- Signs of the Times for Thu, 29 Jun 2006 -


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Editorial: Racism, Not Defence, At the Heart Of Israeli Politics

Joe Quinn
Signs of the Times
29/06/2006

Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert came out and publicly stated something that every unbiased observer of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has privately known for many years: that, to the Israeli oligarchs, the life of an Israeli citizen is "more important" than that of a Palestinian.

Speaking of the recent mass murders by the Israeli army of Palestinian civilians in Gaza (which were ostensibly to stop the firing of impotent qassam rockets at the Israeli town of Sderot by the Palestinian resistance ) Olmert said: "I am deeply sorry for the residents of Gaza, but the lives, security and well-being of the residents of Sderot is even more important."

Of course, Olmert's comment, and the deep-seated racism at the heart of Israeli politics that it appears to belie, can possibly be rationalised with the claim that it is not unreasonable that an Israeli PM would be more concerned about the lives of Israeli citizens than those of the Palestinian 'enemy'. After all, this is "war", is it not? Well, yes and no. Yes, if your definition of "war" is:

Israel has done all of this, and much more

Of course, you will disagree that such can be termed a "war" if you are aware of these same details rather than the propaganda spread by Israeli and American government mouthpieces in the mainstream media. For example, when stating his belief that Israeli citizens were inherently more worthy than their Palestinian brothers and sisters (genetically speaking in large part) Olmert made the comparison between the people of Gaza and the inhabitants of the Israeli town of Sderot who, as stated, have been making a lot of noise about their suffering from qassam rockets fired by the palestinian resistance. The important details, which are as usual ignored by the mainstream press are that, in the 9 day period from June 14th - June 23rd this year, 14 innocent Palestinian civilians were murdered by the IDF as part of the effort to stop the firing of rockets at Sderot. Yet in the past 5 years, just 5 Israeli citizens have been killed by such rockets, despite the fact that dozens have been fired.

Derived from all of this is the obvious fact that, if the Israeli government was truly only concerned with protecting Israeli citizens and bore no visceral, racist hatred towards Palestinians, then we would surely be much further along the road to a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But it is hard to convince anyone that your primary goal is defence when:

And all of this when:

Yet the Israeli government does a very good job of convincing the whole world that it is the victim in the conflict. How can this be? Israeli control of the press? Could that ubiquitous "conspiracy theory" actually be closer to a conspiracy fact? I don't really care, all I want is for someone to explain to me how, in a situation where there is massive evidence that 1.4 million completely isolated Palestinian civilians in the Gaza strip are being systematically murdered and starved by the state of Israel with its shiny 21st century military and all the tax dollars and support America can muster, yet somehow the entire world believes that those 1.4 million dispossessed are "evil terrorists" and "only have themselves to blame".

Somebody, please tell me how it comes to pass, if not by control of the mainstream press, and very significant control at that.

In fact, save yourself the bother, here's how it happened:

9 Israeli children’s deaths were reported in the headlines or first paragraphs of AP articles on the Israel/Palestine conflict in 2004, when 8 had actually occurred.

During the same period only 27 out of 179 Palestinian children’s deaths were reported. Additionally, Palestinian children made up a disproportionately large number of Palestinian deaths in general. Children’s deaths accounted for 21.8% of the Palestinians killed, while children’s deaths accounted for only 7.4% of Israelis killed during this period. 22 times more Palestinian children were killed than Israeli children.

AP reported on 113% of Israeli children’s deaths in headlines or first paragraphs, while reporting on only 15% of Palestinian children’s deaths. That is, Israeli children's deaths were reported at a rate 7.5 times greater than Palestinian children’s deaths.

You might want to consider this one also, and realise that, if the BBC "favors Israel", then American networks are positively "in love" with Israel:
BBC news 'favours Israel' at expense of Palestinian view

Dan Sabbagh,
Media Editor BBC News
May 3rd 2006

The BBC’S coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict implicitly favours the Israeli side, a study for the BBC Governors has concluded.

Deaths of Israelis received greater coverage than Palestinian fatalities, while Israelis received more airtime on news and current affairs programmes. The references to “identifiable shortcomings” surprised BBC News executives, who are more used to accusations that their coverage is routinely anti-Israel. [...]

Of course, the questions left unanswered are, "why" and "how".
Gaza power station destroyed by Israeli Air Force
In any case, within a few days of Olmert's remarks about his dear Palestinian neighbors, it was Olmert himself who clarified the situation by way of his response to the capture by the Palestinian resistance of a single Israeli soldier. As most readers are aware, on the morning of Sunday June 25th, Palestinian resistance fighters launched a legitimate attack on an Israeli army check point on the southern border of the Gaza strip. Enshrined in article four of the third Geneva convention is the right of a people to physically resist the invasion and occupation of their land by a foreign power. Nowhere in the world do we find a clearer example of unjust and illegal occupation and oppression of a land and its people than in the Israeli annexation and occupation of Palestine. Such IDF check points are an integral part of the Israeli military apparatus that is being used to terrorize and oppress the Palestinian people in the Gaza strip including the denial of basic provisions like food and water and as such are very obvious military targets. The Palestinian attack left 2 IDF soldiers dead with one, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, taken prisoner. Three Palestinian resistance fighters were also killed.

The Palestinians who are holding Cpl. Shalit have made it clear that they are doing so in an attempt to negotiate a prisoner exchange. Israel is currently detainng, or rather interning, thousands of Palestinians, many of them innocent civilians. Among them are women and small children. Indeed, the three militant groups who claimed responsibility for the capture of Cpl. Shalit have stated that they would release him in return for the release of Palestinian women and under-18s held in Israeli jails. Sounds like a reasonable offer, right? Well, hold on to your hats, because this one is really gonna shock you: Israel refused! Yes indeed, falling back on the old "we don't deal with terrorists" schtick, Olmert stated that there would be no negotiations - either Shalit is handed over, or the residents of the Gaza strip would suffer the dire consequences. Now, I know what you are thinking: Israeli politicians and military advisors don't want their precious soldier back, that they want to use him as an excuse to kill more Palestinians and maybe wage war on Syria. Heck, you might even be thinking that the Israeli military and government actually knew that an attack of this nature was planned, and allowed it to happen. To which I can only say: eh...yep, that's seems to be the measure of it, but please, be careful about using logic and critical thinking, it might get you in trouble.

The initial response by the Israeli government to the capture of Cpl. Shalit was to escalate the standoff and bomb the main power station and several bridges (two days ago) in Gaza, cutting off power and water to most of the 1.4 million people living there. Palestinian workers have said it may take up to 6 months to repair. No power, no water, for 6 months. But before you decide on the appropriateness or otherwise of such an 'opening salvo' that punished 1.4 million people in one go, including 700,000 children under 15 years of age, let me just update you on the conditions, imposed by Israel, in which Gazans were living even before this latest aggression

For close to 60 years, through its original and continuing theft and occupation of Palestinian land, the Israeli government has been in flagrant violation of international law. Repeatedly over that time, the Israeli army has, and continues to engage in what are clearly crimes against humanity in its attempts to utterly extinguish any form of Palestinian resistance and therefore the inherent right of the Palestinian people to oppose Israeli government barbarism and murder.

The forced migration and ethnic-cleansing of Palestinian civilians from their homes and property in 1948, referred to as the Nakba of Palestine, led to the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to neighboring countries and various countries around the globe. The State of Israel was established on Palestinian towns and villages that had been cleansed of their original inhabitants. Palestinian civilians were scattered and Palestinian refugees came to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Syria. Most of these refugees continue to live in refugee camps, including 8 camps in the Gaza Strip. These refugees lost their property, land, homes and livelihoods and were therefore subjected to a state of poverty, deprivation and exposure.

- 1967 constituted a continuation of the sequence of poverty and deprivation for Palestinians. IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) occupied the Gaza Strip and West Bank. This occupation was accompanied by uprooting of more Palestinians and the creation of more refugees. As a result, the state of poverty and deprivation was exacerbated.

- IDF imposed a number of policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including the annexation of Jerusalem. These policies included the issuing of a series of military orders that facilitated the confiscation of hundreds of thousands of dunums of Palestinian land and control of Palestinian resources, particularly water resources. These policies ensured Israeli control over the consumer and production sectors of the Palestinian economy, making it a market for Israeli products and a source of cheap labor. In addition, a heavy tax system was imposed, which led to a decrease in the income of Palestinians.

- The living standards of Palestinians decreased at the end of 1987 after the eruption of the popular uprising (Intifada) in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This led to an increase in poverty among civilians. IDF imposed restrictions on Palestinian labor in the Israeli market, resulting in the loss of work for tens of thousands of laborers, who now joined in the ranks of the unemployed.

- In 1991, living standards in the Occupied Palestinian Territories deteriorated further due to outbreak of the Second Gulf War. A large number of Palestinians lost work in the region as a result. Many families depended on money transfers from expatriates, particularly those working in the Gulf states (Iraq). In addition, monetary transfers from the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) to the West Bank and Gaza Strip decreased due to the loss of funding from Gulf states.

- The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) was established in 1994 after the signing of the Oslo accords between the PLO and the government of Israel. The accords were based on the Declaration of Principles signed in Washington in 1993. Palestinians were soon disappointed, however, when the economic prosperity expected from the peace agreement was not achieved, especially in light of international promises to establish a developed Palestinian economy. Contrary to promises made, IDF continued to strengthen its control over Palestinian natural resources, as well as control over all border crossings linking the Occupied Palestinian Territories to the outside world or to Israel, and control of the movement of goods and individuals.

- In 1996, IDF introduced policies of comprehensive closure and siege of Palestinian territory. IDF isolated the West Bank and Jerusalem from the Gaza Strip, depriving Palestinians of geographical contiguity. In addition, IDF prevented thousands of Palestinian laborers from reaching their work places in Israel, resulting in the increase of unemployment rates. The living standards of tens of thousands of Palestinian families deteriorated and poverty rates increased.

- On 29 September 2000, the "Al-Aqsa Intifada" erupted. Since then, IDF have imposed a comprehensive closure on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, which has led to a halting of economic exchange and which has paralyzed economic and production sectors. More than 120,000 Palestinian laborers from the Occupied Palestinian Territories were prevented from reaching their workplaces inside Israel as a result of closure. In addition, thousands of Palestinians employed in the local market became unemployed due to the closure of workshops and factories, which were affected by the closure policy or were damaged/ destroyed by IDF. Unemployment rates reached unprecedented levels, which further exacerbated the poverty problem in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

- From September 2000 to the end of 2005, the number of Palestinian civilians killed by IDF and Israeli settlers reached 2,936, including 651 children and 106 women. Tens of thousands of Palestinians were injured. The injured included 8,662 injured people from the Gaza Strip, including hundreds who now suffer from permanent disabilities.

- IDF carried out extensive destruction of Palestinian property. This destruction included the bulldozing of agricultural land, demolition of agricultural and industrial establishments, as well as destruction of infrastructure. PCHR documented the bulldozing and uprooting of over 31,699 dunums of agricultural land in the Gaza Strip, comprising approximately 20% of the agricultural land in the Strip.

- IDF actions and the comprehensive closure affected the living standards of Palestinian families. Unemployment reached unprecedented levels, resulting in raised poverty rates. The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) indicates that the percentage of Palestinian families living under the poverty line increased to more than 64% from the beginning of Al-Aqsa Intifada to April 2001, meaning that over two million Palestinians were living under the poverty line. The geographical distribution of these impoverished Palestinians was 55.7% in the West Bank and 81.4% in the Gaza Strip.[2]

- The Special UN Rapporteur on the Right to Food in the Occupied Palestinian Territories classified families living on brink of a humanitarian disaster. He indicated that the main reason behind this situation was the strict security procedures imposed by IDF on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, since the outbreak of Al-Aqsa Intifada on 29 September 2000. The Rapporteur indicated that acute malnutrition in the Gaza Strip was on the same scale as that seen in poor countries of the Southern Sahara Given the fertile nature of Palestinian land, such comparisons were startling.

More than 22% of Palestinian children under the age of 5 suffer from malnutrition, including 9.3% suffering from acute malnutrition, 13.2% suffering from chronic mal-nutrition and 15.6% suffering from acute anemia. It is expected that this will lead to long-term negative effects on the physical and cognitive development of many of these children. More than half of Palestinian families eat one meal a day only. Food consumption in Palestinian families dropped by 25-30% per person, especially protein intake. The number of Palestinians living under extreme poverty multiplied threefold since the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Intifada.

- PCBS also indicates that the percentage of families that face extreme difficulties in obtaining healthcare for children during the Intifada is 41%, 32.1% in the Gaza Strip and 44.6% in the West Bank. Anemic children in the 6-59 months age group, 41.6% face extreme difficulties in obtaining healthcare.

- International organizations, including humanitarian organizations working in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, foresee catastrophic humanitarian effects in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in general and the Gaza Strip in particular. World Bank estimates indicate that unemployment is expected to rise to 40% in 2006 and to 47% by 2008. The economic and social situation will be more acute in the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank, where unemployment and poverty rates are high and work is dependent on the PNA civilian and security branches. Some organizations estimate that unemployment in the Gaza Strip will reach 60%. Other estimates point to poverty rates in the Occupied Palestinian Territories rising to 67% in 2006 and to 74% by 2008.

- International organization data indicate that the policy of closure imposed by the Israeli government on the Occupied Palestinian Territories has led to the loss of nearly two-thirds of the international aid donated to Palestinians since the establishment of the PNA.

Israeli soldiers pray before entering Gaza

At present, having cut off electricity and water to a people already suffering terribly and who possess no effective means of defending their lives or the lives of their children, the Israeli military has begun shelling the Gaza strip. Palestinians have fled the areas being occupied by the Israeli military which is poised to launch a wholesale invasion of Gaza, during which, we can be sure, many Palestinians will be killed as "collateral damage" for which Mr Olmert will undoubtedly shed crocodile tears. At the same time, Olmert's government is apparently seeking to escalate the matter by ordering Israeli (American-financed) jets to overfly the home of Syrian President Assad in an act of unmitigated belligerence which, coincidentally occured just a few hours after U.S. ambassador to Israel, Richard Jones, stated that the problem behind the Israeli hostage crisis is in Syria, at the home of Hamas's exiled political supremo Khaled Meshaal, who Israel and America claim is being sheltered by the Syrians. The Syrians, for their part, activated their air defences and claim to have forced the Israeli jets to flee.

But before you start to think that there is more to this than meets the eye, I would like to remind you that the Israeli government would like to remind you that all of this is about one thing and one thing only - bringing a poor Israeli boy home to his parents. In saying this, I am not dismissing the life or plight of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, but as a soldier, he knew the risks involved, however small, in involving himself in the maintenance of the brutal oppression of the Palestinian people. In "war", however inappropriate that term is for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there are soldiers and there are civilians. What Cpl. Shalit probably had not bargained for however, was that his life would be used by Israeli politicians in an opportunistic attempt to settle their regional and 'internal' problems once and for all.

What I want you to ask yourself is what the details of this conflict, and the current escalation over the capture of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, say about the value that Israeli politicians assign to the lives of Palestinian civilians, simply as a people, and what, if any, parallels with events in Europe from 1939-1945 come to mind.

I am also waiting on someone to explain to me what mechanism exists to ensure that these details are systematically denied to the international community, and how Israel is promoted in the mainstream press as the 'victim'. Before you decide, consider a relevant recent news story that you surely also somehow missed. It concerns Dana Olmert, the daughter of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who created a stir recently when she joined 200 demonstrators outside the Tel Aviv home of Dan Halutz, the Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, to protest the murder of those 14 Palestinian civilian adults and children who were accidentally murdered by the IDF as they went about their job of "fighting terrorism".

As an interesting aside on Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, Dan Halutz; in August 2002, he ordered the Israeli airforce to drop a one tonne bomb on an occupied apartment block in Gaza where, he claimed, a Hamas member was living. The Hamas leader was killed, along with 14 innocent civilians. When hearing of this "collateral damage", Halutz told his top gun crew:

"Guys, you can sleep well at night. I also sleep well, by the way. You aren't the ones who choose the targets, and you were not the ones who chose the target in this particular case. You are not responsible for the contents of the target. Your execution was perfect. Superb. And I repeat again: There is no problem here that concerns you. You did exactly what you were instructed to do. You did not deviate from that by so much as a millimeter to the right or to the left. And anyone who has a problem with that is invited to see me."
When questioned by a reporter about the morality of the strike and about the feelings of a pilot when he drops a bomb, Halutz stated:
"That is not a legitimate question and it is not asked. But if you nevertheless want to know what I feel when I release a bomb, I will tell you: I feel a light bump to the plane as a result of the bomb's release. A second later it's gone, and that's all. That is what I feel."

There you have it then. To the Israeli oligarchs, the death of Palestinian civilians is "superb", and they feel nothing when they kill women and children. What more can I say - either someone does something about these sick pyschopaths, or they, and their kind in Washington and around the world, will destroy us all.
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Editorial: Portraits of Palestinian Resistance

Rima Merriman
8 June 2006
Electronic Intifada

Rima Merriman, a Palestinian American living in Ramallah, wrote this series, "Portraits of Palestinian Resistance", telling the stories of the four Palestinians killed and one of the 57 wounded in Ramallah on 24 May 2006, as they struggled to protect a Palestinian activist and political prisoner from an Israeli undercover unit.


Palestinian men at Alsa'a Square, a few hundred yards from Al Manarah Circle. (Al-Quds Newspaper)

Palestinian resistance to the occupation comes in many shapes and forms, some of which involves armed resistance undertaken by organized groups with various ideologies. These groups are composed of barely trained young men who pit their meager and crude resources against one of the best trained and best equipped military body in the world, the Israeli Occupation Forces. Of the 76 Israeli soldiers who died in 2005, only six were killed as a result of Palestinian attacks. The rest died of illness or accidents. Thirty of them committed suicide.

The imbalance in the resources between the two sides of the conflict predictably yields a steady mowing down on the part of the Israelis of one young Palestinian martyr after another. Most Palestinian deaths, however, are of civilians (and children) simply going about their daily lives, getting caught up in Israeli ground and air attacks, Israeli indiscriminate fire and Israeli raids.

Israel's control of and entrenchment in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, its continual attempts to stamp out Palestinian resistance to the occupation at any cost, relies heavily on intelligence gathered by Shabak, the 5,000-strong Internal General Security Service of Israel, whose motto is "Defender who shall not be seen".

Lu'lu'a Building, which houses the Internet Café on the sixth floor. (Rima Merriman)

With a cadre of well-trained, Arabic-speaking Israeli informants who are indistinguishable physically from the Palestinian population, Shabak has little problem gathering intelligence on a people whose every movement is regulated by hundreds of check points and by total Israeli control on their borders. These infiltrators prey on Arab innate hospitality and friendliness. The Palestinians call them "musta'ribeen", i.e., "those who appear to be Arabs". Palestinians are not surprised when someone, somewhere comes up to them and says: Got you!

The interior of the Internet Café. (Rima Merriman)

On May 24th at about 2:30 in the afternoon, three musta'ribeen walked into the Al Karmi Internet Café on the sixth floor of the Lu'lu'a (meaning "pearl") building on Al Manara Circle in downtown Ramallah. They went up to the snack bar and ordered juice and then coffee. Their quarry, Mohammad Hamed Al Shobaki, leader of Islamic Jihad in Qalqilya, was at one of the computers of the Café.

In the meantime, a white van with tinted windows and a Palestinian license plate came barreling down the street against traffic, parked at the entrance of the building and disgorged 10-15 Israeli soldiers in full gear, four of whom had on black clothes and black caps. They stormed up the stairs and into the Café, herded everybody into a corner and arrested Al Shobaki. They also "arrested" the three musta'ribeen and covered all four with the black garb.

Palestinian man trying to prevent Israeli Jeeps from getting to Al Manarah Circle. (Al-Quds Newspaper)

The outcry on the street was immediate and spontaneous. Palestinian youth who were in the area started gathering stones and rocks and whatever else they could get their hands on. Someone drove the white van away and was stopped by a hail of stones. The van was promptly set on fire, as the driver, shouting that he was a Palestinian, jumped out.

Palestinian men running towards Lu'lu'a Building. (Al-Quds Newspaper)

Soon, Israeli reinforcements arrived on the scene, though not without being challenged on the way by crowds of angry Palestinian youth, who tried to block their passage. A handful of young Palestinian men who had weapons used them in the attempt. To get their quarry and retreat, it took the Israelis more than two hours, fifteen Israeli armored vehicles, two helicopters and an arsenal of weapons that included tear gas, sound bombs, rubber and specifically designed live bullets that explode inside the victim's body causing severe harm and tissue damage (called dom-dom bullets). Four young Palestinians were shot dead and scores were wounded. Israeli live fire was reported to be indiscriminate.

Rocks, glass bottles and stones by the Lu'lu'ah Building (Al-Quds Newspaper)

For the Israelis, it all must have seemed like a minor inconvenience, easily brushed off, with no loss of life on their well-armored parts. The Palestinian security forces, who are hugely out gunned (they are allowed nominal amounts of ammunition) and outnumbered by the Israeli forces, understand in military fashion the terrible consequences of any engagement they might choose to conduct with their occupiers. Their orders are always to withdraw from any confrontation.

But for the young men who spontaneously rushed to defend Palestinian freedom on May 24th, there was no question of looking on helplessly as the Israelis marched into their town in broad daylight to pluck off one of their leaders. The incident was a battle that showed off their mettle, the battle, as they are now calling it, of endurance and defiance.

Ja'far Khaled Betilla, one of the martyrs. (Al-Quds Newspaper)

Already, the events are slipping into legend, the courage and numbers of the participants expanding with every telling. The men and boys proudly recall how fearlessly they fought, what damage they inflicted. They admire the courage of their fallen comrades whom they commemorate with posters and slogans that convey the spirit of their resistance: "The National Liberation Movement 'Fateh' does not forget the blood of its men. Tomorrow, giant-like men will avenge me." So says the legend on Milad Atallah Abu Al Arayes's commemoration poster. He is one of the four young Palestinian men who lost their lives at Al Manarah on May 24th.

[NEXT...]


Rima Merriman is a Palestinian-American living in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

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Editorial: Dirty Secrets of the Temple

by Stephen Lendman

Years ago I read William Greider's excellent book published in 1987 on how the US Federal Reserve System works. It was detailed and explicit and makes wonderful and informative reading, except for the solution he suggests to a huge problem. His was far too timid. This article proposes a much different one. Greider called his book Secrets of the Temple with a sub-title: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country. A better sub-title might have been how the Fed (and other key central bankers) runs the world. This article attempts to summarize what it does, how it does it, for whose benefit and at whose expense. For those who don't know, prepare for some stunning information and commentary.

Let's be clear at the outset. The US Federal Reserve, Bank of England, Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank (for the 12 European countries that adopted the single euro currency in 1999) are institutions with enormous power far beyond what most people everywhere can imagine. These most dominant of all central banks, as well as most others, have a powerful influence on the financial conditions in virtually all countries including their own, of course, in an increasingly borderless financial world where a significant economic event in one nation can affect most others for better or worse.

One other powerful bank is also part of today's financial world. It needs mentioning because of its importance, even though it requires a separate article to explain how it works more fully. It's the secretive, inviolable and accountable to no one Bank of International Settlements (BIS) founded in 1930 and based in Basle, Switzerland. This bank most people never heard of is the central banker to its member central banks - a sort of banking "boss of bosses" equivalent to what apparently exists in the shadowy world of Mafia dons. Like most other central banks, including the Federal Reserve (explained below), it's privately owned by its members.

It's believed by some academicians and others who've studied the BIS that the ruling elite of financial capitalism established this bank of banks to be the apex of power to exercise authority over a world financial system owned and controlled by them. It's thought their plan was to use this bank to dominate the political system of every country and control the world economy in a feudalistic fashion. In a word, the thinking goes that these super-elite want to rule the world by controlling its money, and they set up this supranational all-powerful bank of banks to do it. As important as that is, that discussion remains for another time as the intent of this article is to focus solely on the US Federal Reserve.

The dominant central banks and BIS, together with most others, wield their influence in cartel-like alliance with each other to assure they all benefit more than they otherwise would without such a cozy arrangement. With their immense power it's no play on words to say these financial institutions do indeed rule the world. Because they're able to create money, they fund the needs of their governments, their militaries and all business activity that couldn't function without a ready supply of that most needed of all commodities. It's money, not love, that makes the world go round, and central bankers have the power to create or remove from circulation as much or little of it as they choose and for whatever purpose they have in mind. That kind of power can move mountains or destroy them.

No nation's central bank is more powerful today than the US Federal Reserve, but it wasn't always that way, and it now has competition for the top spot it hasn't known since WW II. The Fed, as it's called, has existed since it was first established by an act of Congress in 1913. But the Bank of England has been around since Britannia ruled the waves beginning in 1694 when King William III needed help funding the kind of escapade that takes lots of ready cash - war. Back then it was with France, and the king needed a friendly banker to print it up for him to help him fight it. He also needed financial help to facilitate trade and manage the country's debt that always mounts up when wars are fought. The Bank of England wasn't the first central bank, but it was the modern world's first privately owned one in a powerful country. It was called the Bank of England to keep the public from knowing that it, like our Federal Reserve, was and still is privately owned and not part of the government. It was also the model used in the formation of our own central bank and most others.

The Brits may have had a 219 year head start on the Fed, but central bankers are only as powerful as the countries they represent and their economies. Today the former dominant Brits must settle for a far lesser role as being just one of many junior partners to a US hegemon that emerged post WW II as the world's dominant economic power. It still is today, even though some credible experts believe this country may have seen and past its peak and is now in decline. Some go further and claim our decline has been accelerated by the disastrous policies of the Bush administration that irrationally believes waging war on the world without end is the way to rule it, promote endless economic growth and dominance, and thus preserve the nation's preeminent position as the reigning economic champion.

It's easy to challenge that view and think that champ has climbed into the ring a few times too many, has endless plans for more return engagements, and is likely to meet the same fate many a former human one did who didn't know when to quit and ended up with chronic brain damage known as dementia. The lesson from history is always the same. The price for reckless behavior is high, painful and inevitable. It's true for countries as well as individuals, but too often neither one sees it until it's too late. The biggest difference between the US today and other nations in the past that paid dearly for not yielding when their day had passed is that we have an all-powerful arsenal others never did. Should we decide to use it, there likely wouldn't be much left behind for a successor. Not a pleasant thought, but a very real one.

It All Began in 1910 On Jekll Island

It sounds like the title of a horror movie, but the real life events that happened at this privately owned island off the coast of Georgia in 1910 would have challenged even the Hollywood bad dream factory to come up with. It was here that seven very rich and powerful men met in secret for nine days and created the Federal Reserve System that came into being three years later on December 23, 1913 by an act of Congress. Since that time, the nation and world would never be the same, but only the rich and powerful were the beneficiaries. That was the whole idea, and it worked as planned.

The Federal Reserve Act that began it all must surely rank as one of the most disastrous and outrageous pieces of legislation to the public welfare ever to come out of any legislative body. It may have also have been and still is illegal according to Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution which happens to be the inviolable law of the land. The article states that Congress shall have the power to coin (create) money and regulate the value thereof. In 1935, the US Supreme Court ruled the Congress cannot constitutionally delegate its power to another group or body. The Congress thus acted in violation of the Constitution it's sworn to uphold and in so doing created the Federal Reserve System that, as will be explained below, is a private for-profit corporation operating at the expense of the public welfare. By its action, our lawmakers committed fraud against the people of the country and so far have gotten away with it without the public even knowing about the harm done.

The shameful result is that what should have arrived stillborn is now the most dominant institution on earth, and all because of what began on a privately owned island with a scary name. But had the Congress acted responsibly, the act of Fed creation might never have happened. The legislation establishing it was so harmful to the public interest, it likely never would have passed if it hadn't been shepherded through a carefully prepared Congressional Conference Committee meeting scheduled for between 1:30 - 4:30 AM (when most members of Congress were asleep) on December 22, 1913. The Act was then voted on the next day and passed although many members of the body had left for the Christmas holidays and most others who stayed behind hadn't had time to read it or know its contents. Sound familiar? Still it passed (like a thief in the night) and was signed into law by an unwitting or complicit Woodrow Wilson who later admitted he made a terrible mistake saying "I unwittingly ruined my country." But it was too late for postmortems, and the American people have paid dearly ever since. It's about time the public understood that and began to demand an end to over 90 years of damage done.

It almost happened 43 years ago when one president decided to act on behalf of the people who elected him. That man was John Kennedy, who before his death planned to end the Federal Reserve System to eliminate the national debt a central bank creates by printing money and loaning it to the government. That debt has now risen to over $8,400,000,000,000 ($8.4 trillion) which every taxpayer must pay for and has done so in the amount of nearly $174,000,000,000 ($174 billion) in just the first three months of 2006. This debt service is now an annualized amount exceeding two-thirds of a trillion dollars. It's made the bankers rich (which was the whole idea) and the public poorer because we're taxed to pay the tab. It's no exaggeration to call this the greatest financial scam in world history and one that gets greater every day.

The debt was less onerous 40 years ago, but Kennedy understood its danger to the country and the burden it placed on the public. Thus, on June 4, 1963, he issued presidential order EO 11110 giving the president authority to issue currency. He then ordered the US Treasury to print over $4 billion worth of "United States Notes" to replace Federal Reserve Notes. He intended to replace them all when enough of the new currency was in circulation so he could end the Federal Reserve System and the control it gave the international bankers over the US government and the public. Just months after the Kennedy plan went into effect, he was assassinated in Dallas in what was surely a coup d'etat disguised to look otherwise and may well have been carried out at least in part to save the Fed System and concentration of power it created that was so profitable for the powerful bankers in the country. Those benefitting from it had good reason to be involved in the plot to save the special privilege they weren't willing to give up without a fight. It's a plausible explanation that may explain who may have been behind the assassination and for what reason. Whatever the truth is, the banking cartel was only in distress a short time. Once Lyndon Johnson took office, he rescinded Kennedy's presidential order and restored the cartel's former power. It's kept it ever since and is now, of course, more powerful than ever. Even presidents are unable to stop it and those who would try have a lesson from history to give them pause.

The predecessors of the possible Kennedy coup plotters were the men who met on Jekyll Island in 1910. They represented some of the richest and most powerful men in the world - the Morgans, Rockefellers, Rothschilds of Europe (who dominated all European banking by the mid-1800s and became and still may be the wealthiest and most powerful family of all) and others of great influence and power. Included was a US senator, a high ranking Treasury official, the president of the largest bank in the country at the time, a leading Wall Street figure and the man who would later become the first chairman of the Federal Reserve System. It was quite an assemblage, and they came to accomplish one thing. They wanted to change the ideology and course of American business that up to then was based on marketplace competition and replace it with monopoly. They also knew what Baron M.A. Rothschild understood when he once said: "Give me control over a nation's currency and I care not who makes its laws." They knew the wisdom of what's stated in Proverbs 22:7 as well: "The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender."

This was the dawning of the age of powerful cartels when the seven financial titans meeting secretly in the island's clubhouse decided no longer to compete with each other and wanted the power to arrange it. They were already colluding informally but knew it would all work better under a legally sanctioned cartel. They wanted a banking cartel and got one that flourishes today below the public radar with the tool they wanted most - the ability to control the nation's money supply that gave them almost unlimited power. The cartel now works cooperatively with their governments and all other powerful transnational corporations in a dominant global alliance that allows them to control the world's markets, resources, cheap labor and our lives.

The Federal Reserve System Is Not A Government Agency - It's A Privately Owned Cartel of Powerful Banks Protected By Law

It's commonly but falsely believed the Federal Reserve System is a function of government and subject to its control. False. It's often referred to as a quasi-governmental, decentralized central bank, but that's just cover to disguise what, in fact, it really is: a privately held and operated cartel made to look like the government is in charge. The fact that it's headquartered in Washington in the formidable and impressive-looking Eccles building (named after a former Fed chairman) is just part of the clever subterfuge. Here's how it works:

The Fed is composed of a Board of Governors in Washington and 12 regional banks in major cities throughout the country (including in my own city of Chicago where anyone once but no longer could walk up to a teller's window and buy US Treasury securities). The system also includes many and various member banks including all national banks that are required to be part of the system. Other banks were also allowed to join and many did. The Federal Reserve began operating in November, 1914, almost one year after the Congressional act creating the system the previous year as explained above. It was mandated by law to have the greatest power of any institution in the country - the power to create and control the nation's money supply.

Most people know little or nothing about money and banking, likely never think about it, and have no idea how what the Fed and bankers do affect their lives. Before writing this article, I had little more than the modest knowledge I learned in a required course on the subject and basic accounting as part of my MBA curriculum 46 years ago. Those courses left out the most important parts of the story and never hinted at anything sinister about how the banking system works in fact. But no one should ever imagine banks were established or intended to be run for our benefit. They surely are not, and anyone suggesting they are should read on. They're about as beneficial to the public welfare as was the MX Peacekeeper ICBM (the clever language is impressive) intended to carry nuclear warheads back in the mid-80s that had the power to destroy all life on the planet and one day may do it in its old or updated form.

The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 (the law of the land) stipulates that the Federal Reserve Banks of each region are owned by the member banks in it. These Fed banks are privately owned corporations that make a great effort to hide the fact that they, in fact, own what the public largely thinks is part of the public treasury and government. It's easy to think that as Fed chairmen and seven of the twelve Governors are appointed by the President and approved by the Senate. As such, the FRB is a sort of quasi-government entity, but the fact is the System is a privately owned for profit enterprise just like any other business. It has stockholders like other public corporations that are paid 6% risk free interest every year on their equity holdings. The public doesn't know this, and it likely wouldn't be good PR if it found out. People might be even more upset if they learned some of the owners of our Federal Reserve are powerful foreign investors in the UK, France, Germany, The Netherlands and Italy. They're partners with giant US banks like JP Morgan Chase and Citibank as well as powerful Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs in a new world order banking cartel that influences and affects business activity everywhere and our lives.

The issue of private ownership of the Federal Reserve Banks has been challenged several times in the federal courts to no avail. Each time the courts upheld the current system under which each Federal Reserve Bank is a separate corporation owned by commercial banks in its region. One such case was Lewis v. United States that was decided by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that ruled the Reserve Banks are independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations.

Our Founding Fathers Had Different Ideas Than the Powerful Men who Met on Jekll Island

Throughout our history, there was disagreement over who should control the power of the nation's money supply and the right to issue it. The Founding Fathers understood that the British Parliament was forced to levy unfair taxes on its American colonies and its own citizens because the Bank of England had run up so much debt the government needed revenue to reduce it. Benjamin Franklin, in fact, believed that was the real cause of the American Revolution. Most of the Founders also understood the danger that could result from bankers' accumulating too much wealth and power. James Madison, the main drafter of our Constitution, called them "Money Changers," referring to the Bible that said Jesus twice drove the Money Changers from the Temple in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. Madison said:

"History records that the Money Changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance."

Thomas Jefferson was just as strong in his condemnation when he said:

"I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a money aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs."

Jefferson and Madison understood the dangers of commercial monopolies of all types and tried to assure they never would exist in the new nation. They, in fact, wanted two additional amendments added to the "Bill of Rights" in the Constitution but never got them. They believed to protect the liberty of the people the nation should have "freedom from monopolies in commerce" (what are now giant corporations including the big international banks and Wall Street investment firms) and "freedom from a permanent military," or standing armies. Try to imagine what the country would be like today if Jefferson and Madison had gotten their way - a country without giant predatory corporations exploiting everyone for profit and without a rampaging military waging war on the world, threatening to destroy it, and doing it so those corporate giants could earn even greater profits.

They never did, of course, and the people have paid dearly ever since including the great harm caused because the government relinquished its right to control the nation's money supply. It gave it away secretly with the public none the wiser, never knowing how greatly it's been harmed. It's been even worse since the 1980s because the power of the Fed grew under a friendly Republican president, and the corporate media led cheerleading for it hid the effect. For them, no public demeaning of it, its giant member banks or Wall Street allies is allowed.

Things were especially out of hand during the tenure of Alan Greenspan - a Fed chairman no one should have found much reason to cheer either before he headed the Fed when he was a presidential advisor or during the time he did. It was only after his economic consulting firm failed that he went into government service likely because he needed a new line of work. There he managed to become a larger than life seer of central banking who was elevated to near sainthood by the business pundits who thought under his tenure the skies were only blue and the few clouds in sight always had silver linings. Now Alan is retired to the greener pastures of lucrative book contracts and speaking engagements, which shows when you do your job well for the rich and powerful (at the expense of the rest of us) who gave it to you, you'll be well rewarded in the end. It's likely the new Fed chairman has taken note and will dutifully try to follow in the tradition that preceded him.

But try imagining a different sort of Fed chairman, one who knew, believed in and practiced the words and wisdom of another American president of some note - Abraham Lincoln. In 1886 Lincoln said the following: "The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarch, more insolent than autocracy and more selfish than a bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at the rear is my greatest foe."

Lincoln also appears to have said (although some dispute it): "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country.....corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." Imagine what Lincoln might say today.

Given Lincoln's sentiment about the bankers and money power of the country, it would seem to beg the obvious question: did it play a role in, or was it the reason for, his untimely death at the hands of John Wilkes Booth? The international bankers clearly disliked Lincoln after he managed to get the Congress to pass the Legal Tender Act in 1862 that empowered the US Treasury to issue paper money called "greenbacks." Lincoln needed this legislation after he declined to pay the bankers the usurious 24 - 36% interest rates they demanded on the loans he needed to fund his war with the South. With the new banking law, Lincoln was then able to print up the millions of dollars he needed which was debt and interest free. Clearly this was not what the greedy bankers wanted as they can only profit when they get their pound of flesh from financial transactions they control. Right after the war ended Lincoln was assassinated, and shortly thereafter the so-called Greenback law was rescinded, a new national banking act was passed, and all money became interesting-bearing again.

How the Federal Reserve System Works

The Federal Reserve System is the result of the Congress and President having agreed to privatize the nation's money system and relinquish the power that should have remained the government's exclusive right. That act was so outrageous the Fed had to be deliberately designed to look like a branch of the federal government to hide the fact that it's really an all-powerful privately owned banking cartel whose member banks (including all the national ones) share in the vast profits earned from having the most important of all franchises governments alone should have - the right to print money in any amount, control its supply and price, and benefit hugely by loaning it out for a profit including to the government itself that must pay interest on the money it should never have to if it simply printed its own. Think of what happened as the government having legalized the right to counterfeit the national currency for private gain. It's no exaggeration to claim this is the greatest ever of all financial scams causing incomprehensible harm with the public none the wiser. Here's how it works in simple terms:

The Fed was given the authority to conduct the nation's monetary policy with the power to control the supply and price of money. It has three ways to do it - through open market operations, the discount rate it charges member banks, and the reserve requirement percentage of member banks assets it requires them to hold and not loan out. The Board of Governors is responsible for handling the discount rate and reserve requirements while the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is in charge of the open market operations of buying or selling bonds explained further below. Using these tools, the Fed is able to influence the supply and demand for money and thus directly control the federal funds short-term rate that's always fixed unless the Fed wishes to raise or lower it. Longer rates are controlled by the powerful institutional traders in the bond market.

The FOMC and How It Works

The Federal Open Market Committee is really key to the whole process of money creation or contraction. It consists of 12 members - seven members of the Board of Fed Governors, the president of the New York Fed Bank (the most important one of all) and four of the remaining 11 Reserve Bank presidents who serve one year terms on a rotating basis. The FOMC holds eight regularly scheduled meetings a year to assess economic conditions and decide how loose or tight it wants monetary policy to be to further its stated goal of sustainable economic growth and price stability.

The FOMC literally has the power to create money out of nothing. It does it in a four step process:

Step 1 - The FOMC first approves the purchase of US government bonds on the open market.

Step 2 - The New York Fed bank buys them from sellers (financial markets always have an equal number of buyers and sellers).

Step 3 - The Fed pays for its purchases with electronic credits to the sellers' banks, which, in turn, credit the sellers' bank accounts. These credits are literally created out of nothing.

Step 4 - The banks receiving the credits can then use them as reserves to enable them to loan out as much as 10 times their amount (if their reserve requirement is 10%) through the magic (only banks have) of fractional reserve banking and, of course, collect interest on all of it. What a business, and it's all legal. Imagine how rich we might all be if we as private individuals could do the same thing. Borrow a million from the Fed and like magic it becomes 10 times as much, and we get to collect interest on all but the 10% of it we must hold in reserve. This is the magic of fractional reserve banking money creation and explains how powerful an economic stimulus it is when the Fed wants to enhance economic growth.

When the Fed wishes to contract the economy by reducing the money supply, it simply reverses the above process. Instead of buying bonds, it sells them so that money moves out of the buyers' bank accounts instead of into them. Bank loans must then be reduced by 10 times if the reserve requirement is 10%.

How the Fed Harms the Public Interest

The Federal Reserve System exists only to serve its owners and member banks and in doing so is hostile to the public interest. That's because it's a banking cartel with the power to restrict competition for greater profits gained at our expense. It goes from our pockets to theirs, and the public loses in at least four ways:

One - Through the invisible tax of inflation that results from the dilution of purchasing power caused by newly created money entering the system reducing the value of dollars already there. The Greenspan Fed was especially expansive, never was held to account for its excess and was able to pass a serious problem it created on to a future Fed chairman and society to deal with. The man we now lionize as a monetary magician began sensibly. From 1982, before he arrived in 1987, until 1992, the money supply increased on average by 8% a year. But from 1992 - 2002, the printing press worked overtime in sync with the deregulation and growth of global markets expanding the currency by more than 12% a year. It became even more extreme post 9/11 and since 2002 grew at a 15% rate. It now has more than doubled in less than a decade. It appears that the new Fed chairman has taken note and has begun reducing the rate of money expansion as he continues raising the federal funds rate to whatever level he has in mind.

Currency traders as well apparently have taken note of the rate of money supply expansion overall. Except for a respite in 2005, it's quite likely the dollar weakness since 2002 is the result of the excess amount of them created for the Bush administration's profligate spending to fund its endless wars and reckless tax cuts for the rich. The problem is further compounded as from 1964 to the present debt service has grown from 9% to 16.5% of the federal budget and rising; the current account deficit has gone from a 1% surplus to an almost 7% deficit; and federal indebtedness has grown by 40% just since 2001 and financed in large part by "the kindness of (foreign) strangers" that may be growing restive. Furthermore, since March, 2006, the Fed stopped publishing the M-3 aggregate of the total amount of dollars in circulation. With that transparency gone, big buyers of US Treasuries now have to calculate the value of the dollar based on speculation and uncertainty rather than hard data - not a way to inspire trust in the financial markets that function best in an atmosphere of openness and clarity.

Two - The public also loses because the banking cartel is able to practice usury - from it's power over a flexible currency to artificially move rates up or down to any level it chooses which many small lenders in a truly free and open market can't do. In addition, the cartel's market dominance forces most borrowers (especially smaller ones less able to issue their own debt instruments) to come to them for loans which it's then able to make using what should be the peoples' money available to them at the lowest possible cost from many highly government regulated small lenders competing for customers.

Three - Through the taxes, we, the public, must pay to cover the interest on the huge national debt (now over $8.4 trillion) accumulated from the money the Fed printed and loaned to the government. As mentioned earlier, that now totals an annualized amount exceeding two-thirds of a trillion dollars and increasing daily. It's made the bankers rich, ordinary people poorer, and the public none the wiser it's been fleeced big time.

Four - Compounding the above abuse, the cartel is able to get the public to bail out the system with more of its tax dollars. It happens whenever any of the too-big-to-fail banks need financial help to survive. The same is true for big corporations like Chrysler or Lockheed, large investment firms or hedge funds like Long-Term Capital Management or even countries like Mexico. It's also true when a single bank goes out of business and depositors must be compensated or more seriously in the wake of a systemic financial meltdown like the one that wiped out many savings and loan banks in the 1980s. Whether it's a single bank or many dozens at a time, public tax dollars are used to save the system or just pick up the tab to repay depositors insured against losses through government insurance protection up to a stipulated amount per account.

How Would Adam Smith Have Reacted to the Federal Reserve System

This concentration of banking cartel wealth and power is the opposite of what Adam Smith, the ideological godfather of free market capitalism, advocated in his writings including his seminal work The Wealth of Nations. Smith wrote about an "invisible hand" that he said worked best in a free market with many small businesses competing locally against each other. He strongly opposed the concentrated mercantilism of his day (what there was of it) which now would be the equivalent of today's giant transnational corporations and the banking cartel with the power to restrict competition, maintain higher prices than otherwise possible and earn greater profits as a result at the public's expense.

The kind of banking cartel that exists today is precisely what Smith would have condemned. But having a central bank is not in itself a bad thing provided the bank is government owned, controlled and operated for the public welfare. There's only a problem when through subterfuge the bank is set up to appear government owned and run but is, in fact, for private profit the way ours is and most others as well. And in the US, to make the arrangement work, a mostly publicly appointed governing authority runs the System acting as a shill for its private for-profit banking cartel members that wanted it in the first place and got a corrupted Congress to give it to them. To work, the cartel needs the cover it gets from its partnership with government, but it's through that arrangement that it harms the public interest for its own private gain.

And that goes to the heart of the problem: that the Congress elected to serve the people instead betrayed them by creating an all-powerful banking cartel and gave it the authority to practice fractional reserve banking with the power to get free money by creating it out of nothing. It then allowed its members a near-monopoly right to set the rates of interest they wish to charge borrowers. The whole process amounts to a legally sanctioned heist by the powerful banks working in league with government for its own gain. It's also part of a more extensive government arranged process to transfer wealth from the people to the pockets of large corporations and the rich and doing it while those being harmed are unaware it's even happening.

Another Way the Federal Reserve System Harms the Public

The Fed harms the public welfare in one other important way, and again most people are none the wiser about it. Supposedly the Federal Reserve System was established to stabilize the economy, smooth out the business cycle, maintain a healthy rate of sustainable growth while holding prices steady and benefitting everyone. So how well has it done its job? Since its creation in 1913, and with them in charge, we had the crashes of 1921 and the most important and remembered one in 1929. That was followed by The Great Depression that lasted until the onset of WW II that noted conservative economist Milton Friedman explained was caused and exacerbated because the Federal Reserve oddly decided to reduce the money supply at a time of economic contraction instead of increasing it. We then had recessions in 1953, 1957, 1969, 1975, 1981, 1990 and 2001. We also had inflation beginning in the 1960s which became quite severe through much of the 1970s and early 1980s. And we had a major banking crisis in the 1980s at which time more banks and savings and loan associations failed than ever before in our history. It happened in the wake of financial market deregulation when banks were allowed to pursue their own interests without government oversight to check their willingness to assume excess risk or stop them from trying to get away with deliberate fraud.

Along with the economic stability the Fed never achieved, we've also had soaring consumer debt; record high federal budget and trade deficits; a high level of personal bankruptcies and rising mortgage loan delinquencies; interest on a mounting national debt that's a large and rising percentage of the federal budget; the loss of our manufacturing base and it's high-paying jobs with good benefits because they're being exported to low wage countries; an economy in which services now account for nearly 80% of all business that provide mostly lower paying, less skilled jobs with few or no benefits; and a widening income and wealth gap that continues to harm lower and middle income earners to benefit the rich and well-off privileged few and a government that encourages it.

Sum it all up and the conclusion is clear. The one thing the Fed failed to accomplish above all else was what it was established to do in the first place. But it's much worse than that if we understand a cartel's real motives. It's not to serve the public interest. It's to abuse it because that's how it benefits most. It's able to do it with its legally sanctioned concentrated power and a friendly government in league with it as partners or facilitators. It's from that cozy hidden from view arrangement that it's able to get away with the grandest of grand thefts.

A Needed Solution to A Huge Problem

From the information presented above, it's clear that the Federal Reserve System was established through stealth and deceit by a handful of corrupted politicians in service to their powerful banking and Wall Street allies. They did it to defraud the public and without them being any the wiser about what, in fact, had been done or how harmful it was to be to their welfare and interests. Those in the Congress and President Wilson (a man trained in the law, one-time practicing attorney, former esteemed academic and president of Princeton University) either knew or should have known that the act he and they approved establishing the Fed was in direct violation of the Constitution they were sworn to uphold. They didn't, they broke the law, and the public paid dearly for their crime ever since to this day.

So what recourse is left, and can people be mobilized to pursue it. There's only one sensible and just solution to undo the damage done to so many for so long - abolish the Federal Reserve System and restore the power it now has to the federal government working for the public welfare. Take it back from the powerful banking cartel working against it and never allow it to be in its hands again. That alone is the only way. The great German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht would have agreed and once said it was "easier to rob by setting up a bank than by holding up (one)."

Freeing us from the these powerful "Money Changers" would have enormous benefits for everyone. It would establish a prudent policy of money creation that would minimize our most unfair tax - inflation which is caused by private for-profit bankers manipulating the nation's money supply to enhance their profits. It would stabilize the economy and smooth out the extremes in the business cycle exacerbated by the cartel working for its benefit and against ours. It would lower the cost of money for borrowers because it would end the monopoly power the cartel now has to set the rates it chooses by opening the market to more competition. It would reduce the growing and oppressive national debt freed eventually from the extra money supply growth needed to pay it off. It would lower the public's tax burden as less revenue would be needed for debt service. It would be a momentous step toward reducing and hopefully one day eliminating the overwhelming power of all predatory corporate giants preying on us so they can grow and prosper. It might even discourage wars which are only fought for wealth and power - never for glory or to make the world safe for democracy or other false motives. Without a powerful corporate banking cartel and other industry giants that feed on the human misery they create, there would be less of a reason to pursue any. Try to imagine that kind of world and a government working for the public welfare instead of harming it as it now must do in service to capital. That world is possible, and responsible people need to work for it as the one we now have has failed and must be changed before it's too late.

A View of the World Created by the Interests of Capital and Our Government That Supports It

It's the ugly, corrupted world of neoliberal "free market" capitalism controlled by giant corporations; that benefits the privileged few alone causing great human misery and despair; a despotic world that can't endure nor must we allow it to much longer; one with endless wars for power and profit; where people are commodities to be used as needed and discarded like trash when they're not; with no concern for preserving an ecology able to sustain us and won't much longer because we're destroying it and ourselves for profit; where essential human needs don't matter under an economic model only valuing private gain; where democracy is incompatible with predatory capitalism; one no one should want to live in or ever have to; one we must change or perish. In the language of capital, that's the bottom line. Only a mass movement of committed people can change that world. It must or we all will.

Unless we can move from our failed economic model to a better alternative, it will end on its own one day by one means or other. But it may be a denouement no one would wish for - it's own self-destruction taking all else with it either by nuclear holocaust or an environment so inhospitable it won't support our ability to live in it. Our only chance is to work for change while there's still time.

A Vision of A Different Kind of World

History proves a better world is possible when committed people work hard enough for it. It's how slavery was ended; workers won the right to organize and bargain collectively; women gained equal suffrage to men, control of their own bodies, and more rights and status in the work force; blacks and other minorities won important civil rights; and politicians once enacted important social legislation if only out of fear of what might happen if they didn't.

Thomas Jefferson explained the "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." It's also the price to keep our hard won social gains. For the past generation those gains have eroded while we weren't paying attention and only mass people action can regain them. The goal should be for a world of caring and sharing; where peoples' lives improve because we all work together for it; one at peace and not with endless wars to benefit the rich and powerful at our expense; where all essential human needs are met because governments work for the common good to assure it; with real participatory democracy where the public and elected officials work together to keep it strong and vibrant; with no oppressive corporate giants or banking cartels because the law won't allow any; where ecological nurturing and preservation are central; with clean air, water and soil and food that's fit and safe to eat; a much simpler world, more locally based than today's where notions like globalization aren't even in the vocabulary; one based on social equity and justice for all with government, law enforcement and the courts working to assure it stays that way; one we all want to live in and hope some day we can; one we want to pass on to future generations; one we can't afford not to have because the alternative may be no world at all.

We may now be at a key watershed moment where our fate hangs in the balance. We can either work together for a better, sustainable world or likely become the first species in it ever to destroy itself. If it happens, we'll likely take most others with us and not leave much behind for the few hearty ones that remain. We no longer have the luxury of debate for the kind of world we need to survive. The giant banks and corporations won't give it to us nor will a hostile government allied with them. It's up to us to go for it or likely perish if we fail. A good beginning would be by driving the Federal Reserve "money changers" out of our temple and the corporate giants with them. A better world is possible if we remember and live by political theorist Antonio Gramsci's inspirational words about "the optimism of the will." With it, organized people can find a way to beat organized money.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
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Israeli Crimes in Gaza


8 Ministers, 20 MPs abducted by Israel, PM is not immune

Saed Bannoura & George Rishmawi - IMEMC & Agencies - Thursday, 29 June 2006, 10:42

Israeli troops invaded several areas in the West Bank late Wednesday night into the early hours of Thursday morning, abducting 64 Palestinian figures including 8 ministers, 20 lawmakers, and a mayor.

Israeli officials said the Palestinian Prime Minister Ismael Haniya is not immune and could be arrested.

Haniya is a Gaza resident and arresting him would require a major invasion to the Gaza Strip.
Local sources reported that Deputy Prime Minister Nasser Al-Sha'er was abducted on Thursday, though Hamas denied these reports.

In a press conference, Deputy chair of the Palestinian Legislative Council Ahmad Bahar called ifor the United Nations Security Council to look into the Israeli offensive against the Palestinian People.
The Palestinian News Agency, WAFA, reported that soldiers arrested the head of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Dr. Aziz Dweik, after surrounding a building in Al Baloa' neighborhood in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Troops in Ramallah also surrounded a residential building and arrested the Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Education, Dr. Nasser Al Deen Al Sha'er, the Minister of Finance Dr. Omar Abdul-Raziq, Minister of Detainees Wasfi Qabha, and Minister of Planning Samir Abu Aisha.

Soldiers also arrested Palestinian Labor Minister Mohammad Al Barghouthi after stopping him at a checkpoint at Bir Zeit University near Ramallah shortly after midnight. He was taken to an unknown location.

Ashraf, the brother of minister Al Barghouthi, said the soldiers blindfolded his brother and took him to an unknown location.

Al Barghouthi was heading back home with his brother to Kober village near Ramallah after conducting a TV interview.

In Jerusalem, Israeli soldiers arrested Legislators Ahmad Atwan, Wa'el Al Hosseiny, and Mohammad Abu Teir after breaking into their homes.

The brother of legislator Wa'el Al Hosseiny told WAFA that Israeli troops detonated an explosive at the door of his brother's house in the Al Dahia area near Jerusalem and violently broke into his house.

Local sources in Jerusalem reported that a huge military force participated in the attack and that the legislators arrested were all taken to unknown locations.

Troops continued their raid into the West Bank by invading the city of Hebron and arresting Minister of Waqf and Islamic Affairs Nayef Al Rajoub and legislators Khleel Rib'ey, from Yatta village, and Basim Al Za'areer, from Al Samoa'.

Senior Palestinian sources reported that Israeli security forces and soldiers, supported by several military vehicles, broke into the house of Khaled Abu Arafa, Minister of Jerusalem Affairs, in Jerusalem and arrested him.

Israeli soldiers also raided Bethlehem, arresting Palestinian Legislative Council member Anwar Zboun. His location is not currently known.

Legislators Khaled Sa'id and Hamas legislative council spokesperson Khaled Suleiman were arrested in the northern West Bank city of Jenin.

Troops invaded the northern West Bank city of Qalqilia, breaking into the homes of Mayor Wajeeh Qawwas and his Deputy, Hashim Al Masry. Both were arrested.

Qawwas was elected mayor of Qalqilia while he was imprisoned in Israel. He was released just last month.

Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers surrounded a hotel in Ramallah where several Hamas legislators and ministers are holed up and called them to surrender.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyya said earlier in the day that Israel should halt its attack against the Gaza Strip, adding that the Israeli military escalation "complicates the situation" instead of properly solving the crisis of the abducted soldier in the Gaza Strip.

Haniyya added that the American position that supports the declared wide-scale military operation "gives Israel a green light to resume its assault on the Gaza Strip and ignores the suffering of the Palestinian people."

Several Hamas supporters and leaders were also arrested in the raid.

The arrests are part of the ongoing Israeli attack against the Hamas-led Palestinian government while Israeli troops continue their shelling of the Gaza Strip as part of the "Summer Rain" military offensive ordered by the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert.



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Hamas arrests planned weeks ago; G8: Move raises 'concerns'

By Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel
Haaretz Correspondents
29/06/2006

The detention of dozens of Hamas lawmakers in the early hours of Thursday morning had been planned several weeks ago and received approval from Attorney General Menachem Mazuz on Wednesday. The same day, Shin Bet Director Yuval Diskin presented Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with the list of Hamas officials slated for detention.

The Group of Eight industrialized countries said Thursday that the Hamas arrests raised "particular concerns."
Israel Defense Forces troops launched the major arrest operation overnight, detaining 64 of the ruling party's cabinet ministers and parliamentarians in the West Bank, as well as another 23 military activists.

The move is part of Israel's expanded military operation against the Hamas-led government in the Palestinian Authority.

The arrests took place in Ramallah, Qalqilyah, Hebron, Jenin and East Jerusalem, according to Palestinian reports. Soldiers carried arrest warrants signed by judges that were issued following cooperative preparatory work by the state prosecution and police.

"The detention of elected members of the Palestinian government and legislature raises particular concerns," said a joint statement by the G8, which also called on Israel to exercise "utmost restraint."

"[This]... is a pre-planned plot to destroy the [Palestinian] Authority, the government and the parliament and to bring the Palestinian people to their knees," Hamas lawmaker Mushir al-Masri said Thursday.

There appeared to be some confusion Thursday as to whether Palestinian Deputy Prime Minister Nasser a-Shaer, had been one of those detainees or whether he had evaded capture and gone into hiding in the West Bank.

The Hamas ministers had apparently expected the arrests. A-Shaer's wife said Thursday that he had avoided the military arrest operation as he had not been sleeping at home when the sweep took place.

He reportedly had disconnected all his cellular telephones for fear Israeli security services would again attempt to track him down and arrest him.

A-Shaer's wife said she had been in contact with him, and that he was not arrested. Employees at the Ministry of Education offices in Ramallah reported seeing him in the building in the late morning.

But GOC Southern Command Major General Yair Navbeh confirmed at a news conference Thursday that a-Shaer was among those who had been detained.

Warning to Haniyeh

On Thursday morning, National Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer hinted that Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh is not exempt from arrest or harm.

"No one is immune... This is not a government. It is a murderous organization," Ben-Eliezer said.

A Hamas official called the arrests an "open war against the Palestinian government and people," and said that Israel must be prepared to pay their consequences.

"We have no government, we have nothing. They have all been taken," Saeb Erekat, an ally of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, said of the arrests. "This is absolutely unacceptable and we demand their release immediately."

Israel Radio quoted Shin Bet security chief Yuval Diskin as having told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on the day of the kidnapping: "If the soldier is not returned in 24 hours, Israel will not allow the Palestinian government to survive."

The Foreign Ministry released a statement Thursday saying the recent security-related events, particularly the Qassam rocket fire and the kidnapping of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, were realizations of the Palestinian government's policies of terror.

The acceptance of responsibility for the kidnapping and the Hamas-led government's demand to exchange prisoners prove that Hamas' primary objective is not concern for the Palestinian people but determination to implement its policies of terror, the statement said.

"As a result of this, and out of a basic obligation to its citizens, Israel decided to implement orders to prevent terrorism," it went on.

Included among the detainees were Finance Minister Omar Abdel Razek; Minister Samir Abu Aysha; Khaled Abu Arfeh; and Jerusalem Affairs Ministers Naef Rajoub, the brother of senior Fatah official Jibril Rajoub.

Five of the cabinet ministers were arrested at the same Ramallah hotel.

Ahmed al-Najjar, a receptionist at the hotel, said he was asleep when troops arrived after midnight, demanded a list of guests, and took the men from their rooms at gunpoint.

Palestinian attorneys representing security detainees at the IDF military court in Salem said Thursday morning they refuse to represent the Hamas members arrested overnight because they maintain the arrests themselves are illegitimate.

In Ramallah, troops arrested at least two cabinet ministers and four lawmakers, all from Hamas, in a raid on a complex of buildings, Palestinian security officials said.

Labor Minister Mohammed Barghouti was stopped on his way to his village, Kabur, just north of Ramallah. Military jeeps stopped his car, ordered him out of the vehicle and took him away, the officials said.

In East Jerusalem, lawmakers Mohammed Abu Tir, Wael al-Husseini and Ahmed a-Tun were arrested.

Also, the Hamas mayor of the West Bank town of Qalqilyah and his deputy were detained, security officials said.

An IDF spokeswoman said the arrests were part of an operation against suspected terrorists, and were not "bargaining chips" for the release of abducted IDF soldier Corporal Gilad Shalit.

"They are not bargaining chips for the return of the soldier. It was simply an operation against a terrorist organization," she said. "They will be investigated, brought before a judge to extend their detention and charge sheets will be prepared."

The arrests are part of several moves designed to increase pressure on the militant group to free a captive soldier. Israel blames Hamas for the abduction of Shalit, kidnapped Sunday by militants who attacked an IDF post near the border with Gaza.

Army Radio speculated that the lawmakers might be used to trade for the captured soldier, but the IDF refused to comment on the matter.

The operation Thursday night came amidst IDF operations in the southern Gaza Strip aimed at securing Shalit's release.

Comment: Israel's response has caused "particular concerns" among the G8 nations, resulting in their urging Israel to exercise "utmost restraint".

Ask yourself why the G8 is so deathly afraid of using even slightly harsh language when confronting Israel.

If any other nation did what Israel is now doing in the Gaza strip, can you imagine the G8 saying, "Now, we just have a few specific, teeny-tiny concerns... You guys just be really restrained when you kidnap and imprison the other nation's leaders and create a humanitarian crisis there, okay?"

Then again, none of us should really be too surprised. Just look at how easy it was for Bush and his Neocon gang to march through Afghanistan and Iraq and to employ rendition - with the apparent cooperation of quite a few "anti-war" nations!

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Israeli army confirms air strike in Gaza City

www.chinaview.cn 2006-06-29 20:56:00

JERUSALEM, June 29 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Defense Forces (IDF)confirmed an air strike on a car in Gaza City Thursday targeting Islamic Jihad (Holy War) militants.

Two militants from the Islamic Jihad jumped out of the car before it was hit, witnesses said.

The attack came as the Israeli army continued air and ground operations throughout the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to press for release of an abducted Israeli soldier.
The IDF troops were poised to pour into the northern Gaza Strip early Thursday after the second stage of Operation Summer Rains was authorized by Defense Minister Amir Peretz.

Peretz said every operation of IDF should be thoroughly examined "in this most critical moment", and the possibility of a breakthrough in compelling Palestinian militants to release Cpl.

Gilad Shalit still exists, Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported. The IDF confirmed that at least 60 Hamas government ministers,parliament members and activists were arrested during a swift operation carried out overnight in Ramallah, Nablus, Qalqilya,Jenin and Jerusalem.

The IDF launched Operation Summer Rains in the Gaza Strip early Wednesday after an Israeli soldier was kidnapped by Palestinian militants during a predawn attack on a military post near Gaza border on Sunday.

Two Israeli soldiers and two Palestinian militants were killed in the battle.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has vowed to take "extreme actions" to bring the kidnapped soldier home.



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Gaza militants say fired chemical-tipped warhead

Reuters
Wed Jun 28, 2006

GAZA - A spokesman for gunmen in the Gaza Strip said they had fired a rocket tipped with a chemical warhead at Israel early on Thursday.

The Israeli army had no immediate comment on the claim by the spokesman from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement.

The group had recently claimed to possess about 20 biological warheads for the makeshift rockets commonly fired from Gaza at Israeli towns. This was the first time the group had claimed firing such a rocket.

"The al-Aqsa Brigades have fired one rocket with a chemical warhead" at southern Israel, Abu Qusai, a spokesman for the group, said in Gaza.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said the army had not detected that any such rocket was fired, nor was there any report of such a weapon hitting Israel.




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Israel on alert for Hezbollah strikes after warning to Syria

AFP
June 29, 2006

Israel was on high alert for possible retaliation after it threatened to kill Hamas militants harboured by the Damascus regime and flew warplanes over Syria's presidential palace.

The army said it was bracing for any strikes by the Syrian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah militia, amid international concerns that the escalating crisis between Israel and the Palestinians could spread through the region.

"This measure has been taken due to concerns that the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah or other organizations will try to trigger an escalation of hostilities by launching border attacks," an army spokeswoman said.

Israel was not preparing an offensive but merely preparing its units along the northern border to "be prepared to face any likely scenario," she said.
Hezbollah, also backed by Syria's main regional ally Iran, has carried out several deadly attacks along the Israeli-Lebanese border since Israel withdrew its troops from southern Lebanon in 2000.

Tensions are running high in the Middle East after launched a military offensive in the Gaza Strip Wednesday to hunt down a teenage soldier captured by Palestinian militants.

Israel has warned that Hamas militants exiled in Damascus, including political supreme leader Khaled Meshaal, are clearly in their sights over the kidnapping of 19-year-old Gilad Shalit in an attack on the Gaza border on Sunday that also killed two Israeli soldiers.

Israeli warplanes overflew Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's palace in northern Syria Wednesday while the leader was inside, an operation Syrian state television called an "aggressive act and an unacceptable provocation."

"This operation was launched due to the support and protection Syria gives Hamas, which is responsible for the kidnapping of our soldier," the Israeli spokeswoman added.

The action provided "a way for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to prove the long arm of the Israeli army," said a report by Channel 10 television.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan voiced his concern about the escalating Middle East violence, and urged all sides to avoid spreading the conflict.

"We need to be very careful, not only not to escalate but not to expand the area of the conflict," Annan said of the Israeli sortie over Assad's palace.

"So it's very important that we all take very careful steps to deescalate and not take any action or initiative that would expand or escalate the situation," he said.

Public Security Minister Avi Dichter issued a direct threat against the Hamas militants on Wednesday, saying Israel had issued warnings to Syria about the presence of Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders but they had been disregarded.

"This therefore gives Israel full permission to attack these assassins," said Dichter, a former chief of Israel's domestic security agency Shin Beth.

"For years, Israel has held Syria responsible for some of the terrorist actions perpetrated on Israeli territory."

In particular, Israeli leaders have pointed the finger Meshaal, with one minister comparing him to Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Meshaal, 50, is one of Israel's most wanted men and famously survived a bungled attempt by Mossad agents, who tried to poison him in 1997 in Jordan.

"He is definitely in our sights... He is a target. As someone who is overseeing, actually commanding the terror acts, (he) is definitely a target," said Justice Minister Haim Ramon.

A close aide told AFP in Amman that Meshaal was unafraid of Israeli threats.

"Abu al-Walid (Meshaal) believes in God and in fate. The Israeli threats do not scare him," the aide said in a phone interview from Damascus. "He is used to living dangerously."

Hamas's spiritual leader and co-founder Ahmed Yassin and his successor Abdel Aziz Rantissi were killed in Israeli air strikes within a month of each other in 2004.



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Israeli Settler Dead; Troops Round Up Hamas Officials, Blame Syria

By STEVEN GUTKIN
AP
June 29, 2006

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israeli troops rounded up dozens of ministers and lawmakers from the Palestinians' ruling Hamas party Thursday while forging ahead with a military campaign in Gaza meant to win the release of an Israeli soldier held by Hamas gunmen.

The body of a kidnapped 18-year-old Jewish settler was found in the West Bank, Israeli security officials said. He had been shot in the head. Palestinian militants said they killed Eliahu Asheri, whose body was found buried near the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Israeli aircraft hit a car carrying Palestinian militants in Gaza City, the Israeli military said. One person was wounded, hospital officials said.

On Wednesday, Israeli warplanes also buzzed the summer home of Syria's president, Bashar Assad, who harbors the hard-line Hamas leaders who Israel says ordered the kidnapping.
Sunday's capture of the Israeli soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit by Hamas' military wing and two affiliated groups, and Israel's subsequent military incursion into Gaza threatened to bring the two sides to the brink of all-out war. Hamas, which took over the Palestinian Authority after winning parliamentary elections in January, has resisted international pressure to renounce violence and recognize Israel.

An Israeli military official said a total of 64 Hamas officials were arrested in the early morning roundup. Of those, Palestinian officials said seven are ministers in Hamas' 23-member Cabinet and 20 others are lawmakers in the 72-seat parliament.

Palestinian parliament speaker Abdel Aziz Duaik and Religious Affairs Minister Nayef Rajoub, brother of former West Bank strongman Jibril Rajoub of the rival Fatah party, were among those rounded up. There were conflicting reports about whether Deputy Prime Minister Nasser Shaer, who has called for Shalit's release, was arrested.

Officials will be questioned and eventually indicted, the Israeli army and government officials said.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said the ministers and lawmakers were not taken as bargaining chips for Shalit's release, but because Israel holds Hamas responsible for attacks against it.

"The arrests of these Hamas officials ... is part of a campaign against a terrorist organization that has escalated its war of terror against Israeli civilians," Regev said.

Israel has said it would not negotiate Shalit's release with the militants and has rejected demands to free Palestinian prisoners in exchange for information about the captured soldier.

Palestinians were outraged by the arrests.

"We have no government, we have nothing. They have all been taken," said Saeb Erekat, an ally of the moderate Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. "This is absolutely unacceptable and we demand their release immediately."

Although the Israeli action was touched off by the soldier's capture, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government has also been alarmed by a surge in the firing of homemade rockets on Israeli communities bordering Gaza.

A militant offshoot of Abbas' Fatah party said it had fired a homemade rocket with a chemical warhead at the southern Israeli town of Sderot late Wednesday, the first such claim. The Israeli military said it did not detect a rocket fired then, and there was no way to verify the claim.

Israeli warplanes, tanks and thousands of troops began moving into Gaza overnight Tuesday. They knocked out Gaza's only power station, made main roads impassable and took over Gaza's long-closed airport. Aircraft bombed empty Hamas training camps, witnesses said, and flew low over the coastal strip in an apparent attempt to intimidate.

Airstrikes against the training camps continued Thursday, with two coming against camps in southern Gaza used by Hamas and the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a Fatah offshoot. No deaths or injuries have been reported in any of the attacks.

But the disabling of Gaza's electric power plant raised the specter of a humanitarian crisis. The Hamas-led government warned of "epidemics and health disasters" because of damaged water pipes to central Gaza and the lack of power to pump water.

The incursion has focused so far on southern Gaza, where the military thinks Shalit is being held. But the military signaled the prospect of a new front being opened in the northern part of the strip when it dropped leaflets late Wednesday into the area, urging residents to avoid moving in the area because of impending military activity. Security officials said it could take days before a second front was opened.

Israeli army bulldozers moved in Thursday to clear agricultural lands in northern Gaza, witnesses said, apparently so Palestinians couldn't hide there. A small number of tanks entered a buffer zone between southern Israel and Gaza, as they have done in recent weeks.

Olmert has threatened harsher action to free the soldier, though he said there was no plan to reoccupy Gaza. Abbas deplored the incursion as a "crime against humanity."

Abbas and Egyptian dignitaries tried to persuade Syria's Assad to use his influence with Hamas' Damascus-based political chief, Khaled Mashaal, to free the soldier. Assad agreed, but without results, said a senior Abbas aide.

In a clear warning to the Syrian president, Israeli airplanes flew over his seaside home near the Mediterranean port city of Latakia in northwestern Syria, military officials confirmed, citing the "direct link" between his government and Hamas. Israeli television reports said four planes were involved in the low-altitude flight, and that Assad was there at the time.

Syria confirmed Israeli warplanes entered its airspace, but said its air defenses forced the Israeli aircraft to flee.

Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon said Wednesday that the hard-line Mashaal, who appears to be increasingly at odds with more moderate Hamas politicians in Gaza, is an Israeli assassination target. Israel tried to kill Mashaal in a botched assassination attempt in Jordan in 1997.

Comment: Isn't it amazing how Israel can just come out and say, "Oh that guy? Yeah, we're trying to assassinate him" and no one around the world even blinks?


The Popular Resistance Committees in Gaza, which has strong links to Hamas, said it executed Asheri, kidnapped in the West Bank. An Israeli military official said he was shot in the head shortly after he was abducted Sunday. The PRC had said it would execute the hostage if Israel did not halt its invasion of Gaza.

Government spokesman Asaf Shariv said Asheri's killers would be arrested, and Israel would try to bring them to trial.

"Their days as free people are numbered," Shariv said.

Militants also say they kidnapped another Israeli, a 62-year-old man from the central Israeli city of Rishon Lezion. But police said Thursday they found the man's body in his hometown in Israel, and that he apparently died of medical problems.

Comment: And so it begins. With no electricity, damaged water lines, and a hostile Israel, the fenced-in Gaza strip is on its way to becoming a hell on Earth - one giant gulag.

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Pummelling Mother Earth


5.6 Quake hits Iran; no reports of casualties

AP
June 28, 2006

TEHRAN, Iran - An earthquake shook southern Iran early Thursday morning, but there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.

Radio reports said residents of the southwestern city of Bandar Abbas poured into the streets after the quake hit.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake struck at 1:32 a.m. (local time) and had a magnitude of 5.6. It was centered about 35 miles southwest of Bandar Abbas or about 650 miles southeast of Tehran, the capital.
No other details were immediately available.

Even moderate quakes have killed thousands of people in the past in the Iranian countryside where houses are often built of bricks.

In March, three strong earthquakes and several aftershocks jolted western Iran overnight, killing at least 66 people. In February last year, a 6.4-magnitude quake rocked the town of Zarand in southern Iran, killing 612 people and injuring more than 1,400.

Some 26,000 people were killed by a 6.6-magnitude quake that flattened the historic southeastern city of Bam in the same region in 2003.



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Nevada governor declares fire emergency

By SCOTT SONNER
Associated Press
Wed Jun 28, 2006

RENO, Nev. - Gov. Kenny Guinn declared a state of emergency as state and federal crews put practically every available piece of equipment on the lines to combat dozens of lightning-sparked fires that have burned 125 square miles of Nevada.

More than 1,000 firefighters on Wednesday were battling dozens of fires, from a 57,000-acre blaze burning out of control largely in uninhabited rangeland in northeast Nevada to a complex of a dozen smaller fires around Reno and Carson City that forced evacuations at the town of Mound House along the historic Pony Express Trail.
"We're stretched about as thin as possible," said Jeff Arnberger, assistant fire management officer for the
Bureau of Land Management in Elko, where the largest fires were burning.

"Thankfully our neighbors from around Nevada and across the country are giving us a hand," he said.

The series of fires that threatened 300 homes and businesses at Mound House late Monday night grew to 6,000 acres overnight and looped around Carson City on the eastern front of the Sierra, sending a mile-long snake of fire down a hillside near McClellan Peak.

As many as a 200 homes remained threatened there late Tuesday afternoon as fire crews endured a third consecutive day of temperatures in the 90s, low humidity, strong erratic winds and dry lightning.

Federal fire managers were sending a Type I team - the army of firefighters assigned to national priority fires - to take control of that attack on what they dubbed the "Sierra-Tahoe complex."

"Resources are scarce because of all the other fires in the Western United States right now. But this will make it the highest priority," said Mike Dondero, fire management officer for the Nevada Division of Forestry. "We have about a dozen fires in the Reno-Carson City area."

The 125 square miles of land that has burned since lightning bolts started sparking fires over the weekend amounts to about 80,000 acres.

No structures have burned nor injuries reported so far. But there have been a number of close calls, including 2,800 acres worth of fires that threatened homes in Palomino Valley and Lemmon Valley on the outskirts of north Reno Monday night.

"Everywhere I looked there was just fire after fire, everywhere you turned your head," said Nate Bourne, who helped his wife load their dogs and valuables into a vehicle in preparation to evacuate Lemmon Valley late Tuesday.

"You think that everything you cherish in the world is in that house. It's a scary, scary thought," he told the Reno Gazette-Journal.

Guinn issued a proclamation at noon Tuesday declaring a state of emergency statewide,

"The state of Nevada is doing everything possible to assist those battling the large number of wildfires currently raging throughout northern Nevada," he said. He said the declaration will give local governments a leg up in seeking federal assistance to restore depleted firefighting resources given "a significant amount of time remains in the fire season."

Despite continued threats, a number of people returned to their homes and businesses around Mound House, including the Moonlite Bunny Ranch brothel.

"The girls were back by two this morning," said a bartender who gave only the name of Wendy. "We're back in business and we've got business."

The biggest fire in northeast Nevada, the Suzie fire, had consumed an estimated 57,000 acres of sagebrush and grass from Carlin about 20 miles west of Elko to a state highway leading out of Elko to the Idaho state line. It closed Interstate 80 for about 3 hours on Monday and nearly doubled in size during the afternoon when a storm cell settled directly over the fire.

Just east of that, the Elburz fire blackened 12,600 acres and the Sneekee fire in the Red Springs Wilderness Study Area 35 miles southwest of Elko was estimated at 6,000 acres of grass and brush.

Eight Clark County firefighters, a wildfire coordinator and two engines were dispatched late Monday to the Elburz fire - a trip of more than 400 miles.

The Sierra Front Interagency Dispatch Center in Minden, Nev., said at least 16 new fires had been reported since the storms passed Monday afternoon through its jurisdiction covering much of western Nevada and northeastern California along the Sierra Nevada.

About 100 miles north of Reno, two other wildfires that began Sunday also continued to burn, including one that had burned about 3,000 acres near Gerlach but was reported to be 70 percent contained Monday night.

On the outskirts of Susanville in northeastern California, a lightning strike sparked a 625-acre blaze, prompting the evacuation of 100 homes Monday, fire officials said. Residents were allowed to return a few hours later, said Jeff Fontana, spokesman for the Susanville Interagency Fire Center. No injuries were reported and no buildings were destroyed and by midday Tuesday, it was 70 percent contained, he said.

About 250 firefighters also were battling 10 separate blazes Tuesday on remote land around Susanville owned by the BLM, Fontana said.

"The biggest is 2,000 acres, the smallest is several acres," he said.



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Pennsylvania flooding forces evacuations

By MARK SCOLFORO
Associated Press
June 28, 2006

Flooded NY HighwayWILKES-BARRE, Pa. - Up to 200,000 people in the Wilkes-Barre area were ordered to evacuate their homes Wednesday because of rising water on the Susquehanna River, swelled by a record-breaking deluge that has killed at least 12 people across the Northeast.

Thousands more were ordered to leave their homes in New Jersey, New York and Maryland. Rescue helicopters plucked residents from rooftops as rivers and streams surged over their banks, washed out roads and bridges, and cut off villages in some of the worst flooding in the region in decades, with more rain in the forecast for the rest of the week.
Wilkes-Barre, a city of 43,000 in northeastern Pennsylvania coal-mining country, was devastated by deadly flooding in 1972 from the remnants of Hurricane Agnes. It is protected by levees, and officials said the Susquehanna was expected to crest just a few feet from the tops of the 41-foot floodwalls.

But Luzerne County Commissioner Todd Vonderheid said officials were worried about the effects of water pressing against the levees for 48 hours. The floodwalls were completed just three years ago.

"It is honestly precautionary," Vonderheid said. "We have great faith the levees are going to hold."

An estimated 150,000 to 200,000 people in the county of about 351,000 were told to get out by nightfall. The evacuation order applied to more than half the residents of Wilkes-Barre, as well residents of several outlying towns, all of them flooded by Agnes more than three decades ago.

Laura Lockman, 42, of Wilkes-Barre packed a car and planned to clear out along with her husband, three kids and a puppy named Pebbles. They were not ordered to evacuate their brick home, a half-mile from the Susquehanna, but were going to nearby Scranton anyway for the children's safety. Their home was inundated in 1972, when water reached the second floor.

"I just want to get out of here. I just want to be safe, that's all," she said.

A dozen helicopters from the Pennsylvania National Guard, the state police and the Coast Guard were sent on search-and-rescue missions, plucking stranded residents from rooftops in Bloomsburg, Sayre and New Milford. Hundreds of National Guardsmen prepared to distribute ice, water and meals ready to eat.

Flooding closed many roads in the Philadelphia area, including the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

"We lost just about everything - the cars, the clothes, even the baby's crib," said James Adams, who evacuated his family's home near Binghamton, N.Y., after watching their shed float away and their cars get submerged. "I'm not sure what we are going to do."

Elsewhere in the Binghamton area, an entire house floated down the Susquehanna. After touring the region by helicopter, New York Gov. George Pataki estimated that property damage in his state would total at least $100 million.

The soaking weather was produced by a low-pressure system that has been stalled just offshore since the weekend and pumped moist tropical air northward along the East Coast. A record 4.05 inches of rain fell Tuesday at Binghamton. During the weekend, the same system drenched the Washington and Baltimore region with more than a foot of rain.

Although the bulk of the rain moved out of the area Wednesday, streams were still rising from the runoff, and forecasters said more showers and occasional thunderstorms were possible along the East Coast for the rest of the week.

Earlier this week, floodwaters in the nation's capital closed the National Archives, the IRS, the Justice Department and other major government buildings, and toppled a 100-year-old elm tree on the White House lawn. The National Archives, several Smithsonian museums and some government office buildings were still closed Wednesday.

The National Archives moved in giant dehumidifiers to preserve its historic documents. "The threat to the records is not floodwater, but humidity from the lack of air conditioning," spokeswoman Susan Cooper said Wednesday.

An estimated 2,200 people were ordered to evacuate the area around Lake Needwood at Rockville, Md., which was approaching 25 feet above normal. Engineers reported weakened spots on the lake's earthen dam.

A swollen creek carved a 25-foot-deep chasm through all four lanes of Interstate 88, about 35 miles northeast of Binghamton, N.Y., and two truckers were killed early Wednesday when their rigs plunged into the gaps, officials said.

Thousands of people were evacuated from communities across New York state, and whole villages north of Binghamton County were isolated by high water.

Along the Delaware River, more than 1,000 people left low-lying areas of Trenton, N.J., and state employees in buildings along the river left work early.

Trenton's water filtration system was shut down because of debris floating down the Delaware, and Mayor Doug Palmer called for conservation, saying the city had only about two days of drinkable water. The river was expected to crest Friday at nearly 8 feet over flood stage, the fourth-highest level on record for Trenton.

The weather was blamed for four deaths each in Maryland and Pennsylvania, one in Virginia and three in New York, including the two truckers.

The Agnes flood caused 50 deaths and more than $2 billion in damage in Pennsylvania, and remains the worst natural disaster in state history. It left 20,000 families homeless in Wilkes-Barre and surrounding Luzerne County towns.

Afterward, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers undertook one of the most ambitious flood-control projects east of the Mississippi River, raising the existing levees by 3 to 5 feet. The $200 million project was finally completed in 2003.



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US floods recede in Pennsylvania town, New Jersey on alert

By Jon Hurdle
Reuters
Jun 29, 2006

WILKES-BARRE, Pennsylvania - Floods in the Susquehanna River receded early on Thursday, lifting the threat of catastrophic flooding in the historic town of Wilkes-Barre, but water was still rising in parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Days of torrential rain followed by floods had killed at least 16 people in the eastern United States by late on Wednesday. With buildings submerged, roads washed out and rivers surging, authorities declared emergencies and ordered hundreds of thousands of people evacuated across swaths of New Jersey, New York, Maryland and Pennsylvania.

"Yesterday was a war zone in the northern tier of Pennsylvania -- we choppered out over 1,000 people from rooftops, from second and third floors of their homes," Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell said in an interview on CNN.
The Pennsylvania town of Wilkes-Barre was prepared for the worst overnight but levees held and the volume of water coming into the Susquehanna from tributaries upstream was less than had been anticipated, officials said.

"The danger has passed and life will return to normal," said James Brozena, county engineer for Luzerne County.

"It's hard to say we dodged a bullet, considering all the damage and danger, but so far the news has been good today," Rendell said. He said officials were watching the Delaware River in southeast Pennsylvania, which had yet to crest.

The focus also moved to Trenton, New Jersey, on Thursday, where the National Weather Service forecasted flooding on the Delaware would peak in the afternoon.

Binghamton, New York, remained partly flooded and the nearby town of Conklin was the worst hit in the area, according to Broome County spokeswoman Darcy Fauci. Hundreds of people were airlifted from Conklin and Fauci said it would take days for the water to recede.

"Today is going to be a big day for doing a lot of damage assessment and getting into more areas," Fauci said.

LEVEE SUCCESS

Anxiety in Wilkes-Barre, nicknamed "The Diamond City" in the 1800s for its coal riches, had centered on whether 28 miles of levees would withstand the pressure of the flooded river.

"The levee system has performed very well. It has certainly done its job," said Alan Pugh, chief of public safety for Pennsylvania's Luzerne County.

The National Weather Service had been predicting a second crest of 35 to 37 feet in the early hours of the morning but it did not materialize and the water level began falling.

A map posted by the weather service showed flood warnings spread over some 40,000 square miles of the United States, an area roughly the size of the state of Kentucky or the country of Iceland.

There was a flash-flood warning for Montgomery County in central Maryland, where engineers were assessing the state of the Lake Needwood Dam, the National Weather Service said.

The weather service also warned there could be severe thunder storms across New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland later in the day.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans' levees broke, flooding 80 percent of the city and killing over 1,800 people on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Brozena said the Wilkes-Barre levee system was more modern and less vulnerable than the New Orleans flood walls.

The levees -- restraining the Susquehanna River from overwhelming the town nicknamed "The Diamond City" in the 1800s for its coal riches -- were reinforced in 2004.

Despite the success of the levees, some parts of the county flooded and sustained many millions of dollars worth of damage, Pugh said.



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Storm alert for French Alps

AFP
Wed Jun 28, 2006

PARIS - France's state weather service has issued a storm alert for the southeast Alps region, warning that hail and strong wind gusts were likely.

The alert -- the second highest on a four-level scale -- was for Wednesday afternoon through to the early hours of Thursday.




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Big Three cars emit 230 mln tons of greenhouse gas

By Deborah Zabarenko
Reuters
Wed Jun 28, 2006

WASHINGTON - Cars built by the Big Three automakers gave off 230 million metric tons of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the United States in a year, more than the biggest U.S. electric utility, environmental researchers said on Wednesday.

General Motors, Ford and DaimlerChrysler cars and light trucks emitted nearly three-fourths of all carbon dioxide from vehicles on U.S. roads in 2004, the year for which statistics were available, according to the watchdog group Environmental Defense.
Nine other car manufacturers with vehicles on the U.S. market accounted for an additional 84 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, bringing the total for all cars and light trucks in operation in 2004 to 314 million metric tons, the report found.

General Motors vehicles gave off 99 million metric tons or 31 percent of the total; Ford vehicles emitted 80 million metric tons or 25 percent and DaimlerChrysler vehicles emitted 51 million metric tons or 16 percent, according to the report.

By comparison, the largest U.S. electric utility, American Electric Power, had emissions of 41 million metric tons.

Greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide, contribute to global warming, which in turn has been blamed for more severe hurricanes, rising seas and other environmental ills. Though greenhouse gas emissions have most frequently been associated with coal-fired power plants, the new report aims to point up comparable emissions from automobiles.

"The image of the power plant, with a smokestack and stuff billowing out of it, creates that sense of a lot of pollution in one place," John DeCicco, co-author of the report, said by telephone. "People don't necessarily understand that the millions of vehicles are part of the problem that is a really comparable scale."

He stressed a shared responsibility among consumers, auto manufacturers and policy makers.

"It's hard to pin just on General Motors the responsibility for that 20-year-old Chevy that's putting carbon up into the air," DeCicco said.

With just 5 percent of the world's population, the United States has 30 percent of the world's automobiles and produces 45 percent of the world's automotive carbon dioxide emissions, the report said. U.S. cars are driven more and burn more fuel per mile than the international average.

Comment:
"With just 5 percent of the world's population, the United States has 30 percent of the world's automobiles and produces 45 percent of the world's automotive carbon dioxide emissions, the report said. U.S. cars are driven more and burn more fuel per mile than the international average."

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Ecuador's Tungurahua volcano registers 50 explosions in 24 hours

QUITO, Jun 27, 2006 (Xinhua via COMTEX)

Ecuador's National Geophysical Agency said on Tuesday the Tungurahua volcano had registered 50 explosions in the past 24 hours.

The Tungurahua volcano, one of the most active volcanoes in Ecuador, started its second activity peak this May since the eruption process began in August 1999.
It is now experiencing "shivers": constant tremors inside the crater's bed. The agency's volcanologists have observed constant emissions of gas, ash and water vapor that is forming a cloud around 1 km above the volcano's crater.

Authorities said people could observe the volcano closely as it had been alternating periods of calm and moments of intense activity, which can last for months.

Flocks of villagers living near the volcano, located 135 km from the capital Quito, have voluntarily left their homes, saying the loud explosions made it hard for them to sleep at night.



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Quake Rocks Andaman And Nicobar Islands In Indian Ocean

11:27 AM, June 28th 2006
by Playfuls Team

An earthquake with a magnitude of 5.9 struck the islands of Andaman and Nicobar in the Indian Ocean, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said Wednesday.

Local officials called the quake moderate and said there were no reports of any damage.
The USGS said the epicentre was located 176 kilometres south-west of Misha on the Nicobar Islands and occurred at 11:37 p.m. Tuesday (1807 GMT).

Thousands were killed when the islands were hit by the December 2004 tsunami which was triggered by a massive 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Sumatra.



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Guatemala Volcano Red Hot

Guatemala, Jun 28 (Prensa Latina)

The Volcano of Fire´s activity increased Wednesday risks of disaster in Guatemala, already affected by intensive rains that provoked floods and collapses in several towns and this capital.
The National Coordinator for Disaster Reduction has already given first warnings for the possible evacuation of some 500 people.

To avoid damages for the possible spewing of ash and fire, authorities are monitoring four towns located in the volcano´s southern zone.

This is one of the country´s three volcanoes in constant activity, along with the Pacaya, south Guatemala, and Santiaguito, in the west.



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Lightning Strike Starts Fire That Destroys Pine Hills Home

wftv.com
June 27, 2006

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. -- Lightning strikes put firefighters on the run all over Central Florida on Tuesday afternoon. There were several reports of lightning hitting homes and businesses. Fire gutted a house on Sarazen Drive in Pine Hills near Hastings.

Firefighters weren't sure if the lightning struck a nearby tree or the house, or maybe both. But one thing was likely, the nearby pine trees acted like lightning rods.
"You just heard a loud crash, like boom, and then the house rattled," said resident Pam Watson.

Almost immediately, Watson headed to the door with her dogs. She thought her house might be on fire, but it wasn't her home that was struck. It was her neighbor's house on Sarazen Drive that took the hit.

As fast as the crash came, the rain left," Watson said.

No one was home at the time of the fire, but three dogs inside were unable to make it out.

The rain was just what firefighters could have used for the hot and fast-moving fire. It began at the back of the house, but quickly moved to the attic, and with so much damage to the house, there was plenty of fresh air to fuel the fire.

"They had just redone it within the last year," said neighbor John Mitchell.

Mitchell quickly came down the street to check on his neighbors, who weren't home when lightning struck. But, most of their house was left in ruin.

The Pine Hills fire was just one of about a half-dozen Orange County fire crews responded to in just 90 minutes time, all sparked by lightning.

"I honestly don't know how many calls we've got, but we got a lot of calls about the lightning," said Orange County Fire Battalion Chief Thomas Rullo.

"To see it going up like that, it was no putting it out. You know, they were spraying water on it. It was terrible," Mitchell said.

No one was home at the time of the fire, but three dogs inside were unable to make it out. Firefighter didn't have an exact estimate on damages, but said about 75-percent of the home was severely damaged.



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iWar


Stress of Army officer found hanged in Iraq

By Michael Evans
Times Online
28/06/2006

THE head of the Army's Special Investigations Branch in Iraq, involved in a huge workload, was found hanging by a bootlace in his barracks room, an inquest was told.

Captain Kenneth Masters, 40, who commanded 61 Section of the Royal Military Police's Special Investigation Branch, had become "stressed and frustrated", the inquest at Swindon was told yesterday.

He had been involved in investigations into allegations of abusive treatment of Iraqi detainees by British soldiers.

The body of Captain Masters, who had sought medical help, was found at the base at Basra airport in October.
Warrant Officer Philip Floyd told the court: "He was very conscientious. He had a sense of frustration in that the procedures we had to conduct in the inquiries were hindered by forces outside of our control." He did not explain what he meant by that phrase but the Royal Military Police had to investigate every incident where British troops had opened fire and civilians had been wounded or killed.

Captain Masters seemed to think he had disappointed others, the warrant officer said. When a soldier was found drunk on duty he took personal charge of the inquiry.

"He took it very personally and worried that it would lead to disciplinary action. He became more and more indecisive but I never picked up anything from members of the section that was disparaging."

In the officers' mess the day before he died he was withdrawn. "He said he had been having a difficult time and that he had some personal circumstances but didn't elaborate," Warrant Officer Floyd said.

The inquest continues.

Comment: Pass the whitewash. Captain Kenneth Masters was also involved in the investigation into the events of September 19, when Iraqi police arrested two British undercover Special Air Service (SAS) officers in Basra.

According to the BBC, the SAS men were disguised as Arabs and were travelling in an unmarked car containing "weapons, explosives and communications gear" when they were challenged at an Iraqi security checkpoint...

See next story flash back for the truth about what the SAS were doing in Iraq and why Captain Masters had to be "suicided".

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Flashback: British Government's Agent Provocateurs Exposed

Joe Quinn
Signs of the Times
20/09/2005

There is a saying of sorts that "if you are going to do something, do it well", and given the serious consequences, nowhere is that more true than when you plan to engage in criminal activity. Today in Basra, Southern Iraq, two members of the British SAS (Special Ops) were caught, 'in flagrante' as it were, dressed in full "Arab garb", driving a car full of explosives and shooting and killing two official Iraqi policemen.

This fact, finally reported by the mainstream press, goes to the very heart of and proves accurate much of what we have been saying on the Signs of the Times page for several years.

The following are facts, indisputable by all but the most self-deluded:

Number 1:

The US and British invasion of Iraq was NOT for the purpose of bringing "freedom and democracy" to the Iraqi people, but rather for the purpose of securing Iraq's oil resources for the US and British governments and expanding their control over the greater Middle East.

Number 2:

Both the Bush and Blair governments deliberately fabricated evidence (lied) about the threat the Saddam posed to the west and his links to the mythical 'al-Qaeda' in order to justify their invasion.

Number 3:

Dressed as Arabs, British (and CIA and Israeli) 'special forces' have been carrying out fake "insurgent" attacks, including 'car suicide bombings' against Iraqi policemen and Iraqi civilians (both Sunni and Shia) for the past two years. Evidence would suggest that these tactics are designed to provide continued justification for a US and British military presence in Iraq and to ultimately embroil the country in a civil war that will lead to the breakup of Iraq into more manageable statelets, much to the joy of the Israeli right and their long-held desire for the establishment of biblical 'greater Israel'

Coming not long after the botched London bombings carried out by British MI5 where an eyewitness reported that the floor of one of the trains had been blown inwards (how can a bomb in a backpack or on a "suicide bomber" INSIDE the train ever produce such an effect), more than anything else today's event in Basra highlights the desperation that is driving the policy-makers in the British government.

British intelligence would do well to think twice about carrying out any more 'false flag' operations until they can achieve the 'professionalism' of the Israeli Mossad - they always make it look convincing and rarely suffer the ignominy of being caught in the act and having the faces of their erstwhile "terrorists" plastered across the pages of the mainstream media.

The REAL face of "Islamic Terror" - Two SAS agents caught carrying out a false flag terror attack in Basra, Iraq September 20th 2005.

Official: British troops freed in jailbreak

CNN 2005/09/20

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A British armored vehicle escorted by a tank crashed into a detention center Monday in Basra and rescued two undercover troops held by police, an Iraqi Interior Ministry official told CNN.

British Defense Ministry Secretary John Reid confirmed two British military personnel were "released," but he gave no details on how they were freed.

In a statement released in London, Reid did not say why the two had been taken into custody. But the Iraqi official, who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity, said their arrests stemmed from an incident earlier in the day.

The official said two unknown gunmen in full Arabic dress began firing on civilians in central Basra, wounding several, including a traffic police officer. There were no fatalities, the official said.

The two gunmen fled the scene but were captured and taken in for questioning, admitting they were British marines carrying out a "special security task," the official said.

British troops launched the rescue about three hours after Iraqi authorities informed British commanders the men were being held at the police department's major crime unit, the official said.

Iraqi police said members of Iraq's Mehdi Army militia engaged the British forces around the facility, burning one personnel carrier and an armored vehicle.

Video showed dozens of Iraqis surrounding British armored vehicles and tossing gasoline bombs, rocks and other debris at them.

With one vehicle engulfed in flames, a soldier opened the hatch and bailed out as rocks were thrown at him. Another photograph showed a British soldier on fire on top of a tank.

"Many of those present were clearly prepared well in advance to cause trouble, and we believe that the majority of Iraq people would deplore this violence," Reid said. [...]

From the Washington Post

Iraqi security officials on Monday variously accused the two Britons they detained of shooting at Iraqi forces or trying to plant explosives. Photographs of the two men in custody showed them in civilian clothes.

When British officials apparently sought to secure their release, riots erupted. Iraqi police cars circulated downtown, calling through loudspeakers for the public to help stop British forces from releasing the two. Heavy gunfire broke out and fighting raged for hours, as crowds swarmed British forces and set at least one armored vehicle on fire.

Witnesses said they saw Basra police exchanging fire with British forces. Sadr's Mahdi Army militia joined in the fighting late in the day, witnesses said. A British military spokesman, Darren Moss, denied that British troops were fighting Basra police.

From China View (orginally pooled from the BBC)

Iraqi police detained two British soldiers in civilian clothes in the southern city Basra for firing on a police station on Monday, police said.

"Two persons wearing Arab uniforms opened fire at a police station in Basra. A police patrol followed the attackers and captured them to discover they were two British soldiers," an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua.

The two soldiers were using a civilian car packed with explosives, the source said. He added that the two were being interrogated in the police headquarters of Basra.

The British forces informed the Iraqi authorities that the two soldiers were performing an official duty, the source said. British military authorities said they could not confirm the incident but investigations were underway.





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Former Bush Spokesman Urges Newspapers to Run Pro-War Stories by Former Vets With GOP Ties

Democracy Now!
Tuesday, June 27th, 2006

The Buffalo News has revealed that a former spokesman for President Bush has been encouraging U.S. newspapers to run news stories from Iraq written by two combat veterans who are now embedded reporters in Iraq.

The official -- Taylor Gross -- has pitched the stories as "balanced and credible viewpoints gained directly from those closest to and most affected by the Iraq War."

But it turns out the veterans are from a pro-war group called Vets for Freedom that has ties to the Republican Party.
The group is now running website hosted by a firm that previously worked for the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign and the Republican National Committee.

Questions about ties between Vets for Freedom and the Republican party were first raised by the group PR Watch and citizen journalists at PR Watch's website SourceWatch.

TRANSCRIPT

John Stauber, Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy and co-editor of the publication PR Watch. He has co-authored several books including "Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq."

AMY GOODMAN: John Stauber joins us now from Madison, Wisconsin. John is Director of the Center for Media and Democracy and co-editor of the publication PR Watch. He's co-authored several books, including Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq. We welcome you to Democracy Now!

JOHN STAUBER: Thanks, Amy, it's great to be on.

AMY GOODMAN: John, can you talk about this group, Vets for Freedom, and what it means, what their connection to the press is?

JOHN STAUBER: Well, Vets for Freedom is a very interesting organization. I call it a Republican front group. It might be more accurate to call it a Republican-financed, pro-war group geared toward helping the Republicans keep control of Congress and the Senate this November. It portrays itself as a nonpartisan organization of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who are very concerned about the way the media has distorted the image of the war here in the United States and who want to set that record straight. Its founders have been vigorously attacking Democrat John Murtha for his position advocating withdrawal from Iraq. And as the Buffalo News reported just this Sunday, Terry Gross [sic], who was a spokesman for President Bush until last year and is now a P.R. operative and who managed the 2000 Florida debacle for the Republicans, managed their media in the Florida recount --

AMY GOODMAN: Taylor Gross?

JOHN STAUBER: Did I say -- Taylor Gross, correct. He approached the Buffalo News way back in April, trying to place a couple of the founders of this Vets for Freedom organization as embedded reporters for the Buffalo News. Those two Vets for Freedom members were, and are, Wade Zirkle and David Bellavia. They're now in Iraq, reporting on the Vets for Freedom blog. Apparently at least one of them will soon be back in the United States. So I think what we've got here is a pro-war organization.

Its financing is very mysterious. I suspect that, like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, with which it shares a consulting firm, the Donatelli Group, if we knew who was really funding this organization, it would probably be well-heeled people within the Republican Party. I think it's also very possible that this is part of the bigger propaganda campaign that has received hundreds of millions of dollars of public money over the last few years, money that's gone to organizations like the Lincoln Group and other P.R. firms to sell the war.

AMY GOODMAN: We invited on Vets for Freedom to the program, but the group's vice chairman, Owen West, said that no one could join us today. I want to play a clip of the group's founder, Wade Zirkle, speaking on the Hugh Hewitt Show, explaining why he formed the group. Zirkle is a former Marine lieutenant, who served two deployments in Iraq.

AMY GOODMAN: John Stauber, your response?

JOHN STAUBER: Well, this is part of the line that this organization has, that we have to stay the course, we have to support the Bush administration's global war on terror, we have to push forward, that we owe it to the veterans who've died and who've suffered so much, and that the only patriotic course is one of total support for the Bush administration's global war on terror.

I think there was a really important part of the puzzle regarding Veterans for Freedom and what their role is in this election year provided by the New York Times last week, when last Wednesday, in a front-page article, the New York Times reported that the Republican strategy for winning in November is going to be to strongly embrace exactly this pro-war position of Vets for Freedom. And Vets for Freedom is represented by a very sophisticated Republican public relations firm that Taylor Gross founded, called the Herald Group. I think what they understand is that getting vets out as advocates for staying the course, as critics and attackers of anyone who says we should withdraw troops from Iraq, is going to be a very powerful card to play.

AMY GOODMAN: The Vets for Freedom website now features dispatches from Iraq written by these former soldiers who were in Iraq as embedded reporters. The top story on their blog is headlined "Positive Development from Down South." It was written by Vets for Freedom's executive director, Wade Zirkle. Last week the group's vice chair, David Bellavia, wrote about being embedded with the Iraqi military in Ramadi. He describes the experience like this: "Seeing these men in action is amazing. The people of Ramadi trust them. They give them bread and tea. Kids are playing soccer and riding donkeys in the street." This description of Ramadi stands in stark contrast to the other reports coming out of Ramadi, which Iraqis fear will be the site of the next Fallujah. The Los Angeles Times reported last week that thousands of families are reportedly trapped in the city and facing a mounting humanitarian crisis. Food and medical supplies are running low." John, your response to these reports?

JOHN STAUBER: I think these so-called "news reports" coming from David Bellavia, one of the Vets for Freedom founders, is exactly what this organization is all about. When Bush's former spokesperson, Taylor Gross, pitched the Buffalo News and the New York Post and other papers to have Zirkle and Bellavia of Vets for Freedom reporting for them as embedded journalists, I believe this was an effort to be able to portray these pro-war Republican advocates as journalists. And again, they state clearly on their website, which is maintained by the Donatelli Group, the same organization that provided similar services to the infamous Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, they maintain on their website that they are all about changing the media coverage of the war in Iraq to make it pro-war, pro-mission coverage, now, we see, even to the point of trying to portray themselves as embedded journalists.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you know of any news organization who has taken their reports?

JOHN STAUBER: Well, I think it's interesting that there was no real reporting about Veterans for Freedom until we at Center for Media and Democracy began looking at them this month. And then the Buffalo News came forward and broke this big story on Sunday, about how the former Bush spokesperson, Taylor Gross, was pitching them back in April to make these guys embedded reporters for the Buffalo News. As far as we know, according to Taylor Gross in the Buffalo News article, no paper used them as embedded journalists. That's a good sign.

But it's interesting to note that when Taylor Gross was pitching these guys, he didn't say to these papers, "Hey, I'm Taylor Gross. I was a spokesperson for President Bush until last year." He simply said, "I've got some brave vets, and they can provide nonpartisan, unbiased coverage for you on the cheap from Iraq. Would you like them as embedded reporters?" So I think that was really an effort -- remember, this was back in April -- again to be able to have these Vets for Freedom, pro-war advocates say, "Not only are we combat veterans." And these are guys, many of whom were very wounded in combat. There's no questioning their valor or personal passion or commitment, but I think this effort to embed them and get them reporting for papers like the New York Post and the Buffalo News was actually an effort to provide them a veneer of journalism. And it's all fallen apart, because the Buffalo News has revealed it.

What I think is extremely disturbing is that except for this report right now on Democracy Now!, no other national news media has picked this up. There's been no legs to the Buffalo News story, no wire services have picked it up. And yet, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, the New York Times, have all run op-eds from these guys, without any reporting on who they actually are.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, it's interesting. This is what we call engaging in trickle-up journalism. Maybe viewers, listeners now, people who are reading the transcripts, will call their news organizations to ask for more coverage of this. John, I also wanted to ask you about video news releases, a follow-up. Your organization, Center for Media and Democracy, revealed in April that at least 77 TV stations around the country have been caught airing corporate-sponsored propaganda disguised as news. The report accuses of TV stations of actively disguising the content to make it appear to be their own reporting, even though the spots were actually paid for by companies like General Motors, Panasonic and Pfizer. What's been the response to the study since you put it out and we broadcast it?

JOHN STAUBER: The response has been extremely heartening, because the Federal Communications Commission, based on our fake TV news report, has launched a formal investigation of these 36 stations that we caught red-handed airing corporate propaganda disguised as news stories. What the result of that investigation will be, of course, we don't know. But that was a tremendous development. And now, we're urging people to contact the FCC and to demand that the FCC enforce regulations on the books that require the -- [inaudible]

AMY GOODMAN: John Stauber, Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy. Looks like we just lost that satellite feed, but we do want to thank Public Television in Madison, Wisconsin, WHA-TV, Channel 21, for hosting John today. John is co-editor of the publication, PR Watch, and has written a number of books, including Weapons of Mass Deception.

Click Here to listen to the show.





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New Bin Laden Audio Tape: Osama Speaks on the Death of Zarqawi

Rhonda Schwartz and Maddy Sauer
The Blotter
June 28, 2006

A new Osama bin Laden audio is expected to be released within three days. On the tape, bin Laden will talk about the death of Abu Musab Zarqawi. More details to come.

The audio is about 5 minutes in length. This is the fourth time we have heard an audio message from bin Laden this year. The last time we heard from him was following the sentencing of Zacarias Moussaoui for the 9/11 attacks. Bin Laden claimed that he had not assigned Moussaoui to be a part of the attacks.

That tape came 19 days after the sentencing of Moussaoui and was considered a quick turnaround for one of his tapes, which are believed to pass through numerous couriers on their way to Al Jazeera network.

The news of Zarqawi's death came three weeks ago on June 8.


Comment: Some reader comments to this story from The Blotter:
Funny. They can track down 7 terrorists who apparently wanted to blow up the Sears Tower from Miami with no supplies, yet Bin Laden still roams free.
And:
well...if we caught him where would that put the "war on terror"? It'd be all but over. Then the government would have to give all that power back, we couldn't have that....could we?
And:
It's good to see people starting to ask important questions about the well timed release of these "bin laden tapes." Indeed, how do reporters KNOW a tape is on the way?? Did he send them a telegram??? Looks more and more like Bin Laden is the boogie man our government needs to remind people why they should be afraid. I'm starting to wonder WHO is actually making these tapes.
And:
FBI has recently said on record that THERE ARE NO TIES LINKING OSAMA BIN LADEN TO 9/11. Check it out for yourselves this is a government scam! They need their ever elusive boogie man. How come most americans havent woken up to this yet?

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Iranian Prez at AU Summit

Teheran, Jun 29 (Prensa Latina)

Teheran, Jun 29 (Prensa Latina) Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadineyad travelled to Gambia Thursday to attend the 7th African Union Summit, on the invitation of his Gambian counterpart, Yahya Jammeh, current chairman of the regional organization.
The Iranian leader´s agenda includes a conference at the AU session, several meetings with African presidents, and bilateral negotiations, IRNA News Agency informed.

On this first trip to Africa as president, Ahmadineyad will be accompanied by the foreign minister, the vice president of executive affairs, and the head of the Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization.



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Romanian PM says troops to withdraw from Iraq

www.chinaview.cn 2006-06-29 20:51:56

BUCHAREST, June 29 (Xinhua) -- Romanian Prime Minister Calin Popescu-Tariceanu said on Thursday that the country's troops in Iraq would withdraw, joining Italy and Japan in leaving U.S.-led reconstruction efforts in the Middle East state.

Defense Minister Teodor Atanasiu would now seek approval from the Supreme Council of National Defense to issue a pullout order, the premier said at a press conference.
Romania has around 890 troops in Iraq.

The withdrawal has been prompted by concerns over Romanian troops' safety and a growing trend by European states to bring home their soldiers, Tariceanu said.

Among Washington's European allies, Spain has withdrawn troops and Italy is on the move. Japan is also pulling out.

Two Romanian servicemen have been killed in Iraq since their deployment in 2001.

Atanasiu said the ending of the mission would save Romania 90 million U.S. dollars.

In addition to operations in Iraq, Romania has sent more than 700 troops to Afghanistan. Four soldiers have lost their lives there since 2003.



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Ministers warned of terrorism threat from Iran

Press Association
Thursday June 29, 2006

The intelligence agencies have warned ministers that Iran could launch terrorist attacks against British targets if the row over its controversial nuclear programme escalates, it was disclosed today.

The parliamentary intelligence and security committee - which oversees the work of the agencies - said the possibility of Iranian state-sponsored terrorism was now considered one of the main threats facing the UK.
"There is increasing international tension over Iran's nuclear programme and backing of groups such as Lebanese Hezbollah," the committee said in its annual report.

"There is a possibility of an increased threat to UK interests from Iranian state-sponsored terrorism should the diplomatic situation deteriorate."

Ministers have previously claimed that sophisticated roadside bombs used in a series of deadly attacks on British troops in Iraq have been supplied through Iran, although they have not blamed the regime directly.

The committee - which is made up of senior MPs and peers - took evidence from the heads of MI6, MI5, GCHQ and the defence intelligence staff in drawing up its report.

It said that Britain continued to face a "serious and sustained threat" from international terrorism - most significantly from al Qaida and associated networks.

Other security threats included the activities of dissident groups in Northern Ireland - which continued to pose a threat in the province and on the British mainland - and the international spread of weapons of mass destruction.

Asked about the perceived threat from Iran, Tony Blair's official spokesman said: "I don't want to give a piecemeal response to the ISC report. I think it's better we respond in terms of the government as a whole."

He said the cabinet this morning, at its regular weekly meeting, "reviewed the whole counter-terrorism strategy and approach but, in terms of the particular aspects of the ISC report, I think it's better we give our collective response".

That would probably be in about six months' time, added the spokesman.

He went on: "The terrorism threat remains very active and very real. Our commitment is that, if there is a specific threat the public need to know about, then we will tell them."

The report also revealed that MI5, the security service, was expanding so rapidly in order to meet the threat of terrorism in the UK that it had outgrown its London headquarters building.

Thames House at Westminster is expected to have exhausted its capacity by October. The committee said another building had been found to provide additional accommodation - but its identity was censored out on security grounds.

MI5 staff numbers are now expected to grow by over 50% over the next three years, with over half its resources now devoted to counter-terrorism.

The committee welcomed the expansion but warned that the risks involved in taking on large numbers of inexperienced staff would have to be carefully managed.

"This growth carries a series of risks that the service will need to manage over the next few years, including the need to maintain standards in operational capability and service to customers in spite of the increased proportion of new and inexperienced staff," it said.

It said that the expansion had been accompanied by an acceleration of MI5's regionalisation programme in the wake of the July 7 bombings, with the opening of a number of regional stations around the country.

The committee said that with the overall budget for the intelligence agencies due to rise to more than £1.5bn, it was essential to have proper financial controls in place.

"The significant additional funding made available since 9/11 has generally been accepted as essential for building capacity across the intelligence community to counter threats from international terrorism and to provide an enhanced standard of coverage and assurance," it said.

"Given that this represents an unprecedented level of new funding for the agencies, it is important, the committees view, that mechanisms are in place and functioning to ensure that money is well spent, appropriately controlled and monitored, and serves as a driver for increased efficiency."

Comment: Yeah, right.

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Iraqi insurgents offer to halt attacks if US sets withdrawal

June 30, 2006

BAGHDAD: In a sign of the e-times, Iraq's new Prime Minister has set up an email account to communicate with insurgents.

Nouri al-Maliki had the address flashed on the screen during a broadcast on state-run al-Iraqiya television on Sunday night during a program that dealt with the problems of the Iraqi people.

It was advertised as an address to which insurgents were welcomed to write, and confidentiality was assured.
Mr Maliki unveiled his national reconciliation plan earlier in the day, inviting insurgents to lay down their arms.

Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish MP and close associate of Iraq's President, Jalal Talabani, confirmed that Mr Maliki had set up an email account but did not have details about how many electronic messages had been sent to the Prime Minister.

An Iraqi presidential security adviser, Wafiq al-Samaraie, said the response to Mr Maliki so far had not been overwhelming, with just two messages arriving.

The Iraqi Government did not give out the address after the broadcast to prevent those outside the country from flooding it with junk email. Nevertheless, more traditional methods of contact and diplomacy were showing results yesterday.

Insurgent and government officials said 11 Sunni insurgent groups had offered to halt attacks on the US-led military if the Iraqi Government and the US President, George Bush, set a two-year timetable for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from the country.

The demand is part of a broader offer from the groups, which operate north of Baghdad in the heavily Sunni Arab provinces of Salahuddin and Diyala.

Iraq's national security adviser, Mouwafak al-Rubaie, said yesterday that the bombing of the world's most revered Shiite shrines in February was the work of a seven-man cell of al-Qaeda in Iraq that included two Iraqis, four Saudis, and a Tunisian man who has been captured.

Mr Rubaie identified the leader of the al-Qaeda cell as Haitham Shaker Mohammed al-Badri, a Sunni Arab Iraqi born in Samarra.

He remains at large, and officials have distributed his wanted poster to checkpoints and border crossings.

The captured Tunisian told officials that "the sole reason behind his action was to drive a wedge between the Shia and Sunnis and to ignite and trigger a sectarian war in this country", Mr Rubaie said.

Meanwhile, Russia's President, Vladimir Putin, has ordered his country's secret services to find and kill those who kidnapped and killed four Russian embassy employees in Iraq.



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Iraq "insurgents" want U.S. out in 2 years

06/28/06
AP


Insurgents are demanding the withdrawal of all U.S. and British forces from Iraq within two years as a condition for joining reconciliation talks, a senior Iraqi government official said Wednesday.
In Moscow, meanwhile, President Vladimir Putin ordered the special services to hunt down and "destroy" the killers of four Russian Embassy workers in Iraq, the Kremlin said.

A top security official also said Iraqi forces captured a key al-Qaida suspect wanted in the bombing of a Shiite shrine, but the mastermind of the attack that brought the country to the brink of civil war was still at large.

Iraqi government officials involved with the contacts with insurgents told The Associated Press that several militant groups sent delegates from their regions and tribes to speak on their behalf.

One of the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of demands for secrecy in the talks, said the insurgents have so far rejected face-to-face talks, saying they fear being targeted by Shiite militias, Iraqi security forces and the Americans.

The official said the insurgents have demanded a two-year "timetable for withdrawal" in return for joining Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's bid for national reconciliation.

The insurgents also said a condition for any future direct talks would be the presence of observers from the Arab League, Saudi Arabia and Iraq's influential Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars.

Al-Maliki said any amnesty offered under his 24-point reconciliation plan that was unveiled Sunday would not include militants who killed American forces or Iraqis.

"Any amnesty for insurgents will exclude fighters who killed Iraqis or soldiers of the multinational forces because these troops came to Iraq according to international agreements and they are contributing in making the political process successful," he said.

"Those who commit such crimes will stand trial because the aim of killing Iraqis or foreign soldiers is to frustrate democracy and the political process," al-Maliki said.

Al-Maliki has not provided more specifics about the amnesty plan because it's such a sensitive issue in the United States. While he said insurgents who had killed U.S. forces or Iraqis would be excluded, he did not clarify how such a determination would be made because virtually all insurgents who would be affected are still at large.

He also has sought a pardon for detained Iraqis who have not been convicted of killings or terrorist acts.

Al-Maliki also said no timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops would be imposed until Iraqi forces are ready to take over security. "The timing depends on the capabilities of these (Iraqi) forces," he said.

His speech came as the government struggled to contain rampant ethnic and sectarian violence.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad discussed Iraq with Saudi King Abdullah and other top officials Tuesday in Jeddah, the U.S. Embassy said. Saudi Arabia, home to Islam's holiest shrines, has good relations and some influence among Iraq's Sunni Arabs, which make up the core of the insurgency.

Key Iraqi lawmakers have said that seven insurgent groups - not including al-Qaida or Islamic terror groups but mostly made up of former members or backers of Saddam Hussein's ousted regime - had offered the government a conditional truce.

But one of those purported groups, the Mohammed Army, denied such contacts had been made.

"We heard from the media that Mohammed Army brigades in Abu Ghraib, Fallujah and Ramadi were among those negotiated with the Iraqi government ... and that did not happen," according to a statement dated Monday and e-mailed to journalists in Fallujah.

The Mohammed Army is made up of former members of Saddam's Baath Party, members of his elite Republican Guards and former military commanders. It, too, has focused attacks on the U.S. military and played a role in the November 2004 battle for Fallujah.

National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie said a Tunisian identified as Yousri Fakher Mohammed Ali - and also known as Abu Qudama - was captured after being seriously wounded in a clash with security forces north of Baghdad a few days ago in which 15 other foreign fighters were killed.

Al-Rubaie said Abu Qudama was part of a gang that carried out the Feb. 22 attack on the Shiite Golden Dome shrine in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad. The suspect entered Iraq in November 2003 and joined al-Qaida in June 2004, al-Rubaie said.

He also identified the fugitive ringleader in the operation as an Iraqi named Haitham Sabah Shaker Mohammed al-Badri, an al-Qaida operative. He said the gang, which included two other Iraqis, four Saudis and Abu Qudama, planted bombs in the 1,200-year-old Askariya mosque that exploded and obliterated its glistening golden dome.

A spasm of sectarian killing and revenge attacks on Sunni and Shiite mosques after the bombing took Iraq to the brink of civil war. Since then, at least 3,382 civilians were killed, more than 20,000 families were displaced, and dozens of Sunni and Shiite mosques were damaged or destroyed.

While acknowledging al-Badri was still at large, al-Rubaie did not say if other members of the gang had been captured.

Al-Rubaie said Abu Qudama was involved in the shooting death of an Al-Arabiya TV correspondent and two of her colleagues after the shrine bombing. Abu Qudama was captured in Udaim, a village about 70 miles north of Baghdad, he said.

"Abu Qudama confessed that he killed hundreds of Iraqis," al-Rubaie said, without giving details.

The statement from the Kremlin press service said Putin "has ordered the special forces to take all necessary measures to find and destroy the criminals" responsible for the deaths of the Russians, who were abducted in early June.

It did not specify what special forces might be involved. Agents of the Foreign Intelligence Service and the Federal Security Service - the main successor to the Soviet KGB - could be considered special forces.

Federal Security Service chief Nikolai Patrushev later said that special forces would do everything possible to ensure that the killers "do not escape from responsibility," the Interfax news agency reported.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Krivtsov declined to say whether any Russian special forces were in Iraq, but noted that there are "people responsible for security at the embassy" in Baghdad. Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent defense analysts, told The Associated Press, "We don't have real special forces in Iraq."

Among the sporadic violence Wednesday in Iraq, according to police:

- A suicide car bomber blew up himself near a Sunni mosque in a market south of the northeastern city of Baqouba, killing one person and wounding 12.

- A roadside bomb targeting a U.S. convoy exploded in western Baghdad, killing an Iraqi civilian and wounding another.

- Gunmen killed Riyadh Abdul-Majid Zuaini, the customs director for central Baghdad, and his driver in the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Amariyah.

- Clashes between gunmen and police also broke out in the northern city of Mosul, leaving a policeman wounded. One militant was arrested.

Comment: Sounds reasonable. After all, if the US really did invade Iraq in order to remove the threat of Saddam and free the Iraqi people from his "reign of terror", then the mission is accomplished. Why stay? Give Iraq back to the Iraq people. The Iraqi insurgents represent the Iraqi people.

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Sure They Care About Your Health


Most employers cutting retiree health care: study

By Kim Dixon
Reuters
Wed Jun 28, 2006

CHICAGO - Most U.S. employers are planning to further scale back health benefits offered to retirees, as companies struggle with the upward march in the cost of medical care and weigh increased contributions from the government's Medicare program, a survey found.

Ninety-five percent of the mostly Fortune 500 companies polled expect to further restrict their retiree health plans over the next five years, and 14 percent plan to stop providing coverage entirely, the survey of 163 companies by benefits consultants Watson Wyatt found.
Employers have been exiting the retiree health business for a decade-and-a-half, amid rapid inflation in the cost of health care and increasing mobility of workers. But some feared the pace would quicken amid recent changes that boost benefits provided by Medicare, the government's health insurance program for the nation's 43 million elderly and disabled people.

"There is definitely more change in the air now that Medicare Part D has come into play. There are fewer companies that are not planning on doing anything at all," said Cara Jareb, director of retiree medical at Watson Wyatt. "The willingness to eliminate the benefit is clearly increasing."

Changes in the Medicare program include adding prescription drug benefits, known as Medicare Part D. Experts feared that with a richer government benefit, employers would be more likely to stop offering coverage.

About a third of U.S. employers offered current workers retiree coverage in 2005, down from about two-thirds in 1988, according to a recent study by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation.

According to Standard & Poor's, plans for retiree benefits at S&P 500 companies, excluding pensions, were underfunded by $321 billion, meaning promises to retirees are only 22 percent funded.

EMPLOYERS WEIGH EXITING

About three-quarters of U.S. companies polled are accepting a Medicare subsidy from the government intended to keep employers in the business of helping workers defray health costs when they retire.

"The question is, is the bribe enough?," said Mark Pauley, a health economist at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. "My distinct impression is that a fair number of employers did adjust their own contributions around the Medicare benefit. But the numbers completely abandoning it are small."

Most companies are skimming the benefits they do offer. A quarter of employers are tightening eligibility for current workers, and a similar amount are offering more expensive plans.

About 40 percent of employers said they believed the best way to solve their retiree health cost problem is to exit it altogether, although most continue to offer benefits because of practical considerations, the study found.

The same amount, about 40 percent, said taking the government subsidy is the best way to keep costs down. Jareb said it showed that even though companies might think exiting the business would help with costs, most are unlikely to do it at this point.

"In essence the numbers indicate that -- whether due to employee relations, benefits philosophy or collective bargaining -- exiting retiree heath is not a viable option for the majority of employers" the study said.



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Surgeon general warns of secondhand smoke

By LAURAN NEERGAARD
AP Medical Writer
Tue Jun 27, 2006

WASHINGTON - Breathing any amount of someone else's tobacco smoke harms nonsmokers, the surgeon general declared Tuesday - a strong condemnation of secondhand smoke that is sure to fuel nationwide efforts to ban smoking in public.

"The debate is over. The science is clear: Secondhand smoke is not a mere annoyance, but a serious health hazard," said U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona.

More than 126 million nonsmoking Americans are regularly exposed to smokers' fumes - what Carmona termed "involuntary smoking" - and tens of thousands die each year as a result, concludes the 670-page study. It cites "overwhelming scientific evidence" that secondhand smoke causes heart disease, lung cancer and a list of other illnesses.
The report calls for completely smoke-free buildings and public places, saying that separate smoking sections and ventilation systems don't fully protect nonsmokers. Seventeen states and more than 400 towns, cities and counties have passed strong no-smoking laws.

But public smoking bans don't reach inside private homes, where just over one in five children breathes their parents' smoke - and youngsters' still developing bodies are especially vulnerable. Secondhand smoke puts children at risk of sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, as well as bronchitis, pneumonia, worsening asthma attacks, poor lung growth and ear infections, the report found.

Carmona implored parents who can't kick the habit to smoke outdoors, never in a house or car with a child. Opening a window to let the smoke out won't protect them.

"Stay away from smokers," he urged everyone else.

Even a few minutes around drifting smoke is enough to spark an asthma attack, make blood more prone to clot, damage heart arteries and begin the kind of cell damage that over time can lead to cancer, he said.

Repeatedly questioned about how the Bush administration would implement his findings, Carmona would only pledge to publicize the report in hopes of encouraging anti-smoking advocacy. Passing anti-smoking laws is up to Congress and state and local governments, he said.

"My job is to make sure we keep a light on this thing," he said.

Still, public health advocates said the report should accelerate an already growing movement toward more smoke-free workplaces.

"This could be the most influential surgeon general's report in 15 years," said Matthew Myers of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. "The message to governments is: The only way to protect your citizens is comprehensive smoke-free laws."

The report won't surprise doctors. It isn't a new study but a compilation of the best research on secondhand smoke done since the last surgeon general's report on the topic in 1986, which declared secondhand smoke a cause of lung cancer that kills 3,000 nonsmokers a year.

Since then, scientists have proved that even more illnesses are triggered or worsened by secondhand smoke. Topping that list: More than 35,000 nonsmokers a year die from heart disease caused by secondhand smoke.

Regular exposure to someone else's smoke increases the risk of a nonsmoker getting heart disease or lung cancer by up to 30 percent, Carmona found.

Some tobacco companies acknowledge the risks. But R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., which has fought some of the smoking bans, challenges the new report's call for complete smoke-free zones and insists the danger is overblown.

"Bottom line, we believe adults should be able to patronize establishments that permit smoking if they choose to do so," said RJR spokesman David Howard.

And a key argument of some business owners' legal challenges to smoking bans is that smoking customers will go elsewhere, cutting their profits.

But the surgeon general's report concludes that's not true. It cites a list of studies that found no negative economic impact from city and state smoking bans - including evidence that New York City restaurants and bars increased business by almost 9 percent after going smoke-free.

To help make the point, Carmona's office videotaped mayors of smoke-free cities and executives of smoke-free companies, including the founder of the Applebee's restaurant chain, saying business got better when the haze cleared.

In addition to the scientific report, Carmona issued advice for consumers and employers Tuesday:

-Choose smoke-free restaurants and other businesses, and thank them for going smoke-free.

-Don't let anyone smoke near your child. Don't take your child to restaurants or other indoor places that allow smoking.

-Smokers should never smoke around a sick relative.

-Employers should make all indoor workspace smoke-free and not allow smoking near entrances, to protect the health of both customers and workers, and offer programs to help employees kick the habit.

Comment:
"The report won't surprise doctors. It isn't a new study but a compilation of the best research on secondhand smoke done since the last surgeon general's report on the topic in 1986, which declared secondhand smoke a cause of lung cancer that kills 3,000 nonsmokers a year."
This "new report" based on past "best research" isn't a new tactic when it comes to the anti-smoking campaign. If you dig into the "research" that has been done, you will find that very little of it is actually original research. Read "An Environmental 9/11" by Matthew K. Kiel for more information.

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Awkward moments abound in penis pump trial

By SHAUN SCHAFER
Associated Press
Wed Jun 28, 2006

BRISTOW, Okla. - Serving on the jury in an indecent-exposure trial unfolding in this conservative Oklahoma town has been a giggle-inducing experience.

Former Judge Donald D. Thompson, a veteran of 23 years on the bench, is on trial on charges he used a penis pump on himself in the courtroom while sitting in judgment of others.
Over the past few days, the jurors have watched a defense attorney and a prosecutor pantomime masturbation. A doctor has lectured on the lengths the defendant was willing to go to enhance his sexual performance.

The white-handled sexual device sits before the jury box for hours at a time. Occasionally an attorney picks it up and squeezes the handle, demonstrating the "sh-sh" sound of air rushing through the contraption's plastic tubing.

The jurors sometimes exchange awkward looks and break into nervous laughter when the testimony takes a lurid turn.

Thompson, 59, is charged with four counts of indecent exposure, each punishable by up to 10 years in prison. If convicted, he would also have to register as a sex offender, and his $7,489.91-a-month pension would be in jeopardy.

Thompson's former court reporter, Lisa Foster, wiped away tears as she described tracing an unfamiliar "sh-sh" in the courtroom to her boss. She testified that between 2001 and 2003 she saw Thompson expose himself at least 15 times.

"I was really shocked and I was kind of scared because it was so bizarre," said Foster.

She testified that during a trial in 2002, she heard the pump during the emotional testimony of a murdered toddler's grandfather.

The grandfather "was getting real teary-eyed, and the judge was up there pumping on that pump," she said. "It was sickening."

The allegations came to light after a police officer who was in Thompson's court heard pumping sounds and took photos of the device during a break in the proceedings.

Thompson took the stand in his own defense, saying the device was a gag gift from a longtime friend with whom he had joked about erectile dysfunction. He said he kept the pump under the bench or in his office but didn't use it.

"In 20-20 hindsight, I should have thrown it away," he said.

The R-rated testimony has produced occasional outbursts of laughter and surreal scenes. A man who once served as a juror in Thompson's court testified that he never saw the device, but figured out what it was based on movies he had seen.

The comment sent sidelong glances through the courtroom.

"It sounded like a penis pump to me," Daniel Greenwood testified. He said he had seen such devices in "Austin Powers" and "Dead Man on Campus."

Dr. S. Edward Dakil, a urologist called as an expert witness, repeatedly prompted laughter from the jury when discussion turned to the penis pump. Dakil defended use of the device after defense attorney Clark Brewster said it was an out-of-date treatment for erectile dysfunction.

"I still use those," Dakil testified.

Brewster paused.

"Not you, personally?" he asked.

"No," Dakil responded as jurors laughed. "I recommend those as a urologist."



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Science Korner


CDC warns of measles risk with travel to World Cup

Reuters
Wed Jun 28, 2006

NEW YORK - Americans traveling to the World Cup soccer matches in Germany should be aware that nearly 1,200 cases of measles have been reported in a region that includes 3 of the 12 host cities, according to an advisory issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The cases have sprung up in the North Rhine-Westphalia region of the country since January 1 of this year. The World Cup cities of Cologne, Dortmund, and Gelsenkirchen are located in this region.
The CDC is particularly concerned about measles transmission at the World Cup given the extremely contagious nature of the virus and the fact that very large numbers of people are in close contact with one another.

In addition, there is concern that people traveling to a western European country like Germany may not take the precautions to prevent disease that they would when traveling to other areas of the world.

Because of these concerns CDC recommends that:

--People traveling to the World Cup should be aware of their measles vaccination history and take steps if needed to make sure they are protected.

--Any measles symptoms (raised rash on the face that spreads to the extremities, red eyes, etc.) after return from the World Cup should prompt travelers to see a healthcare provider.

--People with measles symptoms should avoid contact with others to reduce the risk of disease transmission.

--Physicians evaluating patients with a fever should inquire about vaccination history and any recent travel.

Comment: Only a tiny fraction of Americans are even interested in watching the World Cup on TV...

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Smile! A new Canadian tool can re-grow teeth say inventors

AFP
Wed Jun 28, 2006

OTTAWA - Snaggle-toothed hockey players and sugar lovers may soon rejoice as Canadian scientists said they have created the first device able to re-grow teeth and bones.

The researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton filed patents earlier this month in the United States for the tool based on low-intensity pulsed ultrasound technology after testing it on a dozen dental patients in Canada.
"Right now, we plan to use it to fix fractured or diseased teeth, as well as asymmetric jawbones, but it may also help hockey players or children who had their tooth knocked out," Jie Chen, an engineering professor and nano-circuit design expert, told AFP.

Chen helped create the tiny ultrasound machine that gently massages gums and stimulates tooth growth from the root once inserted into a person's mouth, mounted on braces or a removable plastic crown.

The wireless device, smaller than a pea, must be activated for 20 minutes each day for four months to stimulate growth, he said.

It can also stimulate jawbone growth to fix a person's crooked smile and may eventually allow people to grow taller by stimulating bone growth, Chen said.

Tarek El-Bialy, a new member of the university's dentistry faculty, first tested the low-intensity pulsed ultrasound treatment to repair dental tissue in rabbits in the late 1990s.

His research was published in the American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics and later presented at the World Federation of Orthodontics in Paris in September 2005.

With the help of Chen and Ying Tsui, another engineering professor, the initial massive handheld device was shrunk to fit inside a person's mouth.

It is still at the prototype stage, but the trio expects to commercialize it within two years, Chen said.

The bigger version has already received approvals from American and Canadian regulatory bodies, he noted.



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Ancient Egyptian tomb opened, owner remains mysterious

Last Updated Wed, 28 Jun 2006 18:34:47 EDT
CBC News

The first tomb to be unveiled in Egypt's Valley of the Kings since King Tutankhamun's contains jewelry and embalming materials, but no mummy.

When the tomb and its seven coffins were uncovered in February, researchers expected to find a royal mummy, given the site was metres from Tut's tomb. Dozens of Egyptian pharoahs and their relatives were laid to rest at the site.
But when the lid was lifted off the last coffin on Wednesday, archeologists found woven flowers and royal necklaces thought to be 3,000 years old.

The embalming materials could help reveal what plants and herbs the ancient Egyptians used, said chief curator Nadia Lokma of the Cairo Museum.

There are also signs the tomb, called KV 63, is linked to Tut, said Zahi Hawas, head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

The tomb has elements of Aten, the sun god in ancient Egyptian mythology, said Egyptologist Otto Schaden of the University of Memphis, who uncovered the tomb.

Coffin lids are coverered in resin, obscuring some hieroglyphic inscriptions, said Hawas.

Researchers hope the hieroglyphics will help them to identify for whom the coffins were built.

The six coffins, which had been opened previously, contained mostly pottery shards and what appear to be feathery pillows.



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DNA shows foreigner worked on royal tomb

www.chinaview.cn 2006-06-29 09:50:07

BEIJING, June 29 -- DNA tests have identified the remains of what may prove to be China's first foreign worker - an early European who worked on the mausoleum of China's first emperor.

The DNA tests were done on remains from one of the laborers' tombs surrounding the mausoleum of Qinshihuang, in northwestern Shaanxi Province.

The mausoleum was built more than 2,200 years ago.
Scientists found the foreign remains among 121 shattered human skeletons in a tomb about 500 meters from the famous museum housing the life-sized terracotta warriors and their horses and weapons.

The discovery means contacts between the people in east Asia and those in what is now central Asia began a century earlier than the previously supposed Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) period, said Duan Qingbo, head of the Qinshihuang Mausoleum Excavation Team under the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Cultural Heritage.

Scientists collected bone fragments from 50 sets of remains in the laborers' tomb that was unearthed in 2003 and from these extracted 15 DNA samples.

Most of the bodies were males aged from 15 to 55, Duan said.

Tan Jingze, an associate professor at Shanghai-based Fudan University, which conducted the DNA tests, said one sample had genetic features commonly associated with the Parsi in India and Pakistan, the Kurds in Turkmenistan and the Persians in Iran.

The foreigner was a man who died in his 20s and was ethnologically a European, Tan said.

He might have been captured in the north where nomads roamed between east and west Asia and been sent to work at the burial ground, she said.

"It's an inspiring discovery, but we're not sure if there are more foreigners involved in the construction of the mausoleum," she said.

Duan said scientists would find it difficult to collect more DNA samples from the tomb as it had suffered serious water erosion and the skeletons, which have been piled in layers, were so badly preserved that any movement would destroy them.



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Dough, Re, Mi


Economy Zips Ahead at a 5.6 Percent Pace

By JEANNINE AVERSA
AP Economics Writer
June 29, 2006

WASHINGTON -- The economy sprang out of a year-end rut and zipped ahead in the opening quarter of this year at a 5.6 percent pace, the fastest in 2 1/2 years and even stronger than previously thought.

The new snapshot of gross domestic product for the January-to-March period exceeded the 5.3 percent growth rate estimated a month ago, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. The upgraded reading - based on more complete information - matched economists' forecasts.

The stronger GDP figure mostly reflected an improvement in the country's trade deficit, which was much less of a drag than previously estimated.
Gross domestic product measures the value of all goods and services produced within the United States and is considered the best barometer of the country's economic fitness.



Fresher barometers, however, suggest the economy is shifting into a lower gear in the current quarter.

In a separate report, the Labor Department said that new claims filed for unemployment benefits last week rose by 4,000 to 313,000 - a bit more than economists were expecting.

Economists predict that economic growth in the April-to-June quarter probably slowed to a pace of around 2.5 percent to 3 percent. High energy prices and a more moderate housing market will play roles in the expected slowdown in overall economic activity.

If that turns out to be the case, the economy will have registered a seesaw-like pattern of growth in the last few quarters.

The opening quarter's energetic performance followed a lethargic showing in the closing quarter of 2005 when the economy grew by a feeble 1.7 percent pace. Fallout from the Gulf Coast hurricanes, including high energy prices, prompted belt tightening by people and businesses.

Consumers and businesses came roaring back in the first quarter, though, a main reason why the overall economy performed so well.

Consumers boosted spending in the first quarter at a 5.1 percent pace, compared to a meager 0.9 percent growth rate in the fourth quarter.

Businesses ramped up spending on equipment and software at a brisk 14.8 percent pace, up from a 5 percent growth rate in the prior quarter.

And, companies' profits continued to grow briskly. One measure of after-tax profits in the GDP report showed profits rose 13.8 percent in the first quarter. It was the second consecutive quarter of such strong growth.

The trade picture improved as imports didn't grow as much as previously estimated. That meant the trade deficit shaved only 0.24 percentage point from GDP, compared with a 0.55 percentage-point reduction calculated a month ago.

An inflation gauge closely watched by the Fed showed that core prices - excluding food and energy - rose 2 percent in the first quarter. That was the same as last month's estimate and was down from a 2.4 percent advance in the fourth quarter.

The inflation reading, however, was taken before oil prices shot up to a record high of $75.17 a barrel in late April. They are now hovering above $72 a barrel.

To fend off inflation, which has been creeping up, the Federal Reserve was expected to boost interest rates at the end of its two-day meeting Thursday. The Fed's goal is to rate interest rates enough to prevent inflation from taking off but not so much as to hurt economic activity.

Job growth lost momentum heading in the summer.

Employers boosted payrolls by just 75,000 in May, the fewest new jobs since October.

President Bush, coping with low job-approval ratings, hopes Goldman Sachs chief Henry Paulson - the man who has been confirmed to be the next treasury secretary - will breath new life in the administration's economic agenda.

Comment:
"If that turns out to be the case, the economy will have registered a seesaw-like pattern of growth in the last few quarters."
A seesaw pattern... It's almost as if someone or something keeps propping up the stumbling economy...

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Google Aims to Speed the Online Checkout Line

By SAUL HANSELL
The New York Times
June 29, 2006

In its quest to "organize the world's information," Google now wants to keep track of your credit card number and where you live.

The company is introducing Google Checkout today, a service that will allow users to make purchases from online stores using payment and shipping information they keep on file with Google.
Google's aim, said Eric E. Schmidt, the chief executive, is to make it easier and faster for people to buy products advertised on Google - thus attracting more advertisers.

"The goal here is to make it be one nanosecond from the time the customer decides to buy to the time the transaction is complete and the product is on the way," Mr. Schmidt said.

For consumers, this sort of service, often referred to as an online wallet, is hardly new. Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo have offered similar wallets, which proved to have limited appeal. While the PayPal service of eBay has attracted widespread use, it offers additional features like the ability to transfer money from checking accounts.

But for merchants, the service comes with a twist: Google will waive some or all of the transaction fees for companies that buy advertising from it. That may give the service a leg up on competitors like PayPal and several smaller companies that help online merchants accept credit cards.

It will also add another entry to the list of businesses that have been shaken up by Google's innovations, a list that already includes publishing, advertising and desktop software.

Google is charging merchants 20 cents plus 2 percent of the purchase price to process card transactions, less than most businesses pay for credit card processing. Banking industry executives say that credit card processors typically pay MasterCard and Visa a fee of 30 cents and 1.95 percent for every purchase, so Google will be subsidizing many transactions.

What is more, for every $1 a company spends on search advertising, Google will waive the fees on $10 worth of purchases. Factoring in the 2 percent fee, that represents a rebate of at least 20 percent of advertising spending.

Mr. Schmidt said the company was willing to lose money on transaction fees because it felt the package would increase advertising spending.

"The math works because we can have lower prices and higher volume," he said.

Google's decision to give free transaction processing to advertisers has the potential to disrupt its carefully cultivated electronic auction for ad placement. Google has worked hard to ensure that the auction treats all advertisers equally, sometimes to the dismay of big companies that are used to discounts for major purchases. It has not offered commissions to advertising agencies, as most media companies do.

Online merchants that do not want to use Google Checkout "might be a little peeved," said Kevin Lee, chief executive of Did-it.com, a search advertising agency. "They might say if you give that credit to some people for credit card processing, give it to me for something else."

Mr. Schmidt said Google had not considered this issue.

While Google's tactics may be seen as aggressive competition, the company is unlikely to run afoul of antitrust laws because it does not have a monopoly in the market.

Yahoo, the other main seller of advertising on search results, recently announced an alliance with eBay that among other things will encourage Yahoo advertisers to use PayPal for payment processing. PayPal will also be promoted as the online wallet for use on Yahoo services. Both companies declined to give financial details of the deal.

Google expects that most sites that use Google Checkout will also continue to use their existing method of processing credit cards and may accept PayPal as well.

Advertisements on Google.com from companies that accept Google Checkout will display a small image of a shopping cart. Clicking on the ad will take customers to the advertiser's Web site, as it does now. When customers decide to buy something, they will be offered the option to sign into Google Checkout and use the credit card and address information on file there. Customers that do not have accounts with Google will be encouraged to set them up.

Google may get several additional benefits from the checkout service. It will encourage more users to register and give it personal data, allowing Google to display advertising based on specific attributes of the viewer. More broadly, the data the company gets from transactions could help it improve the way it chooses which advertising to show to which users. Google says it does not currently plan to use transaction data in this way.

For merchants, one concern is whether Google's system, which is unfamiliar to users, will reduce the number of people who complete purchases on their sites, a measure known as the conversion rate.

"You have people in your most valuable area and suddenly you are switching them off your site to something no one has ever done before," said John Bresee, the president of Backcountry.com, an online seller of sporting goods that has been testing Google Checkout. "The cost will be stunningly high, if they are not great at what they do."

Mr. Bresee said Backcountry would have people watching the performance of Google Checkout around the clock.

"If they convert at the same rate, and the fees are lower, we will put up the biggest Google Checkout button you have ever seen," he said.



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New film starring DiCaprio rattles diamond industry

By Tova Cohen
Reuters
Tue Jun 27, 2006

TEL AVIV - "The Blood Diamond," a film in production starring Leonardo DiCaprio, could hurt diamond sales and the livelihoods of people in Africa, industry leaders warned on Tuesday.

The Warner Brothers film being shot in Africa shows how "conflict diamonds" financed bloody civil wars. DiCaprio portrays a mercenary jailed for smuggling in Sierra Leone, where a civil war lasting until 2002 killed 50,000 people.

Industry officials attending the opening of the World Diamond Congress said the situation with conflict diamonds had dramatically improved in recent years and expressed concern that the movie would not reflect this.
"The problem of conflict diamonds is practically over," Shmuel Schnitzer, outgoing president of the World Federation of Diamond Bourses (WFDB), told Reuters at the conference in Tel Aviv, among the world's top diamond cutting and trading centers.

"To show a film that will lead the public to think the situation is still the same is an injustice to our industry which has done so much," he said.

In a press release issued in February, Warner Bros. Pictures said The Blood Diamond, starring DiCaprio and
Jennifer Connelly, had started production in South Africa and Mozambique.

It did not say when it will be released and company officials could not be reached for comment. The unofficial IMDb movie database has the U.S. release date as January, 2007.

SHOPPING SEASON

The diamond industry fears the movie could hurt sales, especially if it hits theatres around the end of the year during the peak holiday shopping season.

"The people that the movie is trying to help could be hurt the most if it's left without an explanation since livelihoods in Africa depend on income from diamonds," said Eli Izhakoff, chairman and CEO of the World Diamond Council (WDC).

"It will hurt them with a downturn in sales. It can have an adverse effect on all of Africa," Izhakoff said.

He and other diamond industry officials say the situation has changed radically since a system of certification for rough diamonds known as the Kimberley Process was instituted in 2000.

The WDC is currently negotiating with the movie studio to add a scene at the end that would show the implementation of the Kimberley Process.

"They are hearing us and getting documentation and evidence," Izhakoff said. "When all is said and done, they want to be fair."

According to Schnitzer, conflict diamonds account for only 0.2 percent of the world's rough diamonds, down from 3-4 percent a few years ago, but industry and human rights groups differ on how much the practice persists.

Amnesty International, which launched a
Valentine's Day campaign against conflict diamonds, said that diamonds mined in rebel-held areas of West Africa's Ivory Coast were still reaching the international market.



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Bolivia


Bolivia Development Plan Buries Neoliberalism

La Paz, Jun 17 (Prensa Latina)

Mixed reactions has received the development plan that buries neoliberalism from signs of approval to the rejection by business circles opposing the government of Evo Morales.

The Project named "Bolivia proud, sovereign and productive to live well" was presented Friday at the government palace. It establishes new productive bases, industrialization and exports with aggregate value, employment, housing, technological innovation, a new approach in international relations on the basis of sovereignty and the elimination of poverty.
The minister for development, Carlos Villegas, said the strategy points to a yearly increase in public investment and the economy. In the first case, investment will rise from 783 million dollars this year to 1.6 billion by 2011; and the economy will grow 4.6 per cent this year and 7.6 per cent by 2011.

The program is described by the opposition as incomplete, contains seven chapters and uproots the deep social inequity and inhuman exclusion that oppress most of Bolivians, mainly of indigenous origin.

This plan, said Villegas, is fruit of hope placed by the historically excluded

indigenous peoples in the future, and answers the changes demanded by social movements as well as the electoral triumph last December 18, which led Evo Morales to the Presidency.

Its central goal requires the change in the development pattern from exporting primary goods, characterized by exploitation and export of natural resources without aggregate value, he said.

The plan consolidates as main road to development the industrialization of renewable and non-renewable natural resources. The project sustains that inequity and social exclusion are products of colonialism, established at the end of the 19th Century and maintained until the beginning of the 21st Century.

It was neoliberalism that diminished the role of the state and linked the country´s development to the dictate of multilateral organizations and the interests of transnational corporations, says the text.

As a consequence of that model, social, economic and political discrimination of the majority of the indigenous population increased progressively, together with primary exports and the depredation of natural resources.

That is why this new program has as its main objective the elimination of the causes that originated inequity and social exclusion in the country, affirmed Villegas.

The plan looks for redistribution of national wealth obtained for the benefit of social sectors traditionally excluded from access to the productive sector and a dignified job, adequately remunerated and stable, he added.

Thus, the strategy leads to the building of a new society founded on the energy and capacity generated by a multicultural system.

Before that, the Bolivian government had inaugurated the program of Struggle against poverty and support to solidarity investment (Propais), the National Plan for Emergency Employment (Plane) and the Intensive employment Program in El Alto (PIE), all of them generators of eventual employment sources.



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Bolivians prepare for vote to rewrite constitution

Thu Jun 29, 2006 1:17 AM BST
By Helen Popper

LA PAZ, Bolivia (Reuters) - Bolivians go to the polls on Sunday to elect a national assembly to rewrite the constitution, a project President Evo Morales says will give more power to the country's poor indigenous majority.

Constitutional reform was a major election promise of leftist Morales, who took office as the South American country's first indigenous president in January vowing to end 500 years of domination by a white elite.
Sunday's vote -- which includes a referendum on greater regional autonomy -- is his first electoral test and polls suggest his party will win a big majority in the constitutional assembly.

Campaigning on behalf of assembly delegates from his party, Morales, who nationalised the energy industry in May, has pushed the nationalisation of all natural resources in the gas- and mineral-rich country, without saying exactly how.

He is also campaigning for a "no" vote on the regional autonomy referendum, which analysts say could put him on a collision course with the powerful pro-autonomy lobby of wealthy Santa Cruz province, an opposition stronghold.

"We're not going to fight our brothers, but it's now or never for autonomy," pro-autonomy leader German Antelo told flag-waving Santa Cruz residents during a rally to back a "yes" vote. Local media said 200,000 people attended.

Opposition parties have sought to exploit fears about the influence of Morales' ally, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Television ads for the rightist Podemos party, led by former President Jorge 'Tuto' Quiroga, show images of Chavez in military uniform with the words: "Why is Chavez so interested in our constitution? ... Say 'No' to Chavez."

Eighty-one percent of Bolivians support Morales, according to a Mori poll in the weekly La Epoca this week, and critics fear his government will dominate the assembly and entrench a left-wing agenda in the constitution.

Adolfo Franco, an official from the U.S. Agency for International Development, warned in comments published by the Miami Herald last week that the government might try to "promote potentially anti-democratic reforms."

Other government proposals for constitutional reform include giving indigenous communities the right to decide how to manage their land and resources and autonomy to administer justice and local government following their traditions.

It also wants to add the rainbow indigenous flag to the list of national symbols.

Bolivia's constitution has undergone dozens of reforms, but this is the first time a reform assembly is to be directly elected. The 255-member assembly will sit in the city of Sucre, where Bolivian independence was declared in 1825.

Constitutional reform is a key demand of the social groups that toppled two governments from 2003 to 2005 amid violence in Bolivia, which has been dominated by a European-descended elite since the Spanish arrived five centuries ago.

The process is likely to be watched by indigenous groups in neighbouring Peru and Ecuador seeking similar reforms.

Morales, an Aymara Indian who rose to power as the leader of the coca farmers, has said rewriting the constitution will "deliver the second liberation of the Bolivian people" and many of his supporters have high hopes.



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Burning Bush


Court allows statements despite treaty violation

By James Vicini
Reuters
June 29, 2006

WASHINGTON - A divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that failure to tell foreigners of their right to contact their consulate when arrested should not result in throwing out anything they say to police.

The important 6-3 ruling from the nation's top court -- which involved a Mexican and a Honduran -- said foreigners were not entitled to any relief in U.S. courts for violations of the international treaty in question, the Vienna Convention.

Three of the high court's liberal justices said the decision risked jeopardizing treatment of Americans and others traveling the world over.
The ruling, in a pair of cases from Oregon and Virginia, was another by the court's conservative majority that has favored the police. Two weeks ago, the court ruled evidence could be used at trial when the police entered a suspect's home illegally by failing to knock and announce their presence.

Chief Justice John Roberts, one of President George W. Bush's two new conservative appointments to the high court, said for the majority that excluding any statements for a treaty violation would be an inappropriate remedy.

Under the convention, which the United States ratified in 1969 and 169 other nations have ratified, U.S. officials must tell foreign nationals of their right to contact their consulates after their arrest. Americans have the same rights in other countries that signed the treaty.

NO DISPARAGEMENT TO THE VIENNA CONVENTION

Roberts said the ruling "in no way disparages the importance of the Vienna Convention" and that diplomatic avenues remain open for any violation.

He said a failure to tell defendants of their treaty rights was unlikely to produce frequent unreliable confessions or to give the police any practical advantage in obtaining incriminating evidence.

He added that the rights of foreign nationals are effectively protected by other existing constitutional and legal requirements, including the right to a lawyer.

The main dissenters were liberal Justices
Stephen Breyer,
John Paul Stevens and
David Souter.

Breyer wrote that the ruling risked "weakening respect abroad for the rights of foreign nationals, a respect that America in 1969 sought to make effective throughout the world."

Breyer added that it increased the difficulties faced by the United States and treaty-signing nations that want to assure fair treatment around the world.

The Oregon case involved Moises Sanchez-Llamas, a Mexican citizen who was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to more than 20 years in prison for the 1999 attempted murder of a police officer.

Police told him in English and Spanish of his right to remain silent and to have an attorney present, but not that he could contact the Mexican consulate.

In the Virginia case, Honduran national Mario Bustillo is serving a 30-year sentence for the 1997 murder of an 18-year-old man. Bustillo was not advised of his right to seek legal help from the Honduran consulate.

Virginia courts rejected Bustillo's appeal because he had failed to raise the Vienna Convention claim at trial. The high court upheld that decision.

Several legal groups criticized the ruling.

Barbara Bergman of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers said the decision failed to offer any help "to the hundreds of foreign nationals" in the U.S. criminal justice system every year.

Virginia Sloan of the Constitution Project said, "The fairness and accuracy of our criminal justice system may depend on respecting the Vienna Convention."



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Berkeley, Calif. wants vote on Bush impeachment

By Jim Christie
Reuters
Wed Jun 28, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO - Berkeley plans to give voters a say on a measure calling for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, the mayor of this famously liberal California city said on Wednesday.

A number of local governments across the United States have passed resolutions urging impeachment. But the Berkeley city council wants to be the first to put the issue directly to voters, Mayor Tom Bates said in an interview.

"This is basically giving the people a chance to talk, to join the debate," Bates said. "The issues go way beyond impeaching the president. They go to safeguarding the Constitution."
Cheered on by Iraq war protester Cindy Sheehan, who has moved to Berkeley, the council voted unanimously on Tuesday to have the city attorney review the measure that would appear on the November ballot.

The Berkeley Peace and Justice Commission, which advises the city on civil rights issues, recommended the measure to the council.

The panel accuses the Republican White House of intentionally misleading Congress to justify an unnecessary war in Iraq, pursuing unlawful surveillance programs and permitting torture of detainees suspected of links to terrorism.

Bush and Cheney "have acted in a manner contrary to their trust as President and Vice President of the United States and subversive of Constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the People of the United States of America," the commission said in a statement.

Berkeley has seen its politics march steadily leftward since the 1960s, when the Free Speech Movement and Vietnam War protests at the University of California, Berkeley, drew political activists to the city.

Bush received 4,010 votes in Berkeley in the 2004 presidential election, compared with 54,409 votes for Democratic challenger John Kerry.

Republican National Committee spokesman Tucker Bounds said the city council's move was "absolutely out of step with mainstream American voters ... but entirely predictable for liberals in Berkeley."

Berkeley resident Albert Sukoff said he was not surprised by the council's decision.

"I think they overextend themselves and get into things that aren't their business," said Sukoff. "Berkeley has always had a foreign policy, the national one notwithstanding."



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Guantánamo trials ruled illegal

Mark Oliver and agencies
Thursday June 29, 2006

The US supreme court ruled today that the US president, George Bush, overstepped his authority in creating military war crimes trials for detainees at Guantánamo Bay.

In a rebuke to the administration, Justice John Paul Stevens said the proposed trials were illegal under US law and Geneva conventions.

The ruling could hasten the closure of the US detention centre in south-east Cuba, which is used to hold terror suspects picked up in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere beyond the reach of the US constitution and international law.
The case before the supreme court focused on Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who worked as a body guard and driver for the al-Qaida leader, Osama bin Laden. Hamdan, 36, has spent four years in the US prison in Cuba. He faces a single count of conspiring against US citizens from 1996 to November 2001.

Inmates endure open-ended interrogation and detention at the prison, which has become a symbol of the Bush administration's aggressive anti-terror policies.

Mr Bush said last week that he would like to close the camp, but was waiting for direction from the US supreme court. "I'd like to end Guantánamo. I'd like it to be over with," he said after meeting European leaders in Vienna last Wednesday.

Two years ago, the court rejected Mr Bush's claim to have the authority to seize and detain terrorism suspects and indefinitely deny them access to courts or lawyers. In this follow-up case, the justices focused solely on the issue of trials for some of the men.

More than 750 inmates have passed through the steel mesh cages of Guantánamo.

Its numbers of prisoners, however, have been reducing, with no new detainees arriving since September 2004. There are currently around 460 inmates and the Pentagon has already said it intends to transfer 120 of these to their home countries.



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Europe


Bodies of 2 missing Belgian girls found

By ED BROWN
Associated Press
June 28, 2006

LIEGE, Belgium - Police found the bodies of two young sisters Wednesday and said they had been slain and left in a storm sewer after vanishing from an outdoor party in a case that has traumatized Belgians.

A convicted child rapist has been charged in the kidnapping of Stacy Lemmens, 7, and her stepsister Nathalie Mahy, 10, whose bodies were lying about 30 feet apart inside the drainage sewer. Investigators located the spot after an 18-day search, looking under thick undergrowth beside a railroad track in this gritty steel town in eastern Belgium.

"In all our hearts there is a feeling of repugnance, of sorrow and powerlessness," Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said in a televised address to the nation. "We cannot comprehend what motivates these people."
Abdallah Aid Oud, 39, has been charged in the girls' kidnapping. He was arrested when he turned himself in June 13 but has denied involvement. Aid Oud, of North African descent, was the boyfriend of a waitress in the cafe where the girls were last seen. Police say he was in the area the night they went missing.

He was released from a psychiatric ward in December after serving a second sentence for child-sex offenses.

Liege Prosecutor Cedric Visart de Bocarme said there were no other suspects.

"The next hours and days will tell whether there is proof to link the crimes with the suspect," he told reporters.

The girls' bodies were found just a few hundred yards from the cafe where they had been with Nathalie's mother before heading out to play during a late-night street party. Nathalie's mother - the partner of Stacy's father - noticed the girls were missing at about 3 a.m. on June 10 when she went outside to find them.

For Belgium, the gruesome discovery revived painful memories of a series of murders by child rapist Marc Dutroux a decade ago.

A convicted pedophile, Dutroux snatched two 8-year-olds from a Liege street in 1985 and held them for months before allowing them to starve to death locked in a basement while he served time for a minor offense.

Crown Prince Philippe, heir to the Belgian throne, said he was scaling back a trade visit to Moscow as a sign of respect.

"As parents ourselves, we want to express our feelings," he told reporters in Moscow.

"It's a new black day for Belgium," said Elio di Rupo, premier of Belgium's French-speaking Wallonia region.

Scores of mourners placed flowers, teddy bears and white balloons on a bridge over the railroad track near the spot where the bodies were found.

White balloons were the symbol of a campaign that drew hundreds of thousands of protesters into the streets of Belgium's cities in the 1990s to demand reforms of the justice system after revelations of bungling in the Dutroux case. He was finally sentenced to life in prison in 2004 for a series of murders, rapes and kidnaps.

This time, there were few complaints about the investigation. Hundreds of officers joined the search for the girls, and a nationwide manhunt was launched for Aid Oud shortly after the two disappeared.

Jean-Denis Lejeune, the father of one of Dutroux's victims, 8-year-old Julie Lejeune, drove to Liege to comfort the bereaved parents. After his daughter's killing, he helped found an agency for missing children. When Stacy and Nathalie disappeared, the group distributed tens of thousands of missing posters with their photographs.

A court was expected to rule soon whether to keep Aid Oud in custody. His lawyers are demanding he be freed, arguing there is no evidence to link him to the crimes.

Results of autopsies also were expected Thursday in the girls' deaths.

In a strange twist, police were studying an anonymous letter received Wednesday by the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf which contained two maps showing where the girls' bodies could be found. In a report on its Web site, the paper said the maps, sent from Rotterdam, indicated a spot about 1.2 miles from the spot where they were found, but along the same rail line.

"We received a letter with a map on it that could be interesting for this investigation, so we've passed it on to our colleagues in Belgium," Amsterdam police spokesman Gerard Vrooland said.



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Spanish Aznar Assets Questioned

Madrid, Jun 28 (Prensa Latina)

The Spanish Government will demand from ex president Jose Maria Aznar an explanation for having refrained to account properly to the Office of Registration of Top Official's Assets, in violation of the Spanish law.
Aznar failed to report a company he owns, through which he earns 10,000 euros per month.

In a press conference on Wednesday, Minister of Public Administrations, Jordi Sevilla, said Aznar should have declared the existence of Famaztella SL firm.

Through this company, Rupert Murdoch's News International paid him 10,000 euros monthly as consultant, or 120,000 euros yearly, since September, 2004, just four months after leaving his presidential post.



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