate an agreement that would have accepted the existence of Israel." (IPS)
This implies that the decision to attack Iran must have been made in the earliest years of the Bush administration. (Perhaps, even before Bush took office as indicated in the Project for the New American Century)
Will there be a war with Iran?
The UK Herald reported two weeks ago ("US spells out plan to bomb Iran", Ian Bruce) that "the US is updating contingency plans for a strike to cripple Iran's atomic weapon program if international diplomacy fails....The plan calls for a rolling, five-day bombing campaign against 400 key targets, including 24 nuclear-related sites, 14 military airfields and radar installations, and Revolutionary Guard headquarters."
If there is an invasion it will probably be limited to securing the region of Khuzestan which is adjacent to Iraq's southern flank and contains 90% of Iran's oil wealth as well as much of its natural gas. This could be achieved with as little as 15-20,000 combat troops, plus a backup of Special Forces. The rest could be accomplished by aerial bombardments of military installations, radar, artillery placements, missile silos, nuclear sites and Republican Guard facilities. Needless to say, there are not "400 nuclear targets" in Iran. The Herald article implies that the Pentagon is anticipating a "Serbia-type" attack which disrupts major industry, oil production and civilian infrastructure. This strategy has been described in great detail by author John Pilger in his article "Calling the Kosovo Humanitarians to Account" Pilger states:
"NATO's civilian targets included public transport, hospitals, schools, museums, churches. ..bombing bridges on Sunday afternoons and market places."
Citing the goal of opening the region to a "free-market economy", Pilger notes how NATO intentionally targeted state owned businesses to bring Kosovo into the global economic paradigm and remove any stain of its socialist past. Pilger says:
"In the bombing campaign that followed, it was state-owned companies, rather than military sites, that were targeted. NATO's destruction of only 14 Yugoslav army tanks compares with its bombing of 372 centers of industry, including the Zastava car factory, leaving hundreds of thousands jobless. Not one foreign or privately owned factory was bombed."
We expect that the same basic model will be applied to Iran, although the assault will be papered-over by the "state-media franchise" (the "free press") Iran has no nuclear weapons programs and Washington knows it. It is being prepared for "economic reform" and "structural readjustment" so that it can be included into the prevailing system of predatory capital and satisfy the west's ravenous appetite for cheap oil and new markets.
US carrier groups are already moving to the Gulf and the finishing touches are being put on the battle plans. Lt General Sam Gardiner expects that an attack will come as early as June 2006.
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