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Editorial: Psychologists, Guantanamo and Torture
By STEPHEN SOLDZ
August 1, 2006
For years, the varied mental health professions in the United States have been fighting turf wars. Psychiatrists tried to keep psychologists from being able to conduct therapy or, more recently, from prescribing psychotropic medications. Psychologists fought for rights to conduct these treatments. Psychologists, in turn, fought the attempts of their Masters-level colleagues for professional recognition. Social workers, mental health counselors, and psychoanalysts each fight for recognition against opposition from others.
These battles are fought out through traditional legislative lobbying and pressure. They are, however, also fought through showing one group's value in furthering the interests of the powerful and through organized representatives of each profession maintaining access to non-legislative corridors of power. Thus, keeping in favor with the powerful and not alienating them can be a central aspect of a profession's strategy of advancement.
In this decades-long struggle, the profession of psychology has tried to distinguish itself in various ways. One of these ways is through emphasizing its scientific character. Thus, representatives of organized psychology have been at pains to demonstrate the value of the "science of psychology" to the powerful in industry and in government, including the military and the national security establishment. In addition, psychology's value to the education establishment has been emphasized, as has its value in industrial relations and marketing. World War II provided many opportunities for psychology to demonstrate its value to the war effort including through the screening of soldiers, the development of propaganda techniques to motivate the home front and to undermine enemy morale, the use of human factors engineering to improve airplanes, and the treatment of psychological casualties from the war.
The post-World War II development of a militarized national security state provided many further opportunities for psychology to garner attention to its contributions to the art of propaganda and the development of useable high-tech weapons through human factors engineering, among numerous others.
One particularly disturbing area where psychologists were attempting to demonstrate their value was in the development of sophisticated techniques of interrogation that could obtain information from unwilling captives through the application of behavior modification techniques based on psychological science. Historian Alfred W. McCoy has shed light in this area in his recent book A Question of Torture and in numerous articles and interviews. He documents the decades-long CIA effort to utilized psychological expertise to develop forms of torture that could break down the personality of detainees, rendering them, it was hoped, incapable of withholding desired information. Many of these technique were utilized during the Vietnam conflict and in the various brutal U.S.-supported counterinsurgency campaigns in Latin American in the 1970s and 1980s.
Such applications of psychological knowledge posed thorny issues for organized psychology, always on the lookout for new ways of demonstrating psychology's value to the powerful. While their morally objectionable quality made direct endorsement impossible, to straightforwardly condemn these applications would run the risk of alienating precisely those decision-makers who might be impressed with the potential contributions of psychology as a science and as a profession. Thus, silence about such abuses of psychology is what one would expect from the American Psychological Association, the country's largest representative of organized psychology and silence is what was observed.
The Global War on Terror, launched after 9-11, provided yet another opportunity to experiment with these behavioral science-based torture techniques. The establishment of a detention center at Guantánamo for those detained during the Afghanistan war and other battles in the "Global War on Terrorism" provided a particularly favorable environment. A total institution was created who inmates, the detainees, have, at least in the administration's opinion, absolutely no rights and where all aspects of their daily life can be monitored and controlled. The administration's legal doctrine emphasized that essentially anything short of direct murder was legally acceptable.
Various "behavioral scientists" from psychology and psychiatry were brought in to help the development of this total institution devoted to complete destruction of the personality. In 2005 it was revealed by the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and the New York Times that mental health professionals were serving as consultants on Behavioral Science Consultation Teams, BSCT (colloquially referred to as "biscuit" teams) at Guantánamo, designed to advise interrogators. These teams consult in every aspect of interrogation. As the New Yorker's Jane Mayer told Democracy Now!, one psychiatrist determined that a particular inmate would be allowed seven toilet paper squares a day, while another inmate who was afraid of the dark was deliberately kept almost totally in the dark. Another consultant behavioral scientist, psychologist James Mitchell, recommended that interrogators treat a detainee in such a way as to generate a form of helplessness known as "learned helplessness."
Authors M. Gregg Bloche and Jonathan H. Marks noted in their 2005 NEJM article that interrogations at Guantánamo are often designed to increase stress by means verging on, or even constituting torture:
"Military interrogators at Guantánamo Bay have used aggressive counter-resistance measures in systematic fashion to pressure detainees to cooperate. These measures have reportedly included sleep deprivation, prolonged isolation, painful body positions, feigned suffocation, and beatings. Other stress-inducing tactics have allegedly included sexual provocation and displays of contempt for Islamic symbols."
They go on to note that:
"Since late 2002, psychiatrists and psychologists have been part of a strategy that employs extreme stress, combined with behavior-shaping rewards, to extract actionable intelligence from resistant captives."
Recently, the United Nations Committee against Torture went further and stated that "detaining persons indefinitely without charge, constitutes per se a violation of the Convention" Against Torture. Thus, according to this official body, the existence of Guantánamo in its present form is itself illegal. They went on to join the many organizations and institutions, including most recently, the European Parliament, to call for Guantánamo's closing.
[More information on the interrogation techniques used by American forces at Guantánamo and elsewhere, as well as on their effects on the psychological well-being of those subjected to them, can be found in the Physicians for Human Rights report: Break Them Down: Systematic Use of Psychological Torture by US Forces.]
Even leaving aside the general issue of whether interrogations of the kind conducted at Guantánamo are ever morally acceptable, the participation of mental health professionals in them is potentially in conflict with the ethics codes governing the psychiatric and psychological professions, those of the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association. The Abu Ghraib scandal with its graphic photographic evidence shone a bright spotlight on the abuses that occurred in American detention facilities in this Global War, and after the horrors occurring at Guantánamo and the role of mental health professionals in them were widely reported on, silence by the psychological Association became more difficult to maintain. Pressure mounted for both the Psychological and Psychiatric Associations to do something about psychologists and psychiatrists aiding the torturous interrogations occurring at Guantánamo.
After an extended period of discussion and debate, on May 22, 2006, the American Psychiatric Association endorsed a policy statement that unambiguously stated that under no circumstances should psychiatrists take part in interrogations, at Guantánamo or elsewhere. The crucial section states:
"No psychiatrist should participate directly in the interrogation of persons held in custody by military or civilian investigative or law enforcement authorities, whether in the United States or elsewhere. Direct participation includes being present in the interrogation room, asking or suggesting questions, or advising authorities on the use of specific techniques of interrogation with particular detainees."
The American Psychological Association, in contrast, has adamantly refused to endorse any such statement, saying only that psychologists should behave ethically. Initially, the organization did what organizations often do when embroiled in unwanted controversy: they appointed a Task Force. The Task Force was given a broad mandate to look into what position the Association should take regarding psychologist involvement in national security interrogations in general. This mandate may have had the effect of diluting the Task Force's focus on the abuse at Guantánamo and psychologists' involvement in them.
This Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security included members of the Peace Psychology division of the Association, but it also included psychologists engaged in national security and military activities. (One source claims that four members, out of about eight, were connected to the military. Another source believe a smaller number of members had military or national security connections. A third source, a published article by an Association Division President, states that 6 of 10 members "had ties to the Department of Defense."
Oddly, the membership of the Task Force was kept private, "because of concerns expressed about their personal safety," as it was explained by a former member who refused to elaborate further. However, it has been established that the Task Force included Colonel Louie (Morgan) Banks, identified by Jane Mayer in the July 7, 2005 New Yorker as a psychologist involved the Pentagon's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) program which trains military personnel considered likely to be captured in resisting extreme abuse by their captors. Strangely, for one serving on a policy-recommending body, Col. Banks is not even a member of the Association. Frank Summers, an activist in attempts to change Association policy, succinctly stated the problem with Banks being on the Task Force when he recently wrote in an email "Isn't putting him on the TF equivalent to Cheney being in charge of energy policy? " In addition to Banks, some accounts state that at least one other Task Force member had connections to Guantánamo, but I have been unable to get unambiguous confirmation of this.
Like the membership and its process of appointment, information about the deliberations of the Task Force was also kept private; members agreed to let the Task Force's report stand on its own and not to discuss its deliberations. The report does indicate that agreement was not reached on several issues. Other accounts indicate that a weak initial draft was strengthened by pressure from unhappy Association members.
In June, 2005 this Task Force issued its final report. In a highly unusual procedure, the Association's Board of Directors immediately formally adopted the report without the usual discussion and approval by the broader-based Council of Representatives. This report explicitly stated that it is ethical for psychologists to engage in national security interrogations:
"It is consistent with the APA Ethics Code for psychologists to serve in consultative roles to interrogation and information-gathering processes for national security-related purposes."
While the report reiterated that psychologists should not be involved in any way in "torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment," the Task Force stated that it was not charged to conduct any type of investigation, and thus formed no opinion as to whether any unethical behaviors had occurred.
The Task Force further concluded that no modifications to the Association's Ethics Code were required to deal with the issues of psychologists serving in the various national security roles. Strangely, given the origins of the task force in the controversy about abuse (aka torture) at Guantánamo, the report makes no mention of that or any other specific facility.
It appears that the non-military well-meaning members of the Task Force were outmaneuvered by APA officials who gave it such a wide charge involving all types of national security roles that members did not dare say that psychologists should abstain completely from involvement in national security related activities. Once put in this position, the members ended up stating platitudes akin to the reassurances from the U.S. government that the United States would never engage in torture. Like the Bush administration, the APA leadership has refused to define "torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment," giving the Task Force's edicts no force to actually shape policy.
At a late stage in the Task Force's existence, after their report was issued, as they were to turn to clarifying some details in an Ethics Casebook entry, one of the non-military members, Mike Wessells resigned, stating :
"continuing work with the Task Force tacitly legitimates the wider silence and inaction of the APA on the crucial issues at hand. At the highest levels, the APA has not made a strong, concerted, comprehensive, public and internal response of the kind warranted by the severe human rights violations at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay."
Wessells explained that he was not complaining directly about the Task Force, which:
"had a very limited mandate and was not structured in a manner that would provide the kind of comprehensive response or representative process needed."
Needed, rather, was:
"a strong, proactive, comprehensive response affirming our professional commitment to human well-being and sounding a ringing condemnation of psychologists' participation not only in torture but in all forms of cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of detainees, including the use or support of tactics such as sleep deprivation."
Of course, such a "strong, proactive, comprehensive response" has never come from the Association.
As a further indication that the Task Force report did not mean that the Association was actually interested in doing anything real about psychologists' participation in torture, and as a sign of support for George Bush's National Security State, then APA President Ronald F. Levant traveled to Guantánamo in October, 2005. The Press Release announcing the trip indicated how far the Association was willing to go to support the camp that Amnesty International calls "the gulag of our time." It made clear that the Association leadership never intended to put a stop to psychologists' involvement in Guantánamo. To the contrary, President Levant was quoted as saying:
"'I accepted this offer to visit Guantánamo because I saw the invitation as an important opportunity to continue to provide our expertise and guidance for how psychologists can play an appropriate and ethical role in national security investigations. Our goals are to ensure that psychologists add value and safeguards to such investigations and that they are done in an ethical and effective manner that protects the safety of all involved.'"
Eighteen months after the Abu Ghraib scandal brought the horrors occurring in American detention facilities to the world's attention, after even the mainstream press had numerous articles about how Gen. Miller of Guantánamo brought his special breed of brutality to Iraq with recommendations to "Gitmoize" Abu Ghraib, the Association Press Release contained no acknowledgement that anything out of the ordinary was going on at Guantánamo. As President Levant gushed:
"'This trip gave me an opportunity to ask questions and observe a brief snapshot of the Guantánamo facility first hand,' Levant stated. 'As APA's work in studying the issues presented by our country's national security needs continues, this trip was another opportunity for the Association to inform and advise the process.'"
The Association's campaign to defend Guantánamo and psychologists' participation there continued under the next Association President, Gerald Koocher. One month after assuming office, President Koocher devoted his monthly Presidential column in the Association's APA Monitor to defending the organization and its refusal to do anything in response to the horrors well-documented as occurring at Guantánamo. In Orwellian fashion, he entitled his defense of inaction in the face of barbarity: "Speaking against torture." In this column he attacked Association critics while trying to change the subject:
"A number of opportunistic commentators masquerading as scholars have continued to report on alleged abuses by mental health professionals. However, when solicited in person to provide APA with names and circumstances in support of such claims, no data have been forthcoming from these same critics and no APA members have been linked to unprofessional behaviors. The traditional journalistic dictum of reporting who, what, where and when seems notably absent."
Thus, the ethical policy issue of participation of psychologists in the illegal activities at Guantánamo was changed to one of personal culpability. Could it be proven that a given named psychologist engaged in a particular proscribed behavior. Through this ruse the Association tried to negate all press, United Nations, and NGO criticism. In the absence of an explicit ethics complaint against an individual, the Association would do nothing. As the Association officials knew well, the names of most psychologists offering their "services" at Guantánamo, as well as details on what those services are is a closely guarded secret.
In this same article President Koocher then used a common technique of embattled leaders as he implicitly attempted to rally the psychologist community against the hated other, the psychiatrists:
"Many of our psychiatric colleagues have offered interpretive criticism, although their professional association has yet to agree on an official position. One proposed draft before the psychiatric association includes an itemization of specific prohibited tactics they deem as torture. When carefully scrutinized, their draft bears a remarkable resemblance to our position, although no journalist has yet commented on this point. Likewise, no journalistincluding those critical of the PENS reporthas commented upon an interesting irony: Despite psychiatrists' opposition to prescription privileges for psychologists, the psychiatric association's list of forbidden coercive techniques omits any mention of the use of drugs, implicitly allowing such practices."
In a recent debate with critics, Koocher utilized yet another defense that seems destined for greater use now that pressure is growing on the Association to act. He made a distinction between those psychologists providing health services to detainees, who, he claimed, were forbidden from using information thus gained to aid interrogators, and those behavioral scientist consultants who are not there to tend to detainees and are therefore free to aid interrogation. However, even Koocher had to admit that all psychologists are bound by the principle of "do no harm." He, of course, failed to explain how participation in the workings of an institution designed to destroy the personalities of those incarcerated there could ever meet the "do no harm" principle."
The campaign of the American Psychological Association to deflect criticism of psychologists' involvement at Guantánamo has been unrelenting. Concerned members pressed for an independent investigation to clarify what psychologists actually did at Guantánamo, but the Association refused. Members pushed for a change to the ethics code stating that psychologists did not follow laws or orders when to do so would violate basic human rights, but were met with the argument that such a statement could be used against psychologist practitioners in lawsuits. Critics attempted to have the Association explicitly state that international law should be consulted in addition to United States law on such issues as the definitions of human rights and their violation or the definition of torture and inhuman behavior; they failed. The Association leadership announced that they would develop an ethics casebook entry clarifying acceptable and unacceptable behavior in psychologist-assisted interrogations, but have so far not followed through.
There matters stood when the June 7, 2006, New York Times brought word that the Association's position was carefully noted by the Pentagon, and that, from now on, the military would prefer psychologists over psychiatrists:
"Dr. William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, told reporters that the new policy favoring the use of psychologists over psychiatrists was a recognition of differing positions taken by their respective professional groups.
The military had been using psychiatrists and psychologists alike on behavioral science consultation teams, called 'biscuit' teams because of the acronym, to advise interrogators on how best to obtain information from prisoners.
But Dr. Steven S. Sharfstein, recent past president of the American Psychiatric Association, noted in an interview that the group adopted a policy in May unequivocally stating that its members should not be part of the teams.
The counterpart group for psychologists, the American Psychological Association, has endorsed a different policy. It said last July that its members serving as consultants to interrogations involving national security should be 'mindful of factors unique to these roles and contexts that require special ethical consideration.'"
For many activist psychologists in the Association who had patiently played the organization's game of Task Force, Board discussion, input here, input there, while no substantive change in Association policy occurred, this news was the proverbial straw that broke the camels back. Members who had been urging caution and a one-step-at-a-time approach for months suddenly found themselves urging withholding dues. Within days, an email campaign to the Association's President Koocher was launched and 300 emails were sent in 48 hours. Koocher responded with derision and condescension, while explicitly endorsing psychologists' duty to aid the National Security State. One version of the letter he sent:
"You are dead wrong.
The APA has not been silent.
The APA Board of Directors understands and appreciates that its members have strong opinions about psychologists' involvement in interrogations, and that their opinions are not uniform. Please recognize that interrogation does not equate to torture and that many civilian and military contexts exist in which psychologists ethically participate in information gathering in the public interest without harming anyone or violating our ethical code. Please also examine press reports with healthy skepticism and seek facts, rather than reflexively engaging in letter-writing campaigns predicated on inadequate access to the data.
The Board has adopted as APA policy a Task Force Report, which unequivocally prohibits psychologists from engaging in, participating, or countenancing torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. As the basis for its position, the Task Force looked first to Principle A in the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct, "Do No Harm," and then to Principle B, which addresses psychologists' responsibilities to society. Both ethical responsibilities are central to the profession of psychology. By virtue of Principle A, psychologists do no harm. By virtue of Principle B, psychologists use their expertise in, and understanding of, human behavior to aid in the prevention of harm.
In both domestic and national security-related contexts, these ethical principles converge as psychologists are mandated to take affirmative steps to prevent harm to individuals being questioned and, at the same time, to assist in eliciting reliable information that may prevent harm to others.
It is critical to note that in addressing these issues through a Task Force report, the American Psychological Association was responding to psychologists in national security settings who had approached APA seeking guidance in the most ethical course of action. The Board views as its responsibility supporting our colleagues and members who are striving to do the right thing. The Board encourages its members who have different points of view on this or any issue to make their positions known, and welcomes the opportunity for further discussion of this issue at the August Council meeting."
Ignoring the "you are dead wrong," an introduction that was even more tasteless when used just a few days after the suicide of three hopeless inmates in the Guantánamo hell-hole, the note made clear to wavering members that the Association leadership intends to continue business as usual, that no action on the moral challenge of our time will come unless the members force it.
At this moment leadership in opposition was taken by the Social Justice section (Section 9) of the Division of Psychoanalysis (Division 9; truth in packaging warning: I'm a member of this Section). Within hours of Section members receiving the Koocher email, members who had been willing to work within the Association structure decided that as one member put it in an email on the Section's listserv, "It's time for us to accept . [the] view that the APA leadership is fully participatory in the problem of using obfuscation and propaganda to justify current military aims and methods."
Quickly Section members to launch a petition drive demanding a change in Association policy. A Petition was quickly written and launched on June 15th [at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/483607021] and attempts began to spread the word to members throughout the diverse Association. [Another truth in packaging warning: I am one of the authors of the petition and am listed as its sponsor.]
In the weeks since then a range of organizations, including the Divisions of Social Justice of various Association divisions and others outside the Association, including Physicians for Human Rights and the Ignacio Martín-Baró Fund have initiated discussions on a coordinated strategy to change Association policy. Initial agreement was obtained on supporting attempts to have the Association, at its August convention, reiterate its statements that members should not participate in torture or abusive interrogations. There seems to be nothing in this statement that would be opposed by the Association leadership, who likely will claim this is already Association policy. The question remains open whether this group will go further and try and get the Association to state that members may not participate in interrogations of detainees from the Global War on Terrorism in any capacity and under any circumstances. It seems unlikely that this group will take the additional step of demanding the Association call for the closing of Guantánamo and similar institutions.
I suspect that changing Association policy will require modification of the tactics thus far used by critics. To date, most objections from within the Association have been framed fairly narrowly in terms of the details of the ethics code and what it says, or should say, about psychologist's participation in coercive interrogations. This approach gets one into the realm of legal reasoning and detailed interpretation of texts. As hundreds of years of legal argument demonstrated, such reasoning can lead to many different conclusions, depending on where the reasoner is trying to go. And Association officials have demonstrated their ability, even their genius, to bend moral reasoning to support their position that psychologists' have a right, perhaps even a duty, to serve at Guantánamo and similar facilities. [See, for example, the decidedly different, but both well-presented arguments by President Koocher in a Democracy Now! interview on June 16: , and by Association Director of Ethics Stephen Behnke, posted at around the same time: http://www.apa.org/releases/PENSfinal_061606.pdf] While critics need to rebut these detailed arguments, the battle will not be won at that level, just as major social changes are seldom decisively won in court without accompanying social changes occurring outside the courtroom.
Association members critical of current policy have been highly resistant to openly denouncing Guantánamo for the concentration camp that it is. They have by and large so far not joined in any organized fashion those, such as the U.N. Committee Against Torture, who state clearly that a total institution imprisoning people "indefinitely without charge", where the inmates have no rights, no protections, virtually no ability to control any aspect of their environment, is itself torture. Psychologists, indeed moral human beings, simply have no role in such an institution. To be there in any capacity is to do harm. The arguments so far have been akin to a Nazi-era medical society objecting solely to doctors serving in the death camps, and not to the existence of the death camps themselves. I believe that this is a mistake.
The participation of psychologists at Guantánamo is not simply a professional issue. It is a major moral challenge for the very concept of using knowledge for good and not for evil. If this participation continues, psychology will have lost its soul, just as our entire country is in danger of loosing its soul as we turn away from these evils being committed in our name.
As Association members, and non-members, develop a more aggressive approach to changing Association policy, they should keep in mind this history. It makes clear that the commitment of Association leaders to demonstrating the value of psychology through furthering some of the most sordid aspects of the national security state is deep and long-standing. The last couple of days have brought further evidence of the close ties between the Association and the military; critics have learned that only one only one person was invited to address the August Association convention on the Guantánamo issue, General Kiley, the Surgeon General of the army who drafted the report that recommends using only psychologists for interrogations. Geberal Kiley will only respond to questions submitted in advance. Given the close ties between the psychological Association and the military, it clear Association that will not be changed easily. Change will require extended pressure, using a wide range of tools, in order to impact such a deep seated policy. It remains to be seen if the activist members will be able to maintain the energy and passion aroused by recent news and events, or whether they will again lapse into that state of "learned helplessness" that Association behavior appears designed to induce.
Stephen Soldz, a researcher and psychoanalyst, is Director of the Center for Research, Evaluation, and Program Development at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He is a member of Roslindale Neighbors for Peace and Justice and founder of Psychoanalysts for Peace and Justice. He maintains the Iraq Occupation and Resistance Report web page. He can be reached at: ssoldz@bgsp.edu.
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Editorial: Is the Israeli Army not kind, gentle, and thoughtful?
The Angry Arab News Service
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Under this picture, the New York Times had this caption: "A Gaza home destroyed by Israel Monday. The Israeli Army called the homeowner to warn him about the attack, and his family was evacuated.?" Which can only leave you with this impression: Is the Israeli Army not kind, gentle, and thoughtful?
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Editorial: Qana: Exterminating the Ants
Monday July 31st 2006, 8:41 am
Kurt Nimmo
Another Day in the Empire
In order to understand the racist brutality of the latest Qana massacre, it is instrumental to look at the previous Qana massacre. James Bovard writes: "When you see the photos of corpses of young children being dragged from the Qana rubble, remember: These are not human beings. These are terrorists. And Israel announced ahead of time that, because they were in south Lebanon, they were legitimate targets," as Haim Ramon made sure to inform us. In his blog entry, Bovard quotes from his book, Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil:
On April 18, 1996 the IDF artillery shelled a United Nations compound near Qana that was overflowing with 800 Lebanese civilians "who had fled from their villages on IDF orders." The barrage killed 102 refugees and wounded hundreds of others. Hezbollah guerillas had fired Katyusha rockets a few hundred yards from the compound. A spokesman for United Nations forces in Lebanon quickly denounced the attack as a "massacre." Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, the commander of the Israeli offensive, insisted that the shelling of the camp could not possibly have been deliberate because "that thing cannot happen in a democratic country like Israel." Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres declared that "the sole guilty party, still on the ground, is Hezbollah.... We are dealing here with a horrible, cynical and irresponsible organization. Hezbollah's grand strategy all along has been to hide behind the backs of civilians." A United Nations investigation concluded that "it is unlikely that the shelling of the United Nations compound was the result of gross technical and/or procedural errors." The IDF insisted that it was unaware that the camp was chock full of refugees; the UN report retorted: "Contrary to repeated denials, two Israeli helicopters and a remotely piloted vehicle [drone] were present in the Qana area at the time of the shelling." An Amnesty International report concluded that the IDF "intentionally attacked the UN compound." A few weeks after the attack, two of the Israeli gunners involved in the shelling were interviewed by a Jerusalem newsweekly. One of the gunners commented: "In a war, these things happen.... It's just a bunch of Arabs." A second gunner said that, after bombarding the refugee camp, a commander told the gunners that "we were shooting well and to continue this way and that Arabs, you know, there are millions of them." Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit, who had fought at Qana 18 years earlier while serving in the IDF, observed: "An Israeli massacre can be distinguished in most respects from an Arab massacre in that it is not malicious, not carried out on orders from High Above and does not serve any strategic purpose. . . . An Israeli massacre usually occurs after we sanction an unjustifiable degree of violence so that at some point we lose the ability to control that violence. Thus, in most cases, an Israeli massacre is a kind of work accident."
Note the overt racism here: things happen, it was a work accident, it wasn't malicious, just a bunch of Arabs, there are millions of them, not to worry. Of course, this racism is never reported in the corporate media, although as of late it has surfaced in the form of articles and editorials, most notably by Noah Feldman and Alan Dershowitz, who argue that civilians, including newborn babies, are responsible for their own slaughter and some civilians are more innocent than others. If you watch Fox News and, to a lesser degree, although not much, CNN and the other corporate alphabet propaganda organizations, you will notice these sinister arguments arising in response to the inexcusable slaughter in Qana and elsewhere. Considering the absolute suffusion of Zionist propaganda and conditioning in the corporate media, this obvious slant in favor of (or making excuses for) Israeli crimes against humanity is quite normal.
We are told, ad nauseam, Israel is a democracy, certainly true if one is Jewish. However, Israel is not a democracy for Israeli Arabs (who "enjoy" citizenship, so long as they don't mind second class citizen status) and especially not for Palestinian Arabs, who are considered little more than an infestation of cockroaches. In fact, according to a 2003 opinion poll in Israel (Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies), 31% of Jewish Israeli citizens support the expulsion of the Arab minority, and 46% support clearance of the territories, that is to say stolen land. Imagine likewise numbers in America in regard to Blacks or Mexicans or for that matter any racial or ethnic minority. It would be unacceptable. But for Israel this racism is quite natural-and it is glossed over or completely ignored in the corporate media. As Henryk M. Broder observes, in Israel "biology determines fate" and it is not far off the mark to state this mindset extends beyond the borders of Israel-in fact, Israel has no international accepted borders, but this is another issue-as people in neighboring countries of Arab biology are subjected to a harsh and often murderous fate, i.e., they are simply a bunch of Arabs, there are millions of them, same as there are millions of ants.
The last time we heard the "biology determines fate" argument, the Nazis were storming across Europe.
In addition to Israel's long term desire to steal Lebanese land (at least to the Litani River), the fact the ants of Hezbollah dealt the racist state of Israel a decisive defeat drives not only Israeli leaders but average Israelis bonkers. "Israel never forgot the feeling of humiliation the country-and particularly its military-experienced when a jubilant Hezbollah celebrated the Israeli army's departure," writes Claude Salhani for United Press International. "But much as Hezbollah and the Israelis are at the forefront of this conflict, which is not the root cause of hostilities by any length of imagination. The root cause of the conflict was, and remains, the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Solve it and you solve 90 percent of the region's problems."
Under current conditions, however, with massive support for the racist Israeli state in the United States-including millions of pretrib Christians-and the unrelenting propaganda campaign dismissing Israeli crimes underway in the corporate media, the "root cause of the conflict" will not be addressed, let alone solved. Imagine the "humiliation" of an actual and honest brokered peace-including the establishment of a Palestinian state-on the part of Israelis, so outraged by the mere fact the Lebanese evicted them from their country after a long and illegal occupation. It will never happen. Instead, we can expect a cataclysmic and possibly nuclear confrontation, including the genocide of all Palestinians and no shortage of others.
No, the only way to solve the problem is to go after Israel where it hurts-in the pocketbook. If the United States cut off the succor-in the form of billions of dollars every single year, every year since the early 1950s-Israel would have no choice but to make peace with its neighbors and the Palestinians. Of course, this is far less than certain-in fact, as this point, a fanciful pipedream-and may instead result in a nuclear reaction, as Israel has more than 400 nuclear bombs and the stated desire to use them against their enemies.
Another Day in the Empire
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Psychopaths on the Rampage
Yesha Rabbinical Council: During time of war, enemy has no innocents
07.30.06, 17:37
Efrat Weiss
The Yesha Rabbinical Council announced in response to an IDF attack in Kfar Qanna that "according to Jewish law, during a time of battle and war, there is no such term as 'innocents' of the enemy."
All of the discussions on Christian morality are weakening the spirit of the army and the nation and are costing us in the blood of our soldiers and civilians," the statement said.
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Israel to expand ground war in Lebanon
by Yana Dlugy
AFP
Tue Aug 1, 2006
JERUSALEM - Israel approved the expansion of its ground offensive in Lebanon, dashing hopes of an early end to the three-week old conflict despite a renewed international push for a ceasefire.
"There is no ceasefire and there will be no ceasefire in the coming days," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared.
Israel's security cabinet gave the green light Tuesday to widen its ground offensive in the war on the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah that has killed well over 500 people and left much of Lebanon's infrastructure in ruins.
A government official said the security cabinet has given the army the green light to send ground forces up to 30 kilometres (19 miles) into southern Lebanon.
Following a four-hour meeting late Monday, the cabinet authorized military operations "with a view of controlling the area until the Litani River after having cleaned it of Hezbollah presence but without a permanent occupation," the official said on condition of anonymity.
Israel's border with Lebanon runs eastwards from the Mediterranean coast about 30 kilometers (19 miles) south of the Litani, but moves much closer to the river as it turns north about 30 kilometres inland.
Lebanese television showed pictures of soldiers and tanks massed at the border, where Israeli bulldozers have started flattening Hezbollah positions to create a buffer zone.
Fierce fighting was also raging between Hezbollah guerrillas and advancing Israeli forces in an eastern border area of south Lebanon for the third straight day, Lebanese police said.
The Israeli troops made a small advance of about one kilometer (mile) on the ground, they said.
Despite a promised 48-hour halt in air raids which allowed thousands of southern Lebanese to flee the war zone, Israeli warplanes also struck roads leading to Syria in the early hours of Tuesday, police said.
Syria, which along with Iran, backs Hezbollah, ordered its armed forces to raise their level of alert, official media reported.
Olmert warned that Israel's war on Hezbollah, unleashed on July 12 after Shiite Muslim fighters seized two soldiers in a deadly border raid, would end only when the group ceased to be a threat.
"We will end it when the threat over our heads is removed, when our kidnapped soldiers return to their homes and when we can live in security," Olmert said.
As the fighting looked set to intensify, diplomatic efforts to reach a ceasefire gathered pace after an Israeli attack on the Lebanese village of Qana on Sunday killed 52 people, mainly women and children, and triggered international outrage.
The five permanent UN Security Council members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- held their first official consultations to prepare a resolution on the war, although there has still been no formal call for a ceasefire.
Ambassadors from the five major countries were also due to meet with UN Secretary General
Kofi Annan Tuesday.
US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice flew back to Washington on Monday after a weekend visit to Israel overshadowed by the carnage in Qana, saying she was convinced that "an urgent ceasefire and a lasting settlement" could be achieved this week.
The plans centre on the deployment of an international force in south Lebanon but Israel has warned that any halt to its offensive into southern Lebanon would allow Hezbollah guerrillas to regroup and rearm.
Olmert had however told her that his army would need another 10 days to 12 weeks to cripple Hezbollah, which has been a thorn in Israel's side for years.
"If there is an immediate ceasefire, the extremists will immediately rear their heads," Defence Minister Amir Peretz told a stormy parliament session.
Encouraged by the temporary halt in air bombardments, however brief, tens of thousands of villagers fled southern Lebanon, the Hezbollah heartland which has borne the brunt of the onslaught.
Carrying piles of luggage, mattresses and blankets on car roofs or pickup trucks, people streamed from mountain villages toward the coastal highway leading north to Beirut.
Lebanon was in mourning after what many in the Arab world were calling the Qana "massacre", the biggest single loss of life since Israel unleashed its firepower on its northern neighbour.
Qana, where Jesus is said to have turned water into wine, achieved martyr status after an Israeli attack on a UN base there in 1996 killed 105 people, and the new raid prompted an outpouring of anger around the world.
Rescue teams were searching for bodies still under the ruins of a shelter levelled by Israel forces as personal possessions, bags, and clothes of the dead, were piled up outside.
Flags flew at half-mast throughout Lebanon and banks and public institutions were closed in memory of the victims of what one Beirut newspaper charged was "butchery."
Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora denounced the Qana carnage as a "war crime" and Hezbollah vowed that "this horrible massacre... will not remain unpunished."
But the Shiite militant group reined in its rocket attacks during Monday's Israeli lull. Israeli officials said that compared with 156 rockets on Sunday -- a record number for a single day -- just two shells hit the Jewish state on Monday.
Angry demonstrators took to the streets in several Arab capitals, some burning Israeli flags and denouncing the US administration for its staunch backing of Israel.
Lebanon says 750 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in the Israeli offensive, which has also displaced hundreds of thousands and laid waste to much of the country's infrastructure.
An AFP count has put the death toll at 530, while the
United Nations has said around one-third of the casualties were children. A total of 51 Israelis have been killed, most of them soldiers.
The UN Security Council met immediately after the attack on Qana to adopt a resolution which, in unusually emotional language, expressed its "extreme shock and distress" at the casualties.
But it stopped short both of condemning Israel and of calling for a ceasefire after the United States rejected a draft describing the attack on Qana as "deliberate".
Annan had appealed to the council to call for an immediate ceasefire, and warned Israel and Hezbollah they were both likely guilty of "grave breaches of international humanitarian law".
President George W. Bush said the United States was working "urgently" to end the conflict, but again resisted calls for an immediate ceasefire and avoided criticism of Israel.
Bush also set out what he called "clear objectives" for a lasting peace, including the deployment of a multinational force to bolster humanitarian efforts and to help the Lebanese government take control of the conflict zone.
France has already distributed a draft UN resolution which calls for a ceasefire and political settlement but the United States is working on its own proposal.
But efforts to put together an international force suffered a setback when the United Nations postponed a Monday meeting of potential troop contributors while details of a peace plan were hammered out by the major powers.
Israel pointed the finger at archfoe Iran, saying it pulled the strings of the Shiite militia.
"We are battling Hezbollah, which is nothing but the vanguard of the extremist regime in Tehran that finances and encourages its murderous activities," Peretz said.
But French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy, who has insisted Iran must be a part of the solution, held talks with his counterpart Manouchehr Mottaki in Beirut Monday and talked up Iran's "stabilising role" in the region.
At the United Nations, Israeli and Lebanese delegates sparred at a special Security Council debate on the conflict.
"We owe our people an honorable way out of this war," said Lebanon's acting foreign minister Tarek Mitri.
Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, retorted that Israel "has been repeatedly forced to act, not against Lebanon, but against the forces and the monstrosity which Lebanon has allowed itself to be taken hostage by."
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Israel extends Lebanese offensive
Tuesday 01 August 2006, 15:53 Makka Time, 12:53 GMT
Israel has continued its offensive in Lebanon with attacks in the south, north and east of the country, while Hezbollah said it has repulsed some of the operations.
The Israeli air force launched further air strikes against Lebanese border villages on Tuesday.
Lebanese security sources said Israeli aircraft hit Bayyada and Mansoureh.
Israeli jets also struck eastern Lebanon and roads leading to Syria.
Hezbollah fighters said in a statement that they had beaten back some of the advances in southern Lebanon.
Resistance
"The Israeli forces started from Monday night until the early hours of Tuesday morning to try to take control of the triangle of Aita al-Chaab/al-Qaozah/Ramie villages but Hezbollah fighters confronted them ... forcing them to retreat," the statement said.
Aita al-Chaab is near the Lebanese border from where Hezbollah fighters entered Israel on July 12 and kidnapped two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others.
The movement said Israeli troops were trying to take control of a hill overlooking all three villages.
Hezbollah has also said it has destroyed an Israeli warship off the coast of Tyre. Israel has denied the claim.
The Israeli army said it had killed 20 Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon over the past 48 hours.
An army spokeswoman said: "We have killed 20 Hezbollah terrorists during the past two days in the sectors of Taibe and Al-Adeissa."
Hezbollah said it had lost three men during the fighting.
Arab TV channel Al-Arabiya reported that three Israeli soldiers had been killed in the area.
Further advance
A senior Israeli official has said the Israeli army will move deeper into southern Lebanon and hold on to that territory for several weeks, until a multinational force can deploy there.
Israel Radio, Israel Army Radio and a Israeli goverment official said ground forces would reach the Litani River, about 30km north of the Israeli-Lebanese border.
Ephraim Sneh, a senior Labour Party politician, indirectly confirmed the planned push to Litani in an interview.
Asked by Israel Radio how long troops would hold on to territory up to the Litani, Sneh said: "We are not talking about days we are talking about longer, but not about months."
Sneh, a former deputy defence minister, spoke hours after Israel's security cabinet approved a broader ground offensive into southern Lebanon.
However, two other government officials said the cabinet approved taking only a smaller area of land, a strip about seven kilometres from the border.
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Rice turns heat on UN over Lebanon ceasefire
by Stephen Collinson
AFP
Mon Jul 31, 2006
SHANNON, Ireland - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has launched an effort to win United Nations Security Council backing for her Lebanon peace initiative as soon as this week.
Rice turned her focus to the world body after winding up her weekend visit to Israel, after also visiting Lebanon and an international conference in Rome on the first leg of her mission last week.
"I am going to push very hard to have the UN Security Council resolution this week, I think it is time," Rice told reporters on her plane Monday, after leaving Jerusalem, en route for a refuelling stop in Ireland, then Washington.
She argued that world powers could use a resolution to move on from the arguments about the timing of a ceasefire.
"It's time, everybody has said urgent, some people have said immediate, I would hope we are now going to do the work to put in place the conditions for a ceasefire ... My hope is we will have it during this week."
Despite failing to stop the fighting, Rice earlier said in Jeruslam that she believed she had managed to underpin a future lasting peace.
"As I head back to Washington, I take with me an emerging consensus on what is necessary for both an urgent ceasefire and a lasting settlement," Rice said.
"I am convinced we can achieve both this week," said Rice, who laid out broad principles of a proposed deal, but did not discuss the exact measures that would be adopted to put it in place.
She also did not address the issue of the return of Israeli soldiers whose capture by Hezbollah guerrillas on July 12 sparked Israel's offensive, or of those prisoners the militia wants released from Israeli jails.
Rice welcomed Israel's adoption of a 48-hour suspension of air strikes in southern Lebanon after the raid on the village of Qana that killed 52 people, more than half of them children.
And she said she hoped a parallel 24-hour period allowing people to leave the area could be extended.
The three-part plan would include a ceasefire, the political principles that provide for a long-term settlement and the authorization of an international force to help the Lebanese army keep the peace.
Rice was expected to travel to New York later in the week to push her peace plan at the United Nations -- but faced the prospect of a new debate with France, which has its own draft resolution.
The French draft "calls for an immediate cessation of hostilities" -- a key difference with the Washington plan, which forsees elements of a permanent peace fusing together to create conditions for an ultimate ceasefire.
Rice said that in talks with Israeli and Lebanese officials in her double-pronged peace mission over the past eight days, she had found consensus on key issues.
Among them was the need for Lebanon to be able to expand its authority over the whole of the country -- a goal that would require the deployment of the international force, she said.
Rice also said she found broad agreement that there should be an arms embargo enforced against weapons delivery to anyone other than the Lebanese forces or the international force.
"No foreign forces will be allowed unless specifically authorized by the government of Lebanon and Lebanon should, assisted as appropriate by the international community, disarm armed groups," she said in Jerusalem.
Under the proposed agreement Lebanon would agree to respect the UN-demarcated Blue Line between Lebanon and Israel, and the Lebanese armed forces should deploy to the border.
"These are important, yet temporary measures. An urgent and more permanent end to this violence is something that we all want, and that we must work together to achieve," Rice said.
"To make a cease fire more than words alone, the international community must be prepared to support and sustain it."
US critics in that world community argue however that there will be no peace without bargaining with Hezbollah and sponsors Syria and Iran, a step Rice refused to take.
They also doubt whether the Lebanese government can force Hezbollah to disarm and assail Washington for its staunch support for Israel which they accuse of a "disproportionate" response to agression from Hezbollah.
Comment: Condi's in big trouble now. Her proposal isn't adequately pro-Zionist...
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'How can we stand by and allow this to go on?'
By Robert Fisk
The Independent
07/31/06
They wrote the names of the dead children on their plastic shrouds. "Mehdi Hashem, aged seven - Qana," was written in felt pen on the bag in which the little boy's body lay. "Hussein al-Mohamed, aged 12 - Qana',' "Abbas al-Shalhoub, aged one - Qana.'' And when the Lebanese soldier went to pick up Abbas's little body, it bounced on his shoulder as the boy might have done on his father's shoulder on Saturday. In all, there were 56 corpses brought to the Tyre government hospital and other surgeries, and 34 of them were children. When they ran out of plastic bags, they wrapped the small corpses in carpets. Their hair was matted with dust, most had blood running from their noses.
You must have a heart of stone not to feel the outrage that those of us watching this experienced yesterday. This slaughter was an obscenity, an atrocity - yes, if the Israeli air force truly bombs with the "pinpoint accuracy'' it claims, this was also a war crime. Israel claimed that missiles had been fired by Hizbollah gunmen from the south Lebanese town of Qana - as if that justified this massacre. Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, talked about "Muslim terror" threatening "western civilisation" - as if the Hizbollah had killed all these poor people.
And in Qana, of all places. For only 10 years ago, this was the scene of another Israeli massacre, the slaughter of 106 Lebanese refugees by an Israeli artillery battery as they sheltered in a UN base in the town. More than half of those 106 were children. Israel later said it had no live-time pilotless photo-reconnaissance aircraft over the scene of that killing - a statement that turned out to be untrue when The Independent discovered videotape showing just such an aircraft over the burning camp. It is as if Qana - whose inhabitants claim that this was the village in which Jesus turned water into wine - has been damned by the world, doomed forever to receive tragedy.
And there was no doubt of the missile which killed all those children yesterday. It came from the United States, and upon a fragment of it was written: "For use on MK-84 Guided Bomb BSU-37-B". No doubt the manufacturers can call it "combat-proven" because it destroyed the entire three-storey house in which the Shalhoub and Hashim families lived. They had taken refuge in the basement from an enormous Israeli bombardment, and that is where most of them died.
I found Nejwah Shalhoub lying in the government hospital in Tyre, her jaw and face bandaged like Robespierre's before his execution. She did not weep, nor did she scream, although the pain was written on her face. Her brother Taisir, who was 46, had been killed. So had her sister Najla. So had her little niece Zeinab, who was just six. "We were in the basement hiding when the bomb exploded at one o'clock in the morning,'' she said. "What in the name of God have we done to deserve this? So many of the dead are children, the old, women. Some of the children were still awake and playing. Why does the world do this to us?"
Yesterday's deaths brought to more than 500 the total civilian dead in Lebanon since Israel's air, sea and land bombardment of the country begun on 12 July after Hizbollah members crossed the frontier wire, killed three Israeli soldiers and captured two others. But yesterday's slaughter ended more than a year of mutual antagonism within the Lebanese government as pro-American and pro-Syrian politicians denounced what they described as "an ugly crime".
Thousands of protesters attacked the largest United Nations building in Beirut, screaming: "Destroy Tel Aviv, destroy Tel Aviv," and Lebanon's Prime Minister, the normally unflappable Fouad Siniora, called US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and ordered her to cancel her imminent peace-making trip to Beirut.
No one in this country can forget how President George Bush, Ms Rice, and Tony Blair have repeatedly refused to call for an immediate ceasefire - a truce that would have saved all those lives yesterday. Ms Rice would say only: "We want a ceasefire as soon as possible,'' a remark followed by an Israeli announcement that it intended to maintain its bombardment of Lebanon for at least another two weeks.
Throughout the day, Qana villagers and civil defence workers dug through the ruins of the building with spades and with their hands, tearing at the muck until they found one body after another still dressed in colourful clothes. In one section of the rubble, they found what was left of a single room with 18 bodies inside. Twelve of the dead were women. All across southern Lebanon now, you find scenes like this, not so grotesque in scale, perhaps, but just as terrible, for the people of these villages are terrified to leave and terrified to stay. The Israelis had dropped leaflets over Qana, ordering its people to leave their homes. Yet twice now since Israel's onslaught began, the Israelis have ordered villagers to leave their houses and then attacked them with aircraft as they obeyed the Israeli instructions and fled. There are at least 3,000 Shia Muslims trapped in villages between Qlaya and Aiteroun - close to the scene of Israel's last military incursion at Bint Jbeil - and yet none of them can leave without fear of dying on the roads.
And Mr Olmert's reaction? After expressing his "great sorrow", he announced that: "We will not stop this battle, despite the difficult incidents [sic] this morning. We will continue the activity, and if necessary it will be broadened without hesitation." But how much further can it be broadened? Lebanon's infrastructure is being steadily torn to pieces, its villages razed, its people more and more terrorised - and terror is the word they used - by Israel's American-made fighter bombers. Hizbollah's missiles are Iranian-made, and it was Hizbollah that started this war with its illegal and provocative raid across the border. But Israel's savagery against the civilian population has deeply shocked not only the Western diplomats who have remained in Beirut, but hundreds of humanitarian workers from the Red Cross and major aid agencies.
Incredibly, Israel yesterday denied safe passage to a UN World Food Programme aid convoy en route to the south, a six-truck mission that should have taken relief supplies to the south-eastern town of Marjayoun. More than three quarters of a million Lebanese have now fled their homes, but there is still no accurate figure for the total number still trapped in the south. Khalil Shalhoub, who survived amid the wreckage in Qana yesterday, said that his family and the Hashims were just too "terrified" to take the road out of the village, which has been attacked by aircraft for more than two weeks. The seven-mile highway between Qana and Tyre is littered with civilian homes in ruins and burnt-out family cars. On Thursday, the Israeli Army's Al-Mashriq radio, which broadcasts into southern Lebanon, told residents that their villages would be "totally destroyed" if missiles were fired from them. But anyone who has watched Israel's bombing these past two weeks knows that, in many cases, the Israelis do not know the location in which the Hizbollah are firing missiles, and - when they do - they frequently miss their targets. How can a villager prevent the Hizbollah from firing rockets from his street? The Hizbollah do take cover beside civilian houses - just as Israeli troops entering Bint Jbeil last week also used civilian homes for cover. But can this be the excuse for slaughter on such a scale?
Mr Siniora addressed foreign diplomats in Beirut yesterday, telling them that the government in Beirut was now only demanding an immediate ceasefire and was not interested any longer in a political package to go with it. Needless to say, Mr Jeffrey Feltman, whose country made the bomb which killed the innocents of Qana yesterday, chose not to attend.
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How can 'terrorism' be condemned while war crimes go without rebuke?
By David Clark
The Guardian
07/31/06
As if we didn't know it already, the conflict in Lebanon shows that truth and war don't mix. All parties to the tragedy of the Middle East resort to disinformation and historical falsification to bolster their case, but rarely has an attempt to rewrite the past occurred so soon after the fact. Israeli ministers and their supporters have justified the bombardment of Lebanon as "a matter of survival". Total war has been declared on Israel, so Israel is entitled to use the methods of total war in self-defence. This would be reasonable if it were true, but it isn't. It's completely false.
The conflict was triggered by a Hizbullah operation in which two Israeli soldiers were captured and three killed. Let's be frank, this wasn't exactly the Tet offensive. It certainly didn't justify Israel's ferocious onslaught against the very fabric of Lebanese society. Yes, the rocket attacks on Haifa are an appalling crime, but they followed rather than preceded Israel's decision to escalate the fighting. They cannot provide retrospective justification for Israeli strategy.
The crisis has also been accompanied by the selective and often inappropriate use of the term "terrorism". Following the Israeli government, George Bush and Tony Blair were at it again on Friday, blaming "terrorists" for sparking the conflict. The purpose behind this is obvious enough. In the context of America's war on terror, anyone claiming to be engaged in the fight against this most contested of notions gets carte blanche to do as they please. But the result has been to politicise the term in ways that render it effectively useless as a category of moral judgment or policy analysis.
It is certainly true that Hizbullah has been linked to a string of classic terrorist attacks going back more than 20 years, including suicide bombings against civilian targets, hostage-taking and the hijacking of a TWA flight. A particularly vile example was the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires in which 85 people were murdered. Hizbullah strongly denies involvement, but the truth is probably murkier than either side pretends. Responsibility for these attacks has often been attributed to Hizbullah's External Security Organisation (ESO), a unit believed to be under the operational control of Iranian intelligence rather than the Hizbullah's Lebanese leadership. Britain is one country that draws this distinction, proscribing ESO, but not Hizbullah itself, under the Terrorism Act.
Interestingly, some of the earliest suicide bombings commonly attributed to Hizbullah, such as the 1983 attacks on the US embassy and marine barracks in Beirut, were believed by American intelligence sources at the time to have been orchestrated by the Iraqi Dawa party.
Hizbullah barely existed in 1983 and Dawa cadres are said to have been instrumental in setting it up at Tehran's behest. Dawa's current leadership includes none other than the new Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, feted last week in London and Washington as the great hope for the future of the Middle East. As the old saying goes, today's terrorist is tomorrow's statesman - at least when it suits us.
None of this should be read as exonerating Hizbullah of the charge that it uses terrorist tactics. Irrespective of anything else, the use of Katyusha rockets against Israeli population centres is clearly intended to inflict terror and suffering on civilians. It deserves a response. But the allegations of terrorism levelled at Hizbullah (as well as Hamas and other groups) by America and Israel go well beyond the targeting of non-combatants. The US state department's annual reports on terrorism also list operations carried out against the Israeli Defence Force as examples of terrorism. The US government justifies this conclusion by way of a logical contortion that defines Israeli troops as "non-combatants", despite the fact that Israel continues to occupy territory in Lebanon and Palestine with military force. The intention is not just to stamp out terrorism as commonly understood, but also to stigmatise perfectly legitimate acts of resistance.
Terrorism has always been extraordinarily difficult to define, but the American approach lacks any pretence at objectivity, thus making the term utterly meaningless. Used in this way, terrorism becomes simply "political violence of which we disapprove". The answer, of course, must not be to abandon any attempt to distinguish between right and wrong in the use of force. There need to be standards if we are to prevent the free-for-all of violence without limit. But these standards must be disinterested, legitimate and robust. As it happens, most of what we need is adequately provided for in international humanitarian law. Numerous treaties and judgments from the Geneva conventions onwards set out quite detailed rules governing the use of force, including the principles of proportionality and civilian immunity.
Under international law, there can be no doubt that many of the actions carried out by Hizbullah and Hamas constitute war crimes that must be punished. The reason it has been disregarded for the purposes of fighting terrorism is that, rather inconveniently for the governments concerned, it applies to states as well as non-state groups. Accepting it would leave them open to unwanted scrutiny and possibly even prosecution for war crimes of their own. In the case of the Israeli government, it isn't hard to see why. Israeli doctrine eschews the principle of proportionality in favour of massive retaliation, as has been amply demonstrated in Lebanon and Gaza.
Despite Israel's protestations that it is doing everything it can to avoid civilian casualties, it is clear that its military strategy is aimed at maximising the suffering of the Lebanese people as a whole. This was declared quite openly on day one of the campaign, when Israel's chief of staff, General Dan Halutz, promised to "turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years", and confirmed again yesterday with the horrific slaughter at Qana. The approach is identical to the one taken in similar operations in 1996 and 1993, when Yitzhak Rabin admitted: "The goal of the operation is to get the southern Lebanese population to move northward, hoping that this will tell the Lebanese government something about the refugees, who may get as far north as Beirut." Populations will move like this only if they are in fear of their lives.
The same applies to Gaza, where the pretence at discrimination is even thinner and Palestinian civilians are being subjected to a brutal siege and acts of violence that have no military justification. As in Lebanon, the intention is to force civilians to turn on the militias by inflicting as much pain and suffering as the Israeli government thinks it can get away with. What is this if it is not terrorism? It is certainly a war crime. So let's hear no more hypocritical utterances about the evils of terrorism from Bush and Blair. Not until they are able to speak with genuine moral authority by condemning all forms of illegal violence, irrespective of who commits them.
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Four-Year-Old Qana Survivor's Night Between The Dead
By Hanady Salman writing from Beirut
01 August 2006
Electronic Lebanon
When Hassan saw his mom, he started yelling at her, "Why did you leave me there alone, sleeping with our neighbor's kids? How could you? You know, if I weren't scared I would have followed you home. But it was dark and they were shelling, so I slept again. Where is Zeinab?"
His mother, Rabab, told him the following: "She's having fun in heaven. There are no Israelis there. She's happy there."
Three of my colleagues went to Tyre today.
I will spare you the details of what they saw and wrote. There's only one thing that I need to share with you. Saada went to Jabal Amel hospital where she found a four year old boy, Hassan Chalhoub, who had spent the previous night in the morgue between the dead. He had been sleeping next to his sister, six-year-old Zeinab, in the shelter in Qana. There with him were his mom and his dad, who's confined to a wheelchair. Many of the people of Qana are survivors of the 1996 massacre, when 110 people were killed and more than 100 were injured when by Israeli raids on civilians who had sought shelter in a nearby UN base. Thus, many of the people of Qana have special needs.
Hassan was sleeping when it all happened Saturday night. His mom was injured, but she managed to find her way under the rubble and was looking for her kids. She called him, and he answered her. She asked him if he was injured and he said no. So, she went to look for her daughter and husband. She found her daughter's hand. She tried to take her out, to pull her up. She couldn't. Then she saw her husband, so she crawled to him. But before that, she caressed her daughter's hand and whispered to her, "forgive me my angel because I can't help you out of here."
She saved her husband, thinking that someone had already taken care of little Hassan.
She and her husband spent the rest of the night in the closest house, where the civil defense workers had taken them. The next morning, they took them to the hospital.
Hassan was thought dead. They put him where they put the other kids. He woke up in the morning and opened his eyes to see a two-year-old girl lying next to him. He thought she sleeping. He looked around, and luckily found a man. "Ammo, what am I doing here?" he asked. The man couldn't believe his eyes.
He took Hassan to his parents. When Hassan saw his mom, he started yelling at her, "Why did you leave me there alone, sleeping with our neighbor's kids? How could you? You know, if I weren't scared I would have followed you home. But it was dark and they were shelling, so I slept again. Where is Zeinab?"
His mother, Rabab, told him the following: "She's having fun in heaven. There are no Israelis there. She's happy there."
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Qana, again?
Helena Cobban at July 30, 2006 03:26 PM
It is almost beyond belief that Israel's military has once again, in its massively disproportionate assault against Lebanon, hit a large group of very vulnerable Lebanese civilians who had sought shelter at Qana.
The last time that happened was in the crucial war of 1996, which was the turning point that (four years later) led to Israel's unilateral (and ignominious) withdrawal from Lebanon.
I believe that Ehud Olmert, an untested leader eager to show his military "mettle", ordered the present drastic over-reaction to a (relatively small) Hizbullah provocation as a way to demonstrate to his people that he is not "soft" on the Arabs. Also, to try to turn the tide of politics in Lebanon decisively against Hizbullah. It seems he had understood nothing of what occurred in the battle of 1996, and is still determined-- at huge and quite unacceptable cost to Lebanon-- to repeat almost all the same grisly strategic mistakes that Israel (when the militarily untested Shimon Peres was PM) made that year.
Just as the assault ordered by Peres in 1996 turned out to be a strategic defeat for Israel, so too does Israel's present action in Lebanon appear to be turning out the same way.
In Haaretz today, veteran israeli strategic analyst Zeev Schiff writes (and sorry, no link) that Condi Rice,
needs military cards, and unfortunately Israel has not succeeded to date in providing her with any. Besides bringing Hezbollah and Lebanon under fire, all of Israel's military cards at this stage are in the form of two Lebanese villages near the border that have been captured by the IDF.
If the military cards Israel is holding do not improve with the continuation of the fighting, it will result in a diplomatic solution that will leave the Hezbollah rocket arsenal in southern Lebanon in its place. The diplomatic solution will necessarily be a reflection of the military realities on the ground.
I find these words interesting from a number of perspectives. First, Schiff is admitting that-- for all the destruction Israel has rained on the Lebanese citizenry over the past 17 days-- still, they have been able to take and hold only two Lebanese villages. (I note that he seems to measure "military cards" almost wholly in terms of facts established on the ground, an analytical judgment that I agree with.)
Second, he seems clearly to be urging the Israeli military command to establish more "facts on the ground" than they already have.
Third, he is writing from the clear premise that there is close coordination between the Bush administration's diplomacy and Israel's military actions. In one sense, we all know this to be true at this point. The Bushites have clearly been holding up the attempts to get a ceasefire as a way of giving the Israeli assault more time to continue. But Schiff is saying something a little different from this. He is saying not so much that American diplomacy has been buttressing Israel's military interests as that Israel's assault has been serving the Bushites' broader diplomatic interests (even if, from his perspective, they have not yet done so enough.)
Schiff is a very smart and well-informed person, but on occasion he acts a bit as a mouthpiece for the Israeli military's propaganda. Is the Israeli military now trying to tell the world that they have been doing everything they've been doing over the past 17 days as a "service" to the Bush administration?
Anyway, as I've written before, for every day this fighting continues, the death and suffering will continue. In Qana, elsewhere in Lebanon and Palestine, and in Israel (though on a far smaller scale). The idea that all this suffering does anything to "serve" the interests of the US citizenry is outrageous.
(I'm enroute back to the US, currently overnighting in London. This slaughter in Qana, once again, is deeply disturbing. I'm still trying to get my head around it. I do know that Shimon Peres and his commanders were never ever held accountable for the Qana slaughter of 1996. I interviewed him in 1998 and asked him about it. He tried to blow off all responsibility for it, saying something to the effect that "We told the Lebanese to leave south Lebanon on that occasion so everything we did after that was quite legal and okay." They've used this "warning people to leave their homes" PR maneuver again this time. It does not exculpate the Israeli commanders and leaders one iota and certainly provides no excuse under international law for their actions. It's an outrage: people-- including vulnerable young families, elders, and the sick, should be ordered away from their homes on the whim of a foreign military? And then, how on earth are they supposed to leave in safety if no safe access is afforded them? The whole argument is deeply manipulative and dishonest.)
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Criticism grows but Olmert digs in
Paul McGeough Chief Herald Correspondent in Beirut
August 2, 2006
DESPITE faltering progress in its war in Lebanon, Israel is signalling a determination to push deeper into Lebanese territory with the call-up of another 15,000 reserves, and increased ground incursions.
Shrugging off international outrage in the wake of mass civilian deaths when Israeli forces hit the wrong target at Qana in south Lebanon, the Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, declared: "The fighting continues. There is no ceasefire and there will not be any ceasefire in the coming days."
Promising during a special session of the Knesset that Israeli forces would "expand and deepen [their] operations against Hezbollah", the Defence Minister, Amir Peretz, intimated there would be no let-up by Israel until a multinational force was mandated to use its weapons against Hezbollah if the group broke the terms of any ceasefire agreement.
But amid rising uncertainty about the direction of the war - one leading Israeli commentator yesterday described Mr Peretz as "stupid" - Israel saw time on its side because efforts to formulate a peace plan at the United Nations are stalling.
The Hezbollah militia, whose kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers sparked the war, also dug in, warning it would not accept the presence of an international security force on Lebanese territory.
As the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, left Jerusalem on Monday, she was upbeat about the prospect of putting a peace plan in place this week. But in-flight to Washington, that confidence seemed to ebb as she told reporters: "I can't tell you when to pack just yet ... We're working very hard to make it this week."
There are two stumbling blocks at the UN - the timing of a ceasefire within a greater peace plan and the perception that the US is dragging its heals to allow Israel more time as it tries to diminish Hezbollah as a fighting force.
But in judging the progress of the war, Michael Oren, of Israel's Shalem think tank, said: "Israel started this crisis with the most favourable diplomatic position it has ever had in its history, and over the course of three weeks the Olmert Government has managed to squander that advantage".
Israel, with strong US backing, is demanding any international force must take up its positions on the border before it will stop fighting. Other countries, led by France, are insisting that there has to be a halt to the war before any big-picture plan can the finalised.
The diplomatic logjam forced the cancellation of a UN-convened meeting of countries likely to make up the force - France, Italy, Greece, Sweden, Norway, Indonesia, Turkey and Egypt. The most fraught issue on their proposed agenda was the rules of engagement, particularly the extent to which they would have to fight Hezbollah.
Central to the UN debate is a requirement that Lebanon's security forces must be backed in extending Beirut's authority to the south of the country - a near-autonomous Hezbollah enclave - but weakness and sectarian splits in the Lebanese Army virtually guarantee it will be the foreign forces that engage Hezbollah.
Like Hezbollah, the Lebanese forces are mainly Shiite and in the past have crumbled in the face of Hezbollah aggression and manipulation of their sectarian loyalty.
Combined with political inertia in Beirut, this Lebanese reality cuts the ground from under claims like that made by President George Bush on Monday: "Lebanon's democratic government must be empowered to exercise sole authority over its territory."
Calling for "a long-lasting peace, one that is sustainable" over what Washington sees as a short-term ceasefire, Mr Bush again shaped the conflict as part of a global battle between good and evil: "The current crisis is part of a larger struggle between the forces of freedom and the forces of terror in the Middle East."
But as he directed his verbal fire at Syria and Iran, Hezbollah's chief sponsors, the French Foreign Minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, was dining with his Iranian counterpart in Beirut and praising Iran as "a great country, a great people, and a great civilisation which is respected and which plays a stabilising role in the region".
A 48-hour halt to Israeli air strikes, which ends at 2am local time today, was partially observed by Israel and Hezbollah. In a remarkably cynical explanation of the Israeli response to the slaughter in Qana, an Israeli Foreign Ministry official said Israel had to offer the suspension to "take the steam" out of the reaction to the mass civilian killings at Qana.
As the confirmed death toll there reached 49, Israel's Deputy Prime Minister, Shimon Peres, admitted the sloppiness of the Israeli targeting at Qana. He said the rocket launcher they were targeting was a full 300 metres from the apartments that were demolished - a distance commanders believed avoided the risk of hitting the building in which up to 60 are thought to have died.
Writing in Yediot Aharonot on Monday, the columnist Nahum Barnea challenged the carte-blanche bombing of civilian homes that were believed to be stores for Hezbollah weapons.
He defended Israel's right to strike at Hezbollah and acknowledged the inevitability of civilian casualties in war, but wrote: "The question is how and at what cost? ... A blanket directive [by Mr Peretz] regarding the entire civilian population of southern Lebanon and the Shiite neighbourhoods of Beirut is a hasty and light-headed act, which courts disaster. We saw the outcome of this yesterday, in the bodies of the women and children that were taken out of the bombed house in Qana."
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War on Islam
At least 52 dead in latest Iraq carnage
By VIJAY JOSHI
Associated Press
August 1, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Bombings and shootings across Iraq killed at least 52 people Tuesday, including 24 people in a bus destroyed by a roadside bomb. The attacks further damage the U.S.-backed government's efforts to establish control over the country.
The bus, carrying many Iraqi soldiers, was struck in the northern industrial city of Beiji, killing everyone on board, said Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari.
Police earlier said that 20 Iraqi soldiers were killed on the bus. Al-Askari confirmed that many of the passengers were soldiers, but said he did not know how many. He said the bus was not being escorted by U.S. troops, as earlier believed.
Following the blast, a curfew was imposed in Beiji, 155 miles, north of Baghdad.
In the Karradah neighborhood of Baghdad, a car bomb exploded during morning rush hour near a bank, killing at least 14 people and injuring 37, said police Lt. Col. Abbas Mohammed Salman.
The target was well chosen because Iraqi security forces draw their salaries from the bank on the first day of every month. The blast set several cars on fire in the leafy Shiite neighborhood. Dismembered bodies were strewn on the sidewalk.
Abdul Hassan Mohammed, a 62-year-old teacher, said he was walking to the bank to draw his pension when the bomb exploded. "A big explosion slammed me 4 meters (12 feet) into a wall. My friends took me to one of their stores, gave me water and asked me to relax ... I didn't get my pension," he told The Associated Press.
Karradah has seen increasing violence in the sectarian fighting between Shiites and Sunnis in recent months. Last Thursday, rockets and mortars rained down in the neighborhood, collapsing an apartment house, shattering shops and killing 31 people. A car bomb also exploded at the same time.
Elsewhere, a car bomb targeting a police patrol killed one policeman and six civilians in Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, said an official of a joint Iraqi-U.S. security force center. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release details.
A roadside bomb narrowly missed a car belonging to the Ministry of Electricity, killing one civilian and wounding another in eastern Baghdad, police said. Gunmen in two cars raided a mosque west of Baghdad, killing a cleric and his brother.
A suicide attack was foiled when soldiers fired at a car trying to slam into an army convoy in Baghdad. The car exploded, killing the driver but nobody else, police said.
And two insurgents were killed when a roadside bomb they were planting on a highway detonated prematurely in Karma, 25 miles west of Baghdad, police said. In the northern town of Mosul, a drive-by shooting killed one civilian.
On Monday, gunmen dressed in military fatigues burst into the offices of the Iraqi-American Chamber of Commerce and a nearby mobile phone company, seizing 26 people in a daylight raid in a mostly Shiite area of the capital. The same day, a millionaire businessman and his two sons were abducted from their car in Baghdad.
All the victims were believed to be Iraqis. The Iraqi-American Chamber is an independent organization not affiliated with the U.S. government, and maintains branches throughout Iraq and in Amman, Jordan.
The Interior Ministry denied that the kidnappers were police - despite the uniforms - and blamed the attack on "terrorists," Iraqi state television reported.
U.S. officials estimate an average of 30-40 people are kidnapped each day in Iraq, although the real figure may be higher because few families contact the police. Security officials believe most of the ransoms end up in the hands of insurgent and militia groups.
Many abductions are believed to be tied to the ongoing violence between Sunni and Shiite extremists who target civilians of the rival Muslim communities.
On Monday, the government said that since February, 30,359 families - or about 182,000 people - had fled their homes due to sectarian violence and intimidation. That represented an increase of about 20,000 people from the number reported July 20.
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Two British troops killed, one presumed dead after Afghan ambush
AFP
Tue Aug 1, 2006
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Two British NATO soldiers were killed and another was presumed dead after an ambush in southern
Afghanistan, a day after the alliance assumed command from the US-led coalition.
Insurgents armed with rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns aambushed a vehicle patrol of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Helmand province, the force and Britain's defence ministry said.
They were the seventh and eighth British soldiers to die this year in southern Afghanistan, where NATO is embarking on what it calls its most challenging mission yet to crack a growing Taliban insurgency.
The NATO force announced the casualties in a statement without releasing their nationalities, adding that the attack happened at 7:30 am in the restive northern part of the province.
A ministry of defence spokeswoman in London later revealed the soldiers were British and had died during "ongoing" clashes with insurgents.
"A UK vehicle patrol was attacked by insurgents with rocket propelled grenades and heavy machine guns. Sadly, two UK soldiers have died. One is missing, presumed killed, and another seriously injured," she said.
The bulk of a British deployment of around 4,000 troops to Afghanistan is based in Helmand. Britain announced earlier this month that it would boost its initial deployment due to the unexpectedly fierce resistance.
British newspapers have reported dissatisfaction in the military at the vulnerability of army vehicles being used in Afghanistan, especially Land Rovers. It was not clear which vehicles were involved in Tuesday's attack.
The attack came a day after the US-led coalition that overthrew the Taliban in 2001 transferred command of foreign forces in southern Afghanistan to a NATO contingent.
ISAF's move into southern Afghanistan is NATO's most ambitious military undertaking yet and its first outside of the Europe Atlantic area.
It is also a risky mission, with insurgents more active in the lawless south than in the west and north of the country and Kabul, where ISAF has already been working to extend the government's authority.
Helmand is also the main producer of Afghanistan's illegal opium crop, which is the biggest in the world, and experts say the rebels and drugs-runners have joined forces against the new troops.
NATO's civilian spokesman in Kabul said Tuesday's attack would not change the ISAF mission and was not unexpected in an area that had already seen several encounters between foreign and insurgents.
"It tells us what we already knew, which is (that) the south is a difficult and challenging environment," Mark Laity told AFP.
"But it was challenging yesterday and it will be challenging tomorrow. The key thing is, this does not change our determination to continue the mission."
Laity said the incident also did not detract from NATO's ambition to put a greater emphasis on reconstruction than the US-led coalition, which was mandated primarily to hunt down insurgents.
"Development and security cannot be separate but we obviously know that the establishment of security is more challenging in some areas than others," Laity said.
A total of 62 foreign troops have died in action in Afghanistan in 2006, the bulk of them Americans.
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Dozens die in attacks in Iraq
Last Updated Tue, 01 Aug 2006 07:35:43 EDT
The Associated Press
Bombings and shootings across Iraq killed at least 52 people Tuesday, including 24 who died in an explosion on a bus.
The worst carnage was near the northern industrial city of Beiji, where a bus carrying 24 people was hit by a roadside bomb, said Defence Ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari. He said everyone on board died and confirmed that many among the passengers were soldiers.
Following the blast, a curfew was imposed in Beiji, 250 kilometres north of Baghdad.
A few hours later, a bomb-laden car blew up near a bank in the once-fashionable Karradah neighbourhood of Baghdad, killing at least 14 people and injuring 37, said police Lt. Col. Abbas Mohammed Salman.
He said the target was well chosen because Iraqi security forces draw their salaries from the bank on the first of every month.
The blast set several cars on fire in the Shia neighbourhood. Dismembered bodies were strewn on the sidewalk.
Abdul Hassan Mohammed, a 62-year-old teacher, said he was walking to the bank to draw his pension when the blast happened.
"A big explosion slammed me four metres into a wall. My friends took me to one of their stores, gave me water and asked me to relax," he said. "I didn't get my pension."
Karradah has seen increasing violence in the sectarian fighting between Shias and Sunnis in recent months. Last Thursday, rockets and mortars rained down in the neighbourhood, collapsing an apartment house, shattering shops and killing 31 people. A car bomb also exploded at the same time.
Such repeated violence, carnage and daily kidnappings are chipping away people's confidence in the ability of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to impose the will of his security forces and end sectarian strife as well as general lawlessness.
Much of the violence is blamed on the Shia-Sunni conflict, but some of it is also the handiwork of criminals who see a lucrative business in abductions for ransom.
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Iraqi official calls for Shia region
Tuesday 01 August 2006, 17:52 Makka Time, 14:52 GMT
Iraq's Shia vice-president has vowed to bring the issue of a Shia federal state before parliament.
Adel Abd al-Mahdi, a senior official in the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and Iraq's vice-president, pledged on Monday that the Shia Iraqi Coalition - the biggest bloc in the Iraqi parliament - will raise the issue of a Shia federal state within two months.
Abd al-Mahdi was speaking at a gathering commemorating the third anniversary of the death of Baqir al-Hakim, the former leader of SCIRI who was killed by a bomb in Najaf in 2003.
"We suggest continuing the establishment of regions. We are going to submit the project to the parliament in the coming two months," he said.
Abd al-Mahdi acknowledged the government's failure in terms of public services and economy.
"Achieving public services that Iraqis hope for will help us in fighting terrorism. We have to hit terrorism by providing services and achieving a good economy," he said.
Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, chairman of SCIRI and brother of the late al-Hakim, led another ceremony on Saturday, also commemorating the third anniversary of his brother's death.
He gave a speech in which he highlighted "a number of important issues that we should take care of and give them priority in our daily movements".
Al-Hakim repeated his claim for a Shia federal region consisting of nine Iraqi governorates stretching from Babylon, 100km south of Baghdad, to Basra at the tip of southern Iraq.
He said: "Federalism is constitutionally secured. We have to work seriously on this issue, and figure out the necessary mechanism to switch to federalism. Dear countrymen, this issue is important to your governorates' security, safety and reconstruction."
Prosperity
He urged his followers to follow the example of Kurds in northern Iraq who declared their federal state earlier this year.
"Kurdistan was devastated by wars and suffered the same amount of negligence you suffered, but now - thanks to federalism - it has started to enjoy progress and prosperity more than any part of Iraq," he said.
Al-Hakim urged the Iraqi government to give the Iraqi governorates their constitutional rights to decide their state of rule.
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Bill Clinton's 'moral authority' needed: Royal
PARIS, Aug 1, 2006 (AFP)
Ségolène Royal, the Socialist tipped to become France's first female president, on Tuesday called for former US president Bill Clinton to intervene to calm the escalating Middle East conflict.
"France can play an intermediary, trustworthy role" but we also need "voices that carry international weight, that have moral authority", Royal told RTL radio.
"I am thinking about people such as Bill Clinton. We can find others, one per continent, who will be able to relaunch dialogue and give the feeling that we can talk to each other again," she said.
"We need person-to-person talks so that this little 48-hour glimmer of truce can be transformed into a ceasefire," Royal added.
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Middle East Spinning Out Of Control
by Frank Kaufmann
UPI Outside View Commentator
July 31, 2006
Washington - The situation in the Middle East has spun out of control. Analysts and so-called experts cannot see a way beyond the ever intensifying horrors. William Kristol, our generation's most eloquent and greatest lover of war, said this morning "Iran and Hezbollah have won this battle..." Lost and morose, Kristol despairingly allowed, "It has been a bad two months (for the "good guys")."
When it looks as though things cannot get worse (The United Nations has said that its top officials in New York and its officers on the ground in Lebanon made numerous calls to the Israeli mission and the Israeli military to protest repeated firing on its outpost in Lebanon where four unarmed observers later ended up being killed) they do (An Israeli official said the bomb that killed 54 refugees in Qana, Lebanon, including 37 children, early Sunday hit the wrong building).
The U.S. in five short years has forfeited its once elegant and glorious role as a peacemaker (only the U.S. and the U.K. stood out against an immediate ceasefire at the recent Rome summit). Sunday morning news analysts even on the perfectly pro-administration, Fox News referred to Rice's time at the Middle East crisis summit in Rome "a flame-out," not just once, but as the term of record throughout the Chris Wallace hour. (The Rome talks broke up after failing to reach agreement, according to CNN television.) (Ms. Rice lost the public relations war. Reports of the Rome meeting uniformly painted her as isolated in one corner, according to the New York Times.).
In the midst of it all President Bush was caught on an open mike in front of the world's most powerful leaders, with a mouth full of shrimp swearing about Syria, and complaining about Kofi Anan. Bad enough?
A week later President Bush was forced to apologize publicly for not notifying Tony Blair that the U.S. was transporting bunker busters through Scotland to Israel (Israel's Justice Minister Haim Ramon said Israel was given a green light to continue attacks after the United States convinced Arab and European ministers not to call for an immediate truce at a Rome.) The news of U.S. bomb shipments to Israel broke on the same day four U.N. peacekeepers were killed in Israeli air strikes on Lebanon.
Bad enough? After 17 days of Israeli sorties over southern Lebanon, Hezbollah rather than being decimated showed up by complete surprise firing Khalibar 1's into Israel. Israel said the newer rockets have four times the range of the Katyushas, possibly putting northern Tel Aviv in range.
The magnitude, implications, and irresolvable conundrums of this ever escalating Israel-Hezbollah conflict have kept from the front pages and from proper analysis matters of enormous significance regarding the region. The July 29 deaths of 3 Marines brings the number of U.S. military war deaths in Iraq to 2,573 since the U.S. led invasion of 2003. The day before that, 3,700 troops about to go home were stopped and held back (3,700 troops who had been planning to return home over the next two weeks probably will remain for at least the next six weeks and possibly as long as four months, this time in the most violent area of the country, reports The Washington Post). Just weeks earlier, every public figure including President Bush spoke enthusiastically about beginning the process of troop withdrawal from Iraq. This rhetoric met a sudden and complete about face as the U.S. Central Command said that 5,000 additional troops in armored vehicles will patrol Baghdad streets, where nearly 100 civilians die each day, many of them victims of reprisal killings by death squads. In Iraq nearly 100 civilians die EVERY DAY!
The most significant matter about this horrific Israel-Hezbollah war has yet to dominate the attention of analysts. It has to do with intelligence. Here are three invaluable observations from Jim Hoagland of the Washington Post: 1. Israel has been forced to improvise furiously on the battlefield after discovering how much it did not know about the forces Hezbollah had amassed in southern Lebanon... Israelis take intelligence deadly seriously. For them, it is a tool of survival. 2. The intelligence failures by the Israelis in Lebanon and by the Americans in Iraq are related. 3. American intelligence has done no better at predicting the course or strength of Iraq's insurgency and the sectarian warfare that the insurgents have deliberately fanned between Iraq's Shiites and Sunnis. Months of Bush administration happy talk about a government of national unity based on Sunni inclusion did not lead to the reduction of violence that was predicted, but to a sharp spike in Iraqi deaths and destruction instead. Intelligence (like everything) has two dimensions, an interior impulse and an exterior manifestation. The public and political figures tend to focus on the exterior aspects of intelligence gathering even though they are of lesser importance. The exterior aspects of intelligence, (what information you gather, how, and how accurately) are only valuable if guided well by insightfulness. In fact the term "intelligence" in common parlance does NOT refer to how much you know or how accurate your information, rather to how well you think.
The fact that two of the finest militaries in history (and the nations attached to them) find themselves up to their elbows in tar babies with no end in sight, after days for one and years for the other, and countless billions poured into shocking and awe-ing, is not for the lack of "a big right hand," but for not thinking straight.
A person or state operating on the following understanding might be described as intelligent. Further, the "gathering of intelligence," might proceed more fruitfully from an "intelligent" starting point. 1. Iran, Syria, and over 50 major, independent and state sponsored Islamist, and anti-Israel/US militias and "terrorist" organizations do not like the United States and do not like Israel. Bombing them will not make them change their minds. 2. The term "democracy" is not regarded as representing a virtuous social order to the intelligentsia, leaders, and rank and file of these states and these groups. Bombing them will not make them change their minds. 3. These states and groups do not uphold Christian and European conventions on how properly and "justly" to conduct war. Bombing them will not make them change their minds. 4. There are too many of them to bomb until they are all gone. Many argue that attacks on them strengthen them politically and strengthen their recruitment efforts.
It would be pleasant if we could bomb people into seeing things our way, and failing that bomb the recalcitrant ones until they are all gone. But we cannot. Good and effective strategies cannot arise from such a starting point. That is bad intelligence.
Strong and effective intelligence gathering should be based in clear understanding. Better understanding as the ground of "intelligence" would help to avert occasions in which powerful and economically and militarily advanced countries make big and costly mistakes with dire and enduring repercussions.
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Most Russians Blame Israel for Current Middle East Crisis - Poll
Created: 01.08.2006 14:32 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 14:32 MSK
MosNews
About half of the Russians recently polled blame Israel for the escalation of the current Middle East crisis, a poll released by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center revealed, RIA Novosti news agency reported Tuesday.
Asked who they consider to be in charge of the war between Israel and Lebanon, 23 percent of the recipients said that they blame Israel, and another 21 percent named the U.S. and other Israeli allies.
Only 14 and 13 percent of those polled believe that Hezbollah and Hamas, respectively, are responsible for the crisis. 5 percent think that Iran, Syria and other terrorist organizations' sponsors must be blamed. 4 percent think Lebanon provoked the predicament.
28 percent of Russians think that both sides are equally guilty.
Assessing the conflict, 39 percent said that Israel is fighting Palestinian and Lebanonese terrorist groups. 26 percent think that Israel is waging a military campaign against peaceful Lebanon, another 17 percent on the contrary, think that Lebanese and Palestinian extremists are fighting peaceful Israel. 18 percent has found it difficult to assess the conflict.
Most of the Russians polled also believe that Moscow has to stay away from the tangled Middle East conflict. 70 percent of the 1600 polled think that "Russian peacekeepers must not get involved in the conflict settlement."
At the same time 38 pecent of those polled believe that Russia should continue independent mediation. 11 percent think Moscow should support one of the sides.
The poll was conducted July 22-23 2006.
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AP reported that Rice "cut short" her Mideast trip, failed to note reports that Lebanese PM rebuffed her
Tue, Aug 1, 2006 11:59am EST
Media Matters for America
Summary: On July 30, Associated Press writer Katherine Shrader reported that Condoleezza Rice had canceled a trip to Lebanon after Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and other Lebanese officials apparently made clear she "was not welcome to visit." But numerous subsequent AP articles ignored entirely the earlier report that the Lebanese government had asked her to postpone the trip.
In the wake of Israel's deadly July 30 attack on the Lebanese village of Qana, Associated Press writer Katherine Shrader reported that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had canceled a trip to Lebanon after Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and other Lebanese officials apparently made clear she "was not welcome to visit." But numerous subsequent AP articles -- including one written by Shrader herself -- simply reported that Rice had "cut short her diplomatic mission" or "scrap[ped] her planned meeting" with Saniora, ignoring entirely the AP's earlier report that the Lebanese government had asked her to postpone the trip.
Shrader's original article quoted Saniora refusing to discuss anything with Rice "other than an immediate and unconditional cease-fire" and noted that "infuriated Lebanese officials said they had asked Rice to postpone the visit," despite her statement indicating that the decision to postpone the meeting was hers. From the July 30 article:
Stymieing Rice's diplomatic mission, Israel's early morning missile strike sparked protests in Beirut and forced Rice to cancel an expected visit Sunday with Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora.
[...]
Speaking in Beirut, Saniora said the attack on Lebanese civilians demonstrates a cease-fire is the only option. "There is no place at this sad moment for any discussions other than an immediate and unconditional cease-fire as well as international investigation of the Israeli massacres in Lebanon now," he told reporters.
[...]
She has spoken by phone to Saniora to express the condolences of the U.S. government and its citizens and let him know she wouldn't be coming. But infuriated Lebanese officials said they had asked Rice to postpone the visit.
Either way, Rice was not welcome to visit Lebanon, an ally.
"In the wake of the tragedy that the people and the government of Lebanon are dealing with today, I have decided to postpone my discussion in Beirut," Rice said. "In any case, my work today is here."
Numerous other print outlets similarly reported that, while Rice stated that the decision to postpone the trip was hers, the Lebanese government's version of events differed. A July 31 Washington Post article acknowledged that "[v]ersions vary on who made the decision" and quoted from both Rice and Saniora's respective statements. The New York Times noted that Rice had canceled the meeting and reported that Saniora "made it clear that in any case Ms. Rice would not be welcome in Beirut on Sunday." And a July 31 Chicago Tribune article reported that "[i]n a rebuff to Rice, the Lebanese government responded to the bombing by telling the United States' top diplomat that she wasn't welcome in Lebanon unless the U.S would support an immediate cease-fire." The Tribune further noted that this "forced Rice to cancel her visit to Beirut later in the day."
But in subsequent articles on this development, the AP has failed to acknowledge the disagreement surrounding whose idea it was to cancel the meeting. AP writers Thomas Wagner and Kathy Gannon reported in a July 31 article that the "stunning bloodshed in Qana increased international pressure on Washington to back an immediate end to the fighting. ... The attack prompted U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to cut short her Mideast mission to return home Monday." AP writer Deb Riechmann's July 31 report noted that Rice had "cut short her diplomatic mission in the Mideast." The same day, AP writer Nedra Pickler reported that the Qana attack had "prompted Rice to cut her trip short," and Tom Raum wrote that Rice "cut short her diplomatic mission to the Middle East without making an expected second stop in Lebanon."
Moreover, in a July 31 article, Shrader herself ignored entirely the account of the Lebanese government, which she had reported a day earlier. Instead, Shrader simply noted that Rice "had to scrap" the meeting and that, prior to leaving, she called Saniora "to discuss her plans to announce a framework for a U.N. resolution." Further, she reported that Rice had "disputed suggestions that this was one of her most difficult trips as secretary of State":
Rice had to scrap scheduled meetings with Lebanese leaders in Beirut on the final full day of her trip after Israel attacked the Lebanese village of Qana, killing more than 55 people while they slept. Searing images of children's bodies being pulled from rubble were replayed on international television.
[...]
A State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity about the sensitive diplomatic discussions, said Rice called Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora before leaving Monday to discuss her plans to announce a framework for a U.N. resolution. She also plans to dispatch her ambassador to Beirut to brief the prime minister in detail on the elements.
[...]
Rice disputed suggestions that this was one of her most difficult trips as secretary of State, but acknowledged she might not be as self-reflective as people think.
"I have a particularly strong sense of commitment to Lebanon itself. These are wonderful people, it's a beautiful place, and it's had such trouble and such misery for such a long time," she said. "It is hard to see what Lebanon is going through. It is hard to see what the Israeli citizens are going through. It's been way too long in the Middle East."
In an August 1 profile of Saniora, however, AP writer Sam F. Ghattas reported that the prime minister's "stance hardened after an Israeli strike in the southern town of Qana that killed at least 56 people" and that he subsequently "canceled a visit by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice."
-J.K.
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Britain and Germany reject EU draft statement calling for Lebanon ceasefire
01/08/2006
Britain and Germany today rejected a draft EU statement calling for an immediate ceasefire in the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah militants, diplomats said.
The two nations, at emergency EU foreign ministers' talks, offered an alternative draft calling for an "eventual cessation of hostilities" - with no time frame given.
On the way into the meeting, the EU presidency warned that Israel's offensive in southern Lebanon would only increase support for Hezbollah militants.
The ministers' emergency meeting discussed a draft statement saying: "The (EU) Council calls for an immediate ceasefire."
Britain has so far agreed with the US position that work is needed to ensure any ceasefire can last, and UK foreign secretary Margaret Beckett has said "a call for an end to the violence" should be an element of a long-term peace plan.
All EU ministers have to agree on the statement before it is issued.
Comment: Conclusion? Blair and Merkel enjoy seeing Lebanese children murdered.
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War on Everyone
Castro's Condition Unknown After Surgery
By ANITA SNOW
AP
Aug 1, 2006
HAVANA - Little was known of Fidel Castro's condition Tuesday after he underwent an operation and temporarily turned over the Cuban presidency to his brother Raul, ushering in a period of uncertainty at home and celebrations by his enemies abroad.
The surprise announcement that Castro had been operated on to repair a "sharp intestinal crisis with sustained bleeding" stunned Cubans on the island and in exile, and marked the first time that Castro, two weeks away from 80th birthday, had relinquished power in 47 years of absolute rule.
The news came Monday night in a statement read on state television by his secretary Carlos Valenciaga. The message said Castro's condition was apparently due to stress from a heavy work schedule during recent trips to Argentina and eastern Cuba. He did not appear on the broadcast.
Castro, who took control of Cuba in 1959, resisted repeated U.S. attempts to oust him and survived communism's demise elsewhere, said he was temporarily handing over the presidency and the leadership of Cuba's Communist Party to his brother, Raul.
Raul Castro, Cuba's defense minister who turned 75 in June, also did not appear on television and made no statement on his own. For decades the constitutional successor to his brother, Raul Castro has assumed a more public profile in recent weeks.
Fidel Castro last appeared in public Wednesday as he marked the 53rd anniversary of his July 26 barracks assault that launched the revolution. The Cuban leader seemed thinner than usual and somewhat weary during a pair of long speeches in eastern Cuba.
"The operation obligates me to undertake several weeks of rest," Castro's letter read. Extreme stress "had provoked in me a sharp intestinal crisis with sustained bleeding that obligated me to undergo a complicated surgical procedure."
The calm delivery of the announcement appeared to signal that there would be an orderly succession should Fidel become permanently incapacitated.
Cuban exiles celebrated in the streets of Miami, but Havana's streets were quiet overnight as Cubans awaited further word on Castro's condition.
It was unknown when or where the surgery took place, or where Castro was recovering.
Ongoing intestinal bleeding can be serious and potentially life-threatening, said Dr. Stephen Hanauer, gastroenerology chief at the University of Chicago hospitals. He said it was difficult to deduce the cause of Castro's bleeding without knowing what part of the digestive tract was affected.
Ulcers are a common cause of bleeding in the stomach or upper intestine, while a condition called diverticulosis also can provoke bleeding in the lower intestine, especially in people over age 60, said Hanauer. He said this condition involves weakened spots in the intestinal lining that form pouches, which can become inflamed and provoke bleeding.
Fidel seemed optimistic of recovery, asking that celebrations scheduled for his 80th birthday on Aug. 13 be postponed until Dec. 2, the 50th anniversary of Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces.
With Havana's streets calm, an electronic news ticker at the U.S. diplomatic mission provided the only clue that something dramatic had occurred inside Cuba's government: "All Cubans, including those under the dictatorship, can count on our help and support. We respect the wishes of all Cubans."
Waiters at a popular cafe in Old Havana were momentarily stunned by the news, but quickly returned to work.
"He'll get better, without a doubt," said Agustin Lopez, 40. "There are really good doctors here, and he's extremely strong."
But Martha Beatriz Roque, a leading Cuban government opponent in Havana, said she believed Castro must be gravely ill to have stepped aside - even temporarily.
"No one knows if he'll even be alive Dec. 2 when he's supposed to celebrate his birthday," she said in a telephone interview. She said opposition members worried they could be targeted for repression during a government change - especially if authorities fear civil unrest.
White House spokesman Peter Watkins said U.S. authorities were monitoring the situation: "We can't speculate on Castro's health, but we continue to work for the day of Cuba's freedom."
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Castro's strongest international ally, was the first foreign leader to react to the news, expressing his distress during a visit to Vietnam. He said he called the Cuban leader's office after hearing the news.
"Waking up this morning and receiving that news, you may see what feeling one would have toward a good friend," Chavez said Tuesday morning. "When there is such an announcement, it's worrisome."
"We wish President Fidel Castro will recover rapidly," Chavez said. "Viva Fidel Castro."
Across the Florida straits in Miami, exiles waved Cuban flags on Little Havana's Calle Ocho, shouting "Cuba! Cuba! Cuba!" as drivers honked their horns. Over nearly five decades, hundreds of thousands of Cubans have fled Castro's rule, many of them settling in Miami.
Castro has been in power since the Jan. 1, 1959 triumph of the armed revolution that drove out dictator Fulgencio Batista. He has been the world's longest-ruling head of government and his ironclad rule has ensured Cuba's place among the world's five remaining communist countries, along with China, Vietnam, Laos and North Korea.
Castro resisted U.S. demands for multiparty elections and an open economy and insisted his socialist system would long outlive him.
The son of a prosperous plantation owner, Castro's official birthday is Aug. 13, 1926, although some say he was born a year later.
Talk of Castro's mortality was taboo until June 23, 2001, when he fainted during a speech in the sun. Although Castro quickly recovered, many Cubans understood for the first time that their leader would eventually die.
Castro shattered a kneecap and broke an arm when he fell after a speech on Oct. 20, 2004, but laughed off rumors about his health, most recently a 2005 report he had Parkinson's disease.
But the Cuban president also said he would not insist on remaining in power if he ever became too sick to lead: "I'll call the (Communist) Party and tell them I don't feel I'm in condition ... that please, someone take over the command."
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U.S. Has Plan to Aid Post-Castro Cuba
AP
Aug 01, 2006
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration, which has made no secret of its desire to see the end of Fidel Castro's regime in Cuba, said it has a plan in place to help transition the island nation to democracy after Castro.
"We can't speculate on Castro's health, but we continue to work for the day of Cuba's freedom," said White House spokesman Peter Watkins. He also said the U.S. is closely monitoring the situation.
On Monday, before Castro's illness was announced, President Bush was in Miami and spoke of the island's future.
"If Fidel Castro were to move on because of natural causes, we've got a plan in place to help the people of Cuba understand there's a better way than the system in which they've been living under," he told WAQI- AM Radio Mambi, a Spanish-language radio station. "No one knows when Fidel Castro will move on. In my judgment, that's the work of the Almighty."
The president apparently was referring to a recently updated plan that calls for diplomacy enlisting Cuban citizens and other nations to demand a new government after Castro dies. The plan, released last month by the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, recommends that the United States spend $80 million over two years for food and other aid to Cuba to encourage multiparty elections, free markets and democratic institutions.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., a member of the House International Relations Committee who has long opposed Castro, said even a temporary relinquishment of power by the dictator is "a great day for the Cuban people and for their brothers and sisters in exile."
"Fidel Castro has only brought ruin and misery to Cuba so if he is incapacitated, even for a short period of time, it is a marvelous moment for the millions of Cubans who live under his iron fisted rule and oppressive state machinery," she said. "I hope this is the beginning of the end for his despised regime."
The State Department declined comment, but the United States has been open about the fact it is prepared to go to some lengths to ensure that the communist system Castro created goes out with him.
It is official U.S. policy to "undermine" Cuba's planned succession from Castro to his brother Raul, to whom Fidel Castro temporarily transferred power Monday, citing an operation over an intestinal problem and internal bleeding.
The transfer marked the first time that Castro, two weeks away from 80th birthday, had relinquished power in 47 years of absolute rule.
Watkins, the White House spokesman, said the administration was "monitoring the situation," though he did not provide details. Cuba itself has disclosed little about the dictator's circumstances beyond Monday's statement about Castro's operation.
Castro, who took control of Cuba in 1959, resisted repeated U.S. attempts to oust him and survived communism's demise elsewhere.
Cuba has been under a U.S. financial embargo since 1961, two years after the Castro came to power with the ousting of then-President Fulgencio Batista.
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Raise readiness, Assad tells Syrian Army
Reuters
Mon Jul 31, 2006
DAMASCUS - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told the Syrian military on Monday to raise its readiness, pledging not to abandon support for Lebanese resistance against Israel.
"We are facing international circumstances and regional challenges that require caution, alert, readiness and preparedness," Assad said.
"The barbaric war of annihilation the Israeli aggression is waging on our people in Lebanon and Palestine is increasing in ferocity," Assad said in a written address on the occasion of the 61st anniversary of the foundation of the Syria Arab Army.
Diplomats in Damascus say the Syrian army has been on alert since the Israeli onslaught on Lebanon began on July 12 after Hizbollah fighters captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border operation.
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Iran cleric calls on Muslims to arm Hizbollah
Reuters
Tue Aug 1, 2006
TEHRAN - Muslim nations should arm Hizbollah in its fight against Israel, Iran's influential hardline clerical politician Ahmad Jannati said on Tuesday.
Iran has repeatedly said it only provides moral support to Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas and there was no immediate sign that Iran's official policy has changed.
Israel accuses Iran of providing Hizbollah with missiles used against civilian and military targets.
"We are expecting Muslim nations to provide various kinds of support, including arms, medicine and food to Hizbollah," he told the students news agency ISNA.
Jannati heads the Guardian Council, Iran's constitutional watchdog composed of six clerics and six hardline lawyers.
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Iran irate over nuclear deadline
by Stefan Smith
AFP
Tue Aug 1, 2006
TEHRAN - Iran reacted angrily to a UN Security Council resolution ordering the Islamic to freeze sensitive nuclear work by the end of the month.
UN Resolution 1696, which dangles the threat of sanctions unless Iran halts uranium enrichment and other work that could help build a nuclear bomb, was welcomed by the United States and its allies but decried as "destructive and totally unwarranted" by Iran's UN ambassador.
"I would suggest to you that this approach will not lead to any productive outcome. It can only exacerbate the situation," Javad Zarif told the Security Council.
"The Americans must be sure that Iran will not take part in a game which it will lose," Kazem Jalali, spokesman for the Iranian parliament's foreign affairs commission, was also quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency.
"If there were to be a loser, it would be those who have shifted the Iranian nuclear issue away from dialogue," he warned.
The Security Council gave Tehran an August 31 deadline to comply, and said that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohammed ElBaradei should then report back on what Iran has done to fall into line.
But the text of the resolution held off from an immediate threat of sanctions, which have been opposed by Russia and China, and said any punitive action would have to be the subject of further discussions.
A state radio commentator said the resolution was merely fresh proof that "Western countries want to prevent Iran from having an independent nuclear energy programme."
"A powerful Iran which masters the latest technology is against their interests," the commentator said, adding that "history has shown that when the people have a goal and the government supports them, nothing can hold them back."
Iran insists it only wants to enrich uranium to make reactor fuel and that this is a right enshrined by the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Demands for a suspension stem from widespread suspicions the country wants the capacity to make weapons-grade uranium.
An editorial in the ultra-hardline Siasat Rouz newspaper called on the government to quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) -- something officials have already threatened to do if the pressure mounts.
"In preparing the final battle, we should at first attack US bases in neighbouring countries and then clear the region of this infected microbe," the paper said, while also calling on Iran to rally "friendly governments and Muslim people ready to carry out suicide attacks".
The hardline Jomhuri Eslami paper said the resolution was "unacceptable", complaining that the United States was meanwhile "preventing any move to bring a ceasefire" between
Israel and Iran's Lebanese allies Hezbollah.
"It shows the Security Council has sadly become an instrument in the hands of the Americans," the paper fumed. "Iran will undoubtably respond by suspending its adhesion to the NPT."
The hardline Kayhan newspaper, whose firebrand editor is appointed by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, played down the importance of the resolution.
"Experts believe that this resolution does not carry the necessary weight and that the objective... is to threaten Iran rather than take action," the paper said.
Senior government officials are expected to speak on the issue later Tuesday.
On Monday, US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters that Iran would head "down the road of further isolation" if it failed to heed the Security Council call.
"The international community has offered them a pathway... so that we can have negotiations," said McCormack.
"They don't have anywhere to hide. They don't have any protectors," he said. "It is in their interest, it is in the interest of the international community for them to comply."
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Iran FM meets French counterpart in Beirut
BEIRUT, July 31, 2006 (AFP)
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, whose country is one of the main backers of Hezbollah guerrillas battling Israeli forces, met his French counterpart Philippe Douste-Blazy in Beirut late Monday, officials said.
The meeting took place at the Iranian embassy as Douste-Blazy pressed efforts for a diplomatic solution to the three-week-old Israeli offensive in Lebanon.
Neither minister made any comment after their talks which lasted more than two hours.
Ahead of the talks, Mottaki implicitly criticised the United States for abetting the Israeli offensive.
"We consider any party which backs the Zionist enemy ... in its aggression ... and foils efforts to stop the aggression as partners and responsible for the crimes committed against Lebanon," he said after talks with his Lebanese counterpart Fawzi Sallukh, a Hezbollah ally.
He also criticised the United Nations and its agencies for failing to do more to halt the Israeli offensive, launched after Shiite militants of Hezbollah captured two soldiers in a deadly cross-border raid on July 12.
"After three weeks, those organizations did not do their duties toward that aggression," he said.
Earlier Monday, Douste-Blazy said Iran was a key player in the Middle East and "plays an important stabilising role" in the region.
"It is clear that we cannot accept a destabilisation of Lebanon that could lead to a destabilisation of the region. In the region there is a great country like Iran which is respected and which plays an important stabilising role in the region," he said.
"We think more than ever that the Iranians are an important and respected actor."
His comments came despite outspoken criticism of Iran from the United States which has accused the Islamic regime and its key regional ally Syria of arming Hezbollah and encouraging its attacks on Israel.
Iran insists it gives only moral support to the Shiite militant group.
Mottaki, who arrived from neighbouring Syria earlier Monday, was due to meet Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, Prime Minister Fuad Siniora and parliament speaker Nabih Berri on Tuesday.
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Two Koreas exchange gunfire along border
By Jon Herskovitz
Reuters
Tue Aug 1, 2006
SEOUL - North and South Korean troops exchanged gunfire across their heavily fortified border for the first time in about a year, a military official said on Tuesday.
North Korean troops fired two shots at a South Korean guard post near the Demilitarized Zone late on Monday and South Korean troops returned six shots, an official said by telephone.
"No one was injured in the incident," the Joint Chiefs of Staff official said, referring to South Korean troops. There was no word if any North Korean soldiers were hurt.
The Joint Chiefs issued a statement saying the U.N. Command Military Armistice Commission -- monitoring a truce that halted fighting in the 1950-53 Korean War and has left the two countries technically at war since then -- will look into the skirmish.
One of the shots hit the guard post, causing South Korean troops to immediately return fire, the official said.
Last October, North Korea fired a bullet toward a South Korean guard post and the South returned fire. The two navies clashed along a disputed maritime border in 2002, resulting in deaths and casualties on both sides.
MISSILE TESTS
Ties have become notably strained since North Korea defied international warnings, including from
South Korea, and test-fired seven missiles on July 5th.
After a frosty inter-Korean ministerial meeting days after the tests, Seoul said it would suspend food aid until Pyongyang returned to stalled six-country talks on ending its nuclear weapons program.
North Korean delegates stormed out of the meeting and said the South would "pay a price" for spoiling inter-Korean ties.
Since then, North Korea has halted several projects with the South, including the reunion of families separated by the war.
On Tuesday, North Korea said it would be difficult to hold a joint ceremony to mark the August 15, 1945 anniversary of the end of Japanese colonial rule over the peninsula due to recent flooding, a South Korean committee preparing for the event said.
North Korea has stationed most of its 1.2 million-man army near the DMZ. South Korea has more than 650,000 troops, who are supported by about 30,000 U.S. troops.
In another sign of the souring relationship, a South Korean commission issued a report on Tuesday reiterating North Korea was to blame for the 1987 explosion of a Korean Air jet that killed 115.
Seoul has avoided bringing up that incident in recent years in the interest of its "sunshine policy" of engagement.
The United States put North Korea on its list of countries that support terrorism after the airliner bombing. North Korea has been keen to discuss how to get off that list in direct talks with Washington.
North Korean agents were also accused of attempting a presidential assassination in 1974, and in 1983 set off a bomb in Myanmar that killed 17 senior South Korean officials.
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Airport curb on US 'bomb flights'
BBC
Tuesday, 1 August 2006
US military flights carrying bombs to Israel will no longer use any civilian airports in the UK, the BBC has learnt.
The decision follows criticism of the use of Prestwick Airport near Glasgow to refuel flights suspected of carrying bombs to Israel.
It has emerged that in future only military airfields will be used.
The decision was reached after protests at the airport and discussions between various government departments, led by the Foreign Office.
US flights to Israel used RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk rather than Prestwick airport last weekend, prompting protests from about 30 peace campaigners at the military base.
'Not happy'
BBC News understands that Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett last week pressed for all US flights through the UK to be suspended while hostilities in Lebanon continued.
But her concerns were rejected by Downing Street.
The latest move means the planes will at least not pass through civilian bases any longer.
Mrs Beckett last week opened up a rare public rift with the Americans when she said she was "not happy" because it appeared the US planes at Prestwick had not followed correct procedures for transporting hazardous materials.
She raised the issue with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and threatened to make a formal protest if the reports proved to be true.
Her worries were seized by government critics as evidence that America was taking British support for granted.
But the White House dismissed Mrs Beckett's protest, saying the Department of Defense believed the "paperwork" had been in order.
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Where the bin Laden trail goes cold
By David Montero | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor August 01, 2006
Reports put him in the Dir Valley of Pakistan, but a visit there shows only the difficulties of finding him.
KUMRAT, PAKISTAN - Hajji Samander Khan and his friends seem befuddled, even bored, by the notion that Osama bin Laden might be hiding in this beautiful valley of apple orchards and walnut trees. Mere propaganda, they declare as they sip Pepsi, swat flies, and harangue on the immodest apparel of foreign aid workers.
The elderly gentlemen seem to welcome only one sign of change in this conservative valley: the arrival of tourists, the backpacking kind, not those with a $25 million reward on their head.
"Osama bin Laden was brought from Afghanistan by the Americans," Mr. Khan says amid chuckles. "They should know where he is."
In late May, ABC news cited unnamed Pakistani government sources as saying that bin Laden and his entourage had moved down from the mountains of Afghanistan to Kumrat, just 40 miles from the Afghan border.
But the area, although insular and strictly religious, seems an unlikely place for the world's most wanted terrorist, locals and analysts say. Harboring him would only undercut the main impulse of the region: protecting its religious mores, pristine beauty, and tourism from the encroachment of the Pakistani government and its American allies.
A recent visit to the far-flung area bolstered this view, underscoring the difficulties of the hunt for Osama bin Laden, which remains largely a series of unfruitful extrapolations from uncertain leads.
"It's all guesswork. If people knew exactly where he was, then it would be no problem catching him," says Lt. Gen. Talat Masood (ret.), a defense analyst in Islamabad.
Past and present circumstances might suggest Dir Valley as a viable refuge for bin Laden.
The rugged and forested area was once considered the stronghold of the banned extremist outfit, Tehrik-e-Nifaz Shariah Muhammadi, which sent thousands of volunteers to assist the Taliban after the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001. Local officials insist the power of the group has been all but shattered, but recent violence in and around Dir indicates that extremism remains.
Internet cafe, music store bombed
In late June an organization calling itself Amr Bil Maroof Wa Nahi Anil Munkar bombed an Internet cafe and a music store in Dir city, and it threatened to target other establishments spreading "obscenity" in the area.
Then in early July, six paramilitary personnel were killed by a remote-controlled bomb in lower Dir valley. A high-ranking police official in Dir city, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media, described the attack as the possible beginning of a longer campaign against the military.
"You can call the incident the start of a process of backlash on the military as a result of the operations being carried out in [Waziristan] and Balochistan," he says.
Despite such circumstances, however, a recent visit to the region found residents and officials dismissive of the claim that bin Laden was hiding in Kumrat and far more concerned with promoting the area's natural beauty for tourists.
"I don't think people would put themselves at risk for the sake of Osama bin Laden. I haven't heard anything to date about Osama bin Laden - neither from intelligence agencies or the people," says Mohammed Nisar Wardag, the mayor of Dir.
Outsiders are noted immediately
Entering the main village of Kumrat, which is split by a simple dirt road, has the air of puncturing a bubble: a quiet, self-contained world busy at bettering itself.
Men saw great slabs of wood for construction, and women work the lush fields, their bodies and faces completely covered in billowing shrouds, which locals say they wear even indoors.
Troops of young girls, meanwhile, wash their faces in the river on the way back from the madrassah, evidently the only school in town. Because all this takes place just beside the road, outsiders are noticed immediately, and greeted with respect but an air of suspicion.
Abdul Rasheed, a local resident, says the bin Laden rumors are just propaganda. "We know these mountains, these people. No outsider can hide here. We welcome tourists, but not Osama."
Many others share the opinion that Kumrat would never welcome the outside attention that bin Laden would bring, even though it is a pocket of strict religiosity.
The region has a reputation for its hearty dislike of the outside world - aside from tourists. Locals detest the presence of the government, complaining that it extracts the area's forest wealth without compensation.
They are also against international nongovernmental organizations because they are believed to be non-Muslim and their representatives are prone to dressing immodestly. Residents would therefore not risk sheltering bin Laden, observers add, since it would invite further government interference, or, at worst, direct intervention by the US military.
The police official even advised that Americans not enter the area, since opposition to the war in Afghanistan runs high. The official said that, while there were no legal injunctions against visiting, he would stop Americans who attempted to do so, as he had done in the recent past.
Such measures were for their own safety, the official insisted, and not because the presence of bin Laden was a reality.
"This is just a rumor," he said, referring to bin Laden. "[People in Kumrat] are such rigid people. If [bin Laden] was there he would be cut to pieces. Because of the temperament of the people there, they cannot keep something like that secret."
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Dry
Rare clouds 'could indicate global warming'
The Daily Mail
1st August 2006
Rare, mother-of-pearl coloured clouds caused by extreme weather conditions above Antarctica are a possible indication of global warming, Australian scientists have announced.
Known as nacreous clouds, the spectacular formations showing delicate wisps of colours were photographed in the sky over an Australian meteorological base at Mawson Station on July 25.
The clouds can only form in temperatures lower than minus 80 degrees Celsius (minus 112 Fahrenheit). Meteorologist Renae Baker who photographed the clouds, said a weather balloon sent up about 12 miles above the Earth's surface measured temperatures as low as minus 87 Centigrade (minus 124.6 F).
"They reveal extreme conditions in the atmosphere, and promote chemical changes that lead to destruction of vital stratospheric ozone," Baker said.
Australian scientist Andrew Klekociuk said said temperatures in the stratosphere, between 5 and 31 miles above Earth, would be expected to drop as global warming increases. Data collected over the past 25 years had reflected this.
"Over that time there has been a small decrease in temperature and that change is actually occurring faster than the warming at the surface of the Earth," he said.
The delicate cloud colours are created at sunset when fading light passes through tiny water-ice crystals blown along on strong jets of stratospheric air.
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Feds call reinforcements for wildfires
By CHRISTOPHER SMITH
Associated Press
Tue Aug 1, 2006
BOISE, Idaho - Federal land management agencies are being asked to make more employees available to fight wildfires because crews and equipment have been stretched to the limit by nearly 60 major blazes around the West.
For the first time since 2003, the National Interagency Fire Center over the weekend raised its response status to the highest threat level, a move triggered when nearly all available crews and firefighting resources are committed.
The move allows federal firefighting coordinators to summon additional federal employees, military reinforcements and foreign fire crews if necessary.
"It frees up what we call the militia - agency employees whose regular job may be as a biologist or realty specialist but who are trained in fire duty and can now be called up to help," said Randy Eardley, a U.S. Bureau of Land Management spokesman at the federal firefighting center in Boise.
More than 24,000 firefighters were working on fires across the West on Monday, including 58 large fires of 500 acres or more.
The biggest active fire in the country was in northern Nevada, where nearly 300 square miles of grass and sagebrush had burned. It was 10 percent contained Monday, and fire bosses had no estimate when it would be surrounded.
No homes were in immediate danger, though one outbuilding had been destroyed, said Jamie Thompson of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Winnemucca, Nev.
More people were told to evacuate Monday from areas south of Chadron, Neb., on the fourth day of fires that have scorched nearly 80 square miles.
About 45 to 50 people were affected by the latest evacuation orders, and hundreds of others evacuated over the weekend were kept from their homes.
Four rural houses have been destroyed and several more damaged since lightning sparked the fires last week.
In Montana, more firefighters, equipment and aircraft arrived Monday as crews fought to corral a fire that blew up rapidly in Glacier National Park over the weekend, fanned by strong winds and blistering heat.
Firefighters got some relief Monday with calmer winds and lower temperatures, but officials said the fire - estimated at 34 square miles - still posed a threat to the gateway community of St. Mary.
The blaze came within a mile of the town over the weekend. The National Park Service on Sunday evacuated its administrative site there, as well as several area campgrounds.
Most of the park remained open to visitors, officials said.
Residents of a subdivision in central Oregon were allowed to return late Monday as crews tamed a fire there, though evacuation orders remained in effect for another 500 residents of two subdivisions near the tourist town of Sisters.
The subdivisions appear to be protected from the 14-square mile fire, which is 30 percent contained, said Scott Brayton, a fire spokesman.
An evacuation order was also lifted for several dozen residents near Weaverville in northern California after a wildfire that destroyed one home calmed down.
In Idaho, a 5-square-mile fire in the mountains fed on bug-killed evergreen stands as it neared a cluster of vacation homes and a mining museum.
More than 70,600 timber and range fires have burned on federal land so far this year, higher than the 10-year average of 50,984, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Because of unusually large early-season range fires in Texas and Oklahoma, the acreage burned so far in 2006 is 5.5 million, compared with a 10-year average of 3 million acres for the same period.
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Winnipeg sets new records for hot, dry weather
Last Updated: Tuesday, August 1, 2006 | 10:11 AM CT
CBC News
The month of July was hot and dry enough to set new weather records in Winnipeg, according to officials at Environment Canada.
Winnipeg received 11 millimetres of rain in July, breaking the previous record low of 13.5 millimetres, set in 1875, meteorologist Eric Dykes told CBC News Tuesday morning.
Normal precipitation for the month of July is 70.6 millimetres.
Dykes said the period of June-July was also the driest on record, with a total of 40 millimetres of rain. That broke the previous record, set in 1886, by more than seven millimetres.
Hottest days on record
July wasn't just dry: it was hot. Sixteen of the month's 31 days recorded temperatures above 30 C. Normally, there would be four days that hot.
"The daytime high - the average temperature in Winnipeg in the afternoons of July - was 29.8 C, and that is a new record," said Dave Phillips, a senior climatologist at Environment Canada.
"Never has it been so warm in the afternoons over the month of July than this past month. You have to go back to 1974 to see 28.9 C, almost a full degree cooler than what you've had."
Phillips notes Winnipeggers have experienced a series of record-breaking summers in the past few years.
"Two years ago, the big buzz, of course, was about how cool it was. There was no summer," he said. "And then last year, you just couldn't dry out! Now it's the dry and the heat. You just can't get any normal kind of weather there."
August is also expected to start off dry. Despite some cloud cover expected Tuesday, there is only a 30 per cent chance of hit-and-miss showers across southern Manitoba. Temperatures, however, are expected a bit lower, in the mid-20s.
The precipitation situation looks more promising later in the week, as a warm front is expected to bring showers to the region on Saturday.
Fall harvest already underway
The heat and aridity of the past two months have forced crops to mature much earlier than usual, so the fall harvest is already well underway in much of the province.
Swathing of barley is complete in some areas, and farmers are also cutting some oats and spring wheat, with some combining even underway, according to the latest provincial crop report.
Yields are expected to come in below normal, with many crops displaying signs of heat and drought stress.
Livestock farmers have noticed the water levels in their dugouts dropping fast, but there is still enough for cattle to drink in most areas.
With dry pastures and disappointing hay cuts, some farmers are cutting cereal crops and baling them for the winter feeding period.
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Wet
Forecaster WSI sees fewer Atlantic hurricanes
Reuters
Mon Jul 31, 2006
NEW YORK - The 2006 Atlantic hurricane season will not be as active as initially projected, due in part to a cooling of ocean temperatures this summer, private forecaster WSI Corp. said in its updated tropical weather outlook on Monday.
Some 14 named storms will form this year, with four of them becoming major hurricanes with winds over 111 miles per hour, WSI said.
That is down from WSI's forecast this spring of 15 named storms with five becoming intense hurricanes.
"The reasons for the reduction in numbers are a recent cooling of tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures to levels closer to normal and increased chances of El Nino development, which would cause a more disruptive wind shear environment and may result in the last half of the season being less active than originally anticipated," the forecast said.
The forecast would amount to only half of last year's record 28 named storms, but it would bring the 2006 season well-above the historical average of just below 10 named storms, WSI said.
Last year's hurricane season caused billions of dollars in damage and shut down a quarter of U.S. fuel production, causing energy prices to spike to record highs.
"While we still expect a relatively active year, it appears that conditions are in no way similar to last year's record season. In fact, tropical ocean temperatures have cooled quite a bit during the last couple of months and are now only slightly warmer than normal," WSI seasonal forecaster Todd Crawford said.
"Further, it appears that we may be in the very early stages of the next El Nino event, which increases the odds of a weak finish to the year. We now expect a year more similar to 2000 or 2003, both of which had 14 named storms," Crawford added.
Hurricane seasons have historically brought an average of 9.6 named storms, 5.9 hurricanes, and 2.3 major hurricanes of Category Three or stronger.
Category Three storms pack winds of at least 111 miles per hour, with storm surges of about nine to 12 feet above normal, according to the five step Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale rating system.
Last year's Hurricane Wilma was the strongest Atlantic tropical cyclone on record, a Category Five hurricane with winds well in excess of 155 mph at peak intensity.
Only two named storms have formed so far this year, neither of which has developed into a hurricane.
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Terminator criticises Bush over tackling climate change
by Phil Hazlewood
AFP
Tue Aug 1, 2006
LONG BEACH, United States - California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger criticised ineffectual US government policy on climate change, as he and British Prime Minister Tony Blair vowed to tackle the problem together.
"California will not wait for our federal government to take strong action on global warming," the Republican said after an hour-long talks on the subject with Blair and prominent industry figures in Long Beach, California.
The former movie star's language was stronger than that of Blair's official spokesman earlier Monday, who was keen to downplay suggestions that Britain's partnership with the US west coast state could offend Washington.
Schwarzenegger told a news conference: "We won't wait for the federal government. We will move forward because we know it's the right thing to do. We will lead on this issue and we will get other western (US) states involved."
He added: "I think there's not great leadership from the federal government when it comes to protecting the environment."
Blair -- who is regularly criticised for being too close to US President George W. Bush -- sidestepped questions about whether he shared those views.
He acknowledged that Britain and the United States had differences over the UN Kyoto Protocol to tackle climate change but said Washington was part of the G8 plus five dialogue to secure a new agreement to replace Kyoto in 2012.
Schwarzenegger restated his belief that "the debate is over" about whether global warming exists while Blair said he was encouraged that all the G8 leaders, including Bush, accepted it "without exception" at the Saint Petersburg summit earlier this month.
What the governor described as "unprecedented", the agreement commits Britain and California commits to "urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote low carbon technologies".
As well as sharing best practice, expertise and private sector involvement, Blair said he hoped it could include a possible emissions trading scheme similar to that in the
European Union to push energy suppliers into using "greener", renewable sources.
Blair was whisked to the talks at British oil giant BP's facility from Los Angeles airport in a 12-vehicle-strong convoy, as dozens of police motorcyclists carved a path through the notoriously gridlocked freeway traffic. The talks were hosted by London-based not-for-profit organisation the Climate Group, whose chief executive Steve Howard told reporters: "If you could have bottled the energy in that room you could have solved the problem overnight."
Delegates included BP chief executive John Browne, with delegates including Virgin Atlantic boss Richard Branson, DuPont's Charles Holliday and Google founder Sergey Brin.
Both Britain and California have set out ambitious plans to cut the carbon dioxide emissions widely thought to lead to global warming.
Britain aims to reduce C02 emissions by 60 percent from 1990 levels by 2050 while Schwarzenegger has called for a reduction in emissions to 2000 levels by 2010 and 1990 levels by 2020.
Britain is keen that the estimated 17 trillion dollars of investment in new energy producing facilities between now and 2030 leads to cleaner energy choices.
Blair met Schwarzenegger Sunday at a meeting for senior executives of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. empire and talked of the need to work closely with energy-hungry emerging economies like China and India.
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Monsoon rains kill 12, paralyse Pakistan's Karachi
AFP
Tue Aug 1, 2006
KARACHI - At least 12 people died and dozens were injured after monsoon rain flooded streets and brought down electricity cables in Pakistan's largest city Karachi.
There were also fears of disease outbreaks in the city of at least 12 million people as drinking water pipes have been contaminated by drain water, health official Naushad Sheikh told AFP Tuesday.
"According to reports we have received, at least 12 people have died in Karachi during the last 48 hours in different rain-related accidents," Sheikh said.
Three people were electrocuted by power lines that fell during the downpour and four others drowned in storm drains and floods, the private Edhi Welfare Trust said.
Karachi, Pakistan's teeming commercial hub and a major port on the Arabian Sea coast, was brought to a standstill on Monday due to flooded roads.
Pumps were installed in several area to clear the flooding but frequent power cuts caused by the rain's effect on the creaking electricity network hampered the effort.
On Tuesday most of the roads were opened for traffic, but the meteorological department has forecast another spell of widespread rain and isolated heavy showers in Sindh province during the next 24 hours.
The rain also washed away part of a railway bridge Sunday which cut the main line between Karachi and northern Pakistan. Buses were linking Karachi to Hyderabad, 160 kilometres (100 miles) to the northeast.
Torrential rain in Pakistan has killed at least 30 people in the past two weeks and caused widespread damage to crops, roads and triggered landslides.
Areas devastated by last October's South Asian earthquake are among those hit.
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Bush told storms link to global warming inconclusive
Reuters
Mon Jul 31, 2006
MIAMI - Officials tracking the approach of the peak hurricane season told President Bush on Monday that data linking a series of devastating storms to global warming was inconclusive.
Eleven months after Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc on the Gulf Coast, causing catastrophic flooding in New Orleans, Bush visited the National Hurricane Center in Florida, a state often battered by hurricanes.
Max Mayfield, the center's director, said he is often asked whether the powerful hurricanes of recent years resulted from global warming. And Christopher Landsea, a scientist at the center told Bush there was "not a consensus" linking the two.
Hurricane and climate scientists outside the government have also wrestled with that debate, while many environmental groups are upset with Bush for his rejection of the Kyoto agreement to cut greenhouse gases.
Many climate scientists believe carbon dioxide and other gases trap heat like the glass walls of a greenhouse and cause global warming. Skeptics doubt that humans affect global climate change and say temperature fluctuations have occurred throughout history.
Casting doubt on the view presented to Bush by hurricane center officials, Bill Chameides, chief scientist for the ecology group Environmental Defense, said the president had received an "incomplete" assessment.
"In fact, a number of papers have appeared in the literature over the past year showing a rapid rise in hurricane intensity over the past approximately 30 years and have correlated it with increasing sea surface temperatures and thus global warming," he said in a statement.
Bush came under scathing criticism for the botched federal response to Hurricane Katrina, which hit on August 29 and killed 1,300 and displaced hundreds of thousands.
The White House is eager to show that the president has learned lessons from that disaster and that the federal government has been thorough in preparing for the possibility of harsh storms this year.
June marked the official start of the hurricane season, but the peak period for the storms is between mid-August and mid-October.
Democrats view criticism of Bush's handling of Katrina as a potent issue in November elections in which they hope to wrest control from Republicans of one or both houses of Congress.
The Florida Democratic Party issued a statement calling Bush's visit "PR tour" and accused him of ignoring warnings before Katrina hit.
It said the National Guard in Florida, where Bush's brother Jeb is governor, is "stretched dangerously thin" while homeowners were facing surging insurance rates.
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Tropical Storm Chris forms in Caribbean
Aug 1, 2006, 15:17 GMT
MIAMI, FL, United States (UPI) -- Two systems merged to form Tropical Storm Chris over the northeastern Caribbean Sea early Tuesday, prompting tropical storm warnings for various islands.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said at 5 a.m., Chris had sustained winds of 40 mph with higher gusts about 175 miles east of Antigua. The system was moving west-northwest about 9 mph, and strengthening was expected. Winds extended 35 miles outward from the center, forecasters said.
Numerous islands, including Antigua, Barbuda, Anguilla, St. Kitts and Nevis posted tropical storm warnings, which indicate storm conditions, including heavy seas and rain are expected by Wednesday.
A tropical storm watch was called for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, meaning stormy conditions are possible within 36 hours.
Forecasters have predicted 17 named tropical storms will form in this year's Atlantic hurricane season, which began June 1 and runs through Nov. 30.
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Down the Tubes
Ukraine leader mulling parliament dissolution
Reuters
Tue Aug 1, 2006
Summary: Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko is planning to hold talks on Tuesday on procedures for dissolving parliament, but dissolution would only be a last resort, his press service said.
A dissolution would mean that talks with parliament on forming a coalition government had collapsed. Parliament has been pressing Yushchenko to nominate his rival Viktor Yanukovich as prime minister, something he is reluctant to do.
KIEV - Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko is planning to hold talks on Tuesday on procedures for dissolving parliament, but dissolution would only be a last resort, his press service said.
"The Ukrainian President plans today to hold consultations with the Speaker, his deputy and heads of parliamentary factions according to Article 90 of the Constitution of Ukraine about dissolving parliament," his press service said in a statement.
"The head of state stresses the importance of searching for a compromise and understanding and sees his right to dissolve parliament as his final argument," the statement said.
If Yushchenko does order the dissolution of parliament, it could spark an unpredictable standoff with the opposition majority in the chamber. They have said any dissolution would be illegal and that they would ignore it.
A dissolution would mean that talks with parliament on forming a coalition government had collapsed. Parliament has been pressing Yushchenko to nominate his rival Viktor Yanukovich as prime minister, something he is reluctant to do.
Yushchenko was planning to meet Yanukovich later on Tuesday, the statement said.
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France's atomic tests officially linked to cancer
AFP
July 31, 2006
PAPEETE, French Polynesia - Researchers have established a link between France's nuclear tests over the Pacific ocean in the late 1960s and the high incidence of thyroid cancer in Polynesia.
The findings by the National Health and Research Institute (INSERM) in Paris were made public late last week by the French territory's president Oscar Temaru.
Temaru read a letter before Polynesia's regional assembly from INSERM director Florent de Vathaire, who said that a study of 239 cases of thyroid cancer revealed a "statistically significant" link with France's atmospheric nuclear tests.
"The relationship is clear ... whatever the age at the moment of irradiation," Vathaire wrote.
Even taking into account other factors known to increase incidence of thyroid cancer among Polynesians, such as obesity, "the coherence and stability of the results are exceptional", he wrote.
Vathaire said it is now "accepted" that French tests increased the number of people with thyroid cancer in Polynesia.
However he added that the number of extra cases is probably limited, with only around 10 instances between 1984 and 2002 definitely linked to the nuclear tests.
France carried out some 40 atmospheric atomic tests in Polynesia from 1966 to 1974. After that its tests were carried out underground.
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Moscow Court Declares Yukos Oil Company Bankrupt
Created: 01.08.2006 19:30 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 19:30 MSK
MosNews
A Moscow judge declared the Yukos oil company bankrupt on Tuesday, paving the way for the liquidation of what was once Russia's biggest oil producer, Associated Press news agency reports.
Arbitration Court Judge Pavel Markov's decision drops the curtain on a three-year drama that has seen Yukos' billionaire founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky jailed in a Siberian penal colony and the company's biggest production unit sold at a discounted price to the state.
The fraud investigation against Khodorkovsky and the tax probe into Yukos that began in 2003 were cast by the Kremlin as a crusade against a rotten corporate empire. But the case was perceived by others as punishment for Khodorkovsky's perceived political ambitions and a drive by the state to regain mastery of the strategically important oil sector.
The widely expected ruling upholds a vote one week ago by Yukos' creditors, who dismissed the assurances of the company's lawyers that it could continue as a viable entity and pay down its remaining debts.
The creditors are dominated by the Federal Tax Service and the state-controlled oil group OAO Rosneft, which already owns the battered company's biggest production unit, Yuganskneftegaz. The production unit was sold in December 2004 in a disputed auction against Yukos' multibillion-dollar back tax bills.
Rosneft became the nation's No. 3 oil producer overnight after its purchase of Yuganskneftegaz and is being primed as the nation's champion oil company, capable of competing with the likes of Exxon Mobil Corp. and Saudi Arabia's Aramco. It is expected to be a major beneficiary in the future liquidation of Yukos' assets, which include capacity of 600,000 barrels per day at its Samaraneftegaz and Tomskneft subsidiaries.
Yukos' current output averages 450,000 barrels per day - as the company has struggled to pay down its massive tax bills it has been able to invest less into production.
Rosneft currently produces about 1.6 million barrels per day, of which 1 million barrels come from Yuganskneftegaz.
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LEBANESE OIL SLICK
August 1, 2006
UN Warns of Environmental Disaster
While the war rages on, a huge environmental disaster is threatening Lebanon's coast. Up to 35,000 tons of oil have spilled into the Mediterranean following Israeli air strikes -- now it is a race against time to prevent long-term damage and the destruction of a fragile ecosystem.
The Lebanese government is calling it the biggest ecological catastrophe in the country's history. Between July 13 and 15, Israeli jets bombed the Jiyyeh power station, located 30 kilometers south of Beirut, and caused up to 35,000 tons of fuel oil to gush into the sea. The oil slick has now spread along 80 kilometers of Lebanon's 225 kilometer coastline and has already reached Syria. A clean up operation is badly needed, but continuing hostilities between the Israeli army and Hezbollah have made this virtually impossible. Now, the catastrophe is threatening to damage the environment across many parts of the Mediterranean.
The United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) is warning of long-term damage if the oil is not cleaned up as quickly as possible. "Every day that passes will increase the potential damage of this tragic incident," UNEP director Achim Steiner told Reuters.
According to the Lebanese Environment Ministry, the worst may be yet to come. Another tank at the same power plant with around 25,000 tons of fuel is still burning and there is a risk that it could leak or explode. The fire has created a thick cloud of black smoke that has polluted the air over Beirut and its suburbs.
As bad as the Exxon Valdez?
In an interview with the BBC, the ministry's director general, Berj Hatjian, compared the oil slick to that caused by the Exxon Valdez tanker, "with 20,000 to 30,000 tons reaching the shoreline." When the tanker sank off the coast of Alaska in 1989, 40,000 tons of oil were released into the sea. The result was the worst ever maritime environmental disaster. Hundreds of thousands of animals died, and because the oil spill could not be completely cleaned up animals are still being poisoned today.
The environmental impact of the current oil slick is not confined to Lebanon and risks spreading through the Mediterranean. The Regional Marine Pollution Emergency Response Center (Rempec), based in Malta, has already recorded the first traces of oil on the Syrian coast -- confirming reports of contamination made by the port authority at Syria's coastal town of Tartus. Environmental groups in Lebanon are also warning that the pollution could reach the coasts of Turkey and Cyprus.
The Lebanese government has asked Syria and Jordon for help in the clean up operation, which it calculates could cost up to $50 million. Several Mediterranean countries have made equipment and personnel available to try to avert a catastrophe. However, the Lebanese government told the BBC that there are only minimal amounts of "dispersants, booms, absorbents and skimmers" readily available. Furthermore, with Israel continuing its air strikes, any clean-up work would be far too dangerous. But if the spill is not contained, the damage will quickly become irreversible and cause long-term damage to the complex ecosystem along the Mediterranean coast. Among the first victims could be the endangered green turtles whose eggs hatch in July. Now it is feared that the baby turtles will not be able to get past the oil to reach the sea.
According to UNEP chief Steiner, "The Lebanese government has requested international assistance from the UN, and we stand ready to do all we can." He added that he is urgently trying to assemble EU satellite images and other data in order to get a more accurate measure of the spill along Lebanon's coast. "Firstly our thoughts are with the suffering of the civilian population," he said. "But we must be concerned about the short and long-term impacts on the marine environment, including the biodiversity upon which so many people depend for their livelihoods and living."
The ocean is a vital source of income for many Lebanese, through fishing and tourism. Many fish and crabs have already perished and others are covered in oil. The Lebanese beaches that were once so popular with tourists could be polluted for some time to come. Even when the bombing stops, it is unlikely tourists will be rushing back to the country, but if they did, instead of sandy beaches they would find long stretches of oily ground, strewn with dead and dying marine life.
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Let Freedom Ring
Police spies chosen to lead war protest
Demian Bulwa, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, July 28, 2006
Two Oakland police officers working undercover at an anti-war protest in May 2003 got themselves elected to leadership positions in an effort to influence the demonstration, documents released Thursday show.
The department assigned the officers to join activists protesting the U.S. war in Iraq and the tactics that police had used at a demonstration a month earlier, a police official said last year in a sworn deposition.
At the first demonstration, police fired nonlethal bullets and bean bags at demonstrators who blocked the Port of Oakland's entrance in a protest against two shipping companies they said were helping the war effort. Dozens of activists and longshoremen on their way to work suffered injuries ranging from welts to broken bones and have won nearly $2 million in legal settlements from the city.
The extent of the officers' involvement in the subsequent march May 12, 2003, led by Direct Action to Stop the War and others, is unclear. But in a deposition related to a lawsuit filed by protesters, Deputy Police Chief Howard Jordan said activists had elected the undercover officers to "plan the route of the march and decide I guess where it would end up and some of the places that it would go."
It was revealed later that the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center, which was established by the state attorney general's office to help local police agencies fight terrorism, had posted an alert about the April protest. Oakland police had also monitored online postings by the longshoremen's union regarding its opposition to the war.
The documents showing that police subsequently tried to influence a demonstration were released Thursday by the American Civil Liberties Union, as part of a report criticizing government surveillance of political activists since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The ACLU said the documents came from the lawsuit over the police use of force.
Jordan, in his deposition in April 2005, said under questioning by plaintiffs' attorney Jim Chanin that undercover Officers Nobuko Biechler and Mark Turpin had been elected to be leaders in the May 12 demonstration an hour after meeting protesters that day.
Asked who had ordered the officers to infiltrate the group, Jordan said, "I don't know if there is one particular person, but I think together we probably all decided it would be a good idea to have some undercover officers there."
Several months after the rally, Jordan told a city police review board examining the April 2003 port clash that "our ability to gather intelligence on these groups and this type of operation needs to be improved," according to a transcript provided by the ACLU.
"I don't mean same-day intelligence," Jordan told the civilian review panel. "I'm talking about long-term intelligence gathering."
He noted that "two of our officers were elected leaders within an hour on May 12." The idea was "to gather the information and maybe even direct them to do something that we want them to do," Jordan said.
"I call that being totalitarian," said Jack Heyman, a longshoremen's union member who took part in the May 12 march. He said he was not certain whether he had any contact with the officers that day.
Jordan declined to comment when reached at his office Thursday. In his deposition, he said the Police Department no longer allows such undercover work.
City Attorney John Russo said he was not familiar with the police infiltration of the protest, but said the city had made "significant changes" in its approach toward demonstrations after the port incident. Police enacted a new crowd-control policy limiting the use of nonlethal force in 2004.
The ACLU said the Oakland case was one of several instances in which police agencies had spied on legitimate political activity since 2001.
Mark Schlosberg, who directs the ACLU's police policy work and wrote the report released Thursday, cited previously reported instances of spying on groups in Santa Cruz and Fresno in addition to the Oakland case. He called on state Attorney General Bill Lockyer and local police to ensure that law-abiding activist groups don't come under government investigation.
"It's very important that there be regulation up front to prevent these kinds of abuses from occurring," Schlosberg said at a news conference.
Schlosberg said the state needs an independent inspector looking into complaints and keeping an eye on intelligence gathering at such agencies as the California National Guard and the state Department of Homeland Security.
Tom Dresslar, a spokesman for Lockyer, said the attorney general had not yet read the ACLU report. But he said his boss "won't abide violations of civil liberties. There's no room in this state or anywhere in this country for monitoring the activity of groups merely because they have a political viewpoint."
Following the Oakland port protest and disclosures about the monitoring of activists, Lockyer issued guidelines in 2003 stating that police must suspect that a crime has been committed before collecting intelligence on activist groups.
But Schlosberg said the ACLU had surveyed 94 law enforcement agencies last year and found that just eight were aware of the guidelines. Only six had written policies restricting surveillance activities, he said.
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US poised to ban social networking sites
Tuesday, August 01 2006
by Ciara O'Brien
The US is set to ban social networking sites like MySpace from schools and libraries in a bid to combat sexual predators.
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Under the Deleting Online Predators Act, any federal institution that receives funding under the E-Rate scheme for computers and internet access will have to put filters in place to prevent access to social networking sites. Access to these sites will only be permitted under adult supervision.
The move is part of the US authorities' attempts to limit paedophiles' access to sites like MySpace. The act has already received widespread support, and was passed by 410 votes to 15 in the US House of Representatives at the end of July.
"The social networking sites have become, in a sense, a happy hunting ground for child predators," US House Representative Michael Fitzpatrick is reported to have said.
However, opponents of the act claim it will cut off a large number of other sites from students. Already a "Save your Space" campaign has begun by some MySpace users to gather support for a petition against the plans. The campaign is aiming to collect some 1 million signatures within a month.
The move by the US government is not a surprise, with parents there becoming increasingly concerned about the rise of social networking sites. In March in the US there was widespread parental outcry when two men were arrested in Connecticut, accused of illegal sexual contact with underage girls they had met through MySpace.
The US is not alone in trying to restrict access to the sites from public networks. In the UK for example, a number of private schools have banned pupils from accessing Bebo and other social networking sites.
Similarly in Ireland, several schools have already made moves to ban these sites from their networks, and from September, the ban will be widespread.
New guidelines from the National Centre for Technology in Education (NCTE) published earlier in the summer proposed tough punishments for students who misuse the school networks, including expulsion. The NCTE wants internet access to be used only for educational purposes, and will impose tough new restrictions including banning students from using their personal details online and from arranging any meetings with people they know online.
The ban in Ireland comes amid fears that the sites are being used by paedophiles to prey on unsuspecting children. Other concerns also include the use of the sites to bully other students.
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Bush signs law extending sanctions against Myanmar
Reuters
Tue Aug 1, 2006
WASHINGTON - U.S. sanctions on Myanmar were extended for up to three years under a law signed by President Bush on Tuesday, an attempt to increase pressure on the government to follow through with democratic reforms.
The law bars the import of goods from the country which the United States calls by its traditional name, Burma. The Bush administration has been critical of its poor human rights record, particularly the house of arrest of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
"The country slides deeper into self-imposed isolation and misrule, the democratic opposition and ethnic minority groups continue to be shut out of the political process, and Aung San Suu Kyi remains under house arrest," White House spokesman Tony Snow said in a statement.
The U.S. House of Representatives and Senate last month approved the three-year extension of the 2003 Burmese Freedom Freedom and Democracy Act.
Myanmar's army has refused to turn over power to a government that was elected in 1990. The government offered in 2003 a "road map to democracy" but Western nations have dismissed it as a sham.
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HSBC delivers warning as bad debt provisions soar to $4bn
By Gary Parkinson, City Editor
The Independent
01 August 2006
HSBC unveiled record profits before tax of $12.5bn (£6.7bn) for the first six months of the year, despite a surge in bad debts among Britons.
Steeper mortgage payments and energy bills have left more borrowers unable to meet repayments on credit cards and other unsecured personal loans.
HSBC, which controls about 10 per cent of that market, tightened its lending criteria towards the end of last year and made fewer loans but was still forced to write-off £361m over the six months to the end of June, against £265m this time last year.
The bank - the world's third biggest behind Citigroup and Bank of America - attributed the increase to an upsurge in bankruptcies and individual voluntary arrangements (IVAs), which it suggested was being encouraged by companies that specialise in making these arrangements for those struggling to pay off large debts.
Michael Geoghegan, who took over as the chief executive in March, said: "We are concerned that independent advisers, who are not regulated, are telling kids to just not bother paying their debts. They are saying, 'Give us a couple of grand and we'll make it go away'."
HSBC said that while the latest UK default figures represented a sharp increase on the first half of 2005, they were steady against those in the second half of last year.
Across the entire group, whose operations straddle 77 countries, bad debts were 19 per cent higher at $3.9bn. However, they were down 14 per cent on the last six months of 2005.
Stephen Green, the bank's chairman, gave an optimistic appraisal of the global economy and his bank's prospects, characterising the global operating environment as "broadly favourable".
Overall, HSBC's interim profits before tax were 18 per cent higher this year than last, driven by a marked improvement at its corporate and investment banking business (CIBM) and booming emerging markets.
HSBC ushered in a banking season that is widely expected to see Britain's biggest banks - Royal Bank of Scotland, HBOS, Barclays and Lloyds TSB - yet again deliver record profits that are sure to cheer investors and anger consumer groups in equal measure.
Vincent Cable, the Liberal Democrat's Treasury spokesman, said: "With soaring profits seemingly unrelated to the standard of customer service, whether it be overdraft charges or cheque clearing times, there will be increasing pressure for a windfall tax on banks."
HSBC's profits in China, Brazil and India were all up by a fifth or more, while muscular global equity markets bolstered its investment bank. At $3.1bn, profits at CIBM were the highest since it began to recruit aggressively three years ago. They were 37 per cent higher than for the same period last year.
Revenues from structured derivatives products jumped 85 per cent, while HSBC also landed high-profile advisory mandates on four of the five biggest deals in Europe during this time.
The self-styled "world's local bank" advised Mittal Steel on its bid for French rival Arcelor and is the sole adviser to E.ON, the German utility giant, on its move for Spain's Endessa.
But more cautious industry observers said HSBC's investment bank would need to deliver a strong performance amid more challenging conditions before the City finally gave it the benefit of the doubt.
Others suggested that Stuart Gulliver, the sole head of the division since John Studzinski announced his departure earlier this year, signalled a change in emphasis yesterday.
HSBC shares edged 3p lower to 971p, valuing the bank at £111.5bn. At 15 cents, the interim dividend was 7 per cent better.
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Waitress gets own ID when carding patron
AP
August 1, 2006
WESTLAKE, Ohio - A bar waitress checking to see if a woman was legally old enough to drink was handed her own stolen driver's license, which was reported missing weeks earlier, police said.
"The odds of this waitress recovering her own license defy calculation," police Capt. Guy Turner said Monday.
Maria Bergan, 23, of Lakewood, was charged Sunday night with identity theft and receiving stolen property. She was arrested at her home in suburban Cleveland and was jailed in Westlake to await a court appearance.
The 22-year-old waitress, whose name was not released, called police last week and said she had been handed her own stolen driver's license by a woman trying to prove she was 21. The woman, who became suspicious of the delay as the waitress went to call police, fled the Moosehead Saloon, but her companion provided her name.
The waitress said she had lost her wallet July 9 at a bar in Lakewood.
The victim also had a credit card stolen. The stolen card has been used to make $1,000 in purchases, Turner said.
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Under the Reich
Chertoff Loses Clout With Senate
by Martin Sieff
UPI Senior News Analyst
July 31, 2006
Washington - Congress has run out of patience with the Department of Homeland Security on disaster response. Two separate, far reaching votes in Congress last week served notice on the chaotically run Department of Homeland Security and its embattled chief Michael Chertoff that Capitol Hill is determined to impose radical reform.
President George W. Bush, notorious for keeping his loyal favorites in crucial Cabinet positions even after they have presided over chaotic mismanagement or disastrously unsuccessful policies, appears to have retained his confidence so far in Chertoff. Unlike Porter Goss, a wash-out as director of the CIA, Chertoff has not made the mistake of feuding with more influential or powerful figures in the administration like Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte or Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
But although Bush continues to trust him, Congress no longer does, even though it is still run by the president's Republican Party. Last week, Congress voted to strip Chertoff of direct oversight of the troubled Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Not only did FEMA perform disastrously in failing to respond adequately to the flooding of New Orleans and the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, it also allowed scores of billions of dollars worth of bloated reconstruction contracts to be approved without adequate scrutiny and it paid out more than $1 billion in fraudulent insurance claims.
Last week the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee of the U.S. Senate served notice that it had had enough. It approved legislation to shake up FEMA from top to bottom and give it exclusive status within the DHS.
If the legislation goes through Congress substantially unchanged, it will be an enormous loss of power and public humiliation for Chertoff.
The new legislation, listed as S. 3595, responds to the "serious failures in leadership and urgent need for broad reform" of FEMA, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Thursday.
Collins said the sweeping legislation, which was approved on a voice vote, was a direct response to the weaknesses found in FEMA as a result of the Katrina disaster, CongressDaily said.
Collins described the new legislation as "a careful and comprehensive program for improvement of our emergency management system. It is a concrete, nuts and bolts plan designed to rebuild and strengthen a broken system."
A key provision in the proposed legislation would restore the FEMA director's access to the president and the White House that he enjoyed until the agency was incorporated into the gigantic new DHS bureaucracy set up after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The bill gives FEMA's boss a "direct advisory role" with the president on emergency management issues. However, the new system may prove to be almost as cumbersome as the old one as FEMA's head will still routinely have to report through Chertoff.
The legislation also restores FEMA's distinct identity within the DHS and gives it a status comparable with that enjoyed by the U.S. Coast Guard, one of the most poorly funded, but also most lean and efficient, parts of the U.S. government or armed services.
Sensitive to the ridicule heaped on former FEMA head Michael Brown after New Orleans and Katrina, the new bill would legislate that future heads of the agency, unlike Brown, must have had serious experience in disaster response. It will require a minimum of five years of executive leadership and strong experience in crisis management. Brown had none. He had previously worked for the International Arabian Horse Association.
Senators on the Homeland Security committee gave Chertoff another slap last week that was less noted but in some respects more surprising. They rejected his department's request to shift $42 million from within already approved funds to tide the Federal Protective Service over an embarrassing budget bottleneck.
The FPS does important work. It provides security for federal buildings through contract guards. But it is paid by other agencies for providing these services. And according to a report Friday carried by GovExec.com, these agencies haven't been paying up and the financial squeeze at Federal Protection has escalated.
Chertoff and DHS acted to request emergency funding for the FPS but only at the last minute, and Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., chairman of the Senate Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee, was not amused. In a July 20 letter to Chertoff, the senator said he was "deeply dismayed at the lack of responsibility shown by the department (of Homeland Security) in delaying until the last possible day the submission of this request to the subcommittee." Gregg expressed to Chertoff his suspicion that the DHS was trying push the extra funding through the Senate at the last moment in order to prevent senators having time to "weigh alternatives or engage in a wider discussion of possible solutions."
"The requested shift would have drawn money from areas including explosives detection and detention of illegal immigrants," GovExec.com reported.
However, the conclusion of Gregg's letter to Chertoff may indicate a growing willingness to allow FPS to explore the option of increasing the fees it charges to other government departments, GovExec.com noted.
Gregg made clear he was not going to let the Federal Protection Service hang out in the wind. He urged Chertoff to negotiate new payment schedule agreements with the U.S. Office of Management and Budget and the General Services Administration.
By itself, the row, and Gregg's letter, would amount only to a storm in a tea cup. But it comes just as the Senate, including key leading Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee, is moving to radically reform FEMA and give it far more autonomy within the DHS. That means Chertoff's poor management record is going to come under increasing scrutiny. And most of that scrutiny is unlikely to be friendly.
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Feds appeal loss in NSA wiretap case
By Declan McCullagh
CNET News.com
July 31, 2006
The Bush administration has asked a federal appeals court to halt a lawsuit that accuses AT&T of illegally opening its communication networks to surveillance by the National Security Agency.
Permitting the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit to proceed would endanger national security and possibly expose classified information, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a legal brief filed on Monday.
The administration also nominated Laurence Silberman, a federal appeals court judge in Washington, D.C., to serve as an expert in this case. A former deputy attorney general, Silberman was appointed by President Reagan and serves on the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review.
The brief is a response to a July 20 ruling by U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco, who surprised lawsuit watchers by saying there are "sufficient" grounds to let the lawsuit continue.
"Because of the public disclosures by the government and AT&T, the court cannot conclude that merely maintaining this action creates a 'reasonable danger' of harming national security," Walker wrote.
In a 24-page brief filed on Monday, the Justice Department asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to review the case because of the "serious risk" of disclosing sensitive information. "The district court has, in a highly unusual action, overruled the government's assertion of the state secrets privilege, and has thereby placed at risk particularly sensitive national security interests," the brief states.
In its class action lawsuit filed in January, the EFF alleged that AT&T violated federal wiretapping laws by cooperating with the NSA. AT&T has declined to comment, although its attorneys have hinted that legal authorization exists. (In general, federal wiretapping law prohibits electronic surveillance "except as authorized by statute" or by the attorney general.) The EFF is a nonprofit that advocates for privacy and free speech on the Internet.
After EFF's lawsuit was filed, reports of a secret room in an AT&T building in San Francisco surfaced and have become central to the nonprofit group's litigation.
A former AT&T employee, Mark Klein, has released documents alleging the company spliced its fiber optic cables and ran a duplicate set of cables to Room 641A at its 611 Folsom St. building. Redacted documents seen by CNET News.com show that AT&T has tried to offer benign reasons for the existence of such a room.
"State secrets" claim
The Bush administration has tried to derail the EFF's lawsuit by invoking the "state secrets" privilege and has submitted statements from Keith Alexander, the NSA's director, and John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence. The state secrets privilege generally permits the executive branch to dismiss lawsuits that could endanger the nation if allowed to proceed.
Those arguments worked before a federal judge in Chicago. On July 25, U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kennelly granted the Justice Department's request to throw out another suit related to the NSA program brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.
But Walker, the judge in San Francisco, saw things differently in the EFF suit and ruled that "even the state secrets privilege has its limits." Although the state secrets privilege might require that the case be halted at some point, he said, it should not be tossed out of courts before it could even properly begin.
In his opinion, Walker also said he was contemplating appointing an expert with security clearance to assist him in "determining whether disclosing particular evidence" would endanger national security.
The Justice Department opposes the idea but said that if an expert was necessary, Silberman is its choice.
For its part, the EFF nominated as an expert: Louis Fisher, who works at the Library of Congress; Michael Jacobs, a former NSA employee who is now a vice president at consulting firm SRA International; and Washington attorney Kenneth Bass, a court-appointed expert in a case dealing with classified documents.
The EFF's brief, which argued against the government's request to halt proceedings while the appeal continues, said the selection of a court-appointed expert was appropriate.
Proposals to rewrite federal surveillance laws could, however, imperil the case if they are eventually adopted. Last week, a U.S. Senate committee heard testimony from the heads of the CIA and NSA who urged the adoption of a bill to expand the 1978 wiretapping law called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It would expand the president's ability to conduct broad telephone and Internet surveillance with limited judicial oversight.
Also on Monday, Walker approved a request from CNET Networks (publisher of News.com) and the California First Amendment Coalition to file a friend-of-the-court brief. In May, CNET and other groups had opposed a request by AT&T to hold part of a hearing behind closed doors. Walker rejected the request.
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Key Republican breaks with Bush on Mideast
CNN
Monday, July 31, 2006
WASHINGTON -- Urging President Bush to turn all U.S. efforts toward "ending this madness," a leading Republican senator Monday broke with the Bush administration and called for an immediate cease-fire in the Mideast.
"The sickening slaughter on both sides must end and it must end now," Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel said. "President Bush must call for an immediate cease-fire. This madness must stop."
The Bush administration has refused to call for Israel to halt its attacks on southern Lebanon, joining Israel in insisting that Hezbollah fighters must be pushed back from the Israeli-Lebanese border.
President Bush Monday in a speech in Miami Beach, Florida, reiterated his call for a cease-fire in the Mideast only if it brought a "long-lasting peace" that addressed Iran and Syria's support for Hezbollah, the Islamic militia that Israel is targeting.
Hagel said that refusal threatens to isolate the United States and Israel and harm chances of achieving a long-term peace in the region.
"How do we realistically believe that a continuation of the systematic destruction of an American friend -- the country and people of Lebanon -- is going to enhance America's image and give us the trust and credibility to lead a lasting and sustained peace effort in the Middle East?" asked Hagel, the No. 2 Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Calls for 'a statesman'
He called on Bush to name "a statesman of global stature" as his personal envoy to the region. And he urged the administration to open direct talks with Hezbollah's backers, Iran and Syria, both of which Washington also accuses of meddling in Iraq.
"Our relationship with Israel is special and historic," he said. "But it need not and cannot be at the expense of our Arab and Muslim relationships. That is an irresponsible and dangerous false choice."
Bush was headed back to Washington after a fund-raising trip to Florida, and the White House had no immediate reaction to Hagel's comments.
Like his frequent ally, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Hagel is a possible GOP presidential candidate in 2008 and has been critical of the administration's handling of Iraq. But few members of Congress have broken ranks with the president over his handling of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict.
Calls for an end to the 20-day conflict have increased since Israel's bombing Sunday of the Lebanese town of Qana, which left at least 54 civilians dead. Hagel said the Israeli campaign was "tearing Lebanon apart," and the resulting civilian casualties and economic damage were weakening the country and bolstering support for Hezbollah, which the U.S. State Department considers a terrorist organization.
Hagel urged the administration to revive the Beirut Declaration of 2002, authored by Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, under which Arab countries would have recognized Israel's right to exist. Hagel said that declaration was "a starting point" toward a regional settlement, but the United States "squandered" it.
'Bogged down' in Iraq?
Meanwhile, the decorated Vietnam veteran said the United States "is bogged down in Iraq," limiting U.S. diplomatic and military options. Last week's announcement that more than 3,000 more American troops were needed to reinforce Baghdad amid rising sectarian violence was "a dramatic setback," he said.
He said the 3-year-old war is wearing badly on the U.S. military, and that Iraq's fledgling democracy needs to take over more of its security responsibilities from American troops.
"This is not about setting a timeline," Hagel said. "This is about understanding the implications of the forces of reality."
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Airline anti-missile system years away
By LESLIE MILLER, Associated Press Writer
Mon Jul 31, 7:46 PM ET
WASHINGTON - It could be 20 years before every U.S. passenger airplane is outfitted with a system to protect it from small portable missiles, according to a government report obtained Monday by The Associated Press.
Under a test program, BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman developed laser-based systems over the past two years that still don't meet the reliability standards set by the
Homeland Security Department, the report said.
"The prototype units are capable of partially meeting the Department of Homeland Security performance requirements," the report said.
The possibility that shoulder-fired missiles could take down commercial airliners in the United States is considered real. They're portable, common and relatively inexpensive.
Though no terrorists are known to have smuggled shoulder-fired missiles into the U.S., the
FBI arrested two men in Albany as they were trying to buy some nearly two years ago.
Terrorists linked with al-Qaida are believed to have fired two SA-7 missiles that narrowly missed an Israeli passenger jet after it took off from Mombasa, Kenya, in November 2002.
According to intelligence estimates, at least 24 terrorist organizations possess rocket launchers, the report said.
They are also known as "man-portable air defense weapons," or Manpads.
Congress agreed to pay for the development of the systems to protect the planes from such weapons, but balked at proposals to spend the billions needed to protect all 6,800 commercial U.S. airliners.
"Ultimately, Congress is going to determine whether it wants to support a wide-scale deployment of Manpads countermeasures to the aviation industry," said William Knocke, Homeland Security spokesman.
Under pressure from Congress in 2004, the Homeland Security Department gave Northrop Grumman Corp. and BAE Systems Plc $45 million each to adapt military missile defense systems so they can be used by airlines. Military systems require too much maintenance - and fire by mistake too often - to be used on a passenger airliner.
Both BAE and Northrop systems use lasers to jam the guidance systems of incoming missiles, which lock onto the heat of an aircraft's engine.
According to the report, tests showed:
_They can be installed on commercial aircraft without impairing safety;
_At least one company can supply 1,000 systems at a cost of $1 million each;
_It will cost $365 per flight to operate and maintain the systems, more than the $300-per-flight goal;
_The systems aren't reliable enough yet for commercial use.
John Meenan, executive vice president for the Air Transport Association, questioned whether the cost of such systems matches the security risk.
"The counter-Manpads proposals we have seen reflect more vendor say so than security prioritization," said Meenan.
Rep. Steve
Israel, D-N.Y., who supports widespread deployment of the systems, said it's always been known that they're expensive. "But it will be much cheaper than the cost of a $5,000 shoulder-fired missile hitting a $130 million 767," Israel said.
In the next phase, the systems will be tested on cargo aircraft in real operational environments for advancements in reliability, performance, cost and ability to be manufactured, the report said.
Results will be reported to Congress in 2008.
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Diebold voting machine hack exposed
By John Leyden
Published Tuesday 1st August 2006 13:20 GMT
Much has been written (in these pages and elsewhere) about the shortcomings of Diebold's electronic voting technology, but researchers at the Open Voting Foundation have come up with what they argue is the most serious flaw in electronic voting technology yet documented.
Open Voting found that by toggling a single switch it's possible to get Diebold's AccuVote TS touchscreen voting machine to boot from an unverified external flash drive instead of the device's built-in firmware, which is stored on an EPROM chip.
In fairness, exploiting this shortcoming would require physically opening up the machine and a certain amount of hardware and programming skills, but that's hardly an insurmountable barrier to a sufficiently motivated hacker.
Open Voting Foundation reckons the problem is compounded by a failure to create a voter-audited paper trail during elections tallied by the machine.
"Diebold has made the testing and certification process practically irrelevant," said Open Voting Foundation president, Alan Dechert. "If you have access to these machines and you want to rig an election, anything is possible with the Diebold TS - and it could be done without leaving a trace. All you need is a screwdriver."
Newer TSx series voting machines can only contain one boot profile at a time, but it's far easier to circumvent controls and overwrite files stored in older TS machines, according to Open Voting.
"These findings underscore the need for open testing and certification. There is no way such a security vulnerability should be allowed. These systems should be recalled," he added. ®
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Bring 'em on!
Meteor shower reported in Gujarat
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
AHMEDABAD: Parts of Gujarat's Kutch region experienced what appeared to be a meteor shower, a private channel reported.
People in Vandhia village in Kutch reported that they saw fiery objects raining down from the sky on Monday, NDTV said.
There have been no reports of damage or injuries to people, the channel said.
Police officials say they have recovered some particles that are being sent to the Space Application Center in Ahmedabad for testing, the channel said
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Illegal, violent teen fight clubs face police crackdown
By Michael McCarthy
USA TODAY
8/1/2006
RLINGTON, Texas - The video shows two bare-knuckle brawlers brutally punching each other until one slumps, beaten, to the ground. The fight doesn't end there: The victor straddles the chest of his fallen opponent, firing rights and lefts into his face.
This is not a scene from the Brad Pitt movie Fight Club. Instead, it involves real teenagers in an underground video called Agg Townz Fights 2. Their ring: the grassy schoolyard of Seguin High School here. They're engaged in a disturbing extreme sport that has popped up across the nation: teen fight clubs.
This year, authorities in Texas, New Jersey, Washington state and Alaska have discovered more than a half-dozen teen fight rings operating for fun - or profit. These illegal, violent, often bloody bouts pit boys and girls, some as young as 12, in hand-to-hand combat. Some ringleaders capture these staged fights with video or cellphone cameras, set them to rap music, then peddle homemade DVDs on the Internet. Other fight videos are posted on popular teen websites such as MySpace.com and YouTube.com.
Some bouts are more like bare-knuckle boxing matches, with the opponents shaking hands before and after they fight. Others are gang assaults out of ultra-violent films such as A Clockwork Orange, with packs of youths stomping helpless victims who clearly don't want to fight.
"When you watch the video, you're appalled by the savagery, the callousness, the lack of morality," says James Hawthorne, deputy police chief of Arlington's West District, who's leading a crackdown on fight clubs. "This is an indictment of us as a society. It's not a race issue or a class issue. It's a kids issue."
Many fight-club brawlers are suburban high school kids, not gang members or juvenile criminals. Chase Leavitt, son of U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, was arrested for participating in a fight club at a Mormon church gym in Salt Lake City in December 2001, when his father was Utah's governor.
The younger Leavitt, then 18, pleaded guilty to disturbing the peace and trespassing in September 2002 and was sentenced to 40 hours of community service, says Sim Gill, the chief prosecutor of Salt Lake City who handled the case.
According to Gill, Chase Leavitt laced up boxing gloves and punched it out with a 17-year-old opponent at the church, which is in an affluent neighborhood. Organizers handed out fliers advertising the fight. About 100 students from Leavitt's East High School paid admission before cops raided the premises. As the teens fled, they dropped a video camera with footage of several bouts that night.
"This is not something that just happens in poor neighborhoods," Gill says. "This crosses all socioeconomic bounds. It's happening in middle-class and upper-middle-class environments."
Secretary Leavitt and Chase Leavitt declined to comment, referring calls to attorney Loren Weiss. He says Chase Leavitt was "prosecuted for who he was, not what he did."
Fight clubs tap into a dark, nihilistic "part of the American psyche fascinated by the spectacle of blood and violence," says Orin Starn, cultural anthropology professor at Duke University who teaches about sports in American society. "This does seem a phenomenon of the Mortal Kombat, violent video game generation. The fight club offers the chance to bring those fantasies of violence and danger to life - and maybe have your 15 minutes of fame in an underground video."
Chuck Palahniuk, author of the cult 1996 novel Fight Club that was the basis for the 1999 movie, declined an interview request but said, "God bless these kids. I hope they're having a great time. I don't think they'd be doing it if they weren't having a great time."
Fights in public, in daylight
This middle-class community of 360,000 residents between Dallas and Fort Worth is the home of baseball's Texas Rangers and the Six Flags Over Texas amusement park and the site of the Dallas Cowboys' planned football stadium.
Sitting in his office on a hot Texas afternoon, Hawthorne shakes his head as he watches the two-hour Agg Townz 2 (slang for Arlington) video, featuring teens mostly from Arlington and the neighboring town of Mansfield punching, kicking and stomping each other.
Hawthorne points out that many fights on the tape take place in daylight on pleasant, tree-lined streets with brick homes and well-tended lawns. One fight turns into a mini-riot with dozens of teens rampaging through the parking lot of a McDonald's restaurant. Another running brawl spills into a busy city street, where the fighters slam up against rolling cars.
In almost every fight, there are dozens of teens cheering on the pugilists or snapping pictures. Sometimes their schoolbooks are spread out on the lawns. In one scene, an adult holds the hands of a toddler who watches a fight as if it's another street game. In another, teens watch the tape as entertainment at a party like a music video.
During the most gruesome footage, one falling fighter strikes his head on a sidewalk and is knocked unconscious. While the defenseless teen's arms jerk spasmodically and his eyes stare upward, his opponent continues to belt him in the face. As the injured teen is dragged away, his head leaves a bloody smear on the curb.
Police here learned about fight clubs after Kevin Walker, 16, was jumped and kicked in the head outside his grandmother's house March 11, suffering a brain hemorrhage and other injuries. Arlington police arrested the producer of the Agg Townz series, Arlington resident Michael G. Jackson, 18, and five of his friends, ages 14-19.
Hawthorne says the group would pay teens a few bucks to fight, or attack other youths, then film the violence with video or cellphone cameras. Jackson edited the footage, set it to rap and sold two volumes through his own website for $15-$20 each. The footage of the Walker attack (seized by cops as evidence and never released) was part of a third volume Jackson was working on when he was arrested, Hawthorne says.
On Thursday, Jackson and three other adult defendants were indicted for aggravated assault on Walker and engaging in organized criminal activity, both felonies, says Jennifer Tourje, assistant district attorney for Tarrant County. They face possible penalties of two years' probation to 20 years in a state penitentiary if convicted of aggravated assault and five years' probation to 99 years in prison if convicted of engaging in organized criminal activity. Both charges also carry possible fines of $10,000, she adds.
Hawthorne has asked the IRS and the state comptroller's office to investigate whether Jackson paid taxes on his DVD sales. Several parents of injured teens are considering civil lawsuits against Jackson, Hawthorne adds.
In Arlington, fight-club participants can be arrested on several felony and misdemeanor charges, including aggravated assault, fighting in public, engaging in organized crime and criminal mischief. Texas law allows police to arrest active spectators as accomplices to fighting in public. As part of the crackdown that began May 10, cops have made 40 arrests, including Jackson and his friends, and issued about 200 citations involving fighting in public or watching arranged brawls, police spokeswoman Christy Gilfour says.
In an interview with USA TODAY, Jackson confirmed filming fights and selling DVDs of them. However, he denies instigating fights or paying teens to take part in them and says he has shut down his website. Jackson says he simply saw a financial opportunity to exploit fights that were happening anyway.
"I just used my business-savvy mind," says Jackson, who's seen break dancing and flashing a wad of cash in the videos. He says he never participated in the fights, and he won't say how much money he made or how many DVDs he sold.
His Dallas-based attorney, Ray Jackson (no relation), calls the organized crime charge "ludicrous" and predicts his filmmaking client will become another Spike Lee. The lawyer adds that although the Agg Townz series has become a "cult classic," his client has not made money from it. Most DVDs in circulation are bootlegs from which his client did not get a cut of the proceeds, Ray Jackson says.
"This was low-end equipment and high-end talent," the lawyer says. "That's why it sold."
Messaging fuels combatants
Teen fight clubs have staged bouts on school campuses and in backyards, city streets, public parks, parking lots and gas stations.
Mac Bernd, superintendent of the Arlington Independent School District, says ringleaders have orchestrated fights the same way they do parties: through word-of-mouth, phone calls and text messages. Text-messaging enables instigators to inflame a minor dispute between teens at breakfast into a full-scale brawl by lunch. "You have an electronic rumor mill that moves at the speed of light," he says. That's why Bernd, despite the objection of some parents, is outlawing all telecommunications devices for the 2006-07 school year - including cellphones, pagers, beepers, PDAs, digital and video cameras, MP3 and CD players and video games. The ban covers 74 schools with 63,000 students, including a half-dozen high schools with 20,000 students.
"We've concluded schools are for teaching and learning," he says.
Race does not appear to play much of a factor in teen fight clubs' bouts. Rita Sibert, president of the Arlington chapter of the NAACP, says the clubs include "a mix of all children, all races."
Most of those in the Agg Townz video are African-American. However, just a week after Jackson's arrest, Arlington police booked a group of 11 white teens and one Hispanic youth for fighting in public, Hawthorne says. A fight video made in nearby Grand Prairie shows mostly white teens, city police Detective John Brimmer says.
Silence surrounds participants
The fictional fight club led by Pitt's character, Tyler Durden, in the 1999 movie was made up mostly of men in their twenties who made a sadistic and masochistic sport out of fighting one another.
Durden's main rule for his club became the movie's signature line and a slogan in popular culture: You do not talk about Fight Club.
Teen fight clubs in Arlington often and elsewhere follow that advice, and police and school authorities have been frustrated by the wall of silence that has surrounded the clubs. Not one of the hundreds of parents who viewed clips from Agg Townz 2 at several community and church meetings seemed to have a clue that fight clubs existed - or that their kids were involved, Hawthorne says. Among local teens, he says, the clubs have been common knowledge.
"It was a revelation for the parents," notes the NAACP's Sibert.
Bernd and other school administrators say most teens, even the ones absorbing the bloodiest beatings, refuse to roll over on fight-club participants for fear of retaliation by ringleaders or gangs involved.
The teen beaten into bloody unconsciousness in the Arlington video has not come forward and is still unidentified, Hawthorne says. Grand Prairie police have made no arrests in their case because no one has filed a complaint, Brimmer says.
Citing such secrecy, Bernd says he suspects there are more fight clubs operating under the radar.
"It's almost like the kids have created a completely different world we don't have access to and don't understand."
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Irish bog bodies help unlock "secrets" of Iron Age
By Kevin Smith
Reuters
August 1, 2006
DUBLIN - Life in the Iron Age may have been nasty, brutish and short but people still found time to style their hair and polish their fingernails -- and that was just the men.
These are the findings of scientists who have been examining the latest preserved prehistoric bodies to emerge from Ireland's peat bogs -- the first to be found in Europe for 20 years.
One of the bodies, churned up by a peat-cutting machine at Clonycavan near Dublin in 2003, had raised Mohawk-style hair, held in place with gel imported from abroad.
The other, unearthed three months later and 25 miles away in Oldcroghan by workmen digging a ditch, had perfectly manicured fingernails.
"I think the message I'm getting is that although they were living in a different time, a different culture, eating different things, living in a different way, people are people -- they're the same in their thinking," said Rolly Read, head of conservation at the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin.
Read is one of a team of experts from Britain and Ireland who carried out an 18-month examination of the 2,300-year-old corpses and whose findings form the basis of "Kingship & Sacrifice," a major new exhibition at the museum.
MYSTERY OF GRUESOME DEATHS
While the last two centuries have seen hundreds of bog bodies recovered from northern Europe's wetlands -- where they were preserved by the unique chemical composition of the peat -- many were not examined in detail because techniques to further preserve them had not been perfected.
Read said the latest finds had yielded precious insights into Iron Age life.
For example, the hair product used by Clonycavan Man was a gel made of plant oil and pine resin imported from southwestern France or Spain, showing trade between Ireland and southern Europe was taking place almost two-and-a-half millennia ago.
"We've been able to apply techniques that weren't available back in 1984 so it's a chance to actually look at aspects of Iron Age people that haven't been explored before," Read said.
Archeologists have always puzzled over why the bodies ended up in peat bogs and why so many of them show signs of violent death, with much debate about whether they were executed for crimes or ritually slain as human sacrifices.
Both Clonycavan Man and Oldcroghan Man -- who were in their 20s when they died -- met grisly ends, the latter in particular bearing the scars of horrific torture, including having his nipples cut almost through.
Like several other bog bodies, Oldcroghan Man had been beheaded. Other examples, such as Denmark's famous Tollund Man, discovered in 1950, still had the rope used to strangle them around their necks.
Manicured fingernails and evidence of good diet -- not to mention Clonycavan Man's taste for imported cosmetics -- seem to indicate that many of those who ended up in the bogs were from the upper classes.
APPEASING THE FERTILITY GODS
Eamonn Kelly, keeper of Irish antiquities at the National Museum of Ireland, has developed a new theory about the bodies based on his discovery that nearly all of the Irish examples were placed in the borders immediately surrounding royal land or on tribal boundaries.
"These people may have been hostages or deposed kings or candidates for kingship who have been sacrificed to ensure a successful reign for a new king and this was done as part of a kingship ritual and as a fertility offering to the gods," he told Reuters.
"The king was held personally responsible for the success of the crops and so on -- if he couldn't guarantee the fertility of the land he risked being deposed," he added.
Another theory, prompted by the writings of Roman historian Tacitus from around the same era, is that the perpetrators of "shameful crimes" were put into the bog in order to trap their souls in a watery limbo where the body did not rot.
The Kingship & Sacrifice exhibition includes Iron Age artifacts such as weapons, feasting utensils, boundary markings and kingly regalia -- all of which are often tied in with bog burials in a number of locations, according to Kelly.
The two most recent bodies -- tanned to a mahogany sheen by acids in the bog water -- have now been freeze-dried for long term preservation and have found their final resting place under glass in Ireland's national museum.
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Scientists take step toward obesity vaccine
Reuters
Tue Aug 1, 2006
WASHINGTON - A vaccine that slows down a key hunger hormone kept rats from gaining weight, even when they over ate, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.
The team at The Scripps Research Institute in California cautioned that such a vaccine is a long way from being tested in human volunteers, and that it may not work in people.
But the study shed light on how hunger and weight gain work, they reported in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The vaccine targeted ghrelin, a hormone discovered in 1999 that helps control appetite in animals and people.
"It appears that active vaccination against ghrelin is one avenue that can slow weight gain and fat build-up in the body," said Kim Janda, a chemistry professor who helped direct the study.
"The study shows our vaccine slows weight gain and decreases stored fat in rats," Janda added.
"While food intake was unchanged in all testing groups, those who were given the most effective vaccines gained the least amount of weight."
The vaccine also appears to help control whether the body stores fat or burns it off, Janda said in a statement.
"To have an impact on appetite and weight gain, ghrelin first has to move from the bloodstream into the brain, where, over long periods, it stimulates the retention of a level of stored energy as fat," Janda said.
"Our study is the first published evidence proving that preventing ghrelin from reaching the central nervous system can produce a desired reduction in weight gain."
Janda hopes the vaccine might help people avoid the weight loss and weight gain seen in "yo-yo" dieting.
"We're not claiming that our study answers the question of obesity treatment once and for all," Janda said.
"What we are saying, and what our study confirms, is that this looks like a serious workable solution to the problem."
The researchers vaccinated mature male rats that were then provided an unlimited amount of low-energy, low-fat food. Unvaccinated rats gained more weight than vaccinated rats fed the same food.
"Whether active immunization against ghrelin would help prevent the development of obesity caused by ... high-fat 'Western' diets, or would facilitate weight loss once obesity is established" remains uncertain, the researchers wrote.
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Cannibal Eats Victim's Head in Soup, Keeps Heart in Fridge
Created: 01.08.2006 12:25 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 12:25 MSK
MosNews
Police have detained a man who murdered an elderly movie director, disjointed his body and made soup by boiling the victim's head.
On July 30 a plumber called the police, saying he had found large chunks of meat in the sewage at a block of flats in northern Moscow.
"I was clearing a blockage, when I saw lumps of human meat!" the Zhisn daily quoted him as saying.
Police rushed to the scene, and bloody tracks led them to the door of Evgeny Zorin. Zorin, 69, was known for his documentaries dedicated to Russian outlands. He lived alone in his apartment in peace with the neighbors.
While the police were contemplating the blood on the stairs, a man rushed out of the apartment and ran for the door. The police detained him and went in.
The apartment was covered in blood, and a strange smell was coming from the kitchen where something was boiling in a saucepan. Inside the saucepan the police found a man's head. On the kitchen table was a bowl of soup and a spoon.
Experts later identified human flesh among the soups ingredients.
In the fridge the police found a human heart, and further inspection produced bloodstained instruments - a small axe, a saw and a knife the murderer had used to cut the body to pieces.
Alexander Poyarkov, 29 years old, confessed to the murder. He said the old man had invited him to spend the night at his place when he had nowhere to go, and then raped him.
"He put me up for the night. Then he raped me. And I killed him," Polyakov said.
Poyarkov stabbed his host with a knife several times. Then he disjointed the body, threw some parts away, flushed others down the toilet, kept the heart and boiled the head, to make the body unrecognizable, he said.
Poyarkov has been charged with murder. He is scheduled to undergo a psychiatric analysis in the near future.
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