As the military investigation team insisted that artillery fire had stopped by the time the explosion occurred and suggested it had been caused by a bomb planted in the sand, Amir Peretz, the Defence Minister, declared: " The accumulating evidence proves that this incident was not due to Israeli forces."
But the official interpretation was strongly challenged by a former Pentagon battle damage expert who has surveyed the scene of the beach explosion. He said yesterday that "all the evidence points" to a 155mm Israeli land-based artillery shell as its cause.
Marc Garlasco, who worked in war zones including Iraq and Kosovo during his seven-year stint in the US Department of Defence, called for an independent investigation into the killings after concluding that shell fragments and shrapnel from the site, the size and distribution of the craters on the beach, and the type of injuries sustained by the victims made Israeli shelling easily the likeliest cause.
His assessment came as at least another seven civilians, including two children, as well as two Islamic Jihad militants, were killed in a double Israeli missile strike on a VW van in the densely populated Zeitoun district of Gaza City yesterday. The two children were hit at a nearby house by flying shrapnel and the civilian dead included three medical workers from a nearby children's hospital who rushed to help after hearing the first explosion.
Israel said the militants had been on their way to launch Katyusha rockets which have a much longer range than the Qassam rockets normally fired from Gaza into Israel. One of the two dead Islamic Jihad militants was Hamoud Wadiya, described as the top rocket launcher in the faction. Mr Peretz said before the strike that Israel was resuming operations "to protect the citizens of Israel" after a pause caused by what he had acknowledged had been "the international storm" over the civilian deaths at the Beit Lahia beach last Friday.
The debate over the beach explosion is unlikely to die down however. Mr Garlasco who is now the senior military analyst for Human Rights Watch, said yesterday: "Of course I can't be completely conclusive but all the evidence points to its being a 155mm Israeli shell which killed the Palestinians on the beach."
Mr Garlasco said that most of the serious injuries of the victims in the Gaza hospitals that he had visited were to the torsos and heads, which were inconsistent with a land mine or of a bomb embedded in the sand. "If this had been a landmine I would have expected to see serious leg injuries," he said. Mr Garlasco said that while he could not rule out the theoretical possibility that Palestinian militants had rigged up an unexploded 155mm shell to make an explosive device of their own, that too would have normally produced many more severe leg injuries.
Mr Garlasco produced a four to five-inch, mainly blackened shell fragment which he collected about 100 yards from the scene of the explosion and in which the figures 55 and the letters "mm" are clearly discernible. While acknowledging that this was not itself definite proof that the shell had killed the Palestinians he said some fragments and shrapnel which the Palestinian police explosives department say they took from the scene where the victims were killed were definitely from a 155mm shell.
Mr Garlasco who accompanied a small group of journalists to the Beit Lahia beach, pointed to three separate craters, each covered in a whitish powder, which he said were fresh, one of which was at the spot where witnesses agree the fatal blast occurred, and the two others separated it from it by about 120 and 250 yards. Mr Garlasco added: "It would be a really ridiculous coincidence if there is active shelling and then suddenly an IED [improvised explosive device] goes off."
The military have admitted firing earlier in the area but now say that the explosion occurred between 4.47 and 5.10pm, when it says firing had stopped. An ambulance driver from the nearby al-Awda hospital, Khaled Abu Sada, said that he first took a call about the emergency at 4.50pm.
The military did not explicitly repeat claims in earlier leaks that Hamas had planted the device or say whether it was a dud shell. It says that shrapnel taken from the bodies of victims being treated in Israeli hospitals was not from a 150mm shell. But Mr Garlasco said that copper-lined shrapnel taken from two injured girls who had been in a car at the time of the blast and from the car itself were consistent with such a shell fired by a M109 howitzer.
Mr Garlasco ruled out the possibility that the shells were naval, as originally thought, on the grounds that they were too large to be fired from Israeli navy coastal vessels.
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Editorial: Nuking Iran
By Paul Craig Roberts
06/12/06 "Information Clearing House"
John Bolton, a notorious neocon warmonger who could not be confirmed as America's ambassador to the UN by even the compliant and corrupt US Senate, got the job as a recess appointment. He is using the platform to push America into war with Iran.
Bolton told the Financial Times (June 9) that the Bush Regime has no intention of reaching an agreement with Iran. Time is running out for diplomacy, Bolton told the Financial Times. Iran has a short time remaining in which it can give up its right under the non-proliferation treaty to enrich uranium for nuclear energy or be attacked. Bolton said that US security guarantees for Iran "were not on the table."
There is no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. Every physicist knows that the enrichment requirement for weapons is many times greater than for nuclear energy and that Iran can barely achieve the latter. Despite the facts, Bolton told the Financial Times: "They've [Iran] got both feet on the accelerator, which is why we have a sense of urgency. Each day that goes by gives Iran more time to continue to perfect its efforts for mass production."
Bolton is lying through his teeth. Bush Regime lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and propagandistic references to mushroom clouds convinced the befuddled American public to accept an illegal invasion of Iraq. The same collection of neocon war criminals is again deceiving the American public about Iran.
In his remarks to the Financial Times, Bolton shows himself to be extremely disturbed by the prospect that the diplomatic efforts of Europe, Russia, and China could undermine the Bush Regime's plan to attack Iran. Bolton is doing everything possible to make certain that there is no diplomatic solution.
To help undermine any prospect for peace in the Middle East, Israeli gunboats shelled a public beach and killed or wounded 50 Palestinians. This was done in order to provoke Hamas into abandoning the long-established cease-fire that Hamas had imposed in the interest of negotiating a Palestinian settlement.
The Israeli government succeeded, and now there will a resurgence of "Hamas terrorism" that Bolton and his neocon compatriots can use to build a frightening spectacle of Muslim terrorism.
The Bush/Olmert axis-of-evil have made it clear that "we don't want no stinking peace."
Writing in Antiwar.com (June 10), University of California Professor Jorge Hirsch explains the tripwire that the Bush Regime has laid for Iran in order to have an excuse to launch an attack on that country.
Just as the Bush Regime planned to attack Iraq and then orchestrated a case based on lies, the Bush Regime has already planned to attack Iran. Only this time nuclear weapons will be used.
Nuking Iran is an essential part of the attack plan. The US lacks the necessary conventional military force to invade and occupy Iran, but the use of nuclear weapons against Iran has a wider purpose. The neocons are determined not to have any more embarrassments, such as the Iraqi insurgency. By nuking Iran they intend to send a wider message that the US will use every means at its disposal to ensure its hegemony. The neocons believe that the use of nukes will convince Arabs and the wider world that there is no recourse to accepting America's will.
The neoconservatives could not care less about public opinion. Neocons are contemptuous of the American people. Leo Strauss taught neocons that it was their duty to deceive the clueless American people in order to implement their agenda of global domination. The neocons believe that they have a perfect right, even the obligation, to manipulate the public through propaganda and black ops in order to create acceptance and support for their wars of aggression.
The neocons are the epitome of evil, and they have succumbed to hubris. Like Hitler when he attacked the Soviet Union, neocons believe that their manipulative skills and use of military power will carry the day for their agenda. Hitler's hubris doomed Germany to destruction. What price will America pay for neocon hubris?
When the neocon nazis nuke Iran it will revive memories in Japan and break the US-Japanese alliance. Japan owns enough US Treasury bonds to be able to destroy both the US dollar and the market for Washington's endless red ink. Russia, China, India, and even our European lackeys will have it forcefully brought home to them that the US is an out-of-control rogue nation. They will unify against us. Most likely our bought and paid for puppets in the MIddle East will fall, and Islamic leaders will gain Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Al Qaeda will gain tens of millions of recruits.
Francis Fukuyama's phrase, "the end of history" takes on new meaning.
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Editorial: Jemaah Islamiah Patsy Exits Prison
Wednesday June 14th 2006, 7:43 am
Kurt Nimmo
Another Day in the Empire
Obviously, the neocon and Likud infested Jerusalem Post is none too happy with the release from prison of the "reputed top leader of the al-Qaida linked terror group," Jemaah Islamiah.
"Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, 68, had served 26 months for conspiracy in the Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people, mostly young foreign tourists.... Australia and the United States, which have accused Bashir of being a key member of the Southeast Asian terror group Jema'ah Islamiyah, said they were disappointed at his release, as did Australian victims of the Bali blasts."
Australia and the United States should be "disappointed" with the Indonesian military creation of Jemaah Islamiah, but this of course would be asking too much.
Indonesia's former president, Abdurrahman Wahid, told the Australian last October "a key figure behind the formation of terror group Jemaah Islamiah was an Indonesian spy" and "police or military officers may have played a role in the 2002 Bali bombing," a predictable outcome as the Indonesian military has a long and sordid relationship with the CIA, including the training of its brutal Kopassus, responsible for wanton slaughter in East Timor and assassinating West Papuan independence leaders.
"There is not a single Islamic group either in the movement or the political groups that is not controlled by (Indonesian) intelligence," Umar Abduh, described as a "former terrorist" told SBS Dateline. "Abduh has written a book on Teungku Fauzi Hasbi, a key figure in Jemaah Islamiah (JI) who had close contact with JI operations chief Hambali and lived next door to Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir.... He says Hasbi was a secret agent for Indonesia's military intelligence while at the same time a key player in creating JI."
Documents cited by SBS showed the Indonesian chief of military intelligence in 1990 authorized Hasbi to undertake a "special job".
A 1995 internal memo from the military intelligence headquarters in Jakarta included a request to use "Brother Fauzi Hasbi" to spy on Acehnese separatists in Indonesia, Malaysia and Sweden.
And a 2002 document assigned Hasbi the job of special agent for BIN, the Indonesian national intelligence agency.
Security analyst John Mempi told SBS that Hasbi, who was also known as Abu Jihad, had played a key role in JI in its early years.
"The first Jemaah Islamiah congress in Bogor was facilitated by Abu Jihad, after Abu Bakar Bashir returned from Malaysia," Mr Mempi said.
"We can see that Abu Jihad played an important role. He was later found to be an intelligence agent. So an intelligence agent has been facilitating the radical Islamic movement."
Not surprisingly, Hasbi met a gruesome end-he was disemboweled "in a mysterious murder in 2003 after he was exposed as a military agent and his son Lamkaruna Putra died in a plane," a not uncommon fate for exposed intelligence operatives. No telling who murdered Hasbi, however it should be noted that dead operatives tell no tales about their government handlers or embarrassing operation details.
JI can also be traced back to the CIA-ISI effort in Afghanistan, essentially the locus of virtually all modern "al-Qaeda" centric terrorism. "A recent ICG [International Crisis Group] report entitled Jemaah Islamiyah in South East Asia: Damaged but still Dangerous estimates that more than 200 men associated with the JI network were sent to Afghanistan. In most cases, the Islamic World League paid their expenses. All of them were trained at the military camps run by the Mujaheddin faction led by Abdul Rasul Sayyaf. Sayyaf, a proponent of strict Wahhabi Islam, had extremely close links to Saudi Arabia and its logistics operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which were run by Osama bin Laden, among others," writes Peter Symonds (The Political Origins of Jemaah Islamiyah: Behind the Bali Bombings).
Without the CIA's dirty operations in Afghanistan, neither Jemaah Islamiyah nor Al Qaeda would have come into existence. The anti-Soviet war provided the money and the training, as well as forging the loose international network of contacts that was to characterize the future modus operandi of these organizations.... As the ICG explained: "All of JI's top leaders and many of the men involved in JI bombings trained in Afghanistan over a ten-year period, 1985-95. The jihad in Afghanistan had a huge influence in shaping their worldview, reinforcing their commitment to jihad, and providing them with lethal skills... It is important to note that the process of sending recruits to Afghanistan began at least seven years before JI formally came into being. In many ways, the emergence of a formal organization around 1992 merely institutionalized a network that already existed."
Indeed, a network organized and nurtured by the CIA and Pakistan's notorious ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence), and in the case JI, sustained by BIN. In addition to Indonesia, the CIA-ISI terror collaboration spread out over the globe, from the Philippines to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, France, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, China, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, the Balkans and elsewhere, where it is put to use creating the phantom of international terrorism rising from the imputed virulence of Islam.
"Bashir was found guilty of blessing the 2002 Bali attacks, but cleared of more serious terrorist charges, including heading Jem'aah Islamiyah, which Indonesian police say received funds from al-Qaida," the Jerusalem Post continues. "No evidence has ever been presented linking him to the execution, preparation or commission of terrorist attacks, and most analysts say he played no operational role in the group's attacks," because operations are run by BIN and Indonesian intelligence and Bashir is little more than a patsy. Of course, when we are told JI "received funds from al-Qaida," this translates into JI receiving funds from the CIA.
JI served its purpose. "Reminiscent of Operation Northwoods, the Bali attack served to trigger 'a useful wave of indignation.' They contributed to swaying Australian public opinion in favor of the US invasion of Iraq, while weakening the anti-war protest movement," writes Michel Chossudovsky. "In the wake of the Bali attack, the Australian government 'officially' joined the US-led 'war on terrorism,'" a multi-headed hydra operating on many levels but concentrating primarily on Islamic terrorism, an on-going and relentless campaign engineered to demonize Muslims, as the ludicrous events most recently in London and Canada demonstrate.
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Editorial: There Is A Dark Cloud Over America
Dorothy A. Seese
June 14, 2006
NewsWithViews.com
Some of us, observers of times, trends and events, have been waiting for the American housing boom to go bust, and that day is apparently on the horizon now. But this would cause no ordinary recession.
The world economic situation isn't stable, it has been destabilized by international monetary interests that stand to gain from the emergence, publicly, of the New World Order that has been in the making in the U.S. since the war between the North and South, with the Northern union of centralized federal control winning the conflict. Two engineered world wars, the Great Depression that brought about cries for socialistic government "reforms" and the obliteration of a free market society have steadily pinched America into a place of incalculable debt, loss of personal freedom, a service-oriented economy for most workers, and a false sense of confidence in our ability to bounce back from short periods of recession. "Made in America" doesn't mean much when the company making goods or services is owned by foreign companies. They can pull back to their own homeland and leave ours devastated.
Most Americans own a lot more debt than anything else, so they're totally vulnerable to a major crash. Even illegal aliens can flee home (after all, there was no law to keep them at home and no law saying they cannot return). The American people, filled now with frustration over inflation and the separation of their own government from the citizenry, fill huge cities where they depend on their livelihood from jobs rather than from land ownership and self-sufficiency that rides out hard times. With world violence increasing exponentially, and American violence making life both edgy and dangerous, the relatively quiet Great Depression could never happen again in the United States. A major depression would bring about unthinkable violence and then martial law with United Nations intervention, doubtless at the request of the US government leadership in power at the time of the crash and backlash.
When I moved into a small condo unit in an Arizona retirement city in 1998, gasoline was selling for a dollar a gallon, food cost about half of what it does now, and housing was about 40% of its present cost. Signs asking for people to fill jobs and touting hiring bonuses were plastered on billboards and newspaper ads. Outsourcing was a very small percentage of what it is today. Times appeared good. But it was a house of cards built on a dot-com revolution that pushed technological changes, competition, and speculative investment over the top of the charts.
The homebuilding industry survived and became America's big non-service industry. While construction companies and their subcontractors hired a considerable number of undocumented workers (illegal aliens to be politically incorrect) they also required more skilled labor, American citizens of various ethnic backgrounds. Raw land around major metropolitan areas has grown scarce, so there have been many cities that took their neglected slum areas and renovated them or razed and rebuilt on the land around "downtown" while others created new developments in outlying areas for commuters (thus increasing the need for more roads and expressways).
There is hardly any business that is not affected, directly or indirectly, by the housing industry.
Worse yet, no one owns their home as their property, free and clear. The mortgage may be paid off, but property taxes, assessments for roads and other government fees and taxes turn into a form of rental to remain in one's own home or lose it to the taxing authority! And then there's the new twist to eminent domain that says your property can be taken (for the taker's idea of a fair value) for some good reason, "good" being defined by the takers.
Still, the housing industry not only produced huge new levels of debt for American homebuying families, but jobs that made a buffer for an overly outsourced American economy that produces little in the way of goods. Forty years ago, the automobile industry was largely American. Now, foreign automakers put assembly plants on US soil and save the cost of shipping while the profits go back to the country of origin, or to international financiers who move investments around like chess pieces on the world's coordinates.
When the housing industry goes bust, Americans will wonder what happened and why. Exactly how bad things will become depends on the agenda that the globalists want to put into effect. If it's total obliteration of America as we have known it, only a facade of which still exists anyway, there will be an enormous crash and enormous losses among small investors, businesses, and workers.
Original
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Georgie Skulks in and out of Baghdad
Bush deems surprise trip to Baghdad a success
Last Updated Wed, 14 Jun 2006 11:32:34 EDT
CBC News
President George W. Bush applauded the efforts of coalition forces in Iraq on Wednesday but gave no hints about when U.S. troops will leave and hand power to the Iraqi government.
"I was inspired to be able to visit the capital of a free and democratic Iraq," said Bush, who spent more than five hours in Baghdad on Tuesday on a trip so secret most in his administration were not told beforehand. While the president did not specifically address when some of the 130,000 U.S. troops might pull out, he was resolute in adhering to his plan of listening to military officials on the ground before deciding on any timetable.
"The message to the enemy is: Don't count on us leaving before we succeed," Bush told reporters in Washington after his surprise trip to Baghdad.
He had high praise after his first meeting with newly installed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, saying: "I saw first-hand the strength of his character and his deep determination to succeed."
Any uncertainty he may have had over the political will of al-Maliki and his cabinet to follow through on the reconstruction plan was eliminated, Bush said.
The president also applauded the tightening of security that began on Wednesday to quell any increase in insurgency action, with coalition troops focusing on central Baghdad before fanning out. He was briefed by the military on raids on insurgents and the air strike last week that killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq.
Bush said the fact that Iraqi officials didn't know of his arrival until the last minute shouldn't be viewed in any kind of negative light, but, rather, was a necessary security precaution.
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Iraq war seen as biggest threat to peace
Ewen MacAskill, diplomatic editor
Wednesday June 14, 2006
The US occupation of Iraq presents a bigger danger to world peace than Iran's alleged nuclear ambitions, according to a worldwide survey published on Wednesday.
The annual survey by the Washington-based Pew Research Centre suggests that support for the US-led "war on terrorism" continues to be on the wane around the world, undermined by the Iraq conflict.
The Pew, which is widely respected and has been running since 2001, polled 17,000 people in 15 countries between March and May. In a press release, it says: "Despite growing concern over Iran's nuclear ambitions, the US presence in Iraq is cited at least as often as Iran - and in many countries much more often - as a danger to world peace."
Only in the US and Germany is Iran seen as presenting a greater danger than the US in Iraq. Public opinion in 12 of the other countries - Britain, France, Spain, Russia, Indonesia, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan, Nigeria, India and China - cite the US presence in Iraq as being the greater danger. Opinion in Japan was evenly divided.
Throughout the period the poll was conducted the crisis over Iran's nuclear programme, intensified by hardline comments from its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was repeatedly in the news. Iraq, too, has been almost daily in the news, with the formation of a new Iraqi government being accompanied by fears of a civil war.
As well as Iraq and Iran, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was also high on the list of issues that present a danger to world peace. Public opinion in about a third of the countries polled put it at the top of their list of threats.
The poll confirms the extent to which the well of international goodwill towards the US in the aftermath of 9/11 is being drained. Favourable opinions of the US have fallen in most of the countries.
One of the sharpest declines in support for the US has been in Spain. Only 23% of the Spaniards polled expressed positive views of the US, down from 41% last year. Even though Madrid suffered a large death toll from an al-Qaida attack two years ago, only about one in four supports the "war on terrorism".
Other countries where positive views dropped significantly include India (56%, down from 71%); Russia (43%, from 52%); and Indonesia (30%, from 38%). In Turkey only 12% said they held a favourable opinion, compared with 23% last year.
In the UK, the US's closest ally in Iraq and the second biggest contributor of troops, 60% said the Iraq war had made the world more dangerous. Only 30% said it had made the world safer.
Forty-one per cent of British people said the US presence in Iraq represented a great danger to world peace, with 34% citing Iran as a big threat.
By contrast, concern about Iran has almost doubled in the US over the past two years, according to the poll. Almost half of Americans, 46%, view Mr Ahmadinejad's government as "a great danger" to stability in the Middle East and world peace, up from 26% in 2003. The growing concern in the US is shared in Germany, where 51% of those polled see Iran as a great danger to world peace compared with just 18% three years ago.
Public opinion is overwhelming opposed to Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon.
While the public in most Muslim countries have a high regard for Iran, little confidence was expressed in Mr Ahmadinejad. About two-thirds in Egypt and Jordan said they had little confidence he would "do the right thing" in world affairs.
Full Survey
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'Marines' Cheer Song About Killing Iraqi Civilians - Song's Lyrics: 'I Blew Those Little F**kers to Eternity'
PRNewswire
12 June 06
WASHINGTON - The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today called on the Pentagon and Congress to investigate a music video posted on the Internet that seems to show U.S. Marines cheering a song that glorifies the killing of Iraqi civilians.
CAIR said the four-minute video, called "hadji girl," purports to be a "marine in Iraq singing a song about hadji." (A "Hajji" is a person who has made the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, but the term has often been used as a pejorative by U.S. troops in Iraq.) The song, posted online in March, tells of a U.S. Marine's encounter with an Iraqi woman. It has been viewed by almost 50,000 people.
The song's lyrics include: "I grabbed her little sister and put her in front of me. As the bullets began to fly, the blood sprayed from between her eyes, and then I laughed maniacally ... I blew those little f**kers to eternity ... They should have known they were f**king with the Marines." Members of the audience, not shown in the video, laughed and cheered wildly for these lyrics.
SEE: HADJI GIRL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTh9ZYS6Flc
Comments apparently posted by other military personnel express approval for the song's contents. One comment states: "This makes me happy to be a Marine. But look out! Here comes the rest of the country to call us evil!" Other comments criticize the video as racist.
"Given the recent allegations that U.S. Marines massacred Iraqi civilians in Haditha and other areas, we need to determine if this video is what it purports to be," said CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad. "The inappropriate actions of a few individuals should not be allowed to tarnish the reputation of all American military personnel."
Awad called on Pentagon officials and members of Congress to investigate the video and all other allegations of such conduct in Iraq.
CAIR, America's largest Muslim civil liberties group, has 32 offices and chapters nationwide and in Canada. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.
NOTE: CAIR offers an e-mail list designed to be a window to the American Muslim community. Subscribers to the list receive news releases and other materials dealing with American Muslim positions on issues of importance to our society. To subscribe to ISLAM-INFONET, go to: http://cair.biglist.com/islam-infonet/
CONTACT: CAIR Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, 202-488-8787 or 202-744-7726, E-Mail: ihooper@cair-net.org
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Déjà vu in Ramadi
By Mike Whitney
06/13/06 "Information Clearing House"
"Come and see the blood in the streets." Pablo Neruda, 'Selected Poems'
We've seen this before. An Iraqi city is surrounded by troops and armored vehicles; the artillery is wheeled into place, the roads are blocked, a giant wall of sand is piled up around the perimeter, and everything goes silent before the final onslaught.
We've seen it in Falluja, al Qaim, Husbaya and Tel Afar; the same persistent refrain over and over again; Rumsfeld's lone mantra; "surround, isolate and destroy".
This time it's Ramadi, next time somewhere else; what difference does it make? Iraq is being decimated city by city, town by town; ravaged by invaders who see an opportunity to fatten their wallets or enhance their reputations. They'll level everything before they're done.
Ramadi is just another dot on the map; another set of mud-buildings in a vast ocean of oil; another convenient testing-ground for the War Department's next generation of high-tech weaponry. To hell with the people; their lives mean nothing.
The strategy for Ramadi is the same as everywhere else; "search and destroy"; identify all areas of resistance and crush them with an iron fist. We don't do diplomacy, we don't do negotiations, we don't do "body counts".
No one defies the new boss.
Ramadi is a teeming city of 400,000 people. Now it is under siege by Rumsfeld's legions. The water lines have been blown up, medical supplies have been blocked, electricity has been cut off, and tens of thousands of people are fleeing into the countryside without shelter or food.
This is what is taking place in Ramadi right now. It's not a video game; its real, and its being executed by the United States under the cover of "liberation" or some other such nonsense.
According to Times correspondent Megan Stack:
"The image pieced together from interviews with tribal leaders and fleeing families in recent weeks is one of a desperate population of 400,000 people trapped in the crossfire between insurgents and U.S. forces...U.S. and Iraqi forces had cordoned off the city...Air-strikes on several residential areas picked up, and troops took to the streets with loudspeakers to warn civilians of a fierce impending attack."
"Air strikes on residential areas"?
Not our areas, their areas. Areas where "hajis" and rag-heads live. Ramadi is just another "terrorist sanctuary" to be "democratized" with laser-guided weapons and firebombs. Who cares that thousands of lives will be lost in another barbarous assault on a civilian population? Who cares that property and infrastructure will be reduced to rubble?
The "free press" will paper it over. They always do.
1500 fresh troops have been deployed to Ramadi for the offensive. Residents are afraid of a Falluja-style battle where vast swathes of the city will be left in ruins and thousands of people killed or injured.
The city has been cut off from all sides and American patrols have announced on loudspeakers that civilians should evacuate immediately. Independent journalists are reporting that "fierce fighting" has already broken out between occupation forces and resistance fighters. Air strikes and helicopter raids have intensified. American soldiers are forcing their way into homes in residential areas and snipers have taken positions on the city's roof tops.
On Saturday, June 10, accounts from inside the city confirmed that:
"A full-scale American attack on Ramadi has commenced and fierce fighting is taking place in most of the districts...American fighter planes are now taking part in the offensive."
Silence from the American media. Silence from the congress. Silence from the United Nations.
Another colossal war crime is taking shape and the world averts its eyes once again.
Thousands of the city's residents have refused to leave because they either have no money, no means of transportation, or no place to go. They'll probably be caught in the crossfire just as others were in Falluja.
It's a good day for Rumsfeld; another chance to spread misery across the pock-marked landscape; another opportunity to experiment with the Pentagon's latest lethal gadgetry, another occasion to reduce a major Iraqi city to Dresden-type wreckage.
He is completely free to work his magic. No one will notice anyway.
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American Accomplice of Terrorist Linked to Death Squads in Iraq
ACN Cuban News Agency
Havana, June 6 (ACN) US Army Colonel James Steele, who was involved in the Iran-Contras scandal along with international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles at his command, is now an advisor to death squads in Iraq.
The presence of the US army officer in Iraq has just been revealed by US Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich, Granma daily reports.
Luis Posada Carriles, currently under arrest in the US charged with illegal entry into that country, was the first to report to Colonel Steele about the downing of a DC-3 aircraft in Nicaragua and the arrest of Eugene Hassenfus, the incident that led to the Iran-Contras scandal.
In a letter addressed to the US State Department, Kucinich notes that Colonel Steele, a current advisor to the US ambassador in Iraq, implemented a plan in El Salvador under which tens of thousands Salvadorans "disappeared" or were murdered, including Archbishop Oscar Romero and four American nuns.
Colonel Steele has been assigned to the new counter-insurgence unit known as the Special Police Commando, which operates under the Iraqi Interior Ministry, said Kucinich.
A 1996 investigation by US journalist Robert Parry, who formerly worked as a reporter for Associated Press, Newsweek and PBS TV, revealed that Posada reported to two FBI officers on his participation in the huge drug trafficking and weapon smuggling operation at the orders of Colonel Steele, a close ally of Colonel Oliver North and his bosses in the White House.
In his book titled "Caminos del Guerrero" (Paths of the Guerilla), terrorist Posada Carriles boasts of his close links to Steele and wrote that in El Salvador, he, Felix Rodriguez Mendigutiand and Colonel Luis Orlando Rodriguez jointly cooperated with Colonel Steel outside their formal bounds of service."
In its article, the Granma newspaper points out that it is no surprise that -having such powerful allies- Posada now enjoys the protection and privileges that he is being given in El Paso, Texas.
At the same time that Posada is being held in that city, five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters remain in prison for having risked their lives by infiltrating Florida-based Cuban-American terrorist groups which served as faithful accomplices of the US' dirty wars against Latin America.
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Another U.S. Cover-Up Surfaces
By Dahr Jamail and Arkan Hamed
Inter Press Service
06/12/06 -- BAGHDAD, Jun 12 (IPS)
In the wake of the Haditha massacre, reports of another atrocity have surfaced in which U.S. troops killed two women in Samarra, and then attempted to hide evidence of their responsibility.
Among the innumerable such cases people speak of, this one too has now come to light.
According to an earlier account, Nabiha Nisaif Jassim, a 35-year-old mother of two, was killed in firing along with her 57-year-old cousin Saliha Mohammed Hassan on May 30 when they were being transported to Samarra General Hospital for Nabiha to give birth.
What was not reported, according to an Iraqi human rights investigator who spoke with IPS on condition of anonymity, was that both women were shot in the back of the head by U.S. snipers.
"I investigated this incident myself, and both of these women were shot from behind," said the investigator. "Nabiha's brains were splattered on her brother who was driving the car, since she was in the back seat."
The U.S. military said soldiers fired on the car after it entered a "clearly marked prohibited area near an observation post" after failing to stop despite "repeated visual and auditory warnings." The U.S. military said in a statement that "shots were fired to disable the vehicle."
The brother of the pregnant woman, Redam Nisaif Jassim, who was driving the car, told IPS that he neither saw nor heard any warnings by the U.S. military. Two men who witnessed the incident from a nearby home also said they saw no signs of any warning.
"These kinds of killings by the Americans happen daily in Iraq," said Jassim, "They gave no warning to us before killing my cousin and sister. Of course we know they have no respect for the lives of Iraqis."
The U.S. military claims the incident is being investigated.
The Haditha slaughter in which 24 Iraqis were killed is under investigation for the incident itself, and further for the cover-up, since the initial report given by the Marine Corps stated only that 15 civilian deaths were caused by a roadside bomb and fighting with insurgents.
In this case too, all signs point to a cover-up. "The area where they were killed by the Americans was completely unmarked," the human rights investigator told IPS. A warning sign at the place was put up after the two women were killed, he said.
Like the Haditha massacre, this incident too should be investigated both for the killing and the cover-up, he said.
According to the investigator, the U.S. troops who killed the two women made no attempt to assist them after the shooting.
The next day Redam Jassim was summoned to a local police station. "The Americans offered me 5,000 dollars, and told me it wasn't compensation but because of tradition," Jassim told IPS. The U.S. military pays usually 2,500 dollars compensation for killing an Iraqi. Jassim says he refused the payment.
The U.S. military recently announced in a Defence Department report provided to Congress that it paid out 19 million dollars in compensation to Iraqis last year -- half of which paid out by Marines in al-Anbar province west of Baghdad.
The military claimed the amount was paid in 600 separate incidents, but it is common knowledge in Iraq that the usual payout for a non-combat civilian death is 2,500 dollars.
A payment of 19 million dollars compensation at 2,500 dollars a person would suggest such killings in thousands.
Jassim told IPS and the human rights investigator that he was asked by the Americans' translator to sign a paper written in English. The family and their relatives live in a village called al-Muta'assim, a 40-minute drive from the main hospital in Samarra.. Most people there, like the Jassims, neither speak nor read English.
After he signed the paper, Jassim was offered 2,500 dollars by U.S. soldiers, which he again refused.
"It is clear the Americans tried to cheat him as well as cover up their tracks at the same time," the investigator told IPS. "Like in Haditha, this incident, along with so many others we cannot keep track of, requires a truly independent investigation, rather than one by the U.S. military."
Phone calls and emails to the U.S.. military spokesperson in Baghdad have not been returned.
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US 'planning to keep 50,000 troops in Iraq for many years'
By Francis Harris in Washington
06/12/06 "The Telegraph "
America plans to retain a garrison of 50,000 troops, one tenth of its entire army, in Iraq for years to come, according to US media reports.
The revelation came as George W Bush summoned his top political, military and intelligence aides to a summit on Iraq's future today at the presidential retreat at Camp David.
Tomorrow the Americans will talk by video link to Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister, and members of his cabinet, as well as American military commanders in Iraq.
The meeting marks the highest profile discussion of Iraq's future so far, and reflects the Bush administration's determination to exploit the two most promising developments in Iraq for many months - the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qa'eda in Iraq, and the completion of the first permanent post-war cabinet.
Mr Bush said the meeting would decide "how to best deploy America's resources in Iraq and achieve our shared goal of an Iraq that can govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself".
But despite fierce domestic pressure to reduce troop levels before November's critical mid-term elections, there were growing signals that Gen George Casey, America's Iraq commander, may raise troop levels in the short-term.
Mr Bush said in his weekend radio address that "violence in Iraq may escalate" as terrorists tried to prove that they had survived the loss of their leader.
American commanders are also worried by the situation in the Sunni areas at the heart of the insurgency, where American units have complained of a shortage of men.
Mr Maliki pledged in a Washington Post article to confront the Shia militia, but his plan to "re-establish a state monopoly on weapons" could well generate a confrontation between ultra-religious gunmen and the fledgling Iraq security forces.
America's military would be drawn into any defining battle over who rules Iraq.
Gen Casey has already summoned his main reserve unit, a 3,500-man armoured brigade based in Kuwait and has alerted a Germany-based brigade that it may be needed soon.
Military planners have begun to assess the costs of keeping a 50,000-man force in Iraq for a protracted period of time. At present the total number of serving American troops is about 500,000.
The plan has not yet received presidential approval. But it would fit with the administration's belief that while troops numbers will fall, American forces will have to remain in Iraq beyond Mr Bush's departure from the White House in early 2009.
Military analysts have noted that significant American spending is already being committed to permanent bases in Iraq. They say Iraq's military may soon be able to fight by itself, but it cannot feed or supply itself and it has no air force to speak of.
The Camp David meeting will be attended by Dick Cheney, the vice-president, Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, Gen Michael Hayden, the CIA director and Gen Peter Pace, America's top soldier.
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Bush pledges to help Iraq succeed
Wednesday, 14 June 2006, 16:35 GMT 17:35 UK
US President George W Bush has pledged to do "what it takes" to help the new Iraqi government to succeed.
His comments came in a news conference following a surprise trip to Baghdad on Tuesday, where he met new Prime Minister Nouri Maliki.
"I saw first-hand the strength of his character and his deep determination to succeed," Mr Bush told reporters.
He also announced details of tough new measures in Baghdad in an effort to win back control of the city's streets.
Some 40,000 Iraqi and US troops were put on the streets just after dawn as part of a crackdown ordered by Mr Maliki.
He has said he is willing to talk to some insurgents, as long as they do not have blood on their hands.
Meanwhile violence continued, with clashes breaking out between gunmen and security forces in the city's north.
No casualties were reported in the clashes, in the mainly Sunni Adhamiya district, which officials said lasted about half an hour.
A car bomb also exploded in northern Baghdad, killing at least two people and injuring 10, police said. A second car bomb exploded in another northern area, but no-one died.
Fears are high that al-Qaeda in Iraq is preparing new attacks after the killing of their leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Zarqawi's successor, named as Abu Hamza al-Mujahid, has reportedly vowed to defeat "crusaders and Shias" in Iraq.
'Capable people'
Mr Bush acknowledged that violence in Iraq would never be completely eliminated.
But he said intelligence gathered from raids after the death of Zarqawi was being used to track down insurgents.
"I was inspired to be able to visit the capital of a free and democratic Iraq," Mr Bush said of his visit on Tuesday, which gave Mr Maliki just five minutes' warning.
The US president had been chairing talks in the US on future policy in Iraq and had been due to speak to Mr Maliki via videophone.
He said the trip had banished any doubts about the new government's "will to go forward".
Mr Bush described the new prime minister's agenda and cabinet as "impressive".
"I came away with the feeling they're plenty capable people," he said.
Difference noticed
The new security measures will be the strictest imposed on Baghdad since the US-led invasion in 2003.
On Wednesday, the nightly evening curfew began at 2030, not 2300 as it did before, and will run until 0600.
Extra troops were posted throughout Baghdad in the morning, setting up new checkpoints to secure road travel in and around the city.
Residents said they had already noticed the difference, with more vehicles being stopped and searched and long queues building up as a result.
But the BBC's Hugh Sykes in Baghdad says checkpoints and patrols provide easy targets for car bombers, and ordering a suicide car bomber to pull over could prompt him to detonate, thereby helping him to achieve his objective.
Insurgents are to be targeted by snap raids, with the majority of resources deployed to the most dangerous areas of Baghdad.
But the question among Iraqis is whether this is just a show of force or whether it can make a dent in the daily bombings and shootings that claim at least 20 to 30 lives in the capital every day.
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Majority Leader Boehner's Confidential Strategy Memo For Thursday's Iraq Debate
Thinkprogress
On Thursday, the House of Representatives will hold a debate on the Iraq war. Media reports say Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) "hopes to match the serious, dignified tone of deliberation that preceded the Gulf war, in 1991."
ThinkProgress has obtained a "Confidential Messaging Memo" from Boehner instructing his caucus to conduct a very different kind of deliberation. Here's a quick summary:
1. Exploit 9/11. The two page memo mentions 9/11 seven times. It describes debating Iraq in the context of 9/11 as "imperative."
2. Attack opponents ad hominem. The memo describes those who opposes President Bush's policies in Iraq as "sheepish," "weak," and "prone to waver endlessly."
3. Create a false choice. The memo says the decision is between supporting President Bush's policies and hoping terrorist threats will "fade away on their own."
You can read the confidential memo for yourself HERE.
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Crackdown on Baghdad begins
By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
14 June 06
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraq's prime minister set in motion the biggest security crackdown in Baghdad since the U.S.-led invasion, with 75,000 Iraqi and U.S. troops to deploy across the strife-prone capital starting today.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki also announced plans for an extended curfew and a weapons ban, saying he would show "no mercy" to terrorists six days after al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. airstrike northeast of Baghdad.
The announcement came as radical anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr planned a demonstration today in Baghdad to protest President Bush's surprise visit to the capital.
Bush's visit Tuesday was seen by many as a boost for al-Maliki, who is seeking to build momentum after al-Zarqawi's death and the appointment of defense and interior ministers following weeks of political stalemate.
Al-Zarqawi's successor, identified by the nom de guerre Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, vowed to defeat "crusaders and Shiites" in Iraq and said "holy warriors" in the country were stronger than ever, according to the new leader's first Web statement, posted Tuesday.
Underlining the threat, explosions struck oil-rich Kirkuk, killing at least 16 people. Kirkuk police Brig. Gen. Sarhad Qader said the attacks in the city 180 miles north of Baghdad were believed to be "a reaction to avenge the killing of al-Zarqawi."
Al-Qaida in Iraq has been increasingly focusing its attacks on Baghdad rather than on U.S. targets in western Iraq.
Security officials said 75,000 Iraqi and multinational forces would be deployed throughout Baghdad today, securing roads in and out of the city, establishing more checkpoints, launching raids against insurgent hideouts and calling in airstrikes if necessary.
"Baghdad is divided according to geographical area, and we know the al-Qaida leaders in each area," said Maj. Gen. Mahdi al-Gharrawi, commander of public order forces under the Interior Ministry.
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The operation, to be launched at 6 a.m. today, was to be the biggest of its kind in Baghdad since the U.S. handed over sovereignty to Iraq in June 2004, al-Gharrawi said.
Civilians have complained of random violence and detentions by Iraqi forces, especially the police, which are widely believed to have been infiltrated by sectarian "death squads."
Al-Gharrawi said there were plans for a single uniform to distinguish legitimate forces in the coming days.
Al-Maliki's plan additionally includes banning personal weapons and implementing a 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew, which hitherto had begun at 11 p.m. The new curfew was expected to begin Friday.
Al-Maliki said in his news conference the plan "will provide security and confront the terrorism and ... enable Iraqis to live in peace in Baghdad."
The Iraqi army launched a similar crackdown dubbed Operation Lightning in May 2005, deploying more than 40,000 Iraqi police and soldiers, backed by U.S. troops and air support. However, violence continued to spike and many Sunnis were alienated by the heavy-handed tactics concentrating on their neighborhoods.
So far in 2006, at least 3,829 Iraqi civilians and at least 754 Iraqi security forces have been killed in war-related violence. There have been at least 335 coalition troop deaths in 2006; of these at least 312 have been U.S. military.
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Germany Says No to Rumsfeld Request for Help in Iraq
Spiegel Online
9 June 06
US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is reportedly looking for Germany to provide more assistance in Iraq. The German government, however, has declined the invitation.
The United States remains interested in a greater German involvement in Iraq according to a newspaper report on Friday. According to the Berlin daily Berliner Zeitung, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has asked his German counterpart Franz Josef Jung for help in training the Iraqi military in Baghdad. Germany's policy of only providing training assistance outside the borders of Iraq, however, will continue, Jung said at a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels on Thursday.
"We're contributing our part to the stabilization of Iraq," Jung said while also emphasizing that German assistance outside Iraq would continue.
Germany has participated in training Iraqi officers in both Hamburg and in the United Arab Emirates as part of a NATO mission begun in 2004 aimed at stabilizing the situation in Iraq. Some 1,000 Iraqi officers have been trained in Baghdad since then with a further 500 travelling to Europe for training. But Germany has consistently refused to become involved directly in Iraq -- a policy that has not changed since Chancellor Angela Merkel's election in the autumn of 2005. Nevertheless, Merkel's term in office has corresponded with a thawing of trans-Atlantic relations which had become frosty under Merkel's predecessor Gerhard Schröder.
Despite the change of tone, however, a direct German involvement in Iraq would likely be extremely controversial. Schröder's outright refusal to get involved in Iraq, first voiced categorically during his 2002 campaign for the chancellery, was extraordinarily popular in Germany and led to his re-election that year. Four years later, the US presence in Iraq remains deeply unpopular in Germany.
The German military only recently pledged almost 800 troops to participate in a peace-keeping operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo during elections there at the end of July. German troops are likewise stationed in Afghanistan, Kosovo and off the Horn of Africa.
wes/Berliner Zeitung/dpa
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Organized Theft
U.S. inflation prompts more rate hike worries
Last Updated Wed, 14 Jun 2006 10:18:06 EDT
CBC News
Fresh reports of rising costs for gasoline and housing in the United States sparked concern Wednesday that interest rates will continue to rise.
The U.S. Labour Department reported that the overall consumer price index was up by 0.4 per cent last month, which was what economists had been forecasting.
However, the core rate of inflation - which factors out volatile items such as food and energy -was up by 0.3 per cent last month. Economists had been looking for an increase of 0.2 per cent.
Rent costs were up by 0.6 per cent in May for the biggest gain since August 1990.
Energy costs increased by 2.4 per cent. So far for 2006, energy costs have been rising at an annual rate of 30.8 per cent, more than double the 2005 rate of 17.1 per cent.
Eyes on the Federal Reserve
Stock markets have been edgy since June 5, when U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said he would remain vigilant in fighting inflation.
The comment upset investors, who fear that another rise in U.S. interest rates will have a spillover effect on Canadian markets by dampening demand for Canada's mineral resources.
The Fed's next decision on interest rates is slated for June 29. The Fed's key interest rates currently stand at a five-year high of five per cent following a string of 16 rate hikes of one-quarter of a percentage point.
Analysts agreed that the latest inflation figures all but guarantee a June 29 rate increase.
"We're sticking to our call for a peak of 5.25 per cent in the funds rate, since the Fed is also going to be facing increasing evidence of a moderation in growth that should, if the central bank is patient, cap the pressure on core inflation," said CIBC World Markets economist Avery Shenfeld.
TD Securities strategist Eric Lascelles said it was still possible for economic data to be released in the next two weeks to persuade the Fed to pause instead of boost its key interest rate.
"But the odds of this outcome have grown exceedingly slim," he said.
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Fed Stumbles Add to Global Market Meltdown
By PAUL THARP
NY Post
14 June 06
As world markets spiral toward a crash landing, Wall Street is hoping new Federal Reserve boss Ben Bernanke keeps his mouth shut.
Skittish investors worried about rising interest rates around the globe yesterday as stock prices collapsed in many of the world's capitals and gold plunged in its biggest one-day drop in 26 years.
Tokyo's stock market triggered the global rout overnight as shares plunged there in the biggest point drop since 9/11.
U.S. blue chips followed by losing all their gains this year, while investors in crude oil fled to escape a possible collapse of crude's long-running bull market.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 86.44 points to 10,706.14, while the S&P 500 dipped 12.71 to 1,223.69. The Nasdaq composite index dropped 18.85 to 2,072.47, its eighth-straight losing session, the longest such streak in 12 years.
Many market watchers believe Bernanke has dropped the ball in his five months at the economy's helm as Fed chief - and that his talk on inflation, and the rate hikes he plans to contain it, have rattled investors.
"Bernanke started with some tough talk, but he got mealy-mouthed and then real dovish to keep everyone in the game," said Bill King, market strategist at M. Ramsey & King Securities.
Other Fed bankers didn't help matters, King said. "They were out there every day making speeches in a public-relations campaign to say 'Inflation is contained,' " he said.
"All of them should just keep their mouths shut. And Bernanke? 'Just shut up!' "
But they all got rock-star status and just loved it too much to stop, King said.
"Now it's blowing up in their face because they were shills instead of quietly running policy," said King, echoing other analysts' frustrations.
Their comments came as global markets were being knocked around.
"There's a massive liquidation in just about everything - oil, stocks, gold, copper," said Peter Beutel, energy analyst at Cameron Hanover.
Oil tumbled here 2 percent to $68.56 a barrel - which is more than triple its price of $19.73 a barrel in January 2002.
"We're at the foothills of another energy recession," Beutel said. "Every time we've tripled energy prices, we get a major recession."
Analysts said they are certain Bernanke will hike rates again this summer.
"This mixture of potentially higher interest rates and an economic slowdown could lead to the next recession," said Herb Kurlan, president of Vtrader Pro.
New government data yesterday said inflation is rising faster than the government predicted, due to broadly rising costs blamed on surging energy.
The Producers Price Index rose 0.3 percent last month, much steeper than forecast.
What's more, energy costs have drained an extra $203 billion a year out of consumer pockets since 2003 for vehicles and heating homes - or an additional $525 million more each day than they spent three years ago.
paul.tharp@nypost.com
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U.S. stocks drop continuously
www.chinaview.cn 2006-06-14 08:54:42
BEIJING, June 14 (Xinhuanet)-- U.S. Stocks dropped on Tuesday amid persistent worries about rising interest rates and slower economic growth after the latest warnings on inflation from Federal Reserve officials.
On Tuesday the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 86.44 points, or 0.80 percent, to 10,706.14, sliding into negative territory for the year. It was the seventh decline by the blue-chip average in the past eight trading sessions. The Dow has fallen 8 percent since closing within 80 points of its all-time high on May 10.
The Standard & Poor's 500 Index was down 12.71 points, or 1.03 percent, at 1,223.69. The Nasdaq Composite Index was down 18.85 points, or 0.90 percent, at 2,072.47.
The Nasdaq finished down for the eighth day in a row, matching a losing streak it registered in May which was its longest in 12 years.
Stocks fell in volatile trading on Tuesday as inflation data added to concerns that the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates for the 17th consecutive time in June.
"It is becoming more widely accepted that the Fed is likely to raise rates at its June meeting and that is being slowly priced into the market," said Charles Lieberman, chief investment officer of Advisors Capital Management in Paramus, New Jersey.
"Fears of Federal Reserve over-reaction in its fight on inflation continue to haunt Wall Street and other global equity markets," said Fred Dickson, chief market strategist at DA Davidson.
Investors searching for undervalued shares after weeks of selling helped to offset the concerns, but many were hesitant to make bets before the Consumer Price Index report on Wednesday.
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Global equity meltdown costs investors $2 trillion
By Chris Sanders
Reuters
13 June 06
NEW YORK - The month-long slide in global stocks has wiped out at least $2 trillion in wealth, leaving investors few alternatives to preserve their holdings aside from bonds and money markets.
Investors have been dumping stocks, commodities and emerging market assets on growing concerns that economic growth will suffer from higher inflation and interest rates.
"It is essentially one consistent story worldwide, starting here in the U.S. There is a fear that the Fed's repeated commitment to limiting inflation demonstrates a willingness to risk economic activity," said Christopher Low, chief economist at FTN Financial in New York.
Stock markets have been punished since the U.S.
Federal Reserve raised interest rates for 16th time in a row on May 10 and issued a hawkish statement saying it may need to do so again to fight inflation. Investors had expected some sign of an end to the tightening cycle.
Global markets have suffered since, and strategists show little agreement about how deep and how long the sell-off will go. Bonds have been the most direct beneficiary of the equities route, with benchmark U.S. 10-year Treasuries staging their longest rally of the year since mid-May.
MARKETS FALL INTO THE RED ON THE YEAR
The Dow Jones industrial average (^DJI - news) is off 8.2 percent since mid-May and as of Tuesday's close had erased its gain for the year. The Nasdaq Composite Index (^IXIC - news) is off 12.75 percent from its high for the year on April 19 and the Standard & Poor's 500 Index (^SPX - news) has fallen by nearly 8 percent from its May peaks.
On Tuesday, Tokyo's Nikkei average booked its biggest one-day percentage fall in two years, tumbling 4.14 percent, wiping out more than 16.56 trillion yen ($145 billion) in market value from the Tokyo Stock Exchange's first section. It was the biggest one-day point drop since immediately after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
In Europe, the FTSEurofirst 300 (^FTEU3 - news) index of top European shares has fallen about 11 percent since May 11. The index finished at 1,238.5 points on Tuesday, its lowest closing level since November 30.
Since its year high hit in early May, the MSCI World Index (^MSCIWO - news) of global stocks has lost $1.9 trillion in market capitalization, nearly 12 percent of its value and more than the economic output of the United Kingdom.
The index compiled by MSCI Barra does not account for all global stocks, meaning the total amount of lost wealth is greater still.
As global central banks in Europe and United States have raised interest rates to cool inflation, investors are aggressively slashing their exposure to emerging markets as well.
OUTFLOWS FROM EQUITIES
Investors pulled out about $8.5 billion from emerging equities in the three weeks ending June 8, according to data from EmergingPortfolio.com Funds research. The benchmark MSCI emerging market stock index (^MSCIEF - news) has lost about 24 percent since May 10.
"We've seen a lot of panic selling by people who have gotten into emerging markets and commodities later in the game -- pessimism is high," said Scott Wren, a senior equity strategist with A.G. Edwards & Sons. "People are sitting on a lot of cash and are afraid to get back in the market."
Given the drop-off markets, analysts said investors should now seek quality.
Tom McManus, chief investment strategist with Banc of America Securities said investors should look at "the bonds of the stock market. Steady companies with strong earnings and geographic diversification."
These shares have been out of favor since about 1998, he added, and are the kind of companies
Warren Buffett has been known to own -- companies with top-quality balance sheets and diversified earnings streams.
Shares held by Buffett include Coca Cola Co. (NYSE:KO - news), American Express Co. (NYSE:AXP - news), Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE:WMT - news), Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE:WFC - news) and Anheuser-Busch (NYSE:BUD - news). Each of these has retained their gains even as the S&P 500 has erased its advance and now stands 2 percent lower on the year.
The global sell-off, however, is not over and may only be just starting, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s global equity strategist Abhijit Chakrabortti.
"This is nothing compared with what we may see late in the summer and early October -- once slower growth finally sinks in and expectations for higher benchmark rates, at 6 percent or even more, come out," Chakrabortti told the Reuters Investment Outlook Summit in New York.
"Sectors most dependent on growth and the companies most dependent on volume and price declines, which also includes tech companies, should be avoided," he said.
"We like the big telecom providers such as Verizon (NYSE:VZ - news) and AT&T (NYSE:T - news), as well as Colgate (NYSE:CL - news)," he added. All three have soundly outperformed the market this year, gaining 4.75 percent, 10.3 percent and 12 percent, respectively.
Among U.S. mutual funds, investors pulled only $1.9 billion out of equity funds in the week that ended June 7, not a huge amount compared with outflows of $7.1 billion during the previous week, research firm TrimTabs reported late last week.
At Boston-based Fidelity Investments, the world's biggest mutual fund company, "we have not noticed unusual activity during the past several days but we had strong money market inflows in May," said Vincent Loporchio, a spokesman.
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Like a dinosaur, US economy heads to extinction because of excessive indebtedness
Pravda
14 June 06
Today the US economy is often compared with a dinosaur, because it is the next largest economy in the world and almost as large as that of the six other members of the Group of Seven combined.
Contrary to what we used to believe, leviathans like the diplodocus were not exactly sloths. It is now thought that they had the strength to stand on their hind legs in order to reach food at the top of trees. They may even have been able to run rather than merely plod. But it seems reasonable to assume that their reaction times were slow; it was a very long way from the diplodocus's tail to its brain. If a predator sank its fangs into that tail, it might have taken the diplodocus a few moments to feel the pain.
The big question about the dinosaurs is, of course, What caused their extinction? Why were so many species unable to evolve in response to environmental changes? The most common explanation is that a very sudden event, like a meteor's impact, gave the dinosaurs too little time to evolve and provided smaller and more dynamic life forms with an opportunity to take over.
An analogous question for economists is whether the United States is capable of evolving out of its present excessive indebtedness. Or could the global economic environment change so drastically as to threaten, if not extinction, then at least decline relative to smaller, more dynamic economies?
When the National Debt clock in Times Square was turned on in 1989, the federal debt amounted to around $2.7 trillion. Eleven years later, on Sept. 7, 2000, the clock read: "Our national debt: $5,676,989,904,887. Your family share: $73,733." That's when the clock was turned off, because, in those innocent days, it seemed as if the $5.6 trillion debt was set to decline, perhaps to disappear altogether. On that same date, CNN reported, "Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore . . . outlined a plan that he says would eliminate the debt by 2012." The proposal was uncontroversial. Economic advisers to the Republican candidate, George W. Bush, were said to have "agreed with the principle of paying down the debt," but their candidate had "not committed to a specific date for eliminating it."
That should have set the alarm bells ringing.
Since becoming president, George Bush has presided over one of the steepest peacetime rises ever in the federal debt. The gross federal debt now exceeds $8.3 trillion. There are three reasons for the post-2000 increase: reduced revenue during the 2001 recession, generous tax cuts for higher income groups and increased expenditures not only on warfare abroad but also on welfare at home. And if projections from the Congressional Budget Office turn out to be correct, America is just a decade away from a $12.8 trillion debt - more than double what it was when Bush took office.
Big public debts are not always bad, to be sure. It could be argued that in his first term Bush wisely used fiscal policy to boost aggregate demand and counter the impact of the dot-com bust. Public borrowing also allows "tax smoothing" by spreading out over time the cost of big one-off expenses like wars, three of which the United States has fought since 1999.
On the other hand, by requiring larger interest payments, big public debts devour revenue that could be spent on other programs. They may crowd out private investment by pushing up long-term interest rates. They may also have a regressive distributional impact, transferring economic resources from taxpayers to bondholders or from future generations to the present generation.
It all depends how you measure the debt. If you exclude bonds and bills in the possession of government agencies and programs, like the Social Security trust fund, the debt actually held by private investors is less than $5 trillion. Economists commonly calculate the debt burden as a
percentage of gross domestic product. Counting only the debt held by the public, that works out to around 38 percent of G.D.P., a major increase relative to 1981 but still modest compared with the years after World War II. What's more, the C.B.O. forecasts (albeit with the rosy assumption of annual growth close to 5 percent) that the debt-to-G.D.P. ratio will actually decline in the decade ahead, to perhaps as little as 34.5 percent - even if today's lax budgetary plans are adhered to.
The trouble is that the officially stated borrowings of the federal government are only one part of the U.S. debt problem. For it is not only the government's debt that has grown large of late. Ordinary American households have also gone on prodigious borrowing sprees.
In the past five years alone, the value of U.S. home-mortgage debt has increased by nearly $3 trillion. Not all of that borrowing went to pay for real estate, the traditional function of mortgages. In 2004, net mortgage borrowing not used for the purchase of new homes amounted to nearly $600 billion. The International Monetary Fund estimates that this kind of equity extraction has risen from less than 2 percent of household disposable income in the year 2000 to more than 9 percent in the third quarter of last year.
And let's not forget those other debts that families did not formerly run up. Consumer credit in the 1960's and 1970's averaged less than 13 percent of G.D.P. In the past 10 years it has climbed to around 18 percent.
Not only do Americans borrow as never before; they also save remarkably little. The impressive resilience of American consumer spending in the past 15 years has been based partly on a collapse in the personal savings rate from around 7.5 percent of income to below zero. The aggregate national savings rate, which includes the public sector and corporations, averaged 13 percent in the 1960's. Last year it was just 0.8 percent.
The trouble is that, for demographic reasons, Americans need to save more than this. According to the 2006 Retirement Confidence Survey, 6 in 10 American workers say they are saving for retirement, and just 4 in 10 say they have actually calculated how much they should be saving - many of them figure that they will simply work longer. According to survey data, the average worker plans to work until age 65. But it turns out that he or she actually ends up retiring at 62; indeed, about 4 in 10 workers end up leaving the work force earlier than planned.
This has grave implications for the federal budget. Already, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid consume nearly half of federal tax revenues. And that proportion is bound to rise, not only because the number of retirees is going up but also because benefits programs are out of control. Over the past four years, Medicare benefits per recipient grew 16 times as fast as the real wages of the workers paying for them through taxation.
In short, the federal government seems to have much larger unfinanced liabilities than official data imply. If you compare the present value of all projected future government expenditures, including debt-service payments, with the present value of all projected future government receipts, the gap is about $66 trillion, according to calculations by the economists Jagadeesh Gokhale and Kent Smetters. That's almost eight times the size of the official gross federal debt.
American consumption has been the principal engine of economic growth in the world over the past decade. But the readiness of American households and politicians to borrow has an inevitable corollary: the United States has become the world's biggest debtor.
In almost every year since 1992, the gap between the amount of goods and services the United States exports and the amount it imports has grown wider. This year the current account deficit, which is largely a trade deficit, could rise as high as 7 percent of G.D.P., nearly double its peak in the mid-1980's. What results is a remarkable accumulation of foreign debt. Estimates of the net international investment position of the United States - the difference between the overseas assets owned by Americans and the American assets owned by foreigners - have declined from a modest positive balance of around 5 percent of G.D.P. in the mid-80's to a huge net debt of minus 20 percent today.
What this means is that foreigners are accumulating large claims on the future output of the United States. However the borrowed money is used, whether productively or not, a proportion of the future returns on U.S. investments will end up flowing abroad as dividends or interest payments.
Asian central banks in particular have been buying large quantities of dollars and dollar-denominated securities. Chinese purchases of U.S. bonds in 2005, for example, are estimated to have risen as high as 2 percent of our G.D.P., a very significant proportion of America's foreign borrowing. At first sight, the channeling of Chinese savings into American bonds seems bizarre.
The average American has an income of about $40,000 a year and has, as we have seen, a personal savings rate of zero. The average Chinese earns around $1,500 per year but has personal savings of 23 percent of his income - and is lending a large chunk of these savings, via the People's Bank of China, to the average American. The conventional explanation for this strange transaction is that the Chinese authorities need to buy dollar-denominated bonds to prevent their own currency from appreciating relative to ours. The logic is that China needs a weak exchange rate to ensure that its exports continue to flow into the American market.
Of course, it is not only the Chinese who have been engaging in the accumulation of dollars and dollar-denominated securities. The Japanese have been nearly as active, as have other Asian economies. Middle Eastern oil producers have also been running large trade surpluses, thanks to high oil prices, and investing at least some of the proceeds in the United States.
As a result, there has been an immense rise in foreign ownership of American securities of all kinds, but especially government bonds. Foreign ownership of the U.S. federal debt passed the halfway mark in June 2004. About a third of corporate bonds are now in foreign hands, as is more than 13 percent of the U.S. stock market. One analyst has half-seriously calculated that at the current rate of foreign accumulation, the last U.S. Treasury held by an American will be purchased by the People's Bank of China on Feb. 9, 2012.
To those familiar with the Latin American debt crises of the 80's and 90's, there's a case to be made that the United States is on the road to becoming a Latin American country. While it is certainly true that our net external debt is now as large in relative terms as some Latin American debts have been in past crises, there's a difference. Latin American countries have generally had to borrow in the currency used by their creditors. A decline in the borrowing country's currency, say the peso, threatens to send its dollar-denominated debt skyrocketing in peso terms.
But the happy position of the United States is more like that of Britain in the aftermath of World War II, when a substantial part of its war debt was owed in sterling to current or former colonies. Because Britain borrowed in its own currency, it had control over the unit of account. As the pound slid from $4 to below $2 from the 40's to the 70's, its sterling liabilities were reduced by half in terms of the key postwar currency.
Could the dollar follow a similar downward path? It has happened before. Between March 1985 and April 1988, the dollar depreciated by more than 40 percent against the currencies of America's trading partners. As a fiscal strategy, dollar depreciation has much to recommend it. At a stroke, American exports would regain their competitiveness overseas and Asian imports would become more expensive, leading to at least some contraction - though not an elimination - of the trade deficit. Foreign creditors would take the hit, finding their dollar assets suddenly worth much less in terms of their own currencies.
So what's the catch? A sudden increase in the dollar price of American imports could stoke inflation in the United States. There is already some patchy evidence of an upturn in inflation. Whichever measure you use, prices are certainly rising at a faster rate now than they were two years ago, as are hourly earnings. As measured by the spread between conventional bonds and inflation-proof bonds, inflation expectations are also up slightly.
But is that really a catch? Not necessarily. Because higher inflation means that the real value of your debt ends up being reduced (in terms of the purchasing power of the amount that you owe) - provided, that is, that your debt is not adjustable-rate or index-linked.
Alas, those are two really serious caveats.
It's a pretty safe bet that if a dollar decline shows signs of boosting inflation, the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates. The credibility of the new Fed chairman would be on the line. Even a federal-funds rate above 5 percent might seem too low. Bear in mind that the federal-funds rate (the overnight rate at which the Fed lends to the banking system) has been going up for two years, from its nadir of below 1 percent in June 2004. Now ask yourself, Who has been most affected by this monetary tightening?
Two important categories of debtor spring to mind. First, there are the households with adjustable-rate mortgages. More Americans have variable-rate mortgages than ever before, even if most existing mortgage rates remain fixed. Since March 2004, there has been a 59 percent increase in one-year adjustable-rate mortgages. But that just means that they have become more expensive for new borrowers. The key question is, When do existing A.R.M.'s reset? The answer: Soon.
According to calculations published by Barron's in February, over the next two years the monthly payments on about $600 billion of mortgages taken out by borrowers in the so-called subprime market (those with checkered or nonexistent credit histories) will increase by as much as 50 percent. This is because many A.R.M.'s have two-year teaser periods to entice borrowers. After that, the meaning of "adjustable" suddenly becomes (in this case, painfully) apparent.
To which you might respond by saying, Caveat emptor. If borrowers fail to read the small print or to anticipate higher rates, then more fool they. And no doubt in the subprime market there are many people who made one or both of those mistakes and will pay dearly for doing so.
Yet the surprising thing is that the second category of debtor vulnerable to higher short-term rates can scarcely plead ignorance or naïveté. For it is none other than the federal government itself.
The protracted decline of long-term interest rates since the 80's has been a boon for an indebted government. Since 1990, the cost of servicing the federal debt has actually declined from 3.2 percent of G.D.P. in 1990 to 1.5 percent in 2005, even as the absolute size of the debt has soared. But that decline has been achieved partly thanks to the term structure of the debt - that is, to the relatively short duration of the bonds issued by the Treasury, which has allowed the government to take maximum advantage of falling rates. At the end of fiscal year 2005, for example, fully a third of the federal debt had a maturity of less than one year, and the average maturity of the entire debt was just 57 months (down from 74 months at the end of 2000).
This was wonderful so long as interest rates were falling. But now that they have started going up, it creates a potential fiscal nightmare: big slices of the federal debt that have to be refinanced at higher market rates. And that creates a new source of budgetary red ink: rising interest payments. It turns out that George Bush has the biggest A.R.M. in the world.
The most important lesson to be drawn from the history of debt is this: It's not the absolute size of your borrowings that matters. It's not even the relative size in relation to your income. The crux is whether the interest payments you have to make are more or less than you can afford to pay. And that, in turn, is a function of whether or not the rate can move, whether or not your income can change and whether or not inflation can help you or hurt you. On this basis, both subprime American mortgage-holders and a distinctly subprime administration may find the months ahead more painful than they anticipated.
The dinosaurs, we conjecture, succumbed to global climate change. The American beast - call it debtlodocus - faces a comparable economic challenge. The global economic climate seems to be changing. We hear no more talk of deflation; we hear a lot about rising rates.
For America 's giant, dinosaurlike economy - with its small, wealthy head; its big, fat middle; and its long low-income tail - there is a tried-and-tested response to a change in the weather. Dollar depreciation and inflation have saved the debtlodocus before. The assumption seems to be that they will do the trick again.
Yet this time may be different. For sinking like a velociraptor's fangs into the tail of the debtlodocus are interest-rate hikes that may outpace and check any increase in inflation. And no one knows when and how violently the leviathan may react to this slowly discernible pain.
It is too soon to speak of extinction, of course. But one obvious inference to be drawn from the British experience of an indebted empire and a sliding currency, as well as from the history of the diplodocus, is that eternal life is not on offer.
Source: The New York Times
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Housing bubble correction could be severe
By Paul J. Lim
U.S. News and World Report
13 June 06
Contrary to popular belief, the housing market hasn't cooled off that much. In fact, residential real estate prices continue to soar in a number of key metropolitan areas, according to a new study released this week.
That's a good thing, right? Actually, no-because the froth building in housing prices raises the distinct possibility of significant corrections to come in many of those regions.
In the first quarter, home prices nationwide rose an additional 7.3 percent, according to a joint study by the financial services firm National City Corp. and the research firm Global Insight. As a result, there are now 71 metropolitan areas-representing nearly 40 percent of all single-family homes-that can be classified as "extremely overvalued," according to the study. By comparison, only 64 metro regions were considered frothy at the end of last year and only 1 percent were classified as such in the first quarter of 2004.
The report further stated that Californians and Floridians ought to be the most concerned, as their states are home to 17 of the 20 most overvalued markets. The frothiest region in the country, according to the study, is Naples, Fla., where home prices are said to be 103 percent overvalued. Rounding out the top five markets are Salinas, Calif.; Port St. Lucie/Fort Pierce, Fla.; Merced, Calif.; and Bend, Ore., which are all more than 75 percent overvalued, according to the report. (Global Insight and National City based their judgments on valuations on several factors, including historical market premiums and discounts, household income levels in those regions, interest rates, and population density.)
"The fact that this number of metro areas - representing such a large percent of the total single family market-is extremely overvalued should be a cause for concern," said Richard DeKaser, chief economist for National City.
Another worrisome sign is that the 50 most overvalued markets at the end of last year were again the biggest winners at the start of 2006. Indeed, the 50 hottest markets saw a 10.1 percent increase in home prices, on average, in the first quarter.
This study's findings would seem to contradict other housing market reports that have shown a steady decline in home prices recently. For example, the Commerce Department has indicated that the median sales price on new single-family homes purchased has fallen around 3 percent since the start of the year.
But DeKaser notes that new homes are sold by developers, not families. And developers generally don't have the luxury that regular families do of living in their homes for several more years to wait out attractive offers. Moreover, DeKaser said new homes represent only a small percentage of the total housing market. For their part, National City and Global Insight relied on national housing data collected by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight.
Under normal circumstances, the fact that housing prices are continuing to rise would be something to cheer. But the housing boom has been going for most of this decade. And housing markets can't be overvalued for too long, as imbalances in residential real estate prices will eventually lead workers to relocate to more affordable cities.
The bottom line: Real estate prices eventually correct themselves. And unfortunately for homeowners, it often takes years before home prices start to rise again, especially after a big run up.
National City recently studied 66 major metro regions over the past 21 years that suffered through a 10 percent or greater decline in prices for at least a two-year period of time. It found that home prices, once they begin to correct, tend to decline 17 percent on average before markets heal themselves.
"And the average duration of these adjustments is 3.5 years," says DeKaser.
So what about families who recently bought into one of these "extremely overvalued" markets in hopes of turning a fast buck? "I extend them my deepest sympathies," says DeKaser.
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BANKRUPTCY FILINGS RISE AFTER REFORMS
Reuters
13 June 06
WASHINGTON - A new law to deter American consumers from seeking bankruptcy protection made filings plunge to a 20-year low in the first-quarter of 2006, but a rapid rise in new cases since then raises questions about whether the law is working as expected.
The 2005 bankruptcy reform law was pushed through Congress by banks and credit card companies that sought to prevent abuse by individuals trying to wipe their financial slates clean from runaway debt.
By making it more difficult to file for personal bankruptcy, the companies reasoned that consumers would be more likely to negotiate a repayment plan.
"I think the law so far is working as it was intended," said James Chessen, chief economist for the American Bankers Association. "Some of the abuses have been wrung out of the system."
But credit card companies and banks are keeping an eye on the recent increase in filings.
The law took effect Oct. 17, 2005, prompting a surge of 619,322 personal bankruptcy filings for that month as debt-laden consumers rushed to court.
New cases plunged to 13,758 in November, and have been steadily rising since, to 49,977 in March.
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Car buyers stymied by negative equity
Brian O'Connor
Detroit News
Jun. 13, 2006
Zero-interest deals and long-term car loans are boosting sales, but they are producing one troubling side effect: a growing number of drivers owe more on their vehicle than it's worth at trade-in time.
Last month, nearly 29 percent of U.S. car buyers found themselves "upside-down" on their loans, owing an average of $3,789 more than their trade-in value for the highest level since September 2004.
Loan officers and car dealers call it "negative equity," and there are plenty of negatives.
First, car buyers often pay more interest as they roll old upside-down loans into new car purchases.
Second, they will be saddled with higher payments that make it harder to save for their next car or keep up with their current automobile loans.
Third, those buyers are instantly turned upside down in their new purchases, creating a vicious cycle of excessive debt.
Upside-down loans also dampen auto sales, says Tony Jerome Jr., general manager of Tamaroff Dodge in Southfield, Mich.
"It hurts us all the time," Jerome said. "Typically, they can't do anything, which means we can't sell them a car. Sometimes you can, but some of the negative equity is ridiculous."
Longer car loans are the prime factor flipping car buyers upside down, experts say. Where the average car loan in 2003 lasted for 60 months, it has crept up to 64 months today, says Jesse Toprak, executive director of the Edmunds.com, a Web site for car shoppers. Part of the reason is the introduction of the 72-month loan.
"Seventy-two months is sort of becoming the norm," Toprak said. "Unless you put a substantial amount of money down, you will have negative equity."
Another trend turning car owners topsy-turvy is no-interest loans.
It sounds like a good deal: All of the payment goes toward reducing the principal instead of paying interest.
But buyers usually take the no-interest loans instead of a rebate that would cut the overall size of the loan.
"When they take that zero percent, they're doing that in lieu of $5,000 in rebates," Jerome said. "If they try to trade in early, they're automatically $5,000 the wrong way."
New cars depreciate rapidly in the first two years of life. The average car, says Edmunds.com, loses 25 percent of its value the moment it is driven off the dealer's lot.
Meanwhile, many loans have buyers paying mostly interest at the beginning and making little headway into reducing the principal amount owed on the car.
It could be worse. The increase in upside-down buyers comes at a time when used-car prices are rising, Toprak said. If they were dropping, car owners would be in even deeper.
Buyers frequently just don't do the math, focusing instead on getting the most car for the smallest monthly payment, says Alan Helfman, vice president of River Oaks Chrysler-Jeep in Houston. "A lot of people put them on five-year loans so they can make the payment affordable, and it depreciates faster than they can catch up."
But not every upside-down buyer has a choice, said Dorothy Guzek, a budget counselor with Greenpath Debt Solutions in Troy, Mich.
She described cash-strapped clients who need cars to get to work but can't afford much and end up financing undependable vehicles.
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Farmers, Celebrities Evicted From Urban Plot
By Hector Becerra, Times Staff Writer
4:11 PM PDT, June 13, 2006
The 14-year effort to establish an urban farm in the heart of South Los Angeles came to an end today when authorities evicted the farmers, as well as some celebrities who were supporting them by keeping vigil on the land.
The eviction occurred during a frenzied day both at the farm site and at City Hall as Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and other city leaders negotiated with the landowner through the morning, failing to reach a deal to save the farm even though the mayor said they had come up with the owner's $16-million asking price. "Today's events are unfortunate, disheartening and unnecessary," Villaraigosa said. "After years of disagreement over this property, we had all hoped for a better outcome."
Personnel using a huge fire ladder this afternoon removed actress Daryl Hannah and protest organizer John Quigley from the tree where they had vowed to remain as long as possible.
About 50 deputies arrived at the property about 5 a.m. and used bolt cutters to remove locks and gain access to the 14-acre property near 41st and Alameda streets. At least a dozen people had remained inside the farm, some chained under trees and others locking hands around 55-gallon drums filled with concrete. At least 40 people were arrested at the site.
Television broadcasts showed a large ladder extending from a firetruck reaching into the tree where Hannah, Quigley and two other people were located. Nearby, protesters were shown sitting on the street or sidewalk, many with their hands tied behind their backs as they were surrounded by police.
Several streets surrounding the farm were closed off by authorities. Trains on the Metro Blue Line, which runs adjacent to the property, were slowing down to about 15 mph in the vicinity of the garden, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
Hannah said she was sleeping in her tent when the Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies - who handle evictions in the county - arrived. Quigley alerted her to the raid, and she raced up the tree in about a minute.
"I felt an extreme sense of urgency. Not only did I have to climb up the tree, I had to pull up the rope behind me so they could not follow me," Hannah said in a cellphone interview with The Times from atop the tree.
Quigley criticized authorities for moving forward with the eviction without first telling the protesters. He said the protesters had a plan for how to peacefully resist an eviction when it came.
When the deputies arrived, Quigley said, some protesters walked out of the farm while others took their positions to block the eviction.
"It's unfortunate they had to come in such a heavy-handed manner," he said.
During an afternoon press conference, a visibly annoyed Villaraigosa said the city made a last-ditch effort to preserve the land, offering landowner Ralph Horowitz the price he had sought, raised through a variety of nonprofit groups.
But the mayor said Horowitz then said he thought the land was worth an additional $3 million and also said he was sick of the protesters, some of whom he said had made anti-Semitic slurs against him
The site has a contentious history. The city acquired the land from Horowitz through eminent domain in the 1980s for a planned trash incinerator, but the project was stopped by neighborhood opposition.
After the 1992 riots, the city leased the land to the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, which began the community garden. In 2003, the city sold the land back to Horowitz for about $5 million.
But the farmers did not leave. In the last three years, and particularly in recent weeks, the farmers have pleaded to stay despite Horowitz's plans to sell the land for development.
A nonprofit group tried to buy the land and preserve the farm. But it announced last month that their fundraising effort was $10 million short of Horowitz's $16.3-million asking price.
Some in the community support him, arguing that the area would benefit from the jobs that would come if the land were developed.
Times staff writer Jesus Sanchez contributed to this report.
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Supreme Court skirts Holocaust dispute
By GINA HOLLAND
Associated Press
12 June 06
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court turned back an appeal Monday from Austrian Jewish victims of the Nazi regime whose litigation had tied up payments from a $210 million settlement.
Justices refused to disturb a decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which sided with the Bush administration in dismissing the class-action lawsuit against Austria.
That decision late last year cleared the way for payouts from a 2001 settlement fund. So far, more than 2,000 payments have been made to Austrian Jews whose property was confiscated during the Nazi era and World War II.
The fund was set up through negotiations with the Austrian government and businesses.
Lawyers who filed the class-action lawsuit told justices that the appeals court panel "swayed perhaps by an understandable desire to obtain some measure of compensation for Holocaust survivors during their lifetimes, has dismissed this case for the wrong reason."
The appeals court panel had split 2-1 in agreeing with the Bush administration that dismissing the case would improve U.S. relations with Austria, Israel and European nations. A dissenting judge said the ruling gives the government too much power to decide when lawsuits can be brought against other countries.
The lawsuit had been filed in 2000 by present and former nationals of Austria and their heirs and successors who suffered from Nazi persecution between 1938 and 1945.
Had the high court intervened and reinstated the case, Austria could have been forced to defend itself in court despite the settlement.
Gideon Taylor, executive vice president of the conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, said more than 2,000 payments have been made and more are coming.
"It's important that payments are made quickly, because they're symbolic. As much as they're about the money, they're also about the history," Taylor said.
The case is Schindler v. Whiteman, 05-1296.
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Billions feared stolen from hurricane relief
June 15, 2006
WASHINGTON: The US Government has doled out as much as $US1.4 billion ($1.9 billion) in bogus assistance to hurricane victims, getting duped to pay for football season tickets, a holiday and even a divorce lawyer.
Congressional investigators have found that prisoners, a supposed victim who used a cemetery for a home address and a person who spent 70 days at a Hawaiian hotel all were able to wrongly get taxpayer help.
Agents from the General Accountability Office, the investigative arm of the US Congress, went undercover to expose the ease of receiving disaster expense cheques from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The inquiry concluded that as much as 16 per cent of the billions of dollars in FEMA help to individuals in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita was unwarranted. The findings are detailed in testimony to be delivered at a hearing today of the House of Representatives Homeland Security subcommittee on investigations.
To dramatise the problem, the GAO gave politicians a copy of a $US2358 US Treasury cheque for rental assistance that an undercover agent got using a bogus address.
The money was paid even after FEMA learned from its inspector that the undercover applicant did not live at the address.
"This is an assault on the American taxpayer," said Michael McCaul, chairman of the subcommittee that will conduct the hearing. "Prosecutors from the federal level down should be looking at prosecuting these crimes and putting the criminals who committed them in jail for a long time."
FEMA spokesman Aaron Walker said the agency, already criticised for a poor response to Katrina, made its highest priority during a disaster "to get help quickly to those in desperate need of our assistance".
"Even as we put victims first, we take very seriously our responsibility to be outstanding stewards of taxpayer dollars, and we are careful to make sure that funds are distributed appropriately," he said.
FEMA said it had identified more than 1500 cases of potential fraud after hurricanes Katrina and Rita and had referred those cases to the Homeland Security inspector-general.
The agency said it had identified $US16.8 million in improperly awarded disaster relief money and had started efforts to collect the money. The GAO said it was 95 per cent confident that improper and potentially fraudulent payments were much higher - between $US600 million and $US1.4 billion.
The investigative agency said it found people lodged in hotels often were paid twice, because FEMA gave them individual rental assistance and paid hotels directly.
FEMA paid Californian hotels $US8000 to house one individual - the same person who received three rental assistance payments for both disasters. In another instance, FEMA paid an individual $US2358 in rental assistance, while at the same time paying about $US8000 for the same person to stay 70 nights in a Hawaiian hotel.
FEMA also could not establish that 750 debit cards worth $US1.5million even went to Katrina victims, the auditors said.
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PSYOPs
Al Qaeda IDs 20th 9/11 hijacker - Saudi militant named in statement - Never mind that the other 19 "hijackers" weren't hijackers...
CNN
13 June 06
Al Qaeda identified a Saudi militant, who was killed in 2004, as the 20th hijacker in the September 11, 2001, attack on the United States, according to a statement published Tuesday on an Islamist Web site.
"Turki bin Fheid al-Muteiri -- Fawaz al-Nashmi -- may God accept him as a martyr (was) the one chosen by Sheikh Osama bin Laden to be the martyrdom-seeker number 20 in the raid on September 11, 2001," the statement said.
Al-Muteiri was not able to join the other hijackers in time for those attacks, the date of which had been pushed forward, the group said without elaborating.
"The (Sept. 11) operation was brought forward for some circumstances that brother Mohamed Atta explained to the general leadership, through brother Ramzi Binalshibh, God free him," the statement added.
Binalshibh, suspected of coordinating the 9/11 attacks, was arrested in 2002 in Karachi, Pakistan. He was once a roommate with Atta, the leader of the September attacks and the hijacker of American Airlines Flight 11 which crashed into the World Trade Center's north tower.
In June 2004, Al-Muteiri was one of four militants killed by Saudi forces during a raid on a residential compound for foreign companies in the oil city of Khobar. The attack killed 22 civilians, including several Westerners.
In its statement, Al Qaeda said it would publish a video of that attack and described the militants as "martyrs." The group has used the Web site for posting statements in the past.
The group's Internet posting also absolved Zacarias Moussaoui of any role in the attacks, according to The Associated Press. "Brother Zacarias Moussaoui had nothing to do with the September 11 attacks, as Sheik Abi Abdullah (bin Laden) mentioned in his last tape," the group's statement said, referring to a May 24 audiotape, the AP reported.
Another Saudi suspected
U.S. investigators have said they believe Mohammed al-Qahtani, another Saudi, was tapped by al Qaeda to be the 20th hijacker.
According to Time magazine, Atta was waiting for al-Qahtani outside the airport in Orlando, Florida, in August 2001, when an immigration officer detained al-Qahtani and denied him entry to the United States.
Al-Qahtani was captured in Afghanistan four months later and is being held at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Nineteen men commandeered four commercial airliners on September 11, 2001, piloting two into the World Trade Towers and one into the Pentagon. A fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed in a Pennsylvania field.
With the exception of that flight, each plane was hijacked by five men.
Some officials have speculated that al-Qahtani may have been the missing hijacker on Flight 93. Initially, Moussaoui was believed to have had that role, one which he had claimed.
Moussaoui pleaded guilty last year to terrorism conspiracy and is the only person convicted in the United States for having a role in the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Last month, Moussaoui recanted the guilty plea, calling it a "complete fabrication," and explained that "solitary confinement made me hostile toward everyone, and I began taking extreme positions to fight the system." (Full story)
But the judge in the case said Moussaoui's request to set aside his guilty plea was "too late" under federal rules and must be rejected.
He was spared the death penalty but sentenced to six life sentences, to run as two consecutive life terms, in the federal supermax prison at Florence, Colorado.
Nearly 3,000 people died in the attacks.
Comment: Within hours of the September 11, 2001 attack, the blame was being laid at the doorstep of Osama bin Laden's cave in the mountains of Afghanistan. We were told that 19 Arab men, mostly Saudi nationals, were the hijackers, and for some obscure reason, Saudi National Hijackers being the culprits justified the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq.
This troubling inconsistency was not sufficient, however, to dissuade a majority of American citizens from believing that Saddam Hussein was also somehow involved in the 9/11 attacks, despite the fact that there has never been any evidence of a link between Osama and Saddam, while there is a mountain of evidence that there was no love lost between the secular Hussein and the religious zealot bin Laden. Furthermore, there has never been any proof offered that any of the 19 men accused of the hijackings were even on the planes that day, not to mention the fact that some of them are actually still alive according to international news reports.
Not long after these names were published, at least seven of the "hijackers" loudly and publicly stated that they were still alive as reported by the BBC in September of 2001.
FBI Director Robert Mueller acknowledged on Thursday that the identity of several of the suicide hijackers is in doubt.
Despite this, the same 19 "hijackers" remain on the FBI website to this day!
There is also a problem with alleged chief hijacker Mohammed Atta. In September of 2002 Atta's father went public with the claim that his son was still alive:
"As I saw the picture of my son," he said, "I knew that he hadn't done it. My son called me the day after the attacks on September 12th at around midday. We spoke for two minutes about this and that."
In fact, former Attorney General John Ashcroft went on record, and stated in no uncertain terms, that the United States government has no idea who the hijackers were, which, of course, begs the question as to how they know who to retaliate against.
We confront here a strange and frightening problem: What can lead so many people to believe a story for which there is not only no evidence, but in fact, the preponderance of evidence points in a different direction? How can so many people be wrong?
The Bush administration provided no proof of the existence of the weapons of mass destruction that it claimed Saddam was preparing to use against the U.S., or might prepare to use against the U.S., or might think about creating in order to prepare to use against the U.S. We now know, to the contrary, that he had no weapons of mass destruction, nor did he have the means of creating them due to years of international sanctions that had already reduced Iraq to a state of military and economic impotency.
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U.S. specialists finish autopsy on al-Zarqawi
BY PATRICK QUINN
ASSOCIATED PRESS
BAGHDAD, Iraq-- Two U.S. military forensic specialists finished an autopsy Sunday on the remains of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, part of the investigation to reconstruct the last minutes of his life before an American warplane bombed his hideout, the U.S. Command said.
The examination comes after U.S. authorities altered their account of how the most-wanted terrorist in Iraq died, first saying he died outright in the airstrike but then saying he survived and died soon after.
"The autopsy is completed. However, we are not releasing results yet," Maj. William Willhoite said.
Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told "Fox News Sunday" he had not seen the autopsy results.
Meanwhile, Iran denied it helped American forces track al-Zarqawi down and kill him. The Islamic republic welcomed his death, though, because it has close ties to the Shiite parties now dominating Iraq's government, which al-Zarqawi sought to topple.
"It is natural that we, like the Iraqi people, are happy from this occurrence," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said. "This doesn't mean that we cooperated with the U.S. in getting him. We had no exchange of intelligence with the U.S. at all (on this)."
Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Baghdad, said Saturday the decision to fly in forensic experts was made shortly after al-Zarqawi's death. The airstrike also killed five others, including al-Zarqawi's spiritual adviser, Sheik Abdul-Rahman.
"I think if we don't do a full autopsy then that might irresponsible on our part," Caldwell said. "I think we sort of owe that just for this reason: How did he actually die?"
He said the U.S. government thought it was important enough "that we grabbed two people in the last 48 hours and told them pack up and move to Iraq."
An Iraqi man raised questions about al-Zarqawi's death, telling AP Television News that he saw U.S. soldiers after the airstrike beating an injured man resembling the dead terrorist until blood flowed from his nose.
Casey said the claim was "baloney."
"He died while American soldiers were attempting to save his life," Casey told "Fox News Sunday." "So the idea that there were people beating him is ludicrous."
The Iraqi, identified only as Mohammed, said he lives near the house where al-Zarqawi was killed. He said residents put a bearded man in an ambulance before U.S. forces arrived.
"When the Americans arrived they took him out of the ambulance, they beat him on his stomach and wrapped his head with his dishdasha, then they stomped on his stomach and his chest until he died and blood came out of his nose," Mohammed said, without saying how he knew the man was dead.
A dishdasha is a traditional Arab robe.
A similar account in The Washington Post identified the man as Ahmed Mohammed.
No other witnesses have come forward to corroborate the account. U.S. officials have only said al-Zarqawi mumbled and tried to roll off a stretcher before dying.
In announcing al-Zarqawi's death, the U.S. military said Thursday he was killed outright when two 500-pound bombs were dropped on his hideout. On Friday, the military said al-Zarqawi survived the bombing, which ripped a crater in the date-palm forest surrounding the house just outside Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.
"It's not going to be 100 percent accurate all the time, but the first reports are going to be a little confused. There are going to be some conflicting stories," Caldwell said, adding that the military should have an accurate chronology ready by Monday.
He said Iraqi police reached the scene first and found the 39-year-old al-Zarqawi alive.
"The coalition forces arrived on the scene. The Iraqi police were there. They in fact saw a person on a stretcher. They moved to that person immediately. A medical person started immediately applying first aid to that person. Another person was trying to talk to that person, to try to identify who this was. They were trying to talk to him and ask him who he was," Caldwell said.
The airstrike killed two other men, two women and girl between the ages of 5 and 7 who were in the house.
AP footage of the scene showed a wide swath of destruction.
Debris--shoes, sandals, a woman's slip--was scattered over concrete blocks and twisted metal. Trees were ripped from their roots. Charred dresses, torn blankets, thin sponge mattresses and pillows were in the crater blasted by the bombs. A cooling unit and part of a washing machine also were in the area.
Lt. Col. Thomas Fisher of the 1st Battalion, 68th Armored Cavalry said his men showed up at the site about five minutes after the blast and cordoned it off. He said a patrol was in the area already.
"We didn't know it was Zarqawi, we just knew it was a time-sensitive target," he said at the scene early Saturday. "We suspected who it was."
Contributing: AP reporter Ryan Lenz.
Copyright 2006 Associated Press.
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Zarqawi 'beaten to death'
Gulf Daily News
12 June 06
LONDON: The leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, may have been beaten to death by US forces following the air strike on his safe house, two British newspapers claimed yesterday.The Observer and the Sunday Times both carried reports on events leading up to his death, citing apparent eye-witnesses to the immediate aftermath of the attack near Baquba, last Wednesday.
But the leader of coalition forces in Iraq, US General George Casey, dismissed the claims as "ludicrous", telling the Fox News television channel: "That's baloney."
In a two-page report, The Observer said that although there was no corroboration of the claims that the badly-injured Zarqawi was beaten to death, revelations of revenge killings by US troops "means it cannot be discounted".
It quoted one man as saying US soldiers pulled a man resembling Zarqawi from an ambulance where locals had placed him, wrapped his traditional Arab robe, the dishdasha, around his head and "battered him severely till he died".
But General Casey said, "We've already gone back and looked at it. Our soldiers who came on the scene found him being put in an ambulance by Iraqi police, they took him off, rendered first aid, and only then expired."
The US is prepared for retaliation by Al Qaeda, in Iraq about Internet threats from the group following last week's assassination of Zarqawi.
The Internet message attributed to Al Qaeda in Iraq threatened "great operations to shake the enemy" following Zarqawi's death.
Jordan's parliament and families of victims, killed in last year's Amman hotel bombings claimed by Zarqawi yesterday condemned four Islamist MPs for presenting their condolences to his family in Jordan.
"We strongly denounce and condemn MPs Ibrahim Mashukhi, Mohammed Abu Fares, Ali Abu Sukkar and Jaafar Horani... for presenting their condolences for the so-called martyr," the families said in a statement.
The parliament also blasted the Islamist deputies "for presenting condolences to a terrorist." It said they were "very angry ... and cannot forgive or be silent".
Iran is "happy" over the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al Qaeda leader in Iraq, the foreign ministry said yesterday.
"Zarqawi's death sparked joy among Iraqis, which shows he was hated by the Iraqi people. We are also happy about what happened," ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said.
Asefi also emphasised that Iran "had no cooperation with the Americans in providing intelligence on Zarqawi."
Meanwhile, strike on Zarqawi yielded a treasure trove of vital intelligence information, Iraq's national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie told US television yesterday.
"We found a lot of material in that place. We found diaries with some telephone numbers, computers, and ... there was a database in that computer," he said.
"There were a lot of information ... Zarqawi used to carry with him," he said.
"It was very useful, not only to capture Zarqawi and get him out of the way of the Iraqi people, because he's the number one enemy of the Iraqi people. It was the value of the information we got with him," said Rubaie, who said that the information was used to carry out "a lot of raids immediately after we got Zarqawi."
"We got quite a few of not only Zarqawi but others now in the organisation," he said.
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Al-Zarqawi successor vows vengeance
www.chinaview.cn 2006-06-14 09:45:35
BAGHDAD, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Al-Qaida's new leader in Iraq vowed on Tuesday to defeat "crusaders and shiites" in Iraq following the killing of his predecessor Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a U.S. air raid.
"The day of vengeance is near and your strong towers in the Green Zone will not protect you," Abu Hamza al-Muhajir said in a website statement, whose authenticity could not be verified.
"You will see what we have in store for you because of your betrayal and apostasy. Our swords are poised above your necks," the statement said.
The Al-Qaida in Iraq on Monday named a new leader to succeed al-Zarqawi, who was killed last Wednesday.
"The Shura Council of al-Qaida in Iraq unanimously agreed to appoint Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Muhajir as the successor of Sheikh Abu Musab al-Zarqawi," said a statement posted on a website.
Comment: Sounds like the dialogue from a really bad Hollywood movie.
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Zarqawi Has Won
Le Monde
10 June 06
The elimination of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed June 7 in a US Air Force raid near Baghdad, is a victory for the United States, engaged since September 2001 in a "war against terrorism," and since March 2003, in a war in Iraq. It's also a victory for the Iraqi government and security services, for Zarqawi was their enemy. Finally, it's a victory for a crushing majority of the Iraqi people since, whether they are pro or anti-American, they were the al-Qaeda leader's first victims.
That victory must, nonetheless, not hide the reality: the victor up to now in this war is Zarqawi himself. Before disappearing, the Jordanian jihadist had, in less than three years, won his main wagers.
Zarqawi promised an international rout: by attacking UN headquarters in Baghdad, he succeeded in making United Nations' agencies, NGOs, and businessmen flee Iraq.
Zarqawi promised a ruthless war against the American Army. Even if his participation from a military point of view was undoubtedly less decisive than he claimed - most operations being conducted by Iraqi rebels, ex-Saddamists, Islamists or Sunni villagers - the result is there: no American patrol can hope to leave its base in Baghdad or in the Sunni triangle without being harassed, often to deadly effect.
Zarqawi finally and above all - it's what differentiated him from an Osama bin Laden at war against the West and Saudi Arabia - promised blood and tears to the Shiites, to the Kurds, and a civil war in Iraq: it is there.
Certainly Iraqis have not gone down to the streets, Kalashnikov in hand, in their masses to kill their neighbors.
But Sunni and Shiite militias make daily assassinations, population transfers have begun, and a climate of inter-community distrust - even hatred - sets Iraq ablaze.
This civil war, larval since 2004, more violent since spring 2006, is Zarqawi's principal victory. He has imposed on Iraqis, including the Sunni guerrilla, this absolute hatred of Shiites. He has planted a much more disquieting seed for the Washington and Baghdad governments than the deaths of soldiers and police.
His disappearance consequently changes nothing a priori about the Iraqi challenge. Certainly, we must wait to see who will take over from him. It is necessary above all to resolve the basic questions in Iraq: those of sovereignty and governance, American occupation, Iranian involvement, the destruction of the economy, the Islamization of society.
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Spate of Good News Gives White House a Chance to Regroup
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 14, 2006; Page A01
In a White House that had virtually forgotten what good news looks like, the past few weeks have been refreshing. A Republican won a much-watched special congressional election. President Bush recruited a Wall Street heavy hitter as Treasury secretary. U.S. forces killed the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. And now the architect of the Bush presidency has avoided criminal charges.
The question is whether this latest updraft in Bush's fortunes will last much longer than the president's surprise trip yesterday to Iraq. Bush took full command of the political stage with his five-hour appearance in Baghdad, just days after the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and used it to showcase a new Iraqi government he hopes to turn the war over to eventually. Yet in the end, some analysts noted, it will matter only if this new government can heal societal schisms and stand up effective security forces.
For Bush, any progress at the moment is critical. Iraq has been at the heart of his political troubles, alienating voters weary of the war, unsettling congressional allies facing reelection this fall, and souring the public mood toward other initiatives by the administration. Even Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove's legal problems stemmed from Iraq and the initial White House effort to justify the decision to invade.
With Zarqawi dead, a new Baghdad government in place and Rove freed from prosecutor's cross hairs, the White House hopes it can pivot to a new stage in which it is no longer on the defensive. In recent weeks, under new Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten, the White House has tried to do more to set an agenda, moving aggressively into the immigration debate and agreeing to join direct talks with Iran over its nuclear program under certain conditions.
"There's a sense of motion and energy and progress on different fronts," said Peter H. Wehner, White House director of strategic initiatives. "There's more of a sense that we're shaping events, rather than being controlled by them."
The spate of positive developments may have arrested the president's months-long slide in opinion polls, at least for now. Bush's approval rating has risen from a low of 31 percent in May to 38 percent this week, according to a USA Today-Gallup poll. Zarqawi's death seems to have somewhat shored up confidence in the prospects for victory in Iraq, with 48 percent now believing the United States will win, compared with 39 percent in April. Still, a CBS News weekend poll with a smaller sample showed Bush's approval rating slipping in the past month from 35 percent to 33 percent.
"When you get into these ruts, you're always looking for anything to bounce you out and get you back on track," said Joel P. Johnson, a White House adviser to President Bill Clinton during difficult times. "They've been in a rut for so long that anything that serves to pull them back onto the road has got to feel pretty good for them. The real question is, does it last a week or is it a real sign of some sort of steadying of the process?"
The aftermath of the capture of Saddam Hussein demonstrated how transitory a single moment of victory can be. Bush got a four-point bump in Washington Post-ABC News polling after Hussein was found in December 2003, but it lasted about two months. Recognizing that, Bush orchestrated a flurry of activity on Iraq in the past few days -- including his secret trip, a Camp David war cabinet meeting and a briefing blitz on Capitol Hill -- to demonstrate that progress in Iraq means more than Zarqawi's death.
Analysts agree that after two weak Iraqi prime ministers, Bush finally has a potentially strong partner in the newly installed Nouri al-Maliki, whom he met for the first time yesterday. But the list of challenges still confronting them is daunting: sectarian strife, inadequate electricity, private militias, slow police training and so on.
"Is the insurgency defeated? No. Has it had a great reversal? Yes," said Anthony Cordesman, who studies Iraq at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "When you talk to people in Iraq on a background basis, U.S. or Iraqi, they always tell you this is going to take at least two more years to play out. That doesn't mean there isn't progress, but progress is relative."
Bush has been careful to highlight publicly the hurdles ahead and to warn that the war is nowhere near over. But for the first time this year, aides sound more upbeat about their chances of reassuring the public about the future and reversing the trajectory of the problem-plagued White House. The sight of Bush in Baghdad twinned with the news that Rove had been cleared shot a jolt of relief and optimism through the building.
"This is not a crowd that rides the highs and lows. This is a team that has been through extraordinary moments of history," said White House communications director Nicolle Wallace. "Having said that, it certainly creates momentum and enhances the confidence of the team when you can point to" examples of progress.
Rove's legal jeopardy had hung over the White House for many months as his colleagues contemplated life in the West Wing without him. Some Republican advisers outside the White House had long worried that Rove's problems were distracting him and had led to setbacks that might have been avoided if he were more fully engaged, such as the failed Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers or the battle over the Dubai port deal.
As part of Bolten's White House shakeup, Rove was relieved of day-to-day policy management duties to enable him to focus more on broader strategy and the midterm congressional elections.
Fellow Bush aides vigorously denied for months that Rove was distracted or was in any way responsible for the president's rocky road. But yesterday, they said he will clearly be more valuable now that the legal cloud has lifted.
"The other team thought they'd sacked the quarterback, and even if he came back he'd limp anyway," said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and a Rove confidant, who had lunch with him yesterday. "Now he's back -- no limp." Switching metaphors, Norquist compared Rove to a bull that has been poked but not killed. "Not only is he in fine fettle, not only is he not wounded, he's pricked enough to be angry."
Rove tried to play down his own development. Having flown back to Washington on Monday night from a New Hampshire speech accusing Democrats of wanting to cut and run in Iraq, he showed up at the White House in time to run yesterday's 7:30 a.m. senior staff meeting, since Bolten was in Iraq with Bush.
As he went around the table soliciting updates on various issues, he made no mention of his legal case, nor did anyone else, according to several people in the room. Norquist said it did not come up during their lunch in the White House mess, either, as they discussed property rights. But Norquist said he did notice aides offering congratulations to Rove as they walked through the halls of the building.
Whether or not he had been distracted before, Rove can focus his attention entirely on the fall midterm elections, which are critical to the remainder of Bush's presidency. Norquist said he believes that after beating his legal woes, Rove will want to demonstrate that he is still "the toughest guy on the block."
If Republicans hold onto the House and Senate, Bush aides figure they have another chance to advance key priorities and shape the president's legacy. If Democrats win the House, the final two years of Bush's administration could be spent fighting rear-guard actions.
The White House took heart from the narrow victory of Brian Bilbray in a California special election to fill the House seat of fellow Republican Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who resigned after pleading guilty to taking $2.4 million in bribes. But it required enormous resources in a traditionally GOP-friendly district, and Republicans presumably need Bush to be performing better with the public to avoid significant losses. Even with his latest bounce, a standard-bearer in the high thirties is not much of an asset.
So the White House is taking a long view, both at home and in Iraq, betting that improvement will continue and trying not to get lost in the news of the moment, good or bad.
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Desperate Bush administration ends already blown Zarqawi deception
Larry Chin
Online Journal Associate Editor
June 12, 2006
The purported execution of "Al-Qaeda mystery man" Musab al-Zarqawi ends what was exposed two months ago as a Pentagon psychological operation in leaked military documents.
The pursuit of Zarqawi is being sold as the "turning point" of the Iraq war. It is nothing of the sort. This is another lie, heaped upon the multitude of lies that comprise the "war on terrorism" itself.
Zarqawi: Pentagon psy-op and intelligence asset
What is a well-established (and deliberately unaddressed) fact is that the United States government and US-connected intelligence agencies created Islamic "terrorism." The US and its allies have continued to use and guide terrorist cells, as well as fill worldwide media with "terrorism" propaganda.
See, "Who is Osama bin Laden?" and "Al-Qaeda: the database"
As pointed out by Michel Chossodovsky in "The Anglo-American War of Terror: An Overview", the continuing US-led war of conquest rests upon a labyrinth of deceptions, of which "Zarqawi" is one:
"One of the main objectives of war propaganda is to 'fabricate an enemy.' As anti-war sentiment grows and the political legitimacy of the Bush administration falters, doubts regarding the existence of this illusive 'outside enemy' must be dispelled.
"Propaganda purports not only to drown the truth but also to 'kill the evidence' on how this 'outside enemy,' namely Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda was fabricated and transformed into 'Enemy Number One.'"
With the Zarqawi hit, a bit more of this evidence has been killed. Literally.
Zarqawi, "Bush's man in Iraq" is not just a manipulated Anglo-American intelligence asset, but a clumsy Pentagon psychological operation. The legend of the "shadowy terror mastermind" responsible for virtually every act of violence in Iraq and beyond has morphed and changed over the years. In a bizarre recent twist (perhaps paving the way for last week's finale), Zarqawi, the "great terrorist mastermind," was depicted as an incompetent; an object of ridicule lacking the knowledge to properly handle an automatic weapon (leading to questions about the competence of US propaganda apparatus). Zarqawi has been reported dead more than once, and now he is dead again, deader than ever.
The definitive analysis, "Who is Musab al Zarqawi?" (recently updated to include analysis of the purported Zarqawi hit), chronicles the entire Zarqawi operation from its inception. In this piece, Chossudovsky reveals:
" . . . a recent Washington Post article provides details on leaked internal military documents which confirm the existence of a PSYOP 'Zarqawi program' at the Pentagon. (WP. 10 April 2006 ) The latter consists in creating a 'Zarqawi Legend' by feeding disinformation into the news chain:
"The Zarqawi campaign is discussed in several of the internal military documents. "Villainize Zarqawi/leverage xenophobia response," one U.S. military briefing from 2004 stated. It listed three methods: "Media operations," "Special Ops (626)" (a reference to Task Force 626, an elite U.S. military unit assigned primarily to hunt in Iraq for senior officials in Hussein's government) and "PSYOP," the U.S. military term for propaganda work . . ." (WP . 10 April 2006, further details).
"In this regard, the senior commander entrusted with Pentagon's PSYOP operation is General Kimmitt who now occupies the position of senior planner at US Central Command (USCENTCOM), responsible for directing operations in Iraq and the Middle East confirms that
'There was clearly an information campaign to raise the public awareness of who Zarqawi was, primarily for the Iraqi audience but also with the international audience.'
"A goal of the campaign was to drive a wedge into the insurgency by emphasizing Zarqawi's terrorist acts and foreign origin, said officers familiar with the program. 'Through aggressive Strategic Communications, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi now represents: Terrorism in Iraq/Foreign Fighters in Iraq/Suffering of Iraqi People (Infrastructure Attacks)/Denial of Iraqi Aspirations,' the same briefing asserts . . . (Ibid)'"
Once it was exposed, this psy-op had to be shut down in the most opportune and timely fashion, obliterating the trail behind an explosive final blast of propaganda.
Bush administration's final lies
The Bush administration's mighty Wurlitzer is in overdrive, pushing again to inflate Bush's macho image, distract attention from unfolding scandals (that won't go away) and continuing losses in Iraq and Afghanistan. In an election year, Bush-Rove is seeking to boost lowest-ever poll numbers, and silence political opposition, with help from both corporate media and "alternative" media. News broadcasts continue to show self-congratulatory Bush White House players gloating about its glorious hunt for Islamic "quarry," and posturing over photos of the alleged Zarqawi corpse.
As Chossudovsky notes, the spin is obvious and transparent:
"The Bush administration is already announcing 'a post-Zarqawi era,' suggesting that with the death of its presumed leader, the 'insurgency' is in the process of being defeated. Zarqawi's death was an opportunity for the new government to 'turn the tide,' Bush said. 'The ideology of terror has lost one of its most visible and aggressive leaders.'
"The killing of Zarqawi has occurred at a time when Bush's public support is at an all time low, as confirmed by the opinion polls. In a press conference at the White House, Bush underscored the role of Zarqawi as 'commanders of the terrorist movement in Iraq. He led a campaign of car bombings, assassinations and suicide attacks that has taken the lives of many American forces and thousands of innocent Iraqis. Osama bin Laden called this Jordanian terrorist the prince of Al Qaida in Iraq. He called on the terrorists around the world to listen to him and obey him.'
"'Now Zarqawi has met his end and this violent man will never murder again,' suggesting that the US has from now on the upper hand in Iraq. 'Zarqawi's death is a severe blow to Al Qaida. It's a victory in the global war on terror, and it is an opportunity for Iraq's new government to turn the tide of this struggle.'"
More importantly: "Zarqawi's death has also served as a convenient cover-up of the extensive war crimes committed by coalition forces in Iraq. The news coverage suggests that Zarqawi, rather than coalition forces, are responsible for countless atrocities and civilian deaths. In the words of Don Rumsfeld, the man who led the criminal invasion and occupation of Iraq: 'I think arguably, over the last several years no single person on this planet has had the blood of more innocent man, women and children on his hands than Zarqawi.'"
(In fact, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and the other murderers of the Bush administration have more blood on their hands than any US presidency in history. They know it. They like it.)
The Bush administration has momentarily succeeded in one respect: hapless congressional Democrats and Left intellectuals (who have enthusiastically supported the "war on terrorism") have been maneuvered and cowed into congratulating Bush's "success," and echoing the administration's lies verbatim. They, along with a large portion of the American sheeple, still jump through the time-honored 9/11 propaganda hoops in Pavlovian fashion, each time Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and the New York Times and Fox News, say "jump." But even this trick has lost its power. Even mainstream reports have noted that any momentary popularity bump for Bush and his war have been "fleeting" at best.
No psychological operation can hide the fact that the Bush administration and its neocon "plan" has failed in catastrophic fashion: failed to do the job it was installed into power to do; failed to conquer Central Asia and the Middle East; failed to secure and control cheap oil; failed to gain geopolitical advantage over superpower rivals. In fact, Bush-Cheney has obliterated what little international respect the New World Order once believed it commanded.
The Zarqawi "crescendo" signals what is likely the beginning of a final chapter in the Bush administration's "war on terror" fiction, as the administration itself faces its own fall. In an attempt to save face, the mentally ill Bush and his criminals know they must act now to create the illusion of victory, even as their violent, criminal acts have left the New World Order, and the entire world, in flames.
Could a spectacular pursuit and execution of "Osama bin Laden" be far behind?
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"New American Century" Project Ends With A Whimper
by Jim Lobe
IPS-Inter Press Service
13 June 06
WASHINGTON - Is the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which did so much to promote the invasion of Iraq and an Israel-centred "global war on terror", closing down?
In the absence of an official announcement and the failure since late last year of a live person to answer its telephone number, a Washington Post obituary would seem to be definitive. And, sure enough, the Post quoted one unidentified source presumably linked to PNAC that the group was "heading toward closing" with the feeling of "goal accomplished".
In fact, the nine-year-old group, whose 27 founders included Vice President Dick Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, among at least half a dozen of the most powerful hawks in the George W. Bush administration's first term, has been inactive since January 2005, when it issued the last of its "statements", an appeal to significantly increase the size of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps to cope with the growing demands of the kind of "Pax Americana" it had done so much to promote.
As a platform for the three-part coalition that was most enthusiastic about war in Iraq -- aggressive nationalists like Cheney, Christian Zionists of the religious Right, and Israel-centred neo-conservatives -- PNAC actually began breaking down shortly after the Iraq invasion.
It was then that the group's predominantly neo-conservative leadership -- Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, PNAC director Gary Schmitt, and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace analyst Robert Kagan -- began attacking Rumsfeld, in particular, for failing to deploy enough troops to pacify the country and launch a true nation-building exercise, as in post-World War II Germany and Japan.
It was the first of a number of policy splits that, along with the deepening quagmire in Iraq itself, have debilitated the hawks, forcing neo-conservatives in the group to reach out to liberal interventionists with whom they sponsored a series of joint statements extolling the virtues of nation-building and a larger army, or calling for a tougher U.S. stance toward Russia and China.
PNAC was launched by Kristol and Kagan in 1997, shortly after their publication of an article in Foreign Affairs magazine entitled "Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy", in which they called for Washington to exercise "benevolent global hegemony" to be sustained "as far into the future as possible".
While critical of then President Bill Clinton, the article was directed more against a Republican Congress which, in their view, had grown increasingly isolationist, particularly after the precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Somalia in 1994 and strong Republican opposition to intervention in the Balkans against Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.
It was in this spirit that the two co-founded PNAC, whose charter was signed by leading neo-conservatives, including Cheney's future chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby; Rumsfeld's future deputy, Paul Wolfowitz; Bush's future top Middle East aide, Elliott Abrams; his future ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad; Rumsfeld's future top international security official, Peter Rodman; American Enterprise Institute (AEI) fellow and neo-cons impresario Richard Perle, and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush; as well as Cheney and Rumsfeld themselves.
The charter's few specifics, as well as follow-up reports published by PNAC -- "Rebuilding America's Defenses" and "Present Dangers", both published in 2000 to influence the foreign policy debate during the presidential campaign that year -- were based to a great extent on an infamous "Defense Planning Guidance" (DPG) draft produced under Cheney when he served as secretary of defence under President George H.W. Bush in 1992.
That paper, which was developed by then-Undersecretary of Defence Wolfowitz, Libby, Khalilzad, and the current deputy national security adviser, J.D. Crouch, with assistance from Perle and other like-minded defence specialists, called for the "benevolent domination by one power" (the U.S.) to replace "collective internationalism" and for Washington to ensure that domination, particularly in Eurasia, in order to prevent the emergence, by confrontation if necessary, of any possible regional or global rival.
It was PNAC's role to sustain and propagate these ideas through its reports, its periodic letters and statements signed by right-wing notables, and a steady flow of opinion-pieces and essays, that acted as part of a larger neo-conservative "echo chamber" that included Kristol's Weekly Standard, Fox News, the Washington Times, and the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, to frame debates in official Washington and the mainstream media.
In this sense, PNAC was more of a "letter-head organisation" that acted more as a mechanism for developing consensus on issues among different political forces -- in its case, Republican hawks -- and then pushing them in public, than as a think tank.
Indeed, the fact that several of its half-a-dozen staff members -- most recently, PNAC director Schmitt -- have taken posts at the much-larger AEI located just five floors above PNAC's offices helps illustrate the incestuous nature of the larger network. Nonetheless, PNAC was the first to call publicly (in 1998) for Washington to pursue "regime change" in Iraq by military means in conjunction with the Iraqi National Congress of Ahmad Chalabi, who would later play a key role in the propaganda campaign against Saddam Hussein in the run-up to the 2003 invasion.
But perhaps its most notable letter was sent to Bush Sep. 20, 2001, just nine days after the 9/11 attacks. In addition to calling for the ouster of the Taliban and war on al Qaeda, the letter called for waging a broader and more ambitious "war on terrorism" that would include cutting off the Palestinian Authority under Yassir Arafat, taking on Hezbollah, threatening Syria and Iran and, most importantly, ousting Hussein regardless of his relationship to the attacks or al Qaeda.
"It may be that the Iraqi government provided assistance in some form to the recent attack on the United States," it said. "But even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism."
The letter was signed by 38 members of the predominantly neo-conservative Washington echo chamber, many of whom -- especially Kristol, Kagan, Defence Policy Board members Perle, Woolsey, Eliot Cohen, Centre for Security Policy president Frank Gaffney, former Education Secretary William Bennett, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, and Foundation for the Defence of Democracies director Clifford May --would emerge, along with Woolsey, as the most ubiquitous champions of war with Iraq outside the administration.
Seven months later, PNAC issued another letter signed by many of the same people urging Bush to step up preparations for war with Iraq, sever all ties to the Palestinian Authority under Arafat and give full backing to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's efforts to crush the Palestinian intifada.
"Israel's fight against terrorism is our fight. Israel's victory is an important part of our victory," the letter noted. "For reasons both moral and strategic, we need to stand with Israel in its fight against terrorism." Bush complied two months later.
That period -- Sep. 20, 2001, to the run-up to the Iraq war in early 2003 -- marked the high-water mark of PNAC's existence. Since then, things have generally gone downhill, as the hawks they represented, including the group's dominant neo-conservatives, have fallen prey to internal disagreements: over Rumsfeld's stewardship of Iraq and the Pentagon; over the wisdom of democratic "transformation" in the Arab Middle East; over Sharon's Gaza disengagement plan; over China; and even over the latest administration moves on Iran.
All of which has made it far more difficult to forge consensus -- and compose letters -- in these areas.
Copyright © 2006 IPS-Inter Press Service
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For Your Health
Ruling underlines doubts about 'humane' execution method
Last Updated Wed, 14 Jun 2006 10:58:15 EDT
CBC News
The U.S. Supreme Court has given death-row inmates another tool to fight their sentences by allowing them to argue the most widely used method of execution in the United States is too cruel to be constitutional.
The court unanimously agreed on Monday to allow prisoners facing death by lethal injection to mount last-minute challenges to their execution by claiming the chemicals involved cause too much pain.
Lawyers for Clarence Hill, a 47-year-old Florida prisoner sentenced to death for killing a police officer, had argued that immense pain in a prisoner's dying moments caused by the drugs would violate the U.S. Constitution's ban on "cruel and unusual punishment."
The Supreme Court has not ruled on the merits of that argument but legal experts say the decision to admit the Hill case means many other last-minute challenges to death sentences can be expected.
Lethal injection used since 1982
When lethal injection was first used in Texas in 1982, it was introduced as the most humane method of execution. It is the main form of execution used by 37 of the 38 American states that have the death penalty. Nebraska uses the electric chair.
Three chemicals are generally used in the procedure - a powerful anaesthetic, a muscle relaxant and a lethal dose of potassium chloride, which disrupts messages between the heart and the brain.
A study published in April 2005 by the British medical journal Lancet found that up to 43 per cent of inmates might still be conscious after receiving the anaesthetic, which would leave them able to feel great pain from the potassium chloride.
Twelve American states have banned potassium chloride injection as too painful for use in the humane killing of pets.
Ruling to have impact, experts say
Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham University in New York City, says the Supreme Court ruling will shake up certainties about lethal injection, especially among prison officials who administer the punishment.
"I think they're going to be under much more scrutiny about what they're injecting and it really pushes them to look at other kinds of drugs - or to make sure that their executioners are going to be trained well to do the injection."
In California - which along with Florida and Texas accounts for nearly half of all American death sentences - an execution was halted earlier this year when the only two medical doctors involved in the procedure withdrew their services. Both were anaesthesiologists.
The American Medical Association has advised its members not to take part in executions but some doctors have disregarded that. Most have to work anonymously and are often paid in cash for their services, to avoid public exposure and professional censure.
There are more than 3,100 prisoners awaiting execution in American jails. The number has gone down in recent years along with a decrease in violent crime.
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Revealed: the lax laws that could allow assembly of deadly virus DNA
James Randerson, science correspondent
Wednesday June 14, 2006
The Guardian
DNA sequences from some of the most deadly pathogens known to man can be bought over the internet, the Guardian has discovered.
In an investigation which shows the ease with which terrorist organisations could obtain the basic ingredients of biological weapons, this newspaper obtained a short sequence of smallpox DNA. The deadly virus has existed only in laboratories since being eradicated from the world's population 30 years ago.
The DNA sequence of smallpox, as well as other potentially dangerous pathogens such as poliovirus and 1918 flu are freely available in online public databases. So to build a virus from scratch, a terrorist would simply order consecutive lengths of DNA along the sequence and glue them together in the correct order. This is beyond the skills and equipment of the kitchen chemist, but could be achieved by a well-funded terrorist with access to a basic lab and PhD-level personnel.
One study estimated that because most people on the planet have no resistance to the extinct virus, an initial release which infected just 10 people would spread to 2.2 million people in 180 days.
The DNA sample we ordered had, at our request, three small modifications to render it harmless before it was sent by post to a residential address in London. The company has since conceded that it was not aware it was sending out a sequence of modified smallpox DNA.
There are legitimate reasons for researchers to buy lengths of DNA from pathogens, for example in developing treatments or vaccines against them. However, because this industry is so new and unregulated, companies are selling custom-made DNA without making thorough checks on the identities of the people who are placing the orders or what the sequences are.
Of the four main companies operating in the UK, none currently screens all their DNA orders. There are 39 companies operating in North America and not all screen their orders.
"This is the most disturbing story I have heard for some time," said Phil Willis MP, chairman of the parliamentary science and technology committee. "There is clearly a massive loophole which needs to be dealt with by regulation or legislation."
Alistair Hay, who is an expert on biological and chemical weapons at the University of Leeds and who advises the government and police, said he was concerned that the company was prepared to supply the DNA to a residential address. "I am surprised that it was so easy," he said.
"I think for any company offering [DNA] sequences there is a need to have some screens in place for sequences that may be suspect," added Prof Hay.
"This is a new field and the regulations haven't really caught up with the technology yet," said Robert Jones at Craic Computing in Seattle, a company that makes software which some DNA synthesis companies use to screen their orders for potentially dangerous sequences.
The potential to manufacture viruses from scratch first came to light in 2002 when US researchers pieced together the genome of the polio virus using short sequences of DNA around 70 letters long. And last year, another team recreated the 1918 flu virus, a devastating and now extinct strain that killed an estimated 50 million people, more people than the first world war.
Building smallpox using the same technique as scientists used to make polio and 1918 influenza would be technically difficult because the virus is larger - the smallpox genome is 185,000 letters long, the influenza genome is 13,500 letters and polio is 7,741 letters. But as techniques improve there is no theoretical reason why it could not be done.
Craig Venter, the US entrepreneur famous for sequencing the human genome, announced in 2003 that his team had constructed the virus phage PhiX174 in two weeks. This has a genome 5,386 letters long. He is currently working on making a bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium from scratch which has a genome around twice as large as smallpox.
The Guardian placed an order online with VH Bio Ltd, a company in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, that supplies equipment and chemicals used in standard molecular biology labs. We used an invented company name along with just a mobile telephone number and free email address.
VH Bio Ltd rang to check whether the address provided was a residential address. The journalist told VH Bio Ltd that our company was in the process of moving offices and so wanted to make sure the order arrived.
The package, which contained a 78-letter sequence of DNA, which is part of one of the smallpox virus's coat protein genes, was delivered by the Royal Mail to a flat in north London. The A5-sized Jiffy bag contained a small plastic phial with a tiny blob of white gel at the bottom - the DNA. The order cost £33.08, plus an additional £7 for postage.
Alan Volkers, chairman of VH Bio Ltd said the company had no idea that the sequence they produced was a modified sequence of smallpox DNA.
He added that many of its regular customers carry out research which requires supplies of DNA sequences from pathogenic organisms, and his company does not normally screen DNA orders less than 100 letters long. After discovering that it had supplied a small sequence of smallpox DNA, the company carried out checks on two European databases and a 30-minute check using scanning software, but none of them raised any alert.
Dr Volkers added that the company processes several hundred short-sequence orders per day and added: "It would be impossible to run them all through [standard scanning software] and operate successfully."
"There are no regulations in place which require us to carry out background checks on potential customers," he said. "We will, of course, comply with any regulations which are introduced."
Before beginning the investigation, the Guardian obtained advice from four independent scientists, including an international expert on pox viruses, the family to which smallpox belongs. They told us the order would be safe to produce, transport and receive.
Without modifications to the sequence, it could potentially fall foul of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001. This lists so-called Schedule 5 pathogens and toxins which are illegal to keep or use without first notifying the authorities. Also covered by the act is DNA "associated with the pathogenicity" of the organisms on the same list.
In order to avoid our sequence coming under the act the DNA sequence we ordered had three changes built into it to create so-called "stop codons".
These are effectively full stops in the genetic code which mean that if the sequence were ever put together with others to make a smallpox gene the protein production machinery would stop at that point. So the sequence could never form part of a functional gene.
In making and receiving the order neither we, nor VH Bio Ltd, have broken the law, but the most widely used software (called Blackwatch) for screening DNA orders for potential bioterror agents picked out our sequence as suspicious in a scan run by Craic Computing. This is because it looks for sequences of DNA letters close to sequences from dangerous organisms.
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Flesh-Eating Bacteria Kills College Football Player - Aggressive Strep Infections May Be on the Rise, Experts Say
By LAURA OWINGS
ABC News Medical Unit
8 June 2006
On April 28, Devin Adair, a healthy, 21-year-old tight end for the University of Tulsa's football team, mysteriously died after spending a week in the hospital.
While it was obvious that he was very ill, he had no visible wounds to help doctors ascertain what was wrong.
When the autopsy report came back last week, the pieces of the puzzle came together: Flesh-eating bacteria had killed him.
Also known as necrotizing fasciitis, flesh-eating bacteria are potent enough to turn a wound as minor as a pinprick or paper cut into a massive infection causing amputation or even death. In Oklahoma, Adair's death is the latest of about a dozen people who have died from the infection since 2003.
Nationwide, there are about 500 reported cases a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The infection is caused by bacteria, usually a type known as Group A Streptococcus (GAS), which thrive naturally on the throat and on the skin.
The good news: Few people in contact with GAS will develop an infection, and it doesn't appear to be very contagious. The bad news: No one yet knows why GAS sometimes becomes invasive.
"These infections are very sporadic and unpredictable, and pop up all the time," said Dr. John Shanley, director of Infectious Disease at the University of Connecticut.
'Changes Right Before Your Eyes'
GAS bacteria can enter the body through cuts, scrapes and even bruises. Sometimes, as in Adair's case, there is no identifiable entry point.
When the bacteria reach the blood, muscles or lungs, they can destroy muscles, fat and skin tissue - hence the term "flesh eating."
"It is very aggressive and changes right before your eyes. It can start as a pimple on the leg and then involve the entire leg in less than a half hour," said Dr. Ferdinando Mirarchi, professor of emergency medicine at Drexel University in Philadelphia.
If left untreated, the infected area begins to swell and appear bluish, white or flaky. Once it has progressed to this point, amputation of the infected area and immediate antibiotic treatment usually are necessary.
As scary as this sounds, most experts agree that there is little that can be done in the way of prevention.
Some People More at Risk
"Just cleaning wounds with soap and water is your best shot, but is probably of little use in general," said Dr. Carl Schultz, professor of emergency medicine at the University of California Irvine.
Any type of abnormally painful inflammation of the skin could signal a possibly serious infection, said Dr. Pascal Imperato, professor and chair of Preventive Medicine and Community Health at the State University of New York.
Therefore, "early diagnosis is essential" to save lives, he said, although as Adair's case shows, this isn't always possible.
Flesh-eating bacterial infections are more common in people with weakened immune systems, diabetics, or intravenous drug users - but healthy people also are vulnerable.
In fact, Mirarchi said "we are seeing an increase in number of cases throughout the years, but to what that is due remains unknown."
Is the Problem Getting Worse?
Since 2003, 10 people in Oklahoma have died from necrotizing fasciitis and the CDC states that approximately 660 infections were attributed to the bacteria in 2003. Deaths weren't available.
CDC officials also say that while cases can pop up in small clusters of people, it is important to remember that they will not spread across the country and that the GAS bacteria in general doesn't seem to be very contagious.
Also, some experts question whether the infections are becoming more common.
Dr. William Schaffner, professor and chair at Vanderbilt's Department of Preventative Medicine, said that this bacteria were "not epidemic or communicable in the conventional sense" and that perhaps "we are just better at making the diagnosis."
Still, the random nature of flesh-eating bacteria and its ability to infect both the healthy and sick is frightening. Shanley said this is evident in the nature of the treatment.
"Antibiotics alone are never enough, and extensive surgery is the rule."
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Diabetes Cases Rise From 30 Million To 230 Million In 20 Years
International Diabetes Federation
by: Christian Nordqvist
Editor: Medical News Today
During the last 20 years the total number of people with diabetes worldwide has risen from 30 million to 230 million, according to the International Diabetes Federation. China and India now have the most diabetes sufferers in the world.
Today, out of the top ten countries with diabetes sufferers, seven are developing countries. The Caribbean and the Middle East have regions where the percentage of adults with diabetes has reached 20%. In certain parts of Africa developing diabetes can mean a short route to death. While patients in developed countries, with access to proper treatment, can expect to live for several decades, in countries such as Mali and Mozambique developing diabetes often means a life expectancy of one or two years.
The International Diabetes Federation released its data at the American Diabetes Association's 66th Scientific Sessions.
The spread of diabetes type 2 today is due to lifestyle, diet and genetics. Many more people today have better access to food, eat more of the wrong nutrients and do much less exercise. This combination of bad diet and inactivity leads to weight gain, which in turn raises the risk of developing diabetes type 2.
Here are some facts
-- The number of people with diabetes is expected to reach 350 million by 2025.
-- Top five countries with the most diabetes sufferers in 2003 were: India (35.5 million, China 23.8 million, USA 16 million, Russia 9.7 million and Japan 6.7 million.
-- Top five countries with the highest percentage of adults with diabetes in 2003 were: Nauru 30.2 %, United Arab Emirates 20.1 %, Qatar 16%, Bahrain14.9%, and Kuwait 12.8%.
-- The number of diabetes sufferers by 2025 is expected to: Double in Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, and South-East Asia, and rise by 20% in Europe, 50% in North America, 85% in South and Central America and 75% in the Western Pacific.
-- There are 6 million new diabetes sufferers in the world each year.
-- Every ten seconds someone in the world dies as a result of having diabetes - 3 million deaths a year.
-- Diabetes is now the fourth biggest cause of death worldwide.
-- Half of all diabetes sufferers around the globe do not know they have it. In some parts of the world 80% of sufferers don't know.
-- Diabetes causes more cases of blindness and visual impairments in adults than any other illness in the developed world.
-- One million amputations each year are caused by diabetes. A diabetes sufferer is up to 40 times more likely to need a lower-limb amputation when compared to a person who does not have diabetes.
-- Diabetes raises the sufferer's risk of developing a cardiovascular disease by two to four times. Cardiovascular disease, the number one cause of death in the industrial world, will soon be the number one cause of death globally.
-- It is estimated that diabetes accounts for 5% to 10% of most nations' health budgets.
-- If more money were spent on early detection of diabetes and diabetes prevention the economic savings would be massive.
-- Good control of blood glucose levels significantly reduces the diabetes patients' risk of developing complications. Managing hypertension and raised blood lipids is also crucial.
-- One quarter of all the countries in the world have not made any specific provision for diabetes care in their health plans.
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Head lice 'are becoming indestructible'
By IAN DRURY
Daily Mail
14th June 2006
You can comb them out, zap them with chemicals or simply keep scratching. But head lice have a habit of maintaining a firm grip on their habitat.
And the bad news is they are becoming increasingly resistant to the most common treatments.
Scientists believe that 80 per cent of the bugs are immune to over-the-counter lotions. They found lice were untroubled by the chemicals permathrin and phenothrin, found in popular bug-busting brands such as Lyclear and Full Marks.
The experts say the process of natural selection means the insects have developed a resistance to the lotions. The findings will not just leave children, parents and teachers scratching their heads. It will almost certainly start a scramble to discover a lotion to do the job better.
Lucrative
Eliminating head lice is a lucrative business, with Britons spending £30million a year on treatments.
Scientists at the Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre in Cardiff discovered four out of five lice were resistant to the chemicals.
A team led by Dr Daniel Thomas armed themselves with nit combs to visit 31 schools in Wales. Eight per cent of children tested had head lice and researchers managed to remove 4,000 nits - head lice eggs - from itchy heads. Each nit collected was tested for resistance to pyrethroids, which are used in the most popular treatments for lice.
They require a shorter application time and do not smell as strongly as other chemicals. More than 80 per cent of the lice were resistant to the insecticides which are designed to attack the insect's nervous system, the scientists discovered.
This was because of the process of natural selection, said Dr Thomas. Most lice have developed a gene which makes them more resistant to poisons following years of exposure to the chemicals.
Insects either develop ways of counteracting the chemicals before they affect their bodies or they become less sensitive to them, said Dr Thomas, whose findings are published in the journal Archives of Disease In Childhood.
He said there was no reason to suppose the findings would not be replicated across the rest of Britain.
Head lice live close to the scalp, where there is guaranteed warmth, food and shelter. They cannot fly, jump or hop and are spread when people's heads touch each other.
Last year a study found those who fine-combed their wet hair were four times more likely to remove head lice than those relying on products bought at the chemist.
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When faces have no name - Genetic condition has people struggling to recognize others
By Carey Goldberg
Globe Staff
June 14, 2006
New findings from researchers at Harvard and elsewhere suggest that a surprising number of people are face-blind, so bad at recognizing faces that they routinely snub acquaintances and have trouble following movie plots. In extreme cases, they may greet siblings as strangers and struggle to discern which child is theirs at school pick-up time.
The syndrome, known medically as prosopagnosia, was long thought to be a rare neurological curiosity that resulted from brain damage.
Research has begun to suggest that most face-blindness stems from genes, rather than brain injury, and that it is far more widespread than previously suspected, with up to 2 percent of the population affected to some degree.
A report by German researchers Thomas and Martina Grüter is expected to be published in a prominent American genetics journal within weeks. Harvard researchers announced May 31 that, by using different methods, they had come up with a similar number, though the data has not yet been published.
"It's a possible stealth condition," said Ken Nakayama, a Harvard psychology professor who led the research. "There is no test for this when you're going to school."
Born prosopagnosics, whose brains are usually normal in other respects, often suspect that something is wrong, but cannot put a finger on it. The condition also goes undetected because born prosopagnosics have never seen faces any other way, so to them, it seems normal, Nakayama said.
But sometimes, the problem "slaps prosopagnosics in the face, and they realize something's really wrong here," said Bradley Duchaine, a former Harvard researcher now at University College London. "I hear parents who go to the day-care center, and for some reason their kid has changed clothes while there, and the parents have no clue who their child is, while the people working there think, 'What is wrong with this parent?' "
Face-blind people can see faces perfectly well -- the eyes, nose, and mouth -- but seem to have trouble processing what they see and placing it into memory to be recalled again. In its rare, extreme form, prosopagnosics describe looking into the mirror and being unable to recognize themselves.
More often, they have trouble recognizing acquaintances and coworkers, social handicaps that can hurt their careers and their private lives. They tend to cope using a variety of ways to tell people apart, based on the sound of a voice, the style of clothing, or their walk. Or they "adapt by being smiling and friendly to everybody," said Richard Russell, another Harvard researcher.
Researchers say public attention to prosopagnosia (pronounced proso-pahgNOsia, and often shortened to "proso") may help people who have it, simply by making their lack of recognition more understandable to others.
Prosopagnosics are already debating whether schoolchildren should someday be tested for face-recognition problems.
"This is about as many children as have dyslexia," Thomas Grüter said, "and these children are not really handicapped in any extensive way, but still they might become outsiders, and this is something that could be avoided easily, just by telling kindergarten or primary school teachers what to do and how to help them. "
There is no known cure for the condition, but researchers are experimenting with training that could, at the least, help those with face-blindness better recognize relatives, friends, bosses, and other key people in their lives.
One Cambridge prosopagnosic, who asked not to be identified because she works in public relations and fears that her career could be damaged if her problem were known, said she has learned never to say, "Nice to meet you," but rather, "Nice to see you." Still, it can be embarrassing and comical to her friends when, for example, she fails to recognize a man she has dated.
In the Harvard research, the 2-percent figure is just a "best guess" at this point, Nakayama said, but it emerged when Harvard colleagues gave some 1,600 volunteers a variety of psychological tests, among them the "Cambridge Face Memory Test," which Nakayama had been working on for years and published last fall.
(It is not publicly available because researchers do not want potential subjects to become familiar with it. Duchaine offered a link for readers who want to quiz themselves: www.icn.ucl.ac.uk/facetests/.)
Thomas and Martina Grüter, the German researchers, became interested in prosopagnosia when, after watching a television documentary on the subject, Martina realized that Thomas's quirks -- needing her to identify people for him at parties, for example -- amounted to face-blindness. His father had it, too.
They hunted down more families and Martina wrote her thesis on the genetics of face-blindness, which seems simple: it appears to involve a single, dominant gene, so a child can inherit prosopagnosia even if only one parent has it.
The Grüters tried to figure out how common the condition really was. They handed out questionnaires to some 800 Münster high school and medical students, asking about experiences that might suggest prosopagnosia, and interviewed students who seemed likely candidates.
From among 800, they confirmed that 17 had a significant level of face-blindness, to the point that it caused problems in their daily lives .
The Grüters' paper, written with Ingo Kennerknecht, was accepted last month by the American Journal of Medical Genetics and is scheduled to be published online in the next three weeks, Thomas Grüter said.
The Grüters are now interested in finding ways to screen children for prosopagnosia and then to help those who are identified without publicly identifying them.
What goes wrong in the brains of face-blind people is largely a mystery, said Dr. Marlene Behrmann, a brain scientist at Carnegie Mellon University.
The phenomenon plays into a major debate in neuroscience, she said, whether the brain is made up of a bunch of separate little modules that each perform a different function or whether all parts of the brain are potentially capable of performing any function. "The truth will be somewhere in the middle, which is why it's a vigorous debate," she said.
If face-blind people have problems only with faces, that would tend to support the view of the brain as made up of task-specific modules, she said. But if, as some research suggests, the problem turns out to involve not only faces but also any objects that look alike, then it supports the idea that the brain uses more general visual processes.
Meanwhile, prosopagnosics such as Glenn, a Brookline cashier, say their lives are complicated both by their face-blindness and by the fact that nobody has heard of their condition.
"It would be really swell for me to be able to walk on the street in Harvard Square and say to somebody, 'You know, I have prospagnosia,' and for them to say, 'Oh, yeah, I know exactly what that is,' but I can't do that right now," said Glenn, who asked that his last name not be used for fear that someone might victimize him, knowing he could never identify them.
Glenn said he recognizes people by their trappings and context. He explains his problem to some people, asking them to realize that he may not recognize them when he meets them again.
Carey Goldberg can be reached at at goldberg@globe.com.
© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.
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Farewell to Teflon
Nora Ephron
Huffingtonpost.com
13 June 06
I feel sad about Teflon.
It was great while it lasted.
Now it turns out to be bad for you.
Or, put more exactly, now it turns out that a chemical that's released when you heat up Teflon is in everyone's blood stream -- and probably causes cancer and birth defects.
I loved Teflon.
I loved the no-carb ricotta pancake I invented last year, which can be cooked only on Teflon. I loved my Teflon-coated frying pan, which makes a beautiful steak. I loved Teflon as an adjective; it gave us a Teflon president (Ronald Reagan) and it even gave us a Teflon Don (John Gotti, whose Teflon-ness eventually wore out, making him an almost exact metaphorical duplicate of my Teflon pans). I loved the fact that Teflon was invented by someone named Roy J. Plunkett, whose name alone you might have thought would have insured Teflon against becoming a dangerous product.
But this year DuPont, which makes polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) resin, which is what Teflon was called when it first popped up as a laboratory accident back in 1938, reached a $16.5 million settlement with the Environmental Protection Agency; it seems the company knew all along that Teflon was bad for you. It's an American cliché by now: a publicly-traded company holds the patent on a scientific breakthrough, it turns out to cause medical problems, and the company knew all along. You can go to the bank on it.
But it's sad about Teflon. Teflon wasn't really good when it first came onto the market. The pans were light and skimpy and didn't compare to copper or cast iron. They were great for omelettes, and of course, nothing stuck to them, but they were nowhere near as good for cooking things that were meant to be browned, like steaks. But then manufacturers began to produce Teflon pans that were heavy-duty, and you could make a steak that was as dark and delicious as one made on the barbecue. Unfortunately, this involved heating your Teflon pan up to a very high temperature before adding the steak, which happens to be the very way perfluoroctanoic acid (PFOA) is released into the environment. PFOA is the bad guy here, and DuPont has promised to eliminate it from all Teflon products by 2015. I'm sure that will be a comfort to those of you under the age of forty, but to me it simply means that my last years on this planet will be spent, at least in part, scraping debris off my frying pans.
Rumors of Teflon have been circulating for a long time, but I couldn't help hoping they were going to turn out like the rumors of aluminum, which was suspected (back in the nineties) of causing Alzheimer's. That was a bad moment, since never mind giving up aluminum pots, it would also have meant giving up aluminum foil, disposable aluminum baking pans, and most crucial of all, anti-perspirants. I rode out that rumor, and I'm pleased to report that it went away. (So has my memory, but I think that's a coincidence.)
But this rumor is clearly for real:
A few days ago, Marian Burros, the incontrovertible food writer for the New York Times, announced that she had moved her Teflon pans to her basement. I notice that she did not throw them out (which I'm going to have to do, since I have no basement). She tested a zillion other pots and made a trillion omelettes, and she wrote that the black enamel frying pan made by Le Creuset was as good as Teflon and even managed to cook eggs that didn't stick. Today I am going to go out and attempt to buy one. My guess is that there are none left in the city of New York.
After I find one, and not a moment before, I will throw my Teflon pans away. Meanwhile, this morning, I am going to make one last ricotta pancake breakfast:
Beat one egg, add 1/3 cup fresh whole-milk ricotta and whisk together. Heat up a Teflon pan until carcinogenic gas is released into the air. Spoon pancakes onto the frying pan and cook about three minutes on one side, until brown. Carefully flip. Cook for another minute to brown the other side. Eat with jam, if you don't care about carbs, or just eat unadorned. Serves one.
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Gitmo
UN experts urge Guantanamo closure after suicides
Last Updated Wed, 14 Jun 2006 10:30:40 EDT
CBC News
United Nations human rights experts repeated their call Wednesday for the closure of Guantanamo Bay prison in the wake of three suicides at the U.S. military facility.
In a statement released in Geneva, the five experts deemed last week's suicides "to a certain extent foreseeable in light of the harsh and prolonged conditions of their detention...." They add that the situation "reinforces the need for the urgent closure of the detention center."
The suicides, they said, highlighted the concern for the mental health of detainees.
The men who committed suicide were later identified as Saudi Arabians Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi Al-Utaybi and Yassar Talal Al-Zahrani, and Yemeni Ali Abdullah Ahmed.
They were the first to die at the base in Cuba since the U.S. began holding terrorism suspects there in 2002.
Many of those in custody are carrying out a prolonged hunger strike to protest against their conditions.
Speaking from the White House lawn on Wednesday, U.S. President George W. Bush said he is waiting for guidance from the Supreme Court before determining what to do with the facility.
"I'd like to close Guantanamo," Bush said. "But I also recognize that we are holding some people that are darn dangerous."
The court is expected to rule this month whether detainees may be tried before military commissions or can challenge their cases in federal court.
Bush said that detainees have been sent home on a continual basis and that those remaining will eventually receive counsel and a hearing in court.
The five envoys, who come from Algeria, Austria, Pakistan and New Zealand issued a report in February decrying the arbitrary nature of the detentions and the inhuman and degrading conditions. The UN representatives were not permitted to visit the prison.
Meanwhile, an Afghan delegation returning from a 10-day visit to Guantanamo Bay said they were allowed to visit all 96 Afghan prisoners currently detained.
A representative from the Afghan Interior Ministry said the conditions were "humane" and that there were few complaints from the men regarding their living conditions.
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Bush acknowledges Guantanamo damages US image
Wed Jun 14, 2006 12:00pm ET11
By Caren Bohan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush acknowledged on Wednesday that the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where three detainees committed suicide, has damaged the U.S. image abroad and said it should be shut down.
But he said a plan for relocating the prisoners was needed first and added he was also awaiting a decision from the Supreme Court about the forum for handling cases of some detainees.
"I'd like to close Guantanamo, but I also recognize that we're holding some people there that are darn dangerous and that we better have a plan to deal with them in our courts," Bush told a news conference in the White House Rose Garden.
He acknowledged that Guantanamo is seen by some countries as an example of the United States not upholding the values it espouses on human rights.
"No question, Guantanamo sends, you know, a signal to some of our friends -- provides an excuse, for example, to say, 'The United States is not upholding the values that they're trying encourage other countries to adhere to,'" Bush said.
Two Saudis and a Yemeni hanged themselves with clothes and bedsheets at the prison for foreign terrorism suspects on Saturday.
The suicides were the first deaths of prisoners at Guantanamo, although there have been many previous suicide attempts and hunger strikes since the United States began sending suspected al Qaeda and Taliban captives there in 2002.
Nearly all the prisoners at Guantanamo are being held without charge and some have been detained for more than three years. The 460 foreigners in the prison were captured mainly in Afghanistan during the U.S.-led war there to oust the Taliban and al Qaeda after the September 11 attacks.
The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule this month on the legitimacy of special military tribunals set up to try some of the prisoners for war crimes. Ten detainees face hearings before the tribunals.
Bush said the United States was also in a difficult position in some of the cases in which it wants to send prisoners back to their home countries but such moves have been criticized.
"Of course, sometimes we get criticized for sending some people out of Guantanamo back to their home country because of the nature of the home countries -- a little bit of a Catch-22," Bush said.
He added that a lot of detainees have been sent back already. "I don't think the American people know that, nor do the citizens of some of the countries that are concerned about Guantanamo," Bush added.
According to the U.S. Department of Defense, 287 detainees have left Guantanamo. That includes 192 who have been released and 95 who were transferred to the custody of other governments.
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Hicks 'severely damaged', says CIA expert
Reporter: Tony Jones
Video
TONY JONES: Well, Alfred McCoy is Professor of history at the University of Wisconsin. In 1972 he wrote The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade,, which is now regarded as a seminal work on the CIA's complicity in Asian drug trafficking. His latest book is A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation from the Cold War to the War on Terror, which examines the CIA's development of psychological torture over the past 50 years. And in an article in the latest edition of the Monthly magazine, he turns his attention to the treatment of David Hicks in Guantanamo Bay, which he says must be viewed through the lens of CIA torture techniques. Well, he joins us now from Madison Wisconsin. Thanks for being there and can I first get your reaction of the suicide deaths at Guantanamo Bay on the weekend?
PROFESSOR ALFRED MCCOY, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN: The two statements, one by Admiral Harris and the other by the State Department official that this is an act of asymmetrical warfare, that this is a good PR stunt, is indicative of the Guantanamo mentality. Guantanamo is not a conventional military prison. It's an ad hoc laboratory for the perfection of the CIA psychological torture. Guantanamo is a complete construction. It's a system of total psychological torture, designed to break down every detainee contained therein, designed to produce a state of hopelessness and despair that leads, tragically, sadly in this case to suicide. The statements by those American officials are indicative of the cruel mentality at Guantanamo.
TONY JONES: Those are pretty dramatic statements you are making. I would have to say, though, the Red Cross is about to go and do an urgent inspection of the prison and it does appear that their reports back in 2004 do back up a lot of what you are saying. They also decided that what was happening at Guantanamo Bay amounted to a system of torture.
PROFESSOR ALFRED MCCOY, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN: They argued that it wasn't just isolated cases. They said that the entire system of treatment of detainees, designed to do one thing, and one thing only - extract information - constituted a system of cruelty, a system of torture. No qualification, not tantamount to torture - a phrase they'd used before - but torture per se. Confinement at Guantanamo constitutes torture. The question is, what kind of torture? It is psychological torture. Not the conventional, physical, brutal torture, but a distinctively American form of torture - psychological torture.
TONY JONES: I'm going to come to the history of how you say that form of torture was evolved by the CIA. Can I first go, though, to some of the most compelling testimony I've read in the account you've given recently in your essay to the Monthly magazine and that comes from FBI officers who visited Guantanamo Bay. Can you tell us, first of all, why they were visiting and why they were writing these reports?
PROFESSOR ALFRED MCCOY, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN: Sure. The FBI has for the past 60 years, until the start of the war on terror, been in charge of US counter-intelligence and, indeed, the investigation of East African bombings by al-Qaeda in 1998, for example, were handled by the FBI. So the FBI is a partner with the CIA and military intelligence in the war on terror generating intelligence to fight the war on terror. Now, there's a distinct difference between the CIA methods and the FBI methods. The CIA have allowed the Bush White House to use enhanced techniques whose sum is indeed torture. The FBI, reflecting its legal culture, do not torture. The FBI use a form of torture we might call empathetic interrogation. That is to say, you form a bond with the subject - the interrogator and the subject develop a personal relationship and through this relationship you get accurate, reliable, non-coerced intelligence and information that, by the way, will stand up in a court of law. So the FBI are down at Guantanamo and they have been appalled by what they saw. The standard techniques used on countless detainees - blasted with sound, blasted with light, confined in the dark, short shackled, long shackled. Now, all of the techniques that the FBI describe and literally dozens of emails from Guantanamo are basically describing the two foundational techniques that are key to the CIA psychological torture paradigm. That is self-inflicted pain in the form of -
TONY JONES: OK. Sorry to interrupt you there, Dr McCoy. Once again I will come to the history of how that evolved in just a moment and we'll talk in more detail about it. I'm very interested in what specifically the FBI officers reported about how individuals were treated. You spoke in general terms and in your essay you talk about some specific cases - people they found unconscious on the ground in cells and so on.
PROFESSOR ALFRED MCCOY, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN: Right. People that were short-shackled to the floor for days at a time. One detainee so desperate that overnight he pulled his hair out, hair by hair. Others covered in faeces, their own waste. Many detainees suffering signs of psychological breakdown. Another thing the FBI established very clearly is that these techniques were of course counter-productive. The FBI would often start interviews and after one of their subjects was subjected, for example, to a regime of strobe lights or blasting rock music, that when the FBI tried to conduct their next interview, the detainees were suddenly hostile and non-cooperative.
TONY JONES: There was evidence the FBI officers saw of people being broken psychologically?
PROFESSOR ALFRED MCCOY, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN: Oh, no doubt about it. Absolutely. They described detainees huddling, quivering, signs of extreme psychological stress. There is also the documented case of the famed detainee Rasul, who was subjected to these techniques of rock music, strobe lights, extreme isolation in a darkened cell for a period much less than David Hicks, by the way, and Rasul was so desperate to end this regime of treatment that shown a video of 40 Jihadists in Afghanistan seated beside Osama bin Laden, he falsely identified himself as one of the jihadists and it wasn't until an agent of MI5 arrived from Guantanamo and established he had been a clerk in an electronics shop in the United Kingdom and not a jihadist in Afghanistan at the time he said he was that the US officers realised he'd given false information in order to end this harsh treatment.
TONY JONES: We should note at this point that Shafiq Rasul was in fact released. The British caused him to be released. I gather he's now back in Britain, but he's a co-litigant, is he not, with David Hicks in the case against the US President?
PROFESSOR ALFRED MCCOY, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN: Well, he was a co-litigant with David Hicks in the landmark decision called Rasul v Bush. David Hicks was the initial litigant, he was the first one, that case started in February 2002, right after detainees began arriving in Guantanamo Bay and David Hicks through his persistence, his refusal to capitulate, his refusal to be broken remained one of the longest standing litigants in that case. The result was a stunning rebuke for the Bush Administration by the US Supreme Court. The Bush Administration had taken the position that Guantanamo Bay is not US territory. The US naval installation at Guantanamo is not US territory and thus was not subject to US courts. The Supreme Court ruled in that landmark case Rasul v. Bush, that indeed Guantanamo is US territory and is thus subject to habeus corpus writs resulting in 160 cases being filed on behalf of 300 detainees. That decision is going to be further tested either this month or next in another landmark case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which will test, by the way, the legality of the military commissions. David Hicks is also very significant in the military commissions because as detainee 002 on the Pentagon's list he was picked to be the first of those 700 detainees tried by the military commissions.
TONY JONES: OK. Let me take you back now into history and back into your book and your research essentially, Question of Torture. The history of the CIA's attempts to break people through interrogation stem right back to the Cold War and to a point where the CIA believed the Soviets had made huge advances on psychological techniques; is that so?
PROFESSOR ALFRED MCCOY, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN: That's correct. In the deepest darkest days of the Cold War initially as a defensive move, the CIA launched a massive mind control project to crack the code of human consciousness, a veritable Manhattan project of the mind with research expenses reaching up to $1 billion a year at peak in the 1950s and the first breakthrough in this massive project came at McGill University. It was actually a joint Canadian, British, US effort, top-secret effort, and Dr Donald O. Hebb at McGill University found that he could induce a state akin to psychosis in a subject within 48 hours. Now, what had the doctor done? Hypnosis, electroshock, LSD, drugs? No. None of the above. All Dr Hebb did was take student volunteers at McGill University where he was head of Psychology, put them in comfortable airconditioned cubicles and put goggles, gloves and ear muffs on them. In 24 hours the hallucinations started. In 48 hours they suffered a complete breakdown. Dr Hebb noted they suffered a disintegration of personality. Just goggles, gloves and ear muffs and this discovered the foundation, or the key technique which has been applied under extreme conditions at Guantanamo. The technique of sensory disorientation. I've tracked down some of the original subjects in Dr Hebb's experiments of 1952 and men now in their 70s still suffer psychological damage from just two days of isolation with goggles, gloves and ear muffs. David Hicks was subjected at peak to 244 days of isolation, the most extreme isolation in the 50-year history of these CIA psychological torture techniques. David Hicks has suffered untold psychological damage that will take a great deal of care, a great deal of treatment and probably the rest of his life to move beyond. To say that David Hicks has not been tortured, to say that David Hicks is only suffering from a sore back, a statement that's been made by the Foreign Minister, I think that just flies in the face of a fact. It represents an ignorance of what torture is, particularly what psychological torture is.
TONY JONES: Do you have any direct evidence that David Hicks was subject over a prolonged period to the sort of things you're talking about, sensory deprivation on that scale with hoods and masks and so on because from what I've read he was subjected to that in the very early days for a short period of time.
PROFESSOR ALFRED MCCOY, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN: That's correct, yes.
TONY JONES: And then he was put in solitary confinement.
PROFESSOR ALFRED MCCOY, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN: Yes, he was put in an extreme form of solitary confinement for 244 days. OK? A dark cell denied any sunlight, denied any emotional support. His contact limited to once a week visits with his military chaplain, OK? So imagine that? 244 days locked up inside a cell with no human contact, no sunlight. That's an extreme form of sensory disorientation. That leads to tremendous psychological damage and when Hicks' civilian attorney Joshua Dratel first met him for the first time he found Hicks was in a severely damaged and stressed psychological state, obsessed with himself, unable to grasp reality and unable to focus on the real issues in this case. Showing all the signs, the same kind of signs that the FBI noted in their emails about the treatment of other Guantanamo detainees. Treatment by the way that the International Red Cross has called torture.
TONY JONES: Alfred McCoy, one of the strange things about the Hicks case is he appears to have virtually incriminated himself in a freely given interview with the Australian Federal Police where over a very long period of time he spells out - and evidently under no duress - he spells out how he had training in three phases in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Given that he openly gave that information to Australian interrogators, why would there be any need to torture him?
PROFESSOR ALFRED MCCOY, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN: Guantanamo itself is a system of torture, OK? The complete isolation, the harsh conditions, the daily harsh treatment, that is a carefully constructed system, designed to break down the detainees. Now, why was David Hicks being singled out to be broken down? Very simply he was picked to be the first detainee among 700 placed before the military commissions. I think the Guantanamo Administration was trying to break him down in order to have him capitulate, co-operate and legitimate what is in fact an illegal, an uncivilised form of military justice that's been repudiated by the United Nations Commission on torture and indeed 76 eminent Australian journalists and the Attorney-General of the United Kingdom. So this was designed to break Hicks down and make him capitulate and co-operate with the military commission, something he's not done. Something that he's resisted in a way that very few of the other detainees have been able to do.
TONY JONES: Although some might argue that in fact it's his lawyers who are resisting and delaying the process of the military tribunals. That's what the Australian Government says, that you could actually have gone through this process a lot quicker and Hicks could be in some more formal system of justice now, if only he'd gone through the military tribunals.
PROFESSOR ALFRED MCCOY, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN: Look, the military tribunals have been repudiated by the UN committee on torture and one of the reasons that the UN committee on torture in their recent meeting in Geneva called for Guantanamo to be closed - and this was a committee made up of 10 eminent international jurors, because they said that the military commissions do not constitute a legitimate form of justice, OK? This is not a court martial under the uniform court of military justice. This is a system that's been described by the Attorney-General of the United Kingdom as a mockery of justice. The official legal observer at Guantanamo, Lex Lasry QC, used similar words calling it a mockery of justice. Those 76 eminent Australian lawyers, including four former judges, have called it an affront to civilised standards. So David Hicks by refusing to capitulate, by refusing to confess, falsely perhaps, but to confess and to cooperate by persisting in his insistence upon his innocence, has in fact resisted and his lawyers are representing his will. Let's not diminish the courage of the man.
TONY JONES: Alfred McCoy, we'll have to leave you on that note. We thank you for coming in to talk to us tonight and perhaps one day in the future with your perspective we can bring you in on a debate on this subject. Thank you very much for being there tonight.
PROFESSOR ALFRED MCCOY, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN: Thank you very much.
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Family of Guantanamo Detainee Doubts He Took His Own Life
By Faiza Saleh Ambah
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, June 14, 2006; Page A17
MEDINA, Saudi Arabia, June 13 -- Yassar Talal al-Zharani's life began on the Red Sea coast 21 years ago, included a stint as a Taliban fighter in Afghanistan, and ended on Saturday in a reported suicide in the U.S.-run prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The death united his friends and family here in grief and disbelief at the Pentagon's version of events.
They described a man who was optimistic, stubborn and too devout to have taken his own life. "He had memorized the Koran by heart. He was a strong believer. How could he take his own life and spend eternity in hell?" asked his sister Sohayla, alluding to Islam's punishment for suicide.
The death of Zharani and two other detainees last week has reignited resentment in the Arab world over the prison that holds more than 450 people, mainly Arab and Muslim men, almost all without charge.
The U.S. administration says most of the facility's detainees are hardened al-Qaeda radicals caught on the battlefields of Afghanistan who must remain incarcerated so as not to stage new attacks on Americans.
Zharani's father, Talal, a fit, bearded 52-year-old retired police colonel, said he believes his son was either hanged by guards or beaten to death by them. The body has not been returned; the father has asked the Saudi government to demand an independent autopsy and investigation.
Sitting with his youngest son and son-in-law in his third-floor apartment Tuesday, Zharani said that when the truth is revealed, it could lead to the closure of the detention facility. "When we expose their crime to the world, then the price for my son's life will have been the freedom of the other prisoners," he said. "I want Yassar to be the last person to die in Guantanamo."
Yassar Zharani was born in the coastal city of Yanbu, the third of nine children. He was the second of three boys, and he spent a lot of time with his mother and sisters and enjoyed amusing them. "He used to sing children's songs to make us laugh," recalled his mother, Umm-Muhammed, 43.
She wore mourning clothes Tuesday, a long-sleeved black shirt and long brown skirt, her hair in a ponytail.
She's not sure why Zharani went to Afghanistan, she said, adjusting her silver glasses. In the summer of 2001, he had just finished 11th grade, and he got permission from his father to go to the United Arab Emirates to take English-language and computer courses. The next thing she knew, he was in Afghanistan.
Zharani's father said he believes his son was working for a relief organization there and got dragged into the war after the U.S.-led invasion that October toppled the ruling Taliban.
But a young man who was recently released from Guantanamo said he had met Zharani several times in northern Afghanistan before the invasion and knew him as a Taliban foot soldier fighting against the Northern Alliance, the country's main anti-Taliban group at the time. The young man, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he was captured with Zharani in Mazar-e-Sharif in post-invasion hostilities and took part in a prison uprising there with him.
Saad al-Azmi, a Kuwaiti man who was freed from Guantanamo last year, said in an interview that he spent about a week in a cell next to Zharani's. "He used to be gone for hours," he said. "He told me they used to strip him to his underwear, bind his hands and feet together with iron shackles, and pour cold water on him. He said they wanted to know things about Afghanistan."
Azmi said he didn't get a chance to learn more because Zharani was moved. But right before Azmi's release last November, Zharani was still being interrogated, he said. "Word went around the prison blocks to pray for Yassar, among a group of others who were being pushed hard, because he was being interrogated through the night," Azmi said.
Azmi dissents from the common view here that Yassar did not kill himself. "His body was a bit frail, he was young. It wasn't just a short period of torture, it was years of torture. It's very possible he wanted to end it," he said.
Zharani was 17 when he arrived at Guantanamo, making him one of the youngest prisoners. Azmi and others who knew him there said that despite his youth he was always trying to cheer the others up, saying that it was God who was putting them through this ordeal and that He would end it soon. Because of the location of his cell, and his extensive knowledge of the Koran, he also often led them in prayers.
He spoke constantly about his mother, how much she must be missing him, and boasted often that his father treated him like a man despite his age, taking him out with him to adult gatherings and relying on him to drive his mother around in the pickup truck he'd bought him when he turned 16.
But he also had a temper. One former detainee recalls that Zharani returned his Koran to the facility's imam because he was disturbed that soldiers had searched or moved it, in his mind a desecration, while he was out during prison walks or in interrogation. When guards tried to return it, he refused to take the book back. Finally, half a dozen guards in riot gear entered his cell, shackled him and returned the Koran by force, the detainee recalled.
Zharani's letters from prison did not mention any of this. On Tuesday, his mother picked up a ream of letters scrawled in spidery Arabic writing. One letter, dated Dec. 30, 2002, contained these words: "And don't be sad if you are believers. God's deliverance is near." She read from another sheet. "Don't worry. God will unite us. I will be home soon."
Last month, with the release of 15 Saudi prisoners from Guantanamo, his family's hopes were also raised. Zharani's mother recalled that she was seated on the floor Saturday, praying in one of her daughter's rooms, when her husband came home from a trip to Mecca unexpectedly. "I told my daughter, 'Go see your father -- he's home. I hope that soon Yassar will walk in on us, just like that, unexpectedly.' "
But her husband walked into the room, knelt down beside her and hugged her. "He kept saying, 'Be patient, let your faith in God be strong, be patient, let your faith in God be strong.' "
She recounted the story calmly. "Then he told me that Yassar had been killed by the Americans in Guantanamo during a brawl over the Koran."
Her son was a young boy, she said. Why didn't the Americans just see what he had to say and release him? Why didn't they at least let her hear his voice on the phone or visit him? "Now all I want is his body back so I can hug him and say goodbye." She picked up a photo of her son in a skullcap and orange jumpsuit, kissed it and put it back down.
In the men's section of the apartment Tuesday, Zharani's father stood greeting the men dressed in the traditional Saudi robes who streamed in to offer condolences. Each kissed him on both cheeks.
"May God grant you patience," they said. "Our prayers are with you." Then they left. As soon as he sat back down, a high-ranking Interior Ministry official returned his call. The father was agitated but very respectful.
"Sir, how can we allow the Americans to conduct the autopsy when they are themselves under suspicion?" he asked. After a few moments of listening, he relaxed and smiled. "Yes, and an independent investigation into the matter by an objective third party." He hung up.
"The Americans can't be both judge and jury in this matter," he said. "We have to have justice."
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French ex-detainee condemns Guantanamo Bay
WASHINGTON, June 14, 2006 (AFP)
A French ex-Guantanamo prisoner said in an op-ed piece published Wednesday by The New York Times that he understands why three detainees in the US detention centre in Cuba recently decided to take their lives.
Describing the "suffering and torture," endless interrogations and disappointment to the point of developing "an immunity to hope," Mourad Benchellali said: "it is easy for me to see how this daily despair and uncertainty could lead to suicide."
Seized in Pakistan shortly after the September 11 attacks, as he tried to make his way back to France from an Al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan where he was "lured ... by a misguided and mistimed sense of adventure,"
Benchellali was released in July 2004.
Along with another five Frenchmen, he awaits trial in France in July on charges of counterfeiting and "associating with criminals in relation to a terrorist enterprise."
The former detainee said he is unable to forget his three-year ordeal with hundreds of other prisoners, most of whom he believes did not commit any hostile act against the United States. "The shared pain endlessly takes me back to the camp."
"I cannot describe in just a few lines the suffering and the torture; but the worst aspect of being at the camp was the despair, the feeling that whatever you say, it will never make a difference," he said.
For some of his fellow prisoners distorted by extremism and full of hatred, Bechellali said, Jihad was "life itself ... But the huge majority of the faces I remember -- the ones that haunt my nights -- are of desperation, suffering, incomprehension turned into silent madness."
Despite his belief that "a small number of the detainees at Guantanamo are guilty of criminal acts," Benchellali said what he heard "from cage to cage, what I said myself so many times in my moments of complete despondency, was not, 'Free us, we are innocent!' but 'Judge us for whatever we've done!'
"There is unlimited cruelty in a system that seems to be unable to free the innocent and unable to punish the guilty," he said.
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A tunnel without end
By Zachary Katznelson
06/12/06 "The Guardian"
The US version of the Guantánamo suicides is disgraceful. The cause of death was gross injustice on Friday night, three prisoners in Guantánamo Bay committed suicide. Two Saudis and one Yemeni hanged themselves. In a desperate attempt at spin, the US claims this was an act of war or a public relations exercise. The truth is quite different. Islam says it goes against God to kill yourself. So what would drive a man to take his own life, despite his religious beliefs? The answer shames the US and its allies, Britain prominently included.
The 460-plus men in Guantánamo Bay have been held for longer than four years. Only 10 have been charged with a crime. Not one has had a trial. The men are not allowed to visit or speak with family or friends. Many have suffered serious abuse. Most are held on the basis of triple and quadruple hearsay, evidence so unreliable that a criminal court would throw it out. Yet the US says it can imprison the men for the rest of their lives. Imagine yourself in this environment, told you will never have the chance to stand up in a court and present your side of the argument. What would you do if no one would listen, if you had been asking for justice for four years and had nothing in return? How hopeless would you become?
Of these three men, little is known. They were in Camp I, a maximum-security area where prisoners are denied even a roll of toilet paper. But we do not know the dead men's stories. While most of the men in Guantánamo have lawyers who fight for their right to a fair trial, these men did not. Until May, the US refused to even tell us who was in Guantánamo. But before it finally released the names of everyone there, the Bush administration secured passage of a law barring lawsuits by the prisoners held in Guantánamo. That means that at last we know the prisoners' identities, but can do nothing legally to help them. The men who committed suicide found themselves in just this legal black hole. They had no legal recourse, just the prospect of a life in prison, in isolation, with no family, no friends, nothing. They took their lives.
So what now? President Bush stated this week that he wants to close Guantánamo, that he wants to give the men trials. Well, let's have them - immediately. The US has had over four years to gather evidence against the men. Surely that is enough time to prove guilt. And now it is time to show the world the evidence. As Harriet Harman, the British constitutional affairs minister, said yesterday, Guantánamo must be opened up to review or shut down. Will Britain do what is necessary to make this a reality? Because this is about even more than the fate of 460 people, it is about whether the US and its allies will lead the world by democratic example, or whether they will continue to give lip service to human rights and open societies, while denigrating those cherished notions with their actions.
If the men in Guantánamo (and the other US prisons around the world, such as the one at the Bagram air force base in Afghanistan, where over 600 men languish in Guantánamo's hidden twin) did something wrong, by all means punish them. But if they did not, they must be sent home.
Mohammed El Gharani, our client at Reprieve, was only 14 when he was seized in a mosque in Pakistan. He was only 15 when he arrived in Guantánamo Bay. Already twice this year he has tried to kill himself, once by hanging, once by slitting his wrists. Let us pray there is movement by the US to finally do justice, before Mohammed, truly only a child, or anyone else in Guantánamo Bay commits suicide.
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Zionism in Action
Negotiations still key to Mideast peace: Chirac
PARIS, June 14, 2006 (AFP)
French President Jacques Chirac appeared Wednesday to reject a plan by visiting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert unilaterally to set Israel's borders in the West Bank, calling instead for talks to resume with the Palestinians.
Speaking as he headed into talks with the Israeli leader, Chirac told reporters the aim of two states living peacefully side-by-side, "implies a resumption of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority".
France and the European Union were ready to help achieve that end, he said.
Olmert, who is on his first visit to Europe since his election in March, is trying to sell a plan to set Israel's borders with or without agreement
from the Palestinians if he is unable to restart negotiations.
Though France has repeatedly said it would oppose any unilateral settlement, Olmert said Monday he would seek to convince Chirac to become a "partner" in his plan.
In a brief statement before their meeting, Olmert vowed to make "all the efforts" necessary for talks to resume with the Palestinians.
But he repeated Israel's three pre-conditions: "an end to terrorism, the respect of all agreements between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, and the recognition of Israel".
The three principles have been rejected by the government led by Hamas, the main Islamist movement in the Palestinian territories, effectively paralysing the peace process.
Tensions escalated further between Israel and the Palestinians last week following the death of eight Palestinian civilians in an explosion on a beach in the northern Gaza Strip -- which prompted Hamas to end an 18-month truce.
Designed to prevent a "stalemate" if it proves impossible to resume talks, Olmert's so-called "realignment plan" would see Israel uproot 70,000 settlers from the West Bank while cementing its hold on housing blocs where most of the quarter of a million settlers live.
US President George W. Bush has called the plan "bold" but has also told Olmert that he must first exhaust all efforts to reach an agreement with Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas.
The Israeli prime minister suggested following his talks in London Monday that his British counterpart Tony Blair had also tacitly backed his proposal, which has received a cool reception from some Arab leaders.
Blair said he favoured a negotiated settlement, but accepted that talks could only resume if Israel's conditions were met -- and that Israel would seek otherwise to "unlock" the situation.
Olmert and Chirac were also expected to discuss the resumption of hundreds of millions of dollars of Western aid to the Palestinians -- suspended as part an economic boycott over the refusal by Hamas to recognise Israel.
The suspension of aid has brought the hard-up Palestinian Authority to the brink of bankruptcy and is thought to have fuelled an unprecedented upsurge in deadly factional violence in the Palestinian territories.
Chirac has called for a solution to be found "quickly" to channel funds to the Palestinian Authority, bypassing Hamas, to pay civil servants' salaries -- but Israel is against the payment of anything other than humanitarian aid.
Following his talks with Chirac, Olmert was to meet Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy.
He was also set to inaugurate a monument to French nationals who helped Jews escape capture by the occupying Nazi forces during World War II.
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Islamists get prison terms for planning attacks in Paris
PARIS, June 14, 2006 (AFP)
A French court handed down prison terms ranging from six months to 10 years Wednesday on more than 20 Islamic radicals convicted of planning to carry out attacks on the Eiffel Tower and other targets in Paris.
A total of 27 people were charged with belonging to a so-called "Chechen" connection -- named because ring-leaders allegedly received training in the Caucasus. Two were acquitted Wednesday.
Prosecutors at the six-week trial which ended last month said that in December 2002 the group was close to attacking targets including the Eiffel Tower, the Les Halles shopping centre, police stations, and Israeli interests.
Ten year sentences were given to Merouane
Benhamed, 33, who was described in court as the group's chief, and to Menad Benchellali, 32. Said Arif, 40, who was extradited from Syria to stand trial, and Nourredine Merabet, described as the group's financier, were sentenced to nine years.
Lesser punishments including suspended jail sentences were handed down on other group-members who were found to have played only a small role in the plot. All were charged with "criminal association in relation with a terrorist enterprise."
Benhamed's lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre denounced the verdict, saying the defendants were "convicted because they are Muslims. This serves the interests of the US, Algeria and Russia. France has the job of convicting Muslims who are a problem to these powers."
During the trial several defendants accused investigators of mistreatment and of offering inducements to confess.
Prosecutors said the group operated out of a flat in the Paris suburb of Romainville, where they gathered funds from the proceeds of petty crime.
The court was told that at the end of 2002 "they were ready to act". However police then made a series of arrests, confiscating electronic devices and chemicals that can be used for bomb-making.
Among those convicted Wednesday was Chelali Benchellali, the imam of a mosque in the southeastern city of Lyon and father of Menad.
Another of his sons, Mourad Benchellali, was one of seven French detainees held at the US base at Guantanamo Bay. Released in July 2004, Mourad now faces terrorist-related charges in France along with five others.
Investigators originally uncovered the Paris plot while looking into alleged recruitment networks to send young men to fight the Russians in Chechnya. Initial reports after the first arrests suggested the plotters were planning chemical attacks against Russian targets in France.
The sentences handed down Wednesday were in many cases much less severe than those requested by the prosecution.
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Palestinian Carries Millions in Suitcase
By IBRAHIM BARZAK Associated Press Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar, who has been seeking to raise money for the financially strapped government, returned to the Gaza Strip on Wednesday with a suitcase full of cash, Palestinians officials said.
An official said Zahar was believed to be carrying up to $20 million. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media. An official statement was expected later Wednesday.
The official said Zahar had declared the money at the border, which is controlled by President Mahmoud Abbas' presidential guard and monitored by European observers. It was not immediately clear whether Zahar would be permitted to keep the money.
Last month, a Hamas official was caught as he tried to smuggle about $800,000 into Gaza. The money was seized, but later returned to the government. Normal travelers must declare all sums over $2,000 and explain their origin.
Abbas has been in a power dispute with the Hamas-led government, and his presidential guard must make the final decision about what to do with the money.
A cutoff in Western aid has left the Hamas-led Palestinian government broke and unable to pay salaries to tens of thousands of civil servants for three months. The money carried by Zahar would cover only a small portion of the government's mounting debts.
Israel and Western donors have demanded that Hamas renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist as a condition for restoring the aid. Hamas, which is sworn to Israel's destruction, has rejected the calls and instead turned to Arab and Muslim countries for help.
The source of Zahar's money wasn't immediately known. During his recent trip, Zahar traveled to Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, China, Pakistan, Iran and Egypt.
Hamas has said it has raised more than $60 million, but previously has been unable to transfer the money to the Palestinian areas because banks are afraid of running afoul of U.S. anti-terrorism laws.
The U.S., European Union and Israel consider Hamas a terrorist group.
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Israel blames Hamas mine for beach blast that killed 8
By MARK LAVIE
Associated Press
13 June 06
JERUSALEM - Defense Minister Amir Peretz said Tuesday that
Israel was not responsible for a blast that killed eight Gaza beachgoers, rebuffing Palestinian accusations that blamed an Israeli artillery round.
An Israeli inquiry concluded that the blast was caused by an explosive buried in the sand, not from Israeli shelling on the afternoon of the Palestinian family's beach picnic.
It was not clear how the explosive got there, or whether it might have been an unexploded Israeli shell from an earlier military barrage. Peretz did not address that issue in his remarks. Israel has been claiming that Hamas militants planted a device to set off against Israeli commandos.
"We have enough findings to back up the suspicion that the intention to describe this as an Israeli event is simply not correct," Peretz said at a Tel Aviv news conference on the inquiry's findings. "The accumulating evidence proves that this incident was not due to Israeli forces."
Palestinians angrily rejected the findings, saying militants were unlikely to plant bombs at a beach teeming with hundreds of people every weekend.
The bloody images of dead Palestinian civilians and wailing survivors on the beach kindled anger against Israel that has swept around the world.
The seaside carnage contributed to a sudden spike in Israeli-Palestinian violence. After the beach blast - and Israeli forces' killing of a top Gaza militant - Hamas called off a 16-month cease-fire that had significantly reduced casualties on both sides.
Human Rights Watch military expert Marc Garlasco, the first independent analyst to inspect the scene, said he examined the shrapnel on the beach, saw the civilians' injuries and concluded the blast was caused by an Israeli shell. He held open the slim possibility that it was planted there by Palestinian militants, although fragment patterns did not back that.
"Our information certainly supports, I believe, an Israeli shell did come in," he said, ruling out a land mine.
According to Israeli findings, shrapnel taken from two wounded Palestinians who were evacuated to Israeli hospitals showed that the fragments were not from the 155-millimeter shells used by Israeli artillery.
Showing aerial photographs and film, the head of the Israeli inquiry, Maj. Gen. Meir Klifi, declared: "There is no chance that a shell hit this area. Absolutely no chance."
Israel has been pounding northern Gaza with hundreds of artillery shells for weeks, trying unsuccessfully to stop Palestinian militants from setting up and launching homemade rockets at Israel.
In recent days, Israeli commando forces have entered Gaza to ambush rocket squads.
Palestinians rejected the possibility that their own explosives caused the fatal blast.
"This is a false allegation, and the Israeli occupation state is trying to escape from shouldering its responsibility by accusing Palestinians without evidence or any proof," said Ghazi Hamad, a spokesman for the Hamas-led Palestinian government.
"The eyewitnesses and the evidence that we have confirm that the massacre is the result of Israeli shelling, and the allegation about land mines planted by Palestinians is baseless," he said.
Palestinian lawmaker Saeb Erekat, who is close to President Mahmoud Abbas, a Hamas rival, called for an international inquiry. He complained that Israel was trying to blame the Palestinians and warned, "this means that this crime could re-occur."
Klifi said the explosion took place between 4:47 p.m. and 5:10 p.m., and no Israeli shells were fired then.
The blast occurred on the outskirts of the town of Beit Lahiya, not far from where Palestinian militants frequently fire rockets toward Israel. The shore is frequented by hundreds of Palestinian beachgoers on Fridays, a rest day in Gaza.
The army has accounted for five of six of the shells that it fired in the area Friday evening before the beach explosion, Klifi said. None of them exploded nearby. The one shell that is not accounted for was fired before the five others - more than 10 minutes before the blast that killed the Palestinians, he said.
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Indonesia frees cleric linked to Bali bombings
www.chinaview.cn 2006-06-14 10:49:19
BEIJING, June 14 (Xinhuanet)-- The Indonesian authorities have released radical cleric Abu Bakar Bashir from prison on Wednesday more than two years after he was imprisoned for conspiracy in the 2002 nightclub bombings in Bali.
The move to set free the 68-year-old co-founder of the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terrorist group has drawn condemnation from countries such as Australia -- 88 of whose citizens were among the 202 people killed in the Bali attack and the US, which has pressed Jakarta for a harder line on terrorism.
"The possibility that a person responsible for such a terrible crime could go free after serving a light sentence...is cause for concern," said a spokesman for the U.S. embassy in Jakarta.
Terrorism experts and Indonesian security officials warn against overstating his importance. While he may once have been the active leader of JI, there have been signs in recent years, they say, that hardliners within the organization no longer either trust or revere him.
Indonesian officials also say further western pressure could hurt rather than help the fight against terrorism, especially as the war in Iraq plods on. The "exaggerated attention" given to Bashir internationally only elevated his status with the Indonesian public, said one senior security official Tuesday.
Bashir has never been accused of planning or executing terrorist attacks in Indonesia. But he has in recent years been a high-profile weather vane for the direction of the fight against terrorism in the world's largest Islamic nation.
Before the 2002 Bali attack -- at a time when the U.S. and others accused Jakarta of ignoring the JI threat -- Bashir was feted by prominent Indonesian political leaders.
Bashir was arrested just weeks after the bombings, amid an escalating crackdown on JI.
During Bashir's time in prison JI members have staged three other high-profile attacks -- on Jakarta's JW Marriott Hotel in 2003, on the Australian embassy in 2004 and on restaurants in Bali last October. Indonesia has established a strong record for arresting and prosecuting terrorists, with more than 100 JI members now behind bars.
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Amerika
ACLU Files Lawsuit Over Surveillance
Wednesday June 14, 2006 4:31 PM
By LOLITA C. BALDOR
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in federal court Wednesday demanding more information about a Defense Department database that collected information on anti-war groups and U.S. citizens.
The lawsuit asks that the Defense Department turn over records it collected in its TALON database, a system developed by the Air Force in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as a way to collect information about possible terrorist threats.
Anti-war groups and other organizations, including a Quaker group - the American Friends Service Committee - protested after it became public that the military had monitored anti-war activities, organizations, and individuals who attended peace rallies.
"The U.S. military should not be in the business of maintaining secret databases about lawful First Amendment activities,'' said ACLU attorney Ben Wizner. "It is an abuse of power and an abuse of trust for the military to play any role in monitoring critics of administration policies.''
ACLU affiliates in Florida, Georgia, Rhode Island, Maine, Pennsylvania and Washington, along with more than two dozen activist groups, joined the lawsuit, which charges that the Pentagon is violating federal freedom of information laws by refusing to provide information on the database.
Pentagon officials did an internal review of TALON - or the Threat and Local Observation Notice - and concluded that it was an important tool in counterterrorism investigations. The review also found that as many 260 reports were improperly collected or kept in the system.
At the time, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said there were about 13,000 entries in the database, and that less than 2 percent either were wrongly added or were not purged later when they were determined not to be real threats.
The ACLU lawsuit argues that the organizations and individuals monitored by the Pentagon have a right to know what information the military has collected about them.
"Spying on citizens for merely executing their constitutional rights of free speech and peaceful assembly is chilling and marks a troubling trend for the United States,'' said Joyce Miller, assistant general secretary for justice and human rights of the American Friends Service Committee. "These actions violate the rule of law and strike a severe blow against our Constitution.''
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Image of U.S. falls even lower
By Brian Knowlton
International Herald Tribune
June 13, 2006
WASHINGTON As the war in Iraq continues for a fourth year, the global image of America has slipped further, even among publics in countries closely allied with the United States, a new global opinion poll has found.
Favorable views of the United States dropped sharply over the past year in Spain, where only 23 percent now say they have a positive opinion, down from 41 percent in 2005, according to the survey, which was carried out in 15 nations this spring by the Pew Research Center. In Britain, Washington's closest ally in the Iraq war, positive views of America have remained in the mid-50s in the past two years, still down sharply from 75 percent in 2002.
Other countries where positive views dropped significantly include India (56 percent, down from 71 percent since 2005); Russia (43 percent, down from 52 percent); and Indonesia (30 percent, down from 38 percent).
In Turkey, a NATO ally of the United States, only 12 percent said they held a favorable opinion, down from 23 percent last year.
Declines were less steep in France, Germany and Jordan, while people in China and Pakistan had a slightly more favorable image of the United States this year than last.
The ebbing of positive views of the United States coincides with a spike in feeling that the war in Iraq has made the world a more dangerous place. This perception was shared by majorities in 10 of the countries surveyed, including Britain, where 60 percent said the world had become more dangerous since Saddam Hussein's removal from power in 2003.
Over the past year, support for the U.S.-led fight against terrorism also declined again, Pew found.
The latest declines came after a year in which anti-American sentiment had slightly receded, aided by good feeling over U.S. aid for tsunami victims and political progress in Iraq.
Many respondents distinguished between their largely negative feelings about President George W. Bush and their feelings about ordinary Americans. Majorities in 7 countries polled had favorable views of Americans, led by Japan, at 82 percent, and Britain, at 69.
But only in India and Nigeria did majorities express confidence in Bush. In Spain, just 1 in 14 respondents registered confidence in him, as did only 1 in 33 in Turkey, an important NATO ally.
After a tumultuous year in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the fight against terrorism is now backed by more than 50 percent only in Russia and India, while support has virtually collapsed in Japan, the poll found. In Spain, deeply affected by the March 2004 bombings in Madrid, a scant 2 in 10 people back the U.S.-led fight.
Pessimism about the future of Iraq was widespread. The polling, by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, was conducted in April and May this year - before the completion last week of the Iraqi government, or the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
All groups except Americans and Germans saw the U.S. presence in Iraq as posing a greater threat to world peace than the threat posed by Iran, which is pursuing a uranium enrichment program that the United States and other Western countries view as a prelude to developing its own nuclear weapons. Russians held that view by a 2-to-1 margin, and even the British did so by a narrow margin.
"Obviously, when you get many more people saying that the U.S. presence in Iraq is a threat to world peace as say that about Iran, it's a measure of how much Iraq is sapping good will to the United States," said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center.
But as leading powers seek ways to contain the Iranian nuclear program, the poll found strong majorities in Western Europe, Japan, and India sharing underlying U.S. concerns. The percentage of people in Britain, France, and Spain who view Tehran as a threat has roughly tripled in three years.
Pew surveyed 16,710 people in Britain, China, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Jordan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Spain, Turkey, and the United States. The polling was conducted from March 31 to May 14.
The success in Palestinian elections of Hamas, which the United States and the European Union consider a terrorist group, raised concerns. For the first time, Germans said that they sympathized with Israel more than with the Palestinians. Support for Israel rose in France, as well. But in Muslim countries, large majorities supported Hamas's victory.
The poll found people in most of the 15 countries unhappy with national conditions. But in China, amid continued vigorous economic growth, a striking 8 in 10 people said that they were satisfied with the way things were going. Slim majorities in Egypt, Jordan and Spain also expressed satisfaction.
After a year of immigrant riots and job protests in France, people in every country but one - the United States - said that they held dimmer views of the French. The number of Americans favorably impressed by France rose to 52 percent, up from 29 percent in 2003, when the French angered Americans by refusing to back the Bush administration's decision to go to war in Iraq.
There was considerable agreement on Iran. More than 9 in 10 Americans, Germans, Japanese and French opposed Iran acquiring nuclear arms.
By sizable margins, they deemed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad untrustworthy, and said that if Tehran had nuclear weapons it would be likely to share them with terrorists and to attack Israel. Only 1 in 25 Spanish respondents expressed a lot or some confidence in the Iranian leader.
The picture was different in Muslim countries: Pakistanis, who take great pride in their own nuclear program, narrowly favored Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, and more than 40 percent in Egypt and Jordan agreed. Muslim publics believed that Iran would use a nuclear weapon for defensive purposes.
In other areas, too, regional differences emerged. The Japanese were more than twice as likely to see North Korea as a threat as they were Iran. But in China, which shares a border and economic ties with North Korea, only 1 in 10 saw Pyongyang as a threat.
Despite the toll taken by the Iraq war, Americans appeared to be paying less attention than others around the world to controversies the war has engendered.
While 3 in 4 Americans said they had heard reports of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, substantially more West Europeans and Japanese - 9 in 10 - had heard about them.
Awareness of global warming was uniformly high in the industrialized countries, but concern about its effects was sharpest in Japan and India, with two-thirds of those polled in both countries expressing great concern. Awareness was lowest in the countries that are the greatest emitters of the greenhouse gases linked to warming - China and the United States - and only 2 in 10 people in those countries said they were very concerned about the problem.
Awareness of bird flu was nearly universal. The greatest alarm over the spread of the disease was in Asia, where the avian epidemic began, and in Africa. Only one American in 10 was very worried, and European levels were similarly low.
Americans' views of several other countries have improved, perhaps influenced by efforts at reconciliation between the United States and some of its Iraq war critics, and by increased cooperation on issues including Iran and North Korea.
"It runs counter to this notion that we've become xenophobic," Kohut said.
While ancient wartime grievances still reverberate between China and Japan, darkening each side's views of the other, two other historical foes, France and Germany, have highly favorable feelings toward each other.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, enjoys very high approval ratings not just at home - where 8 in 10 Germans support her - but in France, where nearly as many French do so.
And in a phenomenon troubling to Bush and his Republican supporters, war worries and high gasoline prices appear to be weighing on Americans' satisfaction ratings, even as many economic indicators have risen. While half of Americans expressed satisfaction with conditions at home in 2003, only 29 percent did so this year.
The Pew survey's margin of error was 2 to 4 percent in every country but Britain and Germany, where it was 6 percent. Kohut said the 6 percent margin, while high, was still valid in so broad a comparative survey.
WASHINGTON As the war in Iraq continues for a fourth year, the global image of America has slipped further, even among publics in countries closely allied with the United States, a new global opinion poll has found.
Favorable views of the United States dropped sharply over the past year in Spain, where only 23 percent now say they have a positive opinion, down from 41 percent in 2005, according to the survey, which was carried out in 15 nations this spring by the Pew Research Center. In Britain, Washington's closest ally in the Iraq war, positive views of America have remained in the mid-50s in the past two years, still down sharply from 75 percent in 2002.
Other countries where positive views dropped significantly include India (56 percent, down from 71 percent since 2005); Russia (43 percent, down from 52 percent); and Indonesia (30 percent, down from 38 percent).
In Turkey, a NATO ally of the United States, only 12 percent said they held a favorable opinion, down from 23 percent last year.
Declines were less steep in France, Germany and Jordan, while people in China and Pakistan had a slightly more favorable image of the United States this year than last.
The ebbing of positive views of the United States coincides with a spike in feeling that the war in Iraq has made the world a more dangerous place. This perception was shared by majorities in 10 of the countries surveyed, including Britain, where 60 percent said the world had become more dangerous since Saddam Hussein's removal from power in 2003.
Over the past year, support for the U.S.-led fight against terrorism also declined again, Pew found.
The latest declines came after a year in which anti-American sentiment had slightly receded, aided by good feeling over U.S. aid for tsunami victims and political progress in Iraq.
Many respondents distinguished between their largely negative feelings about President George W. Bush and their feelings about ordinary Americans. Majorities in 7 countries polled had favorable views of Americans, led by Japan, at 82 percent, and Britain, at 69.
But only in India and Nigeria did majorities express confidence in Bush. In Spain, just 1 in 14 respondents registered confidence in him, as did only 1 in 33 in Turkey, an important NATO ally.
After a tumultuous year in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the fight against terrorism is now backed by more than 50 percent only in Russia and India, while support has virtually collapsed in Japan, the poll found. In Spain, deeply affected by the March 2004 bombings in Madrid, a scant 2 in 10 people back the U.S.-led fight.
Pessimism about the future of Iraq was widespread. The polling, by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, was conducted in April and May this year - before the completion last week of the Iraqi government, or the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
All groups except Americans and Germans saw the U.S. presence in Iraq as posing a greater threat to world peace than the threat posed by Iran, which is pursuing a uranium enrichment program that the United States and other Western countries view as a prelude to developing its own nuclear weapons. Russians held that view by a 2-to-1 margin, and even the British did so by a narrow margin.
"Obviously, when you get many more people saying that the U.S. presence in Iraq is a threat to world peace as say that about Iran, it's a measure of how much Iraq is sapping good will to the United States," said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center.
But as leading powers seek ways to contain the Iranian nuclear program, the poll found strong majorities in Western Europe, Japan, and India sharing underlying U.S. concerns. The percentage of people in Britain, France, and Spain who view Tehran as a threat has roughly tripled in three years.
Pew surveyed 16,710 people in Britain, China, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Jordan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Spain, Turkey, and the United States. The polling was conducted from March 31 to May 14.
The success in Palestinian elections of Hamas, which the United States and the European Union consider a terrorist group, raised concerns. For the first time, Germans said that they sympathized with Israel more than with the Palestinians. Support for Israel rose in France, as well. But in Muslim countries, large majorities supported Hamas's victory.
The poll found people in most of the 15 countries unhappy with national conditions. But in China, amid continued vigorous economic growth, a striking 8 in 10 people said that they were satisfied with the way things were going. Slim majorities in Egypt, Jordan and Spain also expressed satisfaction.
After a year of immigrant riots and job protests in France, people in every country but one - the United States - said that they held dimmer views of the French. The number of Americans favorably impressed by France rose to 52 percent, up from 29 percent in 2003, when the French angered Americans by refusing to back the Bush administration's decision to go to war in Iraq.
There was considerable agreement on Iran. More than 9 in 10 Americans, Germans, Japanese and French opposed Iran acquiring nuclear arms.
By sizable margins, they deemed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad untrustworthy, and said that if Tehran had nuclear weapons it would be likely to share them with terrorists and to attack Israel. Only 1 in 25 Spanish respondents expressed a lot or some confidence in the Iranian leader.
The picture was different in Muslim countries: Pakistanis, who take great pride in their own nuclear program, narrowly favored Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, and more than 40 percent in Egypt and Jordan agreed. Muslim publics believed that Iran would use a nuclear weapon for defensive purposes.
In other areas, too, regional differences emerged. The Japanese were more than twice as likely to see North Korea as a threat as they were Iran. But in China, which shares a border and economic ties with North Korea, only 1 in 10 saw Pyongyang as a threat.
Despite the toll taken by the Iraq war, Americans appeared to be paying less attention than others around the world to controversies the war has engendered.
While 3 in 4 Americans said they had heard reports of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, substantially more West Europeans and Japanese - 9 in 10 - had heard about them.
Awareness of global warming was uniformly high in the industrialized countries, but concern about its effects was sharpest in Japan and India, with two-thirds of those polled in both countries expressing great concern. Awareness was lowest in the countries that are the greatest emitters of the greenhouse gases linked to warming - China and the United States - and only 2 in 10 people in those countries said they were very concerned about the problem.
Awareness of bird flu was nearly universal. The greatest alarm over the spread of the disease was in Asia, where the avian epidemic began, and in Africa. Only one American in 10 was very worried, and European levels were similarly low.
Americans' views of several other countries have improved, perhaps influenced by efforts at reconciliation between the United States and some of its Iraq war critics, and by increased cooperation on issues including Iran and North Korea.
"It runs counter to this notion that we've become xenophobic," Kohut said.
While ancient wartime grievances still reverberate between China and Japan, darkening each side's views of the other, two other historical foes, France and Germany, have highly favorable feelings toward each other.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, enjoys very high approval ratings not just at home - where 8 in 10 Germans support her - but in France, where nearly as many French do so.
And in a phenomenon troubling to Bush and his Republican supporters, war worries and high gasoline prices appear to be weighing on Americans' satisfaction ratings, even as many economic indicators have risen. While half of Americans expressed satisfaction with conditions at home in 2003, only 29 percent did so this year.
The Pew survey's margin of error was 2 to 4 percent in every country but Britain and Germany, where it was 6 percent. Kohut said the 6 percent margin, while high, was still valid in so broad a comparative survey.
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Young People of America...... Rise Up and Rebel!
by Doug Soderstrom
Thomas Paine's Corner
13 June 06
Just over 50 years ago it was No Gun Ri. Then My Lai. And now Haditha.... and, as (headlines declare), even more mass murders, most recently in the Iraqi villages of Ishaqi, Hamdaniya, Latifiyah, and Yusifiyah; young men fresh out of high school, frustrated by life, with nothing better to do than to sign up as mercenaries ready and willing to kill for their country, yet, as always, afraid to die and angry as hell as a result of buddies (comrades-in-arms) having been killed, everyone of them having been thrown into a world of cultural confusion and death wanting nothing more than an opportunity to return home, body and mind unimpaired.
You see, for each of these young men and women, there will be two wars; the first a physical battle to stay alive, the second a psycho-spiritual effort, a struggle to live with what they "had to do" in order to stay alive. In war there are no winners..... only those who lose least!
Isn't it ironic that just this week the commanders in charge of forces in Iraq, after having suffered the painful blowback, the natural consequences, of having so punctiliously trained our children to kill, having trained them to reflexively disregard the rather inconvenient intrusion of an always present voice reminding one of the value of human life, have found it necessary to reverse the harm they have done, that they tighten the slack in their leash on the troops, that it might be better if soldiers did begin to think, did in fact begin to use their minds, before choosing to take the life of another human being. The new training program, technically referred to as "Core Warrior Values," an effort to enable soldiers to discriminate between who they should as opposed to who they should not be willing to kill; that is...... that it is proper for them to be chomping at the bits to kill the "bad guys," those armed with guns eager to kill them, but better for them to hold back a bit when it comes to the "good guys," women, children, the blind, and old men (especially those found to be sitting in wheel chairs). Something like training an American Pit Bull to viciously rip apart, that is, to devour, its prey, and then in midstream, amidst the chaos of an enraged battle, ensuring that the avenger will gently back off choosing to show mercy for those disinclined to fight back.
So many of our children, the vast majority of them Black, Hispanic, and poor, having been cajoled into joining the ranks of the military, all in order to support a country out to "right a world of wrongs." However, what these young folks are never told is that their primary job will be that of killing people, most often that of the enemy, but sometimes even those of their own buddies (during the first Gulf War nearly one out of four soldiers were shot and killed as a result of "friendly fire"). As part of their training (read: brainwashing) these young men and women will be taught: to stuff their conscience (to forget everything taught to them by their parents, elementary school teachers, preachers, priests, and/or rabbis); how to fire an automatic weapon with deadly accuracy; to loathe the adversary since such animosity will make it much easier to kill the enemy; and to trust the government, to have faith that once the soldier returns home all will be well, that all of his/her memories, the recollections of a buddy's head having been blown off, the old lady whose guts were splattered all over the wall, the insurgent who tried to smile as he lay dying on the street, and the little boy whose body he mistakenly blew apart while running to his mother arms, that the unending nightmares will simply vanish into thin air, for no reason other than the soldier's assurance that he did the right thing, that he was doing his duty, that he had done what he had been told to do, that he was simply following orders. However, what the soldier is never told is that as a result of having gone to war there is a reasonable likelihood that he will struggle until the day he dies with nightmares depicting the horrors of war, the unrelenting grief, bitterness and resentment, despair, depression, and the anger that will have taken possession of his life; a marriage in which his wife will never understand what he has gone through; attempts to keep a job amidst the chaos of a life still at battle within; and, if all goes awry, that of exile, soldiers having been banished for having found themselves unable to adapt to "the niceties" of a more civilized world, those damned to a world of losers, a sort of depository, a melting pot of homelessness for those who have given up on life.
Our children need to be told the truth. Our sons and daughters need to realize that choosing to be a soldier means a decision to place themselves among "the damned," since no matter what they end up doing while on the field of battle, they will eventually be damned...... damned if they do and damned if they do not. Realizing that compliance with a superior's order to shoot and kill the enemy may well lead to the damnation (the self-extirpation) of one's soul. On the other hand, noncompliance will lead to that of being court-martialed. However, regardless of the chaotic rigors of battle, regardless how terribly difficult it might be to figure out what one ought (or ought not) do, the lowest man on the totem pole, the grunt, rather than his superiors at the top, will be the one held responsible, the individual most likely to spend time in prison, and in some cases, the one most likely to be put to death for having killed an innocent victim. Of course, along with the fact that most recruits will never receive any educational benefits, that their training in the military is for the most part irrelevant to jobs in the civilian sector, that their military recruiter was always a salesman and never a friend, that he was nothing more than "an advanced grunt" trying desperately, and far too often dishonestly, to meet a quota set for him by a military needing more bodies to be placed on the battlefield, the military recruit needs to understand that he is "an expendable," that his life has little or no value whatsoever for those at the top, that he is nothing more than mere cannon fodder, a redundant grunt filling a slot on the "front lines" of battle enriching the military-industrial complex, a conglomeration of the transnationally rich, felons whose prosperity depends upon the promise of more wars to come!
Just yesterday I discovered that a new bill, HR 4752, The Universal National Service Act of 2006 (a fancy name for a bill that would bring back "the draft"), has been introduced to The House of Representatives. Because the United States government (meaning the Bush-Cheney administration) is on the verge of militarily invading Iran, a conflict that might well lead to all out war in the Middle East, the United States Congress is not taking any chances. Such a bill "on the table," and ready to be passed (enacted) when necessary, will authorize the United States government to once again initiate a military draft for each and every man and woman aged 18 to 42. Although most of the people I have discussed this matter with have told me that there is no way our government would reinstitute the draft since such would no doubt represent political suicide. And they are right. However, there is one thing that trumps the need to avoid political self-immolation, and that is the need to have an adequate supply of soldiers on the ground to fight the next war, the "Battle of Iran," a conflagration likely to draw in the remainder of countries in the Middle East, partisans who may well begin to realize that we, as a nation, had no business meddling in the affairs of the Middle East, no right to have sent our soldiers a world away in order to occupy that of another country.
Consequently, since the war in Iraq is no doubt illegal, it is destroying the social fabric of our people, the economic infrastructure of our nation, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the spreading of peace and democracy around the world, the fact that the president lied in regards to why we went to war, the conflict in Iraq has created a world of greater danger, our warring posture has given the world even more reasons to hate us, I am proposing that it is time for young folks to pull their heads out of the sand, that they come in from the dark, that they begin to pay attention, that they realize that their brothers and sisters have been used (more likely even, abused) by the government, that, before it is too late, they need to tell the military establishment that they will not go to war! Our youth need to understand the tremendous power they have, that war is simply not possible if they refuse to fight, if they make it clear that they will not take up arms. Because our country has become the world's leading producer as well as supplier of military weapons and technology, the world's primary advocate of war, a warmongering nation that requires the destruction of all who threaten its right to dominate the world, our children need not presume that they have a moral responsibility to support the military establishment. I realize that our time has not yet come, that the tipping point, that of the military draft, has yet to become a reality. But when forced conscription into the military becomes inevasible, I expect young people, at least those able to comprehend the significance of their place in history, to take a stand against the tyranny of war...... forces of evil cryptically embedded within the polity of a nation having gone wrong. I am calling upon the youth of this country to say no to war, to tell their leaders that they will not obey the government's request that they take up arms, that they will not go to war for the purpose of killing the enemy.
So many of our young folks have been brought up to believe that being a good person has something to do with that of having a good reputation, being liked by everyone, being held in high esteem by others, even that of being a patriotic citizen, but such has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with that of being a truly decent person. I beg the young people of this nation to consider the ominous proposition that, as it was in the days of Nuremberg when the Nazis were held responsible for crimes against humanity, when the leaders of the German nation dressed their children "in brown shirts" reminding that they had a moral obligation (a national duty) to fight for the Fatherland, it will be the same for the leaders of our nation, as well as for those who blindly allow themselves to be coerced into fighting for our country, a nation having come under the nefarious control of malefactors convinced that our nation has been given the right, the God-ordained responsibility, to oversee the planet, to, in fact, rule the world.
So someday when you reach the end of your days, when you become rather old, and are no doubt ready to die, realize that no one (at least no one of any significance) will ever choose to ask if you were a good citizen, if you were a patriot, if you were loyal to your country. You will never be asked if you wore a uniform with distinction. The only thing for which you will be held accountable, by "those who count," is that of having chosen to become a decent human being, that of having chosen to live your life according to the laws of humanity (the principles of justice, peace, and love), the Law of God, which demands but one, and only one, thing........ that we love one another.
Doug Soderstrom, Ph.D. Psychologist
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Florida House candidate to face litany of criminal charges after alleging vote fraud
RawStory
Miriam Raftery
June 12, 2006
In an exclusive interview with Florida House of Representatives candidate Charlie Grapski - arrested after he filed a lawsuit alleging voting fraud against Alachua County City Manager Clovis Watson, RAW STORY learns of corruption allegations that can only be described as not seen since the days of Boss Tweed.
...What Grapski tells is a tale that one cannot imagine occurring in a law abiding country, one of false arrest, intimidation, and a crony-business system all centered around money interests.
Charlie Grapski, a Democrat running for the Florida House of Representatives, was arrested in April after filing a lawsuit alleging that City officials abused power and influenced the outcome of an election by manipulating the absentee voting process. The story, however, does not start or end with election fraud allegations. What Grapski tells is a tale that one cannot imagine occurring in a law abiding country, one of false arrest, intimidation, and a crony-business system all centered around money interests.
Clovis Watson is not only the City Manager of Alachua county and, as such, the defendant in Grapski's lawsuit, he is also the Police Commissioner of Alchua, Florida, a town dominated by the Republican Party and pro-development Democrats. Watson, one website alleges, is funded by the Alachua County Republican Party, and declined to accept the Democrat of the Year Award because he is planning a switch to the Republican Party. The site also takes aim at Grapski.
According to Grapski, "Clovis Watson filed a sworn complaint as a police officer himself, and as City Manager he was the aggrieved party. As Police Commissioner, he was his own boss and accepted the sworn complaint from himself--and then instructed his subordinates on the police force to have me arrested."
Now, RAW STORY has learned, the Sheriff's office has announced that additional charges, including felony wiretapping, will be filed against Grapski and Michael Canney, a Green Party member who witnessed and videotaped Grapski's efforts to obtain public records.
In this exclusive interview with RAW STORY on June 11, 2006, Grapski reveals startling details of his situation and updates regarding an election outcome allegedly changed by absentee ballot manipulation. He also levels serious allegations of abuse of power by public officials, including officials linked to President George W. Bush's brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush.
Raw Story's Miriam Raftery: What was your background before you decided to run for public office?
Charlie Grapiski: I'm a political scientist and political theorist. I taught those topics at the University of Florida. I am finishing two doctorates, one in politics and one in law; that's a PhD in law, not a JD. I've been involved in local politics for a long time as an activist. I served on a campaign charter review board for the City of Gainsville.
RS: How did you become involved in election reform?
CG: I've been involved in election reform a long time and have been pushing for election reform through charter review board this year.
RS: Let's go back to April and what happened that that started all the troubles leading up to your arrest.
CG: On April 11th there was an election in the City of Alachua. That's part of my district that I'm running for. I went up to the polling location to meet people and get petitions signed and campaign for my candidacy. I knew of some problems in Alachua, but I didn't know how bad they were; people came to me with all sorts of concerns. I said "I'll stay around to watch the vote count on election night." So I went there and saw a number of violations of the law. This was at City Hall. The City officials conducted the elections themselves, which is problematic.
RS: What happened next?
CG: I began investigating this matter and speaking to other people who conveyed stories of their experiences in the election. What they were alleging is that city officials abused their authority and power and actually manipulated the election outcome through use of the absentee ballot process.
RS: How did they manipulate the absentee ballot process, in your opinion?
CG: More will come out this week, but in effect they improperly influenced citizens who cast absentee ballots and instructed them on how to cast them. This included Clovis Watson, the City Manager who is also the Police commissioner. He served on the canvassing board, which is supposed to be neutral, and he is the one who personally arrested me. Another one is Alan Henderson, the City Deputy Clerk, he acted as supervisor of elections for that election.
RS: Were they on the ballot themselves?
CG: No. They influenced the election for a guy named James Lewis. He won the election by 18 absentee ballots but lost it prior to the absentee ballots being counted. This was his election to his 40th consecutive commission. He was on the City Commission (like a City Council). Basically they went up and actively influenced voters on how to vote.
RS: Could that be legal campaigning?
CG: Not if you're a city official and an election official...I don't want to go into too much detail, but in the conduct of giving people ballots they were also engaged in telling them how to cast the ballots. We believe that this is not the first time that they have done this.
RS: Did they try to influence the general public, or are you referring to City employees?
CG: We know that one of the ways they did this was to the general public...people that work for the city are either part of the problem or they are afraid to stand up against it. The people in the City of Alachua are afraid of retaliation by the public officials and the police officials if they stand up to the government. People are literally afraid.
RS: What did you do that started the trouble you're facing?
CG: The first thing I did was I began investigating on my own and organizing and explaining to people what the law was, after the April 11 election. We began talking to others. I spoke to a law professor and former Mayor of Gainsville. His name is Joe Little. He said these are very serious problems and we need to do something about them. We met and discussed it, then I brought citizens of Alachua down to his office and we discussed what we knew. At that point we began interviewing people who were unduly influenced in the election. The things we found out were beyond your imagination. We have an amended complaint being filed this week (week of June 19, 2006).
RS: When was the earlier complaint filed?
CG: We filed a complaint April 23 against the city officials including the mayor and Clovis Watson.
RS: What happened after that?
CG: Later that week, what I began to do was review all of the records of the election to strengthen the case as we wrote up the filing and to document what we knew, to make sure we were correct in our allegations. On Thursday after filing the lawsuit I filed a formal public records request under Florida law with Alan Henderson (the City Deputy Clerk who is also Supervisor of Elections). He is required under law to have those documents ready every day by noon. I said I'd come in on Friday of that week to review the documents. I also knew that with a similar problem ten years ago, the City destroyed the records and told citizens they no longer existed.
RS: So you had reason to be suspicious?
CG: The City's normal approach even to City Commissioners they didn't like was to deny them the public records. So I went in on that Friday with a witness, Eileen McCoy, who was the sole plaintiff at the time, a resident of Alachua. A lot of people were afraid to put their name on the complaint, but she did. I brought my video recorder, because if the city was going to tell me lies or deny me records I wanted a record of that. So I walked in and I told Alan Henderson that I was recording him even though I didn't have to tell him, and he even talked to the recorder to make sure he was being heard clearly.
RS: Did he give you any records?
CG: He basically denied me the records. I said put it in writing and give me the reason you're denying access.' And he called the police!
RS: What was your reaction and what happened next? Were you surprised that the police were called?
CG: Whenever anybody comes to City Hall in Alachua and speaks up, they call the police force. Clovis Watson holds more than one office (City Manager/Police Commissioner/Clerk Canvassing Board Member). It's unlawful in state of FL to hold 2 offices....Then Clovis came in and began speaking; a few minutes into it said I notice you're recording me. He said "If I don't give consent, that's a felony." I said, "No, you can clearly see that I'm recording, two is that you're continuing to talk, and three is you're a public official engaged in public business." He actually wrote in a memorandum to the City Commission that he had no problem being recorded.
RS: So they arrested you?
CG: He didn't arrest me that day. He then said I could review the records Monday at 10:30. Over the weekend he e-mailed me asking for a copy of the tape. I said I'd consider it...He asked to be notified in advance if I planned to record him. I said "Be on notice that I will record all my transactions with you." I came in on Monday, began reviewing the records and in the middle of doing that he came out with a police chief and two armed officers and arrested me for what is a felony wiretap statute.
RS: Is that a state, local or federal statute?
CG: It's a state law intended to make wiretapping illegal. Clovis Watson filed a sworn complaint as a police officer himself, and as City Manager he was the aggrieved party, as police commissioner he was his own boss and accepted the sworn complaint from himself and then instructed his subordinates on the police force to have me arrested! All along, he is the defendant in the elections lawsuit we filed!
RS: What did the Mayor have to say about all of this?
CG: The Mayor (Jean Calderwood) had been appointed in the past by Jeb Bush. Her husband was the treasurer of the James Lewis campaign. She's also a defendant in the case. She's come out publicly in the newspapers over the weekend saying that she was in constant communication with Clovis Watson to arrange my being arrested...She said Clovis Watson did not go out on a limb alone, he was in constant communication with her...She said that in a letter to the editor of the newspaper editor.
RS: Can you send me a copy of that editorial?
CG: Yes, I will scan in that and some other documents.
RS: When was the arrest and what's the status of your case now?
CG: I was arrested May 1st in City Hall. There are photos online www.freealachua.org. A judge ordered my release by 5:00 that day. Someone in sheriff's office decided to hold me over and we had to wake up another judge at midnight to have the original judge's order [upheld].
RS: Did you have to post bail?
CG: I was released on my own recognizance.
RS: What's happened since then?
CG: It only got worse from there. I tried to get the records I'd been seeking. The city put obstacles in our way and refused to turn over the documents. Michael Canney, a member of the Green Party, came as a witness and saw me arrested. He then began filing public records requests himself to get access to records they've denied me Slowly but surely we began getting some documents....One that we've been asking for and still haven't given us is a log of requests for all the absentee ballots. They think we are requesting the log to find out who cast ballots so we could interview them. We already know who cast ballots and are in the process of interviewing them. We have another reason....But the City officials, Clovis Watson sent out a memorandum accusing us of intimidating voters and threatened to arrest us for that!
RS: On what grounds?
CG: When Michael received a list of absentee ballot voters, not the one we requested but another one, Clovis Watson sent a certified letter warning him about how he uses that list. They then put an ad in the newspaper for the last two weeks telling people who voted absentee that if we contact them, they should contact the city so they can take legal action!
RS: How many people voted absentee ?
CG: There were about 120 requests for absentee ballots, of which 107 were counted. Without all the records we can't say for certain anything.
RS: Were there people who say they turned in an absentee ballot request but their ballots weren't counted? In other words, do you have reason to believe there was any destruction of ballots?
CG: There was destruction of ballots, but in a different context. Now on May 15th I went into the City Commission; it decided to try to pass the conclusions of election in a consent agenda item, which is illegal. I went to that meeting and attempted to have them follow rules and law. They threatened to have me arrested that night. After that meeting, the Mayor sent a memo to Clovis Watson asking him to have me arrested.
RS: On what grounds?
CG: Saying I violated conditions of my release from jail by attending a meeting, they called it disruption. Of course my "disruption" was to basically make points of order, formal motions under the rules. That they called disruptive.
RS: Were you arrested again?
CG: No, but they were threatening to; it came very close. Last week the city commission met again. They thought I would be there but I wasn't there for other reasons. But the City had arranged to have a local TV station there and they were going to arrest me that night on TV. Clovis Watson, when he arrested me the first time on May 1st , sent out press releases to the media so it was a very staged event.
RS: How is the media responding? Is there any outrage?
CG: The Gainsville Sun, which is the biggest paper in town, their coverage hasn't been the best but they did run an editorial and a great editorial cartoon and they are very concerned about it. Now Hugh Calderwood, the mayor's husband and Stafford Jones the chairman of the Republican Party for Alachua County and the Republican Party of Alachua County has put up a website designed to attack me and draw a line in the sand for Alachua County, which they designate as a model of how a city should be run. See links on the www.freealachua.org site. The High Springs Herald has done the best job so far of reporting this. They have been reporting it weekly. Another, the Observer is not online but we'll be putting it up online today.
RS: Has there been any national coverage?
CG: The first national was in LA CityBeat on Thursday, an article by Andrew Gumbel, who wrote the book Steal This Vote.
RS: What's happening now?
CG: This week the Sheriff's office and the Sheriff, a guy named Steve Oelrich, a Republican running for the State Senate right now, on Friday I was contacted by the Gainsville sun and informed (because they alerted the newspaper and not me) that the Sheriff's office is filing two further complaints against me for unlawful taping. They are accusing me of felony violations of the law and now filing two charges against Michael Canney for videotaping. The irony of this of course, is that when I contacted the television news with videotape of one of the incidents that they (the officials) claim Michael violated the law by videotaping, Michael videotaped me audio taping Clovis Watson. But the television station was there too, videotaping. They showed this on the news, yet Michael and I are being charged with videotaping while the television station isn't--and they were there doing the exact same thing at the exact same time. That's how absurd this whole thing is.
RS: When will these charges be heard?
CG: The State Attorney's office has not formally charged us, but they've refused to drop the charges, so they are playing this game of harassment. They know the minute they drop the charges we will go on the offense and bring false arrest and civil rights charges. To make matters worse, the former state attorney who many in state attorney office work for is Rod Smith, a Democrat running for Governor. Rod Smith is from Alachua and he wrote Clovis Watson's dual office-holding contact.
RS: Is Clovis Watson a Republican?
CG: Clovis Watson is a Democrat who the Republican Party says on their website is coming over to the Republican Party. But Rod Smith is a player. There is another dimension to what's happening in Alachua County. The County of Alachua is one of the two Democratic voting areas in Florida; the rest of the state has gone Republican. The Republican Party has taken over the City of Alachua and basically opened it up for drive-through development. There are all kinds of land deals where these city officials and cronies are benefiting by development of land, including Rod Smith. We're talking a Wal-Mart distribution center, a Wal-Mart super-center and a Home Depot...They can't get these developed in Alachua County so they absolutely have control over some of these small towns. They are just opening doors for unrestrained growth and development - multi-millions of dollars changing hands.
RS: What is the party affiliation of the other key players?
CG: Henderson - I have no idea. He used to be a journalist I believe; ...I'm told he may have family relationship with one of key political players. Calderwood, the Mayor, is a Republican appointed by Jeb Bush; she also served on the water board which had to approve the development for all of this. Her husband, Hugh Calderwood, he and chairman of Rep. Party are putting all this stuff on the attack site openly under their own names now. It used to be done anonymously on blogs. Steve Oelrich, the Sheriff, is a Republican. Bill Cervone, State Attorney, is a Republican. He was assistant State Attorney under Rod Smith, the Democrat.
RS: So this is basically Republicans abusing power and causing these problems, except for Smith and Clovis, who's converting to become a Republican?
CG: There are some Democrats, old style southern Democrats who are very development oriented. As for Clovis being recruited by Republicans, I don't think there is any Democrat in the county who would miss him. If you see the free Alachua site, there are all kinds of charges of corruption within the police dept under Clovis, a number of allegations going on around that. When you start seeing the stories and documents it will blow your mind.
RS: How optimistic are you about the outcome of all of this, and what are the implications?
CG: If you can clean up one city, you can clean up the whole country. But if you can't clean up one city, we have no chance at the national level. I see a lot of significance in this one case, because it is a small example of what's going on nationally, and it's a lot easier to tackle corruption at the local level, which is the root and foundation of national problems. I'm confident in the end that in terms of justice, I know that what we are doing is on the side of justice. What these officials know is that they have the power and authority and they can abuse it with very little repercussions to themselves normally. They have a lot of power and resources. They are used to people being afraid to stand up....But as long as we keep fighting and pushing this issue, I believe in the end that we will prevail. But it's a struggle to do that. We have mounting legal bills and we are trying to raise money nationally to help with that. (see www.freealachua.org for how you can help).
RS: Do the officials there control the court system, too?
CG: It's very much a company town, and it all depends on what judge we get. Unfortunately, on our elections challenge case, we found that in another open records case a few months ago the judge completely ignored the law, and we've got that on appeal right now. This judge is Robert Roundtree, he is also a Bush appointee. He basically threw out with prejudice a lawsuit filed by the residents of the City of Alachua regarding this multi-million dollar land deal that was the basis of the Wal-Mart land deal with a company called Waco of Alabama. Their lawyer had medical problems at the time and missed a filing deadline and the judge, instead of reprimanding the lawyer, used that opportunity to throw out the case without ever hearing it on the merits, so we don't have a lot of faith in him. But there are other judges in town. The problem is that the more local you are, there is a culture among public officials...and they all have this unwritten rule to go after each other - so nobody polices the police and nobody holds to account public officials. They have nearly free reign in anything they do. There is one other factor. On the Alachua City Commission, and thus the boss of Clovis Watson, is a woman named Bonnie Burgess. She is running for the State House in the same State House race I am, as a developer-friendly Democrat. These people are supporting her run for that office as well - Clovis and the Calderwoods, the powers-that-be in the City of Alachua.
RS: When is your primary election:
CG: September fifth..
RS: Who else is in the race?
CG: There are three Democrats and one Republican, but this is a Democratic district, so they know that whoever wins the Democratic primary is going to win the race.
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Security firm cleared by US army
Wednesday, 14 June 2006, 16:39 GMT 17:39 UK
A British security firm has welcomed the outcome of a US army investigation clearing it of criminal offences.
The US military launched an inquiry after a video showing an Aegis Defence Services contractor firing at civilian cars in Iraq was shown on the internet.
Ageis, which has a Pentagon contract in Iraq said to be worth £157m, said the film had been edited to mislead.
It said the man responsible for the film is now the subject of legal action.
Aegis said its own investigation, which was handed to the US Army's Criminal Investigation Division, had found that the incident shown on the film was within the rules on the use of force by civilian personnel.
The company says its rules of engagement "allow for a structured escalation of force to include opening fire on civilian vehicles under certain circumstances".
In the film, a man is seen leaning out of a speeding car with a machine gun, firing wildly at following civilian vehicles on a highway, hitting some of them.
The footage was posted on a website in November 2005 set up by contractors, but was eventually seen by a wider audience.
The US military investigation concluded that no-one should be charged with any criminal offence.
An Aegis spokesman said: "There was no evidence of any civilian casualties as a result of the incidents and the images published were all taken out of context."
Aegis head, Colonel Tim Spicer, said that it was "regrettable" that the contractor who filmed the event had "brought into question the high standards of behaviour achieved by our team in Iraq".
Its remit includes the protection of civilians and soldiers travelling in Iraq.
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History's Mysteries
Is the Truth About Masada Less Romantic?
By Kim Stubbs
12 June 06
"When we carefully examine ....... the Great Revolt and Masada, a portrait of heroism ...... is simply not provided. On the contrary. The narrative conveys the story of a doomed (and questionable) revolt, of a majestic failure and destruction of the Second Temple and of Jerusalem, of large-scale massacres of the Jews, of different factions of Jews fighting and killing each other, of collective suicide (an act not viewed favourably by the Jewish faith) by a group of terrorists and assassins whose "fighting spirit" may have been questionable."
It is the spring of 73 AD and the revolt that has raged in the Roman province of Judea for eight years is about to reach its bloody and tragic conclusion. On an isolated rock overlooking the Dead Sea at the edge of the Judean Desert 967 men, women and children - the last remnants of Jewish resistance to Imperial Rome - await their fate. The spectacular natural redoubt that has become their final refuge is called Masada, from the Hebrew mezuda meaning "fortress" or "stronghold."
For two years the inhabitants of Masada have waged a successful guerrilla war against the Romans, but now the Roman governor of Judea, Flavius Silva, has arrived with his army. After moving thousands of tons of earth and stone to construct a rampart 375 feet high abutting the western approach to Masada he begins to batter the stronghold's walls with ballistae and catapult fire. Rather than allow themselves and their families to fall into enemy hands the brave but doomed defenders of Masada choose to commit mass suicide. When the Roman army finally breaks into the stronghold they find only an eerie silence and the bodies of the dead.
This is the version of the Masada story generally accepted today. However at least one Israeli academic, Nachman Ben-Yehuda, 1 suggests that the truth may be somewhat less romantic and heroic.
"When we carefully examine ....... the Great Revolt and Masada, a portrait of heroism ...... is simply not provided. On the contrary. The narrative conveys the story of a doomed (and questionable) revolt, of a majestic failure and destruction of the Second Temple and of Jerusalem, of large-scale massacres of the Jews, of different factions of Jews fighting and killing each other, of collective suicide (an act not viewed favourably by the Jewish faith) by a group of terrorists and assassins whose "fighting spirit" may have been questionable." 2
Understandably views such as these have raised the hackles of many Jewish historians. But is Ben-Yehuda's interpretation of events correct? How much of the Masada story is history and how much is myth?
There are two major sources we can refer to in order to analyse this question. The first is the only contemporary account of the siege written by the Jewish historian Josephus. The second is the archaeological evidence that was unearthed by the Israeli archaeologist Yigael Yadin during his major excavation of the site between 1963 and 1965.
Both sources agree on the basic storyline. Jewish rebels seized the fortress around 66 BC (by treachery, according to Jospehus 3), and killed the Roman garrison. Josephus tells us that another group of rebels under the leadership of Eleazar ben Yair fled to Masada after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Yadin's excavations support this period of occupation by way of numerous small finds including scrolls, pottery, weapons, clothes and Jewish coins dating up to the year of the siege. 4
The fact that there was a siege is also beyond doubt - the remains of the Roman circumvallation and siege camp, along with the great ramp Silva had constructed abutting the western approach to Masada, are still visible.
From this point, however, the "facts" are open to interpretation. Were the defenders of Masada a group of religious zealots who fought a heroic but doomed guerrilla war against an overwhelmingly superior adversary? Certainly Josephus's account does not reflect this view. In fact he shows nothing but contempt for the defenders of the fortress, whom he describes as Sicarii - an extremist group that committed murder in order to obtain their political objectives. They took their name from the "sicae" or small daggers concealed under their cloaks with which they stabbed their opponents - almost exclusively fellow Jews who they perceived as too moderate or openly sympathetic to Roman rule. 5 These Sicarii, Josephus states, "strove with one another in their single capacity, and in their communities, who should run the greatest lengths in impiety towards God and in unjust actions towards their neighbors".
Nowhere in his account of the Masada siege does Josephus make any reference to the defenders taking the initiative against the Roman army, even though many contemporary versions credit them with waging a guerilla war against the Romans for up to three years. This omission cannot be attributed to pro-Roman bias on Josephus's part - he includes stories of Jewish attacks against the Romans at both Jerusalem and Machaerus in other parts of his narrative. The most likely reason that there is no mention of attacks being launched against the Romans at Masada is because the defenders never launched any. In fact the only military action of any size that he attributes to them is a raid on the nearby Jewish settlement of Ein-Gedi during which they slaughtered more than 700 of their co-religionists, many of them woman and children. 6
Regarding the conduct of the siege, Josephus tells us that Silva set his army to work moving thousands of tons of earth and stone to construct a rampart 375 high abutting the western approach to Masada. Excavations at the site, however, indicate that Josephus may be mistaken or deliberately misleading on this point as there is an extant spur of rock that the Roman's used as a foundation for their construction. This meant they only had to add 25 to 30 feet to this natural feature in order to raise the ramp to the level of the fortress' walls. The time required to complete this engineering feat would have been significantly less than building it from the ground up, which would have a resulting impact on the length of the siege itself. Rather than being a long and heroic resistance, the whole episode may have been over in as little a month.
Josephus is quite specific about how the defenders of Masada met their end. When the Romans had completed their siege works and defeat was inevitable they chose to kill themselves rather than fall into captivity. Each man first executed his own wife and children, then ten men were chosen by lot to kill the survivors. These remaining ten then drew lots to establish which among them would kill the other nine.
Yadin's excavations uncovered a cluster of eleven small ostraca in front of the palace. Each of these was inscribed with a single name; including one that reads "Ben Yair". Yadin believed these to be the lots used by the last survivors to decide which of their number would kill the others before ending his own life. However if this is the case it begs the question; why are there eleven names inscribed instead of the ten specified by Jospehus?
Having dispatched his compatriots the sole survivor is stated to have set fire to the fortress - with the exception of the well supplied store houses that, according to Josephus, were left intact to show the Romans that the defenders had not been "subdued for want of necessaries". 7 This appears to contradict the archaeological evidence. When the storerooms were excavated the original floor was covered with a thick layer of ash indicating that they were also put to the torch.
Josephus was specific about the number of people besieged at Masada - 967 men, women and children. He also states that with the exception of two women and five children who hid themselves in the caverns beneath the citadel that they all perished. He is equally specific about where they died; the royal palace. Yadin's excavations uncovered the remains of only 28 people, however, and of these only three were discovered under the debris of the palace. The remainder were discovered in a cave at the base of the cliff.
Yadin proposed that the remains were those of Masada's defenders, and went so far as to state that the three skeletons found in the palace "undoubtedly represent the remains of an important commander of Masada and his family". He even went so far as to suggest that the man might have been the last warrior who, having killed his comrades, committed suicide next to the bodies of his wife and child. 8 This interpretation appears to have been based solely on the fact that some armour was found near the remains. The theory was further weakened by one of Yadin's own team, an anthropologist, who estimated the man's age as between 20 and 22, the woman's between 17 and 18, and the child's about 11 or 12 years old at the time of death. If these estimations are correct the grouping could not possibly constitute a nuclear family. 9 The whereabouts of the remaining 932 bodies remains a mystery.
Josephus makes no mention of the 25 bodies in the cave so their origin is open to conjecture. Were they, as Shaye Cohen 10 believes, the "remains of Jews who attempted to hide from the Romans but were discovered and killed" (which contradicts the popularly held belief that the entire population of Masada willingly committed mass suicide), or are they the bodies of Christians who inhabited Masada during Byzantine times as some scholars have suggested?
Joseph Zias of Jerusalem's Rockefeller Museum has yet another theory. After carbon dating samples of textiles found with the remains indicated that they appeared to be contemporaneous with the period of the Revolt, he postulated that they could in fact be of Roman origin. Yadin admitted in 1982 that he had found pig bones alongside the remains - a highly unlikely combination if they were indeed those of zealous Jews to whom the pig is an unclean animal. But Zias notes that Romans sacrificed pigs at burials. Fourteen of the skeletons were adult males, 6 of whom were described as between 35-50, powerfully built and of a "distinctively different physical type from the rest". 12 Could these be the remains of members of the Legion Tenth Fretensis who conducted the siege of Masada and occupied it after its recapture? 11 As one of the emblems of this legion was the boar this would be a quite reasonable interpretation.
A government committee overruled Yadin's suggestion that all these remains be interred in the cave where they were found. Instead they were buried at Masada with full military honours on July 7, 1969.
There are many apparent anomalies in the Masada story, and many of these can be traced to Yigael Yadin and his interpretation of the archaeological remains. Although a revered figure in Israel, he has been accused of interpreting his finds to fit with the heroic mythos of Masada. As to his motives for doing this, Ben-Yehuda suggests "nationalistic, ideological motivation played a very major part in the decision to excavate Masada". 12 He also argues that a nation needs myths to help it "shape a central process of nation and state-building....to shape identities and create cohesion by fostering a strong sense of a shared past". 13 This is particularly true of Israel at the time of Yadin's dig. Less than two decades old and surrounded on all sides by enemies dedicated to her destruction, Israel needed "a new type of Jew, somebody that was willing to fight and die for his own country". 14 Yadin interpreted the events at Masada in a way that provided the requisite role model.
Wherever the truth lies, the Masada story still resonates strongly today both as an enduring symbol of the Jewish state's struggle for existence and of human courage in the face of insurmountable opposition. In December 2001 UNESCO's World Heritage Committee inscribed the Masada site on the World Heritage List stating that it was:
"...a symbol of the ancient Jewish Kingdom of Israel, of its violent destruction in the later 1st century CE, and of the subsequent Diaspora.
"The tragic events during the last days of the Jewish refugees who occupied the fortress and palace of Masada make it a symbol both of Jewish cultural identity and, more universally, of the continuing human struggle between oppression and liberty."
Bibliography
The Jewish war - Flavius Josephus
Sacrificing Truth: Archaeology and the Masada Myth - Nachman Ben-Yehuda, Prometheus Books, 2002
Apocalypse - The Great Jewish Revolt Against Rome, Neil Faulkner, Tempus Publishing, UK, 2002
Masada : Cave 2001/2002 - Dr James D Tabor
Flavius Josephus Eyewitness to Rome's First-Century Conquest of Judea - Mireille Hadas-Lebel
Masada - The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs Website
Masada ; Literary Tradition, Archaeological Remains and the Credibility of Jospehus - Shaye Cohen
Masada Martyrs - Haim Watzman, Archaeological Institute of America - Volume 50 Number 6, November/December 1997
Israeli Icon Under Fire, Chronicle of Higher Education Dec 6, 2002 - Richard Monastersky
UNESCO World Heritage Committee Meeting Minutes, Dec 2001
1 Dean of the Faculty of Sociology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and author of "The Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Mythmaking in Israel"
2 The Masada Myth - Nachman Ben-Yehuda
3 The Wars of the Jews, Book II, Chapter 17 - Josephus
4 Israeli Icon Under Fire - Richard Monastersky
5 Jewish Encyclopedia - entry by Richard Gottheil and Samuel Kraus
6 Jewish War 4:401-4 - Jospehus
7 Josephus
8 Israeli Icon Under Fire, Richard Monastersky
9 Israeli Icon Under Fire, Richard Monastersky
10 Masada; Literary Tradition, Archaeological Remains and the Credibility of Josephus
12 Masada Cave 2001/2002 - James D Tabor
11 Masada Martyrs - Haim Watzman, Archaeological Institute of America
12 Interview of Nachman Ben-Yehuda moderated by Richard Monastersky, Chronicle of Higher Education
13 Sacrificing Truth: Archaeology and the Masada Myth - Nachman Ben-Yehuda
14 Israeli Icon Under Fire, Richard Monastersky
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Bosnia "Pyramid" Is Not Human-Made, U.K. Expert Says - A war of words continues to rage over the alleged discovery of an ancient pyramid in Bosnia.
Sean Markey
for National Geographic News
June 13, 2006
Bosnian-American pyramid buff Semir "Sam" Osmanagic claims a four-sided hill in the town of Visoko is Europe's first known pyramid, larger than any ever built in Egypt.
But in the latest salvo in this battle, the president of the European Association of Archaeologists said on Friday that he had visited the 700-foot (213-meter) hill and saw no evidence that it was human-made.
Speaking at a press conference in Sarajevo, Anthony Harding told reporters the pyramid-shaped hill was a natural phenomenon.
"My opinion and the opinion of my colleagues is what we saw was entirely geological in nature," the AFP news agency quoted him as saying.
"Further work of the same kind would simply produce the same results. I don't think it would change any view about what the nature of the hill is," he said.
Harding, an archaeology professor at England's University of Exeter, visited Visoko, 18 miles (30 kilometers) from Sarajevo, on Thursday.
European Pyramid?
In April 2006 the Houston-based Osmanagic and a mostly volunteer crew began limited excavations in the area and drilled exploratory wells.
The team uncovered what they describe as large stone blocks shaped by human hands and a network of tunnels fronted by a wide, paved entranceway.
Osmanagic has speculated that Illyrians-ancient ancestors of today's Albanians-could have built the alleged pyramid perhaps as early as 12,000 years ago during the last ice age.
Last month Osmanagic told National Geographic News that he was "100 percent convinced" that the pyramid was real.
Those claims have drawn near unanimous contempt from professional archaeologists.
Harding, an expert on Bronze Age Europe, has dismissed Osmanagic's theories as "wacky" and "absurd."
Balkan prehistory expert Curtis Runnels, an archaeologist at Boston University and editor of the Journal of Field Archaeology, joins the chorus of skeptics.
"Mr. Osmangic offers no concrete physical evidence to support his claims, despite the fact that they are fantastic," he said.
"[T]he area was in fact occupied by Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers with a Stone Age technology sufficient for building fires, tents, and simple hunting implements like bows and arrows."
"They were not pyramid builders."
Recent Twist
In another recent twist, wire reports quoted Aly Abd Alla Barakat, a geologist with the Egyptian Mineral Resources Authority.
Barakat, who visited the hill at the behest of Osmanagic's team, told the Associated Press late last week, "My opinion is that this is a type of pyramid, probably a primitive pyramid."
To the AFP, he said: "The white stuff I found between the blocks could be a glue. It is very similar to that we have found in the Giza pyramids."
Critics remain unswayed, and some have questioned Barakat's expertise.
Of the alleged Bosnian pyramid, the European Association of Archaeology's Harding said, "You'd be surprised how many natural stone formations can look as if they are man-made."
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In a Ruined Copper Works, Evidence That Bolsters a Doubted Biblical Tale
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
NY Times
June 13, 2006
In biblical lore, Edom was the implacable adversary and menacing neighbor of the Israelites. The Edomites lived south of the Dead Sea and east of the desolate rift valley known as Wadi Arabah, and from time to time they had to be dealt with by force, notably by the likes of Kings David and Solomon.
Today, the Edomites are again in the thick of combat - of the scholarly kind. The conflict is heated and protracted, as is often the case with issues related to the reliability of the Bible as history.
Chronology is at the crux of the debate. Exactly when did the nomadic tribes of Edom become an organized society with the might to threaten Israel? Were David and Solomon really kings of a state with growing power in the 10th century B.C.? Had writers of the Bible magnified the stature of the two societies at such an early time in history?
An international team of archaeologists has recorded radiocarbon dates that they say show the tribes of Edom may have indeed come together in a cohesive society as early as the 12th century B.C., certainly by the 10th. The evidence was found in the ruins of a large copper-processing center and fortress at Khirbat en-Nahas, in the lowlands of what was Edom and is now part of Jordan.
Thomas E. Levy, a leader of the excavations, said in an interview last week that the findings there and at abandoned mines elsewhere in the region demonstrated that the Edomites had developed a complex state much earlier than previously thought.
Dr. Levy, an archaeologist at the University of California, San Diego, said the research had yielded not only the first high-precision dates in the region, but also such telling artifacts as scarabs, ceramics, metal arrowheads, hammers, grinding stones and slag heaps. Radiocarbon analysis of charred wood, grain and fruit in several sediment layers revealed two major phases of copper processing, first in the 12th and 11th centuries, later in the 10th and 9th.
Khirbat en-Nahas is 30 miles from the Dead Sea and 30 miles north of Petra, Jordan's most famous archaeological site. The name means "ruins of copper" in Arabic. One of the first ancient occupation sites in the Edomite lowlands to be intensively investigated, the ruins of its buildings and grounds spread over 24 acres, and the fortifications enclose an area 240 by 240 feet.
"Only a complex society such as a paramount chiefdom or primitive kingdom would have the organizational know-how to produce copper metal on such an industrial scale," Dr. Levy concluded.
The first results of the research by Dr. Levy and Mohammad Najjar, director of excavations and surveys at the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, were described two years ago at a conference at the University of Oxford, England, and in a report in the British journal Antiquity. Reverberations of support and criticism have shaken the field of biblical archaeology ever since.
With the addition of new dates and more evidence of the importance of copper in the emergence of Edom, the two archaeologists have amplified their interpretations in an article being published this month in the magazine Biblical Archaeology Review.
"We have discovered a degree of social complexity in the land of Edom," they wrote, "that demonstrates the weak reed on the basis of which a number of scholars have scoffed at the idea of a state or complex chiefdom in Edom at this early period."
The findings, Dr. Levy and Dr. Najjar added, lend credence to biblical accounts of the rivalry between Edom and the Israelites in what was then known as Judah. By extension, they said, this supported the tradition that Judah itself had by the time of David and Solomon, in the early 10th century, emerged as a kingdom with ambition and the means of fighting off the Edomites.
The Hebrew Bible mentioned the Edomites no fewer than 99 times. In Genesis, Esau, Jacob's twin brother, is described as the ancestor of the Edomites, and a reference is made to "the kings who reigned in the land of Edom, before any king reigned over the Israelites." Dr. Levy said this statement showed that the Israelites acknowledged Edom's early political development.
In the context, Dr. Levy and Dr. Najjar wrote, "the biblical references to the Edomites, especially their conflicts with David and subsequent Judahite kings, garner a new plausibility."
Historians and archaeologists who generally endorse the new findings welcomed the more precise dating of ruins in the under-explored region and the attention focused on copper production in Edomite history. But they cautioned against interpretations that might encourage uncritical reliance on the Bible as a source of early history.
Most criticism has come from advocates of a "low chronology" or "minimalist" school of early biblical history. They contend that in David's time Edom was a pastoral society, and Judah not much more advanced. In this view, ancient Israel did not develop into a true state until the eighth century B.C., a century and a half after David.
More widely held in recent years is the estimate that Edom did not become a complex society and kingdom until the eighth or seventh centuries, presumably as a consequence of rule by the Assyrian empire.
Israel Finkelstein, an archaeologist at Tel Aviv University and a leading proponent of the low-chronology model, has said the new research does "not shed new light on the question of state formation in Edom." He argues that perhaps the copper operations were controlled by chieftains in Beersheba, to the west, and supplied material for urban centers west and north of Edom.
Dr. Levy and Dr. Najjar said their excavations showed that "this image of external control is not convincing."
Piotr Bienkowski of the University of Manchester, England, and Eveline van der Steen of East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C., who have excavated the Edomite highlands, criticized the statistical analysis of the new dating and suggested that the data had been used to support an unjustified interpretation.
"One 'fortress' does not make a kingdom," they argued in a paper. Dr. Levy said the most advanced statistical methods were applied in analyzing the radiocarbon dates, and the laboratory work was conducted at Oxford and the University of Groningen, the Netherlands.
"We realize that our work is far from complete, " Dr. Levy said, and a large team from the University of California will return this fall to Khirbat en-Nahas for a deeper look into the early history of the Edomites.
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Andes people look back to the future
Roger Highfield
Science Editor
13 June 06
The Aymara people in South America have a concept of time opposite to the rest of the us, so that the past lies ahead of them and the future behind, according to a study published yesterday.
"Until now, all the studied cultures and languages of the world - from European and Polynesian to Chinese, Japanese, Bantu and so on - have not only characterised time with properties of space, but also have all mapped the future as if it were in front.
"The Aymara case is the first documented to depart from the standard model," said Dr Rafael Nunez of the University of California, San Diego, who reports the finding in the journal Cognitive Science with Prof Eve Sweetser of the University of California.
The language of the Aymara, who live in the Andes highlands of Bolivia, Peru and Chile, has been noticed by Westerners since the earliest days of the Spanish conquest. A Jesuit wrote in the early 1600s that Aymara was particularly useful for abstract ideas, and in the 19th century it was dubbed the "language of Adam".
For the study Dr Nunez collected about 20 hours of conversations with 30 ethnic Aymara adults from Northern Chile that included discussions of past and future events. The Aymara language recruits "nayra," the basic word for "eye," "front" or "sight," to mean "past" and "qhipa," the basic word for "back" or "behind," to mean ''future." Thus the expression "nayra mara" - which means "last year" - can be literally translated as "front year".
Elderly Aymara referred to the future by thumbing or waving over their shoulders and swept forward with their hands and arms for now or the near past and farther out, to the full extent of the arm for ancient times.
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Jade Axes Proof of Vast Ancient Caribbean Network, Experts Say
Charles Petit
for National Geographic News
June 12, 2006
A discovery of ancient jade could shake up old notions of the New World before Columbus. Scientists say they have traced 1,500-year-old axe blades found in the eastern Caribbean to ancient jade mines in Central America 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) away, New York's American Museum of Natural History announced late last month.
The blades were excavated in the late 1990s by a Canadian archaeologist on the island of Antigua in the West Indies.
But the jade used to make the blades almost certainly came from Maya mines in distant Guatemala (see map of Guatemala), says mineralogist George Harlow of the American Museum of Natural History.
The find may call into question a once dominant archaeological picture of the pre-Columbian Caribbean.
Previous theories held that a few big or budding civilizations existed on the mainland of Central America, with only isolated, village-based societies on islands in the Caribbean Sea.
The new analysis gives weight to a competing view, which suggests that organized, long-distance trade networks were based primarily on those islands.
"There has been a closed mind-set that these [ancient] people out here were primitive, but we are learning there was a whole world out here we don't yet fully know about," said Reg Murphy, an archaeologist at the Museum of Antigua and Barbuda in St. John's, Antigua.
Murphy collaborated with Harlow on the research.
Murphy says it's likely that complex societies not only existed on the islands but also communicated with other cultures in South America along the Orinoco and Amazon Rivers.
"Those rivers [in South America] were highways of exchange that extended around the coast all the way to Guatemala," he said.
Harlow and Murphy's research team reported its findings in the April issue of the journal Canadian Mineralogist.
Saladoid Culture
The small, triangular jade blades found in Antigua are relics of the Saladoid culture, a society named for its home region along the Orinoco River in modern-day Venezuela (See map of Venezuela).
Known for their elaborate pottery, the Saladoid spread to Caribbean islands as far north as Puerto Rico by 500 B.C.
Archaeologists have excavated jade items in the West Indies before, but the source of the jade has been a puzzle, Harlow explains.
No jade deposits are known to exist in the eastern Caribbean. Also, many archaeologists have held that the Saladoid were insulated from the wider world, their travels limited to short canoe trips between islands.
Harlow says the jade used to make the Antigua blades is of a distinct, very hard form called jadeite.
Only a dozen jadeite surface deposits are known in the world, including a vein on the north side of Guatemala's Motagua River Valley, he adds.
But until recently Guatemalan jade deposits did not match the Antigua jade or other, high-quality forms found in some Maya tombs.
Then came the devastating rains of Hurricane Mitch in 1998. Violent runoff brought chunks of extremely high quality jade careering down the rocky gorges on the south side of the Motagua River.
"As soon as we heard about that, we started looking for its source," said Harlow, a veteran of previous work in the region.
His team found jadeite there of a quality beyond anything recently mined in Guatemala, he says.
The samples they brought back came just in time to answer questions about the Antigua jade pieces.
Shortly after the new deposits were discovered, Harlow received the Antigua blades, dated from 250 to 500 A.D., from the late University of Calgary archaeologist Alfred Levinson.
Harlow says he immediately suspected that the axe blades were from the newly confirmed deposits, based on the jade's unique composition.
He compared the texture of both the Antiguan and Guatemalan jade and measured their ratios of minerals such as mica, albite, omphacite, and quartz.
Harlow found that the newfound deposits and the Antigua pieces bore the same distinctive quartz grains, which are absent from jade mined anywhere else, he says.
"If that [Antigua] stuff is not from Guatemala, the fates are playing some kind of game," Harlow said.
Proof of Trade?
Among those welcoming the finding is archaeologist Richard Callaghan of the University of Calgary, who was not part of Harlow's team.
He has studied remains of early Caribbean island societies for decades. He says the discovery provides new evidence of long-range trade in the pre-Columbian Caribbean.
Based on his research of Saladoid pottery and other artifacts, Callaghan believes that the civilization was sophisticated enough to maintain organized, long-distance contact with other cultures.
"I think those guys could go by boat straight from Puerto Rico or other islands all the way to [Mexico's] Yucatán [Peninsula]," he said.
The trade routes were most likely traveled by big, seaworthy canoes, Callaghan says. The vessels may have resembled the dugout logs seen centuries later by Spanish explorers.
Such seafaring ability, Callaghan adds, may have persisted well after the Saladoid culture faded around A.D. 1000.
The culture was replaced by Caribbean peoples collectively called the Taino, whom the Spanish later conquered and all but exterminated.
Murphy, the Antigua curator, shares Callaghan's expansive view of the Saladoid's cultural reach.
Murphy hopes the jade-axe findings may spur further study into the origins of other exotic, elaborately carved stones found among Saladoid relics.
For example, he says, some Saladoid artifacts are made of a type of turquoise not known to occur naturally anywhere in the Caribbean.
"It could have come all the way from Chile," Murphy said.
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Target Iran
Iran accuses France of human rights violations
TEHRAN, June 13, 2006 (AFP)
TEHRAN, June 13, 2006 (AFP) - Iran's foreign ministry has criticized what it calls human rights violations in France and Britain in a letter to the Austrian presidency of the European Union, the ISNA news agency reported Tuesday.
Tehran asked Britain and France to "take effective steps to prevent further violation of human rights", the letter said.
Austria currently holds the EU presidency, which rotates every six months.
"Iran voices its concern and regret over the terrible social and legal situation in France, such as a resumption of street unrest, the introduction of martial law in some cities, the crisis in employment law and attacks on Sorbonne University," the statement said.
It
added that France suffers from a "regretful situation in prisons, excessive police brutality, torture and harassment of prisoners, and incorrect policies towards immigrants".
On human rights in Britain, the Iranian foreign ministry said: "Human rights violations have been on the rise in Britain. In the fight against terrorism, civil and religious liberties have been tarnished."
"Detaining people without informing them what they are charged with for a long time, violent treatment by the British Home Office along with humiliation against immigrants and refugees has been reported, so we expect the EU to exert more pressure on Britain to improve its human rights record," the letter added.
"The Islamic Republic of Iran also voices its concern over the treatment of Muslims in those countries, especially Muslim schoolchildren, and therefore seriously asks the EU to prevent moves that insult Muslims in Europe," the letter concluded.
The foreign ministry statement came a week before the annual meeting of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, at which the Iranian judicial system could find itself the subject of criticism.
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Ambassodor John Bolton: Either Iran will acquiesce or it will face dire consequences
by Michael Carmichael
June 13, 2006
GlobalResearch.ca
- John Bolton's message was not well received at Oxford University - Taunted and jeered, Bolton bolted
"John Bolton is the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon, if it should be my lot to be on hand for what is forecast to be the final battle between good and evil in this world." ~~ Senator Jesse Helms (Republican, North Carolina, retired)
Facing an increasingly hostile group of law students in an Oxford seminar that had somehow gone dreadfully wrong, beads of sweat began to pop out on John Bolton's furrowed brow. Amidst a rising chorus of taunts, jeers, hisses and outright denunciations, Bolton was swiftly surrounded by his entourage of three American security agents and whisked out the door of the seminar room at Oriel College on Friday, the 9th of June.
Pursued by vocal recriminations from angry and frustrated American students who led the incisive questioning and the equally incisive jeering -- with taunts like, "You should be doing a better job!" Bolton bolted. He turned sharply on his heel and took flight out the door and then fled down the mediaeval passageway and into the relative safety and calm of his bullet-proof diplomatic limousine, Bolton swiftly headed out of Oxford, rudely foregoing the well-established tradition of lingering to talk with interested members of the audience.
Bolton's swift exit contrasted sharply with Oxford appearances by two other American politicians earlier this term. Both John Podesta and Richard Perle enjoyed lingering for discussions with Oxford audiences after their talks. John Bolton would have none of it, and the reason was obvious. Throughout the questioning, the audience became increasingly hostile and combative towards his neoconservative agenda.
Numbering over one hundred and consisting of a large contingent of Americans intermingled with British and international students, the audience was eager to hold Bolton accountable for the neoconservative arguments he put forward in his talk. The keen attitude of the audience infused Bolton with a noticeable reticence to remain and exchange viewpoints even though it is a time-honoured Oxford tradition. Bolton's performance was tantamount to arriving late for dinner, wolfing one's food and then leaving abruptly before the cigars and Amontillado.
Bolton had been invited to Oxford for a one-hour seminar organised by The Law Society. His talk would be followed by the routine question and answer session.
Upon his arrival, Bolton announced that his talk would not be a free and open discussion but strictly limited to his few selected topics: UN reform, scandal and the next Secretary General. Predictably, Bolton launched into his standard speech -- little more than a right-wing denigration of the UN as riddled with corruption in the form of the Oil for Food scandal.
Bolton began his broadside with an examination of the principle of 'sovereign equality,' whereby every nation has exactly the same voting rights as every other member of the General Assembly. He adopted an unsophisticated book-keeper's perspective, stating that the contributions made by the USA dwarfed those of many other nations. He argued unconvincingly that even those forty-seven members who paid the bare minimum had the same voting power in the General Assembly as America. This observation failed to impress the audience who were more than well aware of America's financial and economic superiority to the debt-ridden nations in the third world - a superiority accumulated through trade negotiations designed to extract capital from the poorest nations and transfer it to the wealthiest.
Bolton's panacea for the bureaucratic inefficiency was simple. At its core, he implied that a group of sharp-eyed book-keepers backed by accountants, auditors and a hardened core of dues-collectors should run the United Nations along strict financial guidelines as if it were a private club with a dining room and golf course rather than the world's premiere organization mandated to prevent armed conflict between sovereign nations, foster economic development, enhance social equality and cultivate international law. If Bolton is aware of the principles defining the mission of the United Nations, he made no mention of them whatsoever. His sole focus was a totally transparent harangue on the disparity of dues, a tissue of an argument that would not have convinced a fifteen year old - much less Oxford law students.
Turning to his case for corruption, Bolton launched into a literal diatribe about the Oil for Food programme that he described as a substantial scandal. The background to this is important: led by Bolton, neoconservative critics of the UN attempted unsuccessfully to make a criminal case against Kofi Annan and members of his family through the Oil for Food investigation, but their efforts largely were wasted. The investigation did discover some relatively minor official corruption involving a paltry $150,000 paid to one individual. The largest amount of corruption appears to have come in the form of kickbacks and bribes to the government of Iraq by oil companies seeking cheap oil. Of the kickbacks paid to the government of Iraq, 52% came from the US in the form of bribes for cheap oil, a figure that is more than the rest of the planet of 190 nations combined. While a partisan Republican Senator, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, made allegations against one high profile figure, George Galloway a British MP, they have been refuted. The investigation is ongoing, but of 54 internal audits only one has been made public. Bolton did not mention any of these details, nor did he provide any substantive evidence for his charge of serious levels of official corruption at the UN.
Neither did Bolton call attention to the fact that the Oil for Food case pales into insignificance when compared to the massive scandals engulfing American operations in Iraq involving tens and possibly hundreds of billions of dollars or the Abramoff millions and the Enron scandal soaring into billions of dollars. Weak, prejudiced and hostile in its intent, Bolton's case against the UN failed to impress his keen academic audience of law students. Bolton failed to get an indictment from this grand jury.
The final part of Bolton's talk dealt with the next Secretary General of the UN who will take office later this year. He criticized the obligatory rotation of the office, arguing for a review of the rules governing selection of the Secretary General. Although making comments about the need for balance and fairness, Bolton observed that the next Secretary General should come not from Asia but from the ranks of Eastern Europe - a favourite region for Bolton who champions the increasing integration of Eastern European nations and leaders into the American sphere of influence. Bolton left the impression that he is deeply involved in the selection process for the next Secretary General. From his remarks, it is clear that he is making every effort to influence this selection by anointing an Eastern European functionary loyal to the neoconservative agenda of George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.
Perhaps most dramatically, Bolton presented a stark message to his Oxford audience: the UN exists to institutionalize inequalities of power, wealth and national security. In his view, the UN should be a club for powerful nations to manage their relations with poor nations by denying them any real power. As an agent of corporate wealth and institutional power, in his Oxford remarks Bolton focused exclusively on justice for capital and repudiated the notion of a democratic basis for the UN. Bolton demanded that the UN should remain a gated community devoid of power-sharing with its small clique of five Security Council members wielding veto power over the remaining 190 members.
During the question period, Bolton recognized a law student who politely asked him to justify the application of a double standard in the Middle East that favors Israel over Syria or other Muslim nations. Detecting the student's accent, Bolton pointedly asked, "Where are you from?" The student was Syrian. On that note, Bolton refused to answer the question, and instead he criticized Syria for what he deemed to be its unwarranted interference in the Middle East and Lebanon even though they withdrew their final 15,000 troops last year. From a historical perspective, it is ironic that Bolton would have cited this case, for Syria was invited to provide security operations in Lebanon by the Maronite Christians with the tacit approval of the United Nations and the support of the Arab League. The hypocrisy at the heart of his own case - since he represents a hegemonic power with more than one hundred and thirty thousand uninvited troops on the ground in Iraq, thousands more uninvited troops in Afghanistan and which now threatens to launch a new war against Iran - was lost on Bolton. But, Bolton's hypocrisy was not lost on his perceptive audience who now zeroed in on him with a barrage of pointed questions.
The next question to Bolton was why should the UN be based on dues paid and the wealth and power of its members i.e one nation, one vote -- instead of population, which would mean -- one man, one vote. Detecting another foreign accent, Bolton asked, "Where are you from?" The student was from India. Bolton said that any alteration in the current articles of the UN charter to reform on a demographic basis would change the nature of the institution, and he indicated that principle, i.e. democracy and one man, one vote - ramained totally unacceptable to the United States as a basis for the United Nations. Quite.
In what was rapidly becoming his interrogation, a woman from America questioned Bolton about the need for a balanced approach where America would represent the best interests of the world at large rather than its own particular regional self-interest. At that point, Bolton fumbled. In a clumsy and misguided attempt to turn the tables on his adroit and incisive challengers, Bolton threw out a question of his own. He called for a show of hands of those in the audience who were British. Bolton then asked how many of them wanted the British Ambassador at the UN to represent the interests of Britain. Only one or two hands were raised. Then he asked to see a show of hands of those British subjects who wanted the British Ambassador at the UN to represent not only the interests of Britain but also the collective interests of the other members as well. At least a dozen hands went up into the air. Stunned, Bolton was dumbfounded and said rather witlessly, "I would have gotten a different result in America."
At that point, the crowd was warming to the battle unfolding before them and led so capably by the incensed Americans in the audience. With their voices rising in taunts and jeers and more than a dozen hands demanding to be recognized to put more questions to him, Bolton's attention turned to his phalanx of security agents who surrounded him drawing the question and answer session to an abrupt close. In retrospect, Bolton's was a disgraceful performance, one committed to an ancien regime of property, monetary wealth and military power in diametrical opposition to the democratic rights of humanity. John Bolton showed himself to be a behemoth of corporate greed and corrupt political influence in world diplomacy. My view is that his appointment to the Ambassadorship of the United Nations was tantamount to appointing Vito Corleone to head the FBI.
The primary purpose of Bolton's visit to Britain was not made public, but it was clear nevertheless from his public remarks. With a history of trips to Europe to demand the sackings of officials for whom he has a personal dislike, Bolton's visit to Britain was obviously to demand the sacking of the Deputy Secretary of the UN, a British subject, Mark Malloch Brown. Bolton appeared on the influential BBC4 Today programme, where he was interviewed by Jim Naughtie. Deputy Secretary of the UN Brown was his first target. Brown's speech critical of US policy vis a vis the UN had clearly irritated Bolton. Brown had criticized the US for using the UN to take care of many foreign policy problems while US officials hypocritically attacked it back home in red state America. By pointing this out, Brown touched a sensitive nerve in Bolton's neoconservative brain. Then Bolton falsely accused Brown of criticizing the American people - a sheer fabrication. Then, Bolton lashed out at Brown for making remarks that would injure the UN. Coming from Bolton, this appraisal sounded more like a threat than serious criticism. In explaining the US position on the UN, he stated, "I think that the administration has told the truth about the UN - the good, the bad and the ugly," a strange choice of metaphors for a man with as controversial a reputation as Bolton.
Naughtie turned to the Iran crisis, and Bolton reiterated the official White House line: the situation remains under negotiation but volatile. Either Iran will acquiesce to the demands placed upon it, or it will face dire consequences including military intervention. Leaving no doubt that Bush and Bolton propose unilateral action, Bolton confirmed that Iran would be a test case to determine whether the UN Security Council could be effective in the war against terrorism.
When interviewed on the same day by the Financial Times, Bolton rejected the concept that the Bush administration was holding out the possibility of a "grand bargain" with Iran. In Bolton's mind, the terms of the negotiations are focused exclusively on the Iranian nuclear programme and do not encompass diplomatic recognition or the normalization of relations. Far from detente, Bolton's definition of the process is simple: the US is threatening Iran with war unless they submit to terms which Iran finds unattractive - the cessation of what they state is peaceful research into nuclear energy.
Given his very public actions as exemplified by his statements in the UK and the US, Bolton should now be considered to be functioning as the US Secretary of State. It would not be surprising to see him elevated to that post in the event of Condoleezza Rice leaving the State Department or upon the election of a new Republican administration in 2008.
John Bolton has a fascinating back-story. A Lutheran from Baltimore, Bolton studied law at Yale. The extreme right-wing presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater politicized him, and in the late 1970s, he emerged as a top legal advisor to the extreme racist Republican, Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina. A description of Bolton's political extremism records, "A veteran of Southern electoral campaigns, Bolton has long appealed to racist voters." (John Bolton, Right Web) During the 2000 Florida vote fiasco, Bolton played a high profile partisan role. Working under Jim Baker, Bolton led the so-called "white collar riot" that brought a halt to the counting of ballots in Florida.
Throughout the 1980s, Bolton was a leader of Republican Party efforts to undermine voting rights for minorities. Forming an alliance with James Baker, Bolton served in both the Reagan and Bush 41 administrations. During the Clinton years, Bolton served as an assistant to Baker when he worked as Kofi Annan's envoy in the Western Sahara. It is somewhat ironic that Bolton is now the principal critic of Annan. Additionally, Bolton spent time at the usual right-wing and neoconservative institutions including: the American Enterprise Institute; Project for the New American Century; Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf. Before his appointment as US Ambassador to the United Nations, Bolton served as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control.
In the mid-1990s, Bolton was involved in a political money-laundering scandal that opened a channel for funds from Taiwan to Republican candidates. (ibid.) Prior to his appointment as UN Ambassador, Bolton was deeply involved in the Bush administration's overt campaign to undermine international law. Bolton masterminded the systematic abrogation of several key international treaties including: the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention; the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty; the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. During his work for the Reagan administration, Bolton supported the Nicaraguan contras and sought to deny federal investigators access to key evidence in the Iran Contra scandal. (John Bolton, Officialssay)
Personal scandals have also tarnished John Bolton. A woman accused him of hostile intimidation that led to a case of sexual discrimination. Larry Flynt published evidence that Bolton's first marriage had collapsed after he forced his wife to have group sex at Plato's Retreat during the Reagan administration. (Rawstory)
When Bush nominated him for the UN Ambassadorship, Bolton suffered intense scrutiny. He failed to get the endorsement of the Foreign Relations committee, and a ranking Republican, George Voinovich of Ohio, openly opposed him. When the nomination came to the floor of the Senate, the Democrats launched a filibuster. When a small group of Republicans attempted to invoke cloture to stop the debate, the motion failed for lack of support. During a congressional recess, Bush was forced to appoint Bolton in what is called a "recess appointment." This weakens Bolton's stature, and the law demands that his appointment must be renewed early next year by the Senate in spite of how embarrassing it will be for him.
An embarrassing incident occurred last month that confirms the suspicions of Bolton's polite Syrian questioner at Oxford. In remarks to B'nei Brith International, the Israeli ambassador to the UN identified Bolton as "a secret member of Israel's own team at the United Nations," underlining his confidence in Bolton by stating, "Today the secret is out. We really are not just five diplomats. We are at least six including John Bolton." (Haaretz)
During his Oxford harangue, Bolton said that America is a democracy where people vote for change and the policies they admire. His own role in the racist politics of the South, the cessation of vote counting in 2000 and the obstruction of the Iran Contra investigation transforms every word he ever says claiming America as a model of democracy into the ne plus ultra of political hypocrisy. George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Condoleezza Rice and John Bolton are a comfortable clutch of hypocritical politicians, and their approval ratings now demonstrate that they are not the agents of democracy. Quite the opposite, the democratic disconnection - the increasing disparity between popular opinion and government policy - in Bush and Bolton's America is a scandal of global proportions that could well be driving the United States over the precipice and into the abyss of failed and failing states.
On a hot day in a crowded seminar fuelled by intense questioning, Bolton perspired heavily.
Michael Carmichael became a professional public affairs consultant, author and broadcaster in 1968. He worked in five American presidential campaigns for progressive candidates from RFK to Clinton. In 2003, he founded The Planetary Movement, a nonprofit public affairs organization based in the United Kingdom. He has appeared as a public affairs expert on the BBC's Today, Hardtalk, and PM, as well as numerous appearances on ITN, NPR and European broadcasts examining politics and culture. He can be reached through his website: www.planetarymovement.org
References
Bolton rejects 'grand bargain' with Iran
Woman accuses Bolton of harassment
Bolton Delay Offensive to Jewish Community, Says JINSA
Israel's UN ambassador slams Qatar, praises U.S. envoy Bolton
Larry Flynt: Bush UN nominee won't answer questions about troubled marriage
John R. Bolton
Who Is John Bolton?
John Bolton - Profile - rightweb
Rice's Iran Gambit
John Bolton - officialssay
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China and Russia reject joint statement on Iran nuclear program
Agence France Presse
13 June 06
China and Russia have rejected joining the West in a joint statement urging Iran to halt uranium enrichment, in diplomatic maneuvering ahead of a debate at the UN nuclear watchdog.
Diplomats played down the significance of this however, as China and Russia have already joined Britain, France, Germany and the United States in a ministerial agreement on June 1 calling on Iran to halt enrichment and join in talks on guaranteeing it will not make nuclear weapons.
"The effort didn't work to do a joint statement in Vienna," a senior European diplomat told AFP.
But the diplomat said the six world powers "have never managed to get an EU-3 (Britain, France and Germany) plus three statement in Vienna," at meetings of the watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which oversees cooperation by nations with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
A vigorous debate on Iran but no resolution is expected at this week's IAEA meeting of its 35-nation board of governors, with the Iranian issue expected to come up Wednesday or Thursday.
The EU-3 are expected to issue a statement of their own, with each of the six countries that have made the offer to Iran issuing individual statements.
Iranian allies Russia and China are both reluctant to threaten sanctions against Iran for nuclear work which the United States says show that Tehran wants to develop atomic weapons.
But the two nations closed ranks with the three European Union powers plus the United States in offering Iran talks on trade, security and technology benefits if it would suspend uranium enrichment, which makes nuclear reactor fuel but also atom bomb material.
Iran is currently examining the benefits package and is expected to respond by the end of the month.
"This has no influence on the overall situation," a Western diplomat said about the developments in Vienna, although this diplomat and others admitted that Iran would try to exploit any division, perceived or real, among the world powers.
But delegates from several non-aligned nations, of which China is a member, clearly do want to make a point, as they are preparing a statement that supports Iran's right to enrichment, as enshrined in the NPT.
A non-aligned diplomat said his group would "hold to a statement made by non-aligned foreign ministers in Kuala Lumpur in May," that backs Iran's right to enrich.
Diplomats said Washington was fighting to prevent non-aligned states on the IAEA board from issuing such a statement, which also is an expression of non-aligned concern over a US proposal to have nuclear fuel available in a multilateral reserve so that countries do not develop the ability to enrich uranium on their own.
The non-aligned diplomat said the bloc was planning a statement that would renew a message first issued May 30 in Malaysia, when the the Non Aligned Movement affirmed the right to atomic energy and opposed any attack on nuclear facilities.
"The Americans are not happy with that statement and told that to the NAM members," the diplomat said.
The United States wanted the bloc, which numbers some 16 mostly developing nations on the IAEA board, to stick to a February IAEA resolution calling on Iran to suspend uranium enrichment.
"The US point of view is that the Iranians should not be allowed to feel relaxed about enrichment, that the goal is to keep the pressure on them," the diplomat said.
A senior US State Department official said Washington did not want Tehran to press on with its enrichment activites while drawing out negotiations with the rest of the world.
With Iran being called on to answer the benefits offer within weeks, "we don't want the Iranian authorities to be considering this indefinitely," a senior US State Department official said.
"We don't want to be back into a situation we've seen before where they say they are prepared to negotiate but at the same time they just continue with their nuclear activities," the official said.
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At the U.N., Bluster Backfires
By Sebastian Mallaby
Washington Post
June 12, 2006
Last month President Bush issued a rare apology. "Saying 'Bring it on,' kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong signal," he confessed. "I think in certain parts of the world it was misinterpreted."
Well done, Mr. President, you've understood that bluster can backfire. Now how about sharing this insight with your ambassador to the United Nations?
John R. Bolton, the ambassador in question, has a rich history of losing friends and failing to influence people.
He was notorious, even before arriving at the United Nations last year, for having said that 10 stories of the U.N. headquarters could be demolished without much loss; he had described the United States as the sun around which lesser nations rotate -- mere "asteroids," he'd branded them. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Senate refused to confirm Bolton as U.N. ambassador. "Arrogant," "bullying," and "the poster child of what someone in the diplomatic corps should not be," Sen. George Voinovich called him.
Bush sent Bolton anyway, bypassing the Senate by appointing him during a congressional recess. It soon turned out that dismissing foreign ambassadors as asteroid dwellers was merely a warm-up. As soon as Bolton got to New York, he blew up the preparatory negotiations for a gathering of heads of state, insisting that the other 190 members of the world body immediately agree to hundreds of changes in the summit document.
If Bolton had picked a fight on a worthwhile issue, this might have been justified. But one of the chief aims of his edits was to eliminate all mention of the anti-poverty Millennium Development Goals, even though these targets for reducing child mortality and so on are inoffensive. After a week of Bolton-induced bureaucratic battles, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice weighed in, explaining that the administration actually had nothing against the development goals. When the summit convened, Bush himself had to declare during his speech that he supported the targets that his ambassador had repudiated.
Bolton's next triumph was to demand U.N. reform, or rather to pretend to do so. An effort to create a credible human rights council was underway, but Bolton skipped nearly all of the 30 or so negotiating sessions. Then, when the negotiators produced a blueprint for the new council, Bolton declared it unacceptable, leaving furious American allies to wonder why he hadn't weighed in earlier to secure a better outcome. "The job now is to get clarity on what the U.S. wants," the British ambassador said icily. But what Bolton really wanted was quite clear: to allow the negotiations to falter and then to condemn whatever they produced, throwing red meat to his U.N.-hating allies on the right of the Republican Party.
Next, Bolton blundered into U.N. management reform, an issue that may soon precipitate a crisis. The top U.N. officials, led by Secretary General Kofi Annan, had laid out a menu of radical changes, designed to eliminate useless conferences and reports and to move staff to departments that most needed them. Bolton added his own brand of bluster to this plan: If poor countries carried on resisting management reforms, rich countries would stop paying for the organization. The deadline for agreeing on reform is the end of this month, but no breakthrough is in sight. Officials are wondering what to do if U.N. checks start bouncing.
Not many reformers at the United Nations believe that the budget threat achieved anything. To the contrary, Bolton has so poisoned the atmosphere that the cause of management renewal is viewed by many developing countries as an American plot. And if Bolton carries through on his threat to cut off money for the United Nations, the United States will be more isolated than ever. Refusing to fund U.N. officials who are planning for a peacekeeping mission in Darfur is not a winning strategy.
Last week the U.N. deputy secretary general, a pro-American Briton named Mark Malloch Brown, went public with his Bolton frustrations. He pointed out that the United Nations serves many American objectives, from deploying peacekeepers to helping with Iraq's elections. Given this cooperation, the powers that be in Washington should stick up for the United Nations rather than threatening to blow it up. They should not be passive in the face of "unchecked U.N.-bashing and stereotyping."
This merely stated the obvious. If you doubt that U.N.-bashing and stereotyping goes on, ask yourself what gallery Bolton is playing to -- or check out the latest cover of the National Rifle Association magazine, which features a wolf with U.N. logos in its eyeballs. But Malloch Brown's speech didn't seem obvious to Bolton. "This is the worst mistake by a senior U.N. official that I have seen," he thundered in response. "Even though the target of the speech was the United States, the victim, I fear, will be the United Nations."
Which would suit Bolton and his allies perfectly. But it should not suit Bush, at least not now that he's grasped that bluster can backfire. Arriving at the U.N. summit last September, a different Bush greeted the secretary general and gestured at Bolton; "has the place blown up since he's been here?" he demanded, teasingly. Well, it's now time for the new Bush to acknowledge that Bolton's tactics aren't funny. The United States needs an ambassador who can work with the United Nations. Right now, it doesn't have one.
smallaby@washpost.com
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General Weirdness
Suspect's Dog Bites Him in Police Chase
Wednesday, 14 June 2006, 09:00 CDT
CEDAR CITY, Utah - A police pursuit ended when the suspect's dog, not happy about being bounced around in the car, bit its owner on the face.
Iron County sheriff's officers approached Nicholas T. Galanis, 47, of Salt Lake City to talk to him about some stolen property.
Galanis got in his car and fled with his dog.
The chase went southbound on Gold Springs Road, a windy, bumpy dirt road about five miles northwest of Modena, at around 5:38 p.m. Monday, said sheriff's detective Jody Edwards.
"Deputies could see the dog in the passenger seat getting slammed into the window," he said.
The dog, which is partly pit bull, "became so agitated that he bit his owner in the face," Edwards said. "And this is what ended the chase."
The bite removed part of Galanis' nose and he stopped.
Galanis was taken to Valley View Medical Center before being booked into Iron County Jail.
His dog was taken to the Enoch Animal Shelter.
Galanis was held for investigation of supplying false information to police, receiving/possession of stolen property and theft.
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Bird Goes on the Attack in Ohio
Tuesday, 13 June 2006, 18:00 CDT
PUT-IN-BAY, Ohio - Alfred Hitchcock might have been proud. Police thought Lake Erie island tourists were kidding when they claimed they had been attacked by a bird. But then, officers got pecked on when they went to check Friday night.
Police aren't sure about the bird's species, but said it was black with red spots. They think it may have been trying to protect one of its babies, which had fallen out of the nest.
Yesterday, the baby was no longer on the ground, and officers said there were no more reports of bird attacks.
Last year, joggers also said they'd been attacked by a bird. Police don't know if it was the same kind.
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Wyoming Woman Finds Strange Man in Bed
Monday, 12 June 2006, 21:00 CDT
SHERIDAN, Wyo. - A woman woke up over the weekend to find a man she didn't know climbing into her bed, according to police.
Eva Olson, 40, said she felt her bed move and heard the man say he wanted to talk to her, according to police.
Olson didn't know William O'Dell, 48, of Sheridan, but O'Dell allegedly told police he knew Olson because she was a bartender. He allegedly said he'd stopped by her house to visit.
Olson asked O'Dell to leave, then showed him out the door without incident.
Police said they found O'Dell at his home, smelling heavily of alcohol. He was jailed and charged with criminal entry.
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Nanny arrested in baby-shaking case sues hidden camera maker
copyright AP
14 June 06
A former nanny arrested after a hidden camera caught her appearing to shake a baby she was caring for is suing the camera system's manufacturer.
Charges were dropped against Claudia Muro because of questions about the accuracy of the camera in the 2003 incident involving the five-month-old infant in Florida. The footage was broadcast across the country.
In her lawsuit against Tyco Fire and Security, Muro claims distorted camera footage wrongfully led to her arrest. The suit seeks unspecified damages.
When they dismissed the charges last March, prosecutors said experts they'd consulted concluded the footage was not reliable because its tape was time-lapsed -- meaning the movements that appeared to be shaking might not have actually been as violent as they appeared.
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Jesus Christ Superman
CNN
June 14, 2006
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- First there were the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Now, for many Christian moviegoers comes another gospel.
As the hype machine shifts into high gear for the upcoming release of "Superman Returns," some are reading deeply into the film whose hero returns from a deathlike absence to play savior to the world.
"It is so on the nose that anyone who has not caught on that Superman is a Christ figure, you think, 'Who else could it be referring to?' " said Steve Skelton, who wrote a book examining parallels between Superman and Christ.
As one of society's most enduring pop-culture icons, Superman has often been observed as more than just a man in tights.
In his early 1930's comic-book incarnation, he was a hero of the New Deal, aiding the destitute and cleaning up America's slums, said Tom De Haven, author of a book about Superman's status as an American icon and a novel about the hero's high-school days.
By the 1950's, fears of postwar urban lawlessness had turned him into a tireless crime fighter, while his early television persona envisioned him as an idealized father figure, De Haven said.
More recently, Quentin Tarantino had the villain of "Kill Bill: Vol. 2" wax philosophical about the Man of Steel: "Clark Kent is how Superman views us... Clark Kent is Superman's critique on the whole human race."
Some have also seen the hero as a gay icon, forced to live a double life with his super-self in the closet. A recent edition of the gay magazine "The Advocate" even asked on its cover, "How gay is Superman?"
But the comparison to Jesus is one that's been made almost since the character's origin in 1938, said Skelton, author of "The Gospel According to the World's Greatest Superhero."
Many simply see the story of a hero sent to Earth by his father to serve mankind as having clear enough New Testament overtones. Others have taken the comparison even further, reading the "El" in Superman's original name "Kal-El" and that of his father "Jor-El" as the Hebrew word for "God," among other theological interpretations.
Rumors and mythology
"Superman Returns," which premieres June 28, has been drawing its own comparisons to biblical accounts, especially after the appearance of its trailer earlier this year.
The preview shows the hero with his eyes closed as the voice of his father -- Marlon Brando's, courtesy of 1978's "Superman" -- tells him he was sent to Earth because humans "lack the light to show the way."
"For this reason," continues the voice, "I have sent them you, my only son."
Online message boards and Web logs quickly latched onto the biblical resonance of those lines.
"The allusion to Jesus Christ could hardly be accidental," wrote Christian blogger Tom Gilson.
"Is this a new Superman for the new Evangelist red state America? Superman as Jesus?" asked one contributor to the Portland-based blog site Urban Honking.
The premise of the new Superman movie alone has fueled speculation that it's wearing its biblical comparisons on its long, tight sleeve. Superman, in the film, returns to Earth after a long absence, a narrative that's been likened to Jesus' death and resurrection.
Meanwhile, news reports that "Passion of the Christ" star James Caviezel was originally in the running for the lead role in "Superman Returns," which eventually went to Brandon Routh, convinced others that the film's makers were playing up the New Testament comparisons.
Moviegoers who enter the theater looking for Christian imagery are unlikely to be disappointed. At one point, Superman sustains a stab wound reminiscent of the spear jabbed in Christ's side by a Roman soldier. In another scene, Routh poses with his arms outstretched as though crucified.
'These allegories are part of how you're raised'
Not everybody welcomes the Superman-Jesus comparisons.
"It's a misrecognition," said Amy Pedersen, who is writing her doctoral thesis in art history at the University of California, Los Angeles, on superhero comic books.
Pedersen said Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who introduced Superman in 1938 in a comic book, were Jews who were inspired by the Old Testament story of Moses and the supernatural golem character from Jewish folklore. (Author Michael Chabon made much of these similarities in his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.")
The Christian allusions are recent innovations that compromise the integrity of the Superman myth, she said.
"This does not need to be a consistent cultural form from its beginning to its present, but something has to be maintained," Pedersen said.
"Superman Returns" director Bryan Singer said the notion of Superman as a messianic figure is simply another case of contemporary storytelling borrowing from ancient motifs.
Singer, who is Jewish, said his neighbors' Christianity played a powerful role in the community where he grew up.
"These allegories are part of how you're raised. They find their way into your work," he said. "They become ingrained in your storytelling, in the same way that the origin story of Superman is very much the story of Moses."
It's unlikely that studio executives, conscious of the size of the Christian audiences that were coaxed into theaters by the biblical echoes in "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," would discourage religious associations.
"The way in which the Christian population can get behind a movie that they can agree with is a huge push financially," said Skelton, who also distributes Bible-study kits that draw scriptural lessons from classic television episodes. "It's a smart move in terms of attracting an audience."
At the same time, Superman is fixed firmly enough in popular secular culture so that the religious accents are unlikely to alienate a mainstream audience, said Craig Detweiler, who directs the film-studies program at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena.
"Just like Jesus, in some ways (Superman) transcends parities and politics and can not be co-opted to serve the narrow interests of others," he said. "That could be one reason why studios aren't afraid to let Superman go that way, toward the religious."
"Superman Returns" is a Warner Bros. film. Warner Bros., like CNN, is a unit of Time Warner.
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press.
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The Big Blue Marble
Melting ice threatens sovereignty over Arctic waters, expert warns
Last Updated Wed, 14 Jun 2006 11:01:11 EDT
CBC News
Experts are urging the federal government to act quickly to enhance Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic before melting ice encourages more foreign vessels to use the Northwest Passage.
Some scientists predict that within 25 years, climate change could melt ice in Arctic waters, leaving them ice-free during summer months and thin enough to be kept open in the winter.
Ships travelling from Asia to Europe could trim 5,000 kilometres by taking the Northwest Passage, as opposed to the current route through the Panama Canal.
The United States doesn't recognize Canada's right to control who travels through the Northwest Passage. Washington believes many Arctic waterways are an international strait that any ship should be free to transit.
Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay said he's repeatedly raised the issue of Arctic sovereignty with American officials, including U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
"It's one of those long-standing issues that we always press. We will continue to make the case at every opportunity and every international gathering where it's a relevant point," said MacKay.
Michael Byers, a University of British Columbia professor, said Ottawa must do more to assert its control in the North.
Melting ice may encourage foreign vessels to frequent Arctic waters, bringing illegal immigrants or weapons into Canada, he said.
Byers criticized the federal government for failing to act on its promises to buy three armed polar ice breakers and to establish a deep-water port on Baffin Island.
"That's a serious shortcoming and it's not the fault of any of the people in the Armed Forces who do a wonderful job," said Byers. "It's the fault of governments who haven't taken the issue seriously for decades now."
MacKay said the government does plan to increase its presence in the Arctic, but added it is up to the minister of national defence.
"This government takes its sovereignty over the Arctic very seriously," said MacKay. "Canada's Arctic is Canada's Arctic. True north strong and free."
In 1985, the Arctic waterways made headlines when the U.S. sent the Polar Sea icebreaker through the Northwest Passage without notifying Canada or asking permission.
The ensuing political skirmish produced a Canada-U.S. agreement in which Washington promised to ask for Canadian consent in the future, and Ottawa promised to always give that permission.
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Earthquake Swarm Strikes Alaska
USGS
14 June 06
Update time = Wed Jun 14 18:40:55 UTC 2006
MAG UTC DATE-TIME LAT LON Region
2.5 2006/06/14 17:47:45 39.406 -123.292 NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
2.7 2006/06/14 17:35:59 35.538 -117.772 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
4.3 2006/06/14 17:25:05 50.951 176.507 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.1 2006/06/14 17:12:17 51.836 177.114 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
2.8 2006/06/14 17:00:40 59.469 -152.855 SOUTHERN ALASKA
2.7 2006/06/14 17:00:27 51.864 178.084 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.7 2006/06/14 16:38:28 51.875 178.570 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
2.9 2006/06/14 16:21:18 51.768 178.252 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
MAP 3.9 2006/06/14 16:05:33 51.936 177.106 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.3 2006/06/14 15:51:34 52.035 177.097 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.9 2006/06/14 15:40:32 51.660 177.936 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.3 2006/06/14 15:26:57 51.830 176.953 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.4 2006/06/14 15:15:51 51.825 176.791 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
MAP 3.3 2006/06/14 15:08:57 51.764 178.091 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
2.7 2006/06/14 14:53:43 51.868 178.246 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.1 2006/06/14 14:43:58 52.035 177.097 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
MAP 3.8 2006/06/14 14:24:55 51.830 176.953 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
4.6 2006/06/14 14:12:30 51.197 176.584 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.2 2006/06/14 13:51:26 51.830 176.953 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.5 2006/06/14 13:46:43 51.930 176.944 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.3 2006/06/14 13:38:54 51.751 177.607 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
4.1 2006/06/14 13:24:46 50.162 -173.376 ANDREANOF ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN IS., ALASKA
3.9 2006/06/14 13:20:02 51.631 176.970 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
2.8 2006/06/14 13:16:11 51.768 178.252 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
MAP 3.3 2006/06/14 13:03:18 51.875 178.570 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.5 2006/06/14 12:52:50 51.525 176.819 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.3 2006/06/14 12:52:15 35.941 -120.488 CENTRAL CALIFORNIA
3.4 2006/06/14 12:46:42 51.936 177.106 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.2 2006/06/14 12:37:13 51.864 178.084 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
MAP 2.8 2006/06/14 12:33:05 52.235 177.079 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
2.5 2006/06/14 12:24:56 51.846 177.437 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.6 2006/06/14 12:20:53 51.936 177.106 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.9 2006/06/14 12:03:01 51.936 177.106 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.6 2006/06/14 11:21:40 51.830 176.953 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.9 2006/06/14 11:17:13 51.860 177.923 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
MAP 3.4 2006/06/14 11:12:13 51.936 177.106 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.4 2006/06/14 11:10:46 51.930 176.944 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.4 2006/06/14 11:02:20 51.936 177.106 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.7 2006/06/14 10:40:12 51.930 176.944 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
4.3 2006/06/14 10:29:48 22.385 142.942 VOLCANO ISLANDS, JAPAN REGION
3.2 2006/06/14 10:28:20 51.886 175.811 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.5 2006/06/14 10:20:17 51.731 176.962 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.3 2006/06/14 10:02:01 51.830 176.953 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.6 2006/06/14 09:29:31 51.830 176.953 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
2.6 2006/06/14 09:20:21 51.768 178.252 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
2.7 2006/06/14 09:18:51 51.672 178.419 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
MAP 3.9 2006/06/14 08:42:56 51.830 176.953 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.7 2006/06/14 08:30:56 51.830 176.953 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
4.4 2006/06/14 08:23:15 51.936 177.106 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
4.6 2006/06/14 08:18:01 51.761 176.985 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.3 2006/06/14 08:05:40 51.930 176.944 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
2.6 2006/06/14 07:58:15 51.941 177.268 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
2.9 2006/06/14 07:36:29 51.772 178.414 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
4.7 2006/06/14 07:32:26 51.492 177.068 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
MAP 4.3 2006/06/14 07:30:21 51.936 177.106 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.6 2006/06/14 07:28:08 51.836 177.114 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.3 2006/06/14 07:25:51 59.825 -154.696 SOUTHERN ALASKA
5.2 2006/06/14 07:24:07 2.683 94.368 29.3 OFF THE WEST COAST OF NORTHERN SUMATRA
2.7 2006/06/14 07:20:18 52.035 177.097 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
4.0 2006/06/14 07:15:57 51.731 176.962 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
2006/06/14 07:06:16 51.687 176.742 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
4.4 2006/06/14 07:01:05 51.830 176.953 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.2 2006/06/14 07:00:12 51.864 178.084 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.1 2006/06/14 06:56:34 51.775 178.575 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
MAP 4.0 2006/06/14 06:51:32 51.830 176.953 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.4 2006/06/14 06:47:55 52.035 177.097 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.8 2006/06/14 06:38:26 51.936 177.106 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
4.8 2006/06/14 06:33:55 51.948 177.153 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
4.6 2006/06/14 06:32:36 51.865 177.614 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
4.4 2006/06/14 06:25:17 51.492 177.068 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.5 2006/06/14 06:21:11 52.030 176.935 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.5 2006/06/14 05:54:44 51.731 176.962 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.0 2006/06/14 05:48:21 51.772 178.414 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.1 2006/06/14 05:42:30 51.864 178.084 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.2 2006/06/14 05:33:37 51.936 177.106 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
4.8 2006/06/14 05:26:43 51.777 177.177 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
MAP 3.6 2006/06/14 05:18:05 52.035 177.097 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.7 2006/06/14 05:14:32 51.930 176.944 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.2 2006/06/14 05:10:02 51.775 178.575 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
6.1 2006/06/14 04:46:42 51.970 177.126 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
4.7 2006/06/14 04:35:05 51.822 176.908 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
4.7 2006/06/14 04:34:59 50.951 176.507 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
6.3 2006/06/14 04:18:46 51.893 177.121 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
3.3 2006/06/14 02:40:33 60.665 -151.506 KENAI PENINSULA, ALASKA
2.6 2006/06/14 01:11:19 53.270 -165.526 FOX ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
2.9 2006/06/14 00:59:22 46.197 -122.187 MOUNT ST. HELENS AREA, WASHINGTON
5.2 2006/06/14 00:14:34 5.542 94.535 57.5 NORTHERN SUMATRA, INDONESIA
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Asteroid-watchers worry about cosmic Katrina - Former astronaut presses campaign for global preparedness
By Leonard David
Senior space writer
6 May 06
LOS ANGELES - Natural events such as hurricanes, tsunamis and earthquakes rock this planet from time to time. But when Earth gets stoned by an asteroid, consider it akin to a Katrina from outer space.
When Hurricane Katrina slammed into the United States in August of last year, it became a deadly, destructive, and costly episode - one that has also become a metaphor for lack of government action, both pre- and post-strike.
At the current time there is no agency of the U.S. government - or of any other government in the world - that has the explicit responsibility to develop and demonstrate the technology necessary to protect the planet from collisions with near-Earth objects, or NEOs.
The U.S. Congress needs to be encouraged to take a step in demonstrating the ability to deflect a menacing NEO, says former NASA astronaut Russell Schweickart, chairman of the B612 Foundation. On Saturday he presented an update on dealing with troublesome asteroids here at the 25th International Space Development Conference.
Key capabilities
The goal of B612, a confab of scientists, technologists, astronomers, astronauts and other specialists, is to significantly alter the orbit of an asteroid in a controlled manner by 2015.
In detailing today's NEO situation, Schweickart said there are several givens:
* Earth is infrequently hit by asteroids that cross our orbit while circling the sun.
* The consequences of such impacts range from the equivalent of a 15-megaton explosion to a civilization-ending gigaton event.
* For the first time in the history of humankind, we have the technology to prevent such occurrences from happening in the future - if we are properly prepared.
"Remember, we're dealing here with a less frequent, but far more devastating Katrina ... a Katrina of the cosmos," Schweickart reported.
"NEOs happen so infrequently that even though they are orders of magnitude more devastating, people don't naturally make that match," he told Space.com, "but you don't want to be caught with your pants down."
Schweickart said there are key capabilities that will enable humanity to avoid devastating cosmic collisions: early warning; a demonstrated deflection capability; and an established international decision making process.
While some progress is being made, there remains significant work ahead in all these areas, Schweickart emphasized.
Sky-sweeping surveys
If the current pace of sky-sweeping surveys is extrapolated into the future, on the order of 10,000 NEOs with some risk of impact over the next 100 years are likely to be cataloged by 2018, Schweickart forecast. The chances are better than even that none of these 10,000 will actually hit Earth in those 100 years.
"The important fact, however, is that a substantial number of them will appear as though they may be headed for impact," Schweickart advised. Today, of the 104 currently on impact listings, "two have an elevated risk, and we are watching them closely," he said.
At present, the two asteroids on that "keep an eye on them" roster are 2004 VD17 and Apophis, formerly listed as 2004 MN4.
"Extrapolating to 2018, we may have as many as 200 in a similarly elevated attention category and of growing concern to the general public," Schweickart reported Saturday. "Therefore, it is certainly possible, if not likely, that in the time frame of the next 12 years we - the world - may well be in a position where we need to take action to ensure that we will be able to carry out a deflection mission if needed," he said.
The U.S. Congress amended the Space Act in 2005 to charge NASA with responsibility to "detect, track, catalog and characterize" NEOs wider than 460 feet (140 meters) in diameter. However, thus far Congress has come up short on actually assigning the responsibility to take action, should one of these objects be discovered headed for a collision, Schweickart pointed out.
There is a bit of good news forthcoming, Schweickart explained. Congress did require NASA to provide by the end of 2006 an analysis of possible alternatives that could be employed to divert an object on a likely collision course with Earth. In response to this congressional directive, NASA is about to announce a process for carrying out this mandate.
Global threat ... global response
Schweickart told the audience here that a third leg of the triad for protecting Earth from NEO impacts is probably the most challenging, albeit subtle.
"It is complicated by two related facts," he said. NEO impacts are a global threat, not a national one, and the only decision-making body representing, essentially, the whole planet is the United Nations - a body not known for timely, crisp decision making, he added.
Still, in this area, steps forward are being made.
The Association of Space Explorers - the professional organization of astronauts and cosmonauts - has formed a committee on NEOs that Schweickart chairs. Earlier this year, a technical presentation at a U.N. meeting in Vienna apprised them that this issue was coming at them.
While the United Nations has been brought the problem, Schweickart said, the Association of Space Explorers is committed to bringing them a solution. This solution will take the form of a draft U.N. treaty, or protocol, formulated in a series of workshops over the next two years.
"In these NEO Deflection Policy workshops we will gather together a dozen or so international experts in diplomacy, international law, insurance and risk management, as well as space expertise to identify and wrestle with these difficult international issues," Schweickart noted. "Our goal is to return to the U.N. in 2009 with a draft NEO Deflection Decision Protocol and present it to them for their consideration and deliberation."
Facing the challenge
In wrapping up his ISDC talk, Schweickart said the NEO challenge, in a sense, "is an entry test for humankind to join the cosmic community." He reasons that, if there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe "it is virtually certain that it has already faced this challenge to survival ... and passed it."
"Our choice is to face this infrequent but substantial cosmic test ... or pass into history, not as an incapable species like the dinosaurs, but as a fractious and self-serving creature with inadequate vision and commitment to continue its evolutionary development," Schweickart concluded.
Leonard David is senior space writer for Space.com and the former editor of Ad Astra, the official magazine of the National Space Society. The views of this article are the author's and do not reflect the policies of the National Space Society.
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Odds-n-Ends
US troops to lead major attack on Taliban
Declan Walsh in Qalat
Wednesday June 14, 2006
An American-led force of 11,000 troops will launch their biggest offensive against Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan since 2001 on Thursday, concentrating their firepower on an area under British control.
British, American, Canadian and Afghan troops will sweep across militant strongholds in four southern provinces rocked by a wave of Taliban violence in recent months, US officials said.
The ambitious offensive, named Operation Mountain Thrust, aims to cripple the strengthening insurgency before Nato takes command of southern Afghanistan next month.
The heaviest combat is expected in the lawless mountains spanning western Uruzgan province and north-eastern Helmand, where 3,300 British troops are deploying and Britain suffered its first combat fatality last weekend.
Less intensive operations will target pockets of Kandahar and Zabul provinces. US military officials announcing the operation this morning said reconstruction activities would follow.
"This is not just about killing or capturing extremists," US spokesman Tom Collins told reporters in Kabul. "We are going to go into these areas, take out the security threat and establish conditions where government forces, government institutions [and] humanitarian organisations can move in … and begin the real work that needs to be done."
The British troops will fight alongside 2,300 Americans, 2,200 Canadians and about 3,500 Afghans.
On Wednesday, the US military announced that an American soldier had been killed and two others wounded when their patrol was ambushed in Sangin district of Helmand. Another coalition soldier, whose nationality was not disclosed, died in eastern Kunar province.
Dilbar Jan Arman, the governor of Zabul, one of the four targeted provinces, said US forces and local leaders had been planning the operation for the past two months. "We will search for the Taliban wherever they are. We seek to disrupt their underground networks. We hope it will be a success," he told the Guardian in the provincial capital, Qalat.
As he spoke, US Black Hawk helicopters circled the town centre and an American armoured convoy rumbled through the streets, but there were no other signs of military activity.
The 11,000-strong multinational operation is the broadest and most ambitious strike against the Taliban since 2001. The previous largest offensive involved 2,500 American troops and was confined to Kunar province.
Benjamin Freakley, the US major general commanding operations in Afghanistan, said the troops would attack Taliban safe havens across the four provinces simultaneously.
"They'll be in one area, they'll move out of that area, they'll conduct an attack in another area, then move back to a safe haven," he told the Associated Press. "This is our approach to put simultaneous pressure on the enemy's networks, to cause their leaders to make mistakes, and to attack those leaders."
A dramatic surge in fighting since mid-May has killed about 550 people, according to US and Afghan military figures. The Taliban has suffered the vast majority of casualties under US and British bombs; at least 11 coalition soldiers have also died.
Information about civilian deaths is notoriously difficult to obtain due to the inaccessibility of battle sites, but local human rights groups have reported dozens of casualties.
Afghan officials in Qalat welcomed the coming offensive against the Taliban, who reportedly killed at least three people in a recent ambush on a police checkpoint. But many officials also blamed Pakistan for allowing the insurgents to shelter, train and rearm in the lawless tribal areas that run along the Afghan border.
"The Taliban is a disease, like typhoid," said Muhammad Hanif, Zabul's director of education. "And the ISI [Pakistan's intelligence agency] is the germ that causes it."
Pakistani officials have repeatedly and angrily denied any collusion with the Taliban, saying it is impossible to control the 900-mile, largely unpatrolled border.
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US need not fear China, says analyst
Lorna Edwards
June 15, 2006
CHINA'S rapid rise will not pose a threat to the US as the dominant regional power because Asian countries trust each other less than they trust America.
So said Dr Robert Sutter, a former US official and prominent foreign policy analyst from Georgetown University, in Melbourne yesterday. And panic in Washington over the so-called "China rising" at the expense of the US was a baseless fear whipped up by interest groups.
Dr Sutter said one of the main reasons the US would remain a strong security presence in Asia was that Asian governments were wary of each other. "The countries do not trust each other," he said in a speech organised by the Australian-American Association and the Australian Institute of International Affairs.
"At the end of the day, the United States does not want anybody's territory."
He said US lobby groups were promoting a panic over issues such as the trade deficit and intellectual property rights. But the Bush Administration would be unlikely to move towards protectionism. "I don't think there will be a big change in policy as big business is intertwined with China," he said.
The veteran foreign policy analyst who specialises in Asian affairs said concern over China's growing power in Asia had some parallels with the unsubstantiated fears of Japanese dominance in the 1980s and the Soviet Union years earlier.
China was now attempting to allay foreign concerns about its growth and had steered away from taking any significant risks in diplomacy.
"They don't do anything hard," he said, with the exceptions of the flashpoint issues of Taiwan, the Dalai Lama, Falun Gong and more recently Japan.
Dr Sutter advised Australia to steer the middle course in its relationship with China.
"Australia has interests and they should be laid out," he said. "Australia ... doesn't want trouble over the Taiwan issue."
Dr Sutter's address was part of "The World According To Bush" series sponsored by The Age
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Chinese activist paralysed in attack
Mary-Anne Toy, Beijing
June 15, 2006
AN OUTSPOKEN Chinese activist who gave an interview on German television critical of the Three Gorges dam has been left paralysed after leaving a police interrogation over his contacts with foreign media.
ARD, the joint organisation of Germany's public broadcasting agencies, has formally complained to the Chinese Government after Fu Xiancai was attacked from behind as he was walking home from the police station.
Zigui county police had called Mr Fu in to discuss the interview broadcast by German public television station Das Erste last month in which Mr Fu talked about being threatened and beaten for complaining about the Government's failure to pay compensation for the forced relocation of people displaced by the huge dam.
In a letter to China's ambassador to Germany, ARD chairman Jobst Plog said: "It is beyond doubt that the attack was an attack of revenge, among other things, for his comment on German television." Professor Plog called on the Chinese Government to ensure that Mr Fu receives proper medical treatment and is protected from any more violence and intimidation, saying such incidents threatened to mar international coverage of the 2008 Olympics.
Professor Plog's letter, released publicly yesterday, said Mr Fu was under police surveillance in hospital in Yichang city but his family was barred from contacting him. German media have reported that the German Foreign Ministry has demanded an explanation from the Chinese Government through its Beijing embassy.
Human Rights in China said the attack highlights the risks that activists faced when they spoke to the media. The group said Mr Fu was struck from behind, the blow breaking his neck and leaving him paralysed from the neck down but able to speak.
There has been a disturbing rise in the use of hired thugs to intimidate activists. This year four men were executed after being convicted of carrying out an attack on six villagers in Hebei province who had been protesting against the seizure of their land for a power plant. The people who hired them have not been arrested.
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XMM-Newton spots the greatest of great balls of fire
European Space Agency
12 June 06
Thanks to data from ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray satellite, a team of international scientists found a comet-like ball of gas over a thousand million times the mass of the sun hurling through a distant galaxy cluster over 750 kilometres per second.
This colossal 'ball of fire' is by far the largest object of this kind ever identified.
The gas ball is about three million light years across, or about five thousand million times the size of our solar system. It appears from our perspective as a circular X-ray glow with a comet-like tail nearly half the size of the moon.
"The size and velocity of this gas ball is truly fantastic," said Dr Alexis Finoguenov, adjunct assistant professor of physics in the Department of Physics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), and an associated scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Extra-Terrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany. "This is likely a massive building block being delivered to one of the largest assembly of galaxies we know."
The gas ball is in a galaxy cluster called Abell 3266, millions of light years from Earth, thus posing absolutely no danger to our solar system. Abell 3266 contains hundreds of galaxies and great amounts of hot gas that is nearly a hundred million degrees. Both the cluster gas and the giant gas ball are held together by the gravitational attraction of unseen dark matter.
"What interests astronomers is not just the size of the gas ball but the role it plays in the formation and evolution of structure in the universe," said Dr Francesco Miniati, who worked on this data at UMBC while visiting from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland.
Abell cluster 3266 is part of the Horologium-Reticulum super-cluster and is one of the most massive galaxy clusters in the southern sky. It is still actively growing in size, as indicated by the gas ball, and will become one of the largest mass concentrations in the nearby universe.
Using XMM-Newton data, the science team produced an entropy map (entropy is a thermodynamical property that provides a measure of disorder). The map allows for the separation of the cold and dense gas of the comet from the hotter and more rarefied gas of the cluster. This is based on X-ray spectra. The data show with remarkable detail the process of gas being stripped from the comet's core and forming a large tail containing lumps of colder and denser gas. The researchers estimate that a sun's worth of mass is lost every hour.
"In Abell 3266 we are seeing structure formation in action," said Prof. Mark Henriksen (UMBC), co-author of the results. "Dark matter is the gravitational glue holding the gas ball together. But as it races through the galaxy cluster, a tug-of-war ensues where the galaxy cluster eventually wins, stripping off and dispersing gas that perhaps one day will seed star and galaxy growth within the cluster."
Note to editors
The findings, resulting from a research effort led by the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, appear in the 1 June 2006 issue of the Astrophysical Journal (volume 643, page 790).
The European Space Agency's XMM-Newton X-ray mission was launched in December 1999. With its powerful mirrors, it is helping to solve many mysteries about the most energetic phenomena taking place in the Universe.
For more information
Alexis Finoguenov, UMBC Dept. of Physics (University of Maryland, Baltimore County), and Max Planck Institute for Extra-Terrestrial Physics (Garching, Germany)
E-mail: alexis @ mpe.mpg.de
Mark Henriksen, UMBC Dept. of Physics (University of Maryland, Baltimore County)
E-mail: henrikse @ umbc.edu
Norbert Schartel, ESA XMM-Newton Project Scientist
E-mail: norbert.schartel @ sciops.esa.int
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