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Editorial: Thank God For Non-Richochet Bullets
Joe Quinn
Signs of the Times
15/08/2006
Let me give you a little scenario to ponder:
An innocent man who offers no suggestion that he is a threat in any way, is murdered on a London train with 7 point blank shots to the head of the victim over a 30 second interval by an UK police officer with Scotland Yard's elite CO19 gun squad.
In a sane world, what should happen to this officer? Reprimand? Dismissal? Jail time?
Think again:
De Menezes Gun Cop To Train Sky Marshalls
ONE of the officers who shot Tube blunder man Jean Charles de Menezes is to train new British sky marshals.
The armed cop, in his 30s, has been picked because top brass say he has "proven ability to act swiftly and decisively" in emergencies.
"We need the best to counter the very real threat posed by international terrorism.
"Sky marshals have to act quickly and decisively in any situation.
"They have to be ruthless in bringing down potential terrorists before they can bring down an aircraft."
All UK police forces have been told to send firearms officers for the eight-week course because of the heightened terror alert.
Hang on...I feel a quote from Lobaczewski coming on:
In a pathocracy, all leadership positions, (down to village headman and community cooperative managers, not to mention the directors of police units, and special services police personnel, and activists in the pathocratic party) must be filled by individuals with corresponding psychological deviations, which are inherited as a rule. However, such people constitute a very small percentage of the population and this makes them more valuable to the pathocrats. Their intellectual level or professional skills cannot be taken into account, since people representing superior abilities are even harder to find.
After such a system has lasted several years, one hundred percent of all the cases of essential psychopathy are involved in pathocratic activity; they are considered the most loyal, even though some of them were formerly involved on the other side in some way. [...]
[T]o mitigate the threat to their power, the pathocrats must employ any and all methods of terror and exterminatory policies against individuals known for their patriotic feelings and military training; other, specific "indoctrination" activities such as those we have presented are also utilized. Individuals lacking the natural feeling of being linked to normal society become irreplaceable in either of these activities. Again, the foreground of this type of activity is occupied by cases of essential psychopathy, followed by those with similar anomalies, and finally by people alienated from the society in question as a result of racial or national differences.
The phenomenon of pathocracy matures during this period: an extensive and active indoctrination system is built, with a suitably refurbished ideology constituting the vehicle or Trojan horse for the purpose of pathologizing the thought processes of individuals and society.
The goal- forcing human minds to incorporate pathological experiential methods and thought-patterns, and consequently accepting such rule - is never openly admitted. This goal is conditioned by pathological egotism, and the possibility of accomplishing it strikes the pathocrats as not only indispensable, but feasible. Thousands of activists must therefore participate in this work.
I know what you are thinking, "this is very dangerous!" What if a guy like this (or one of his students) gets trigger happy when some passenger looks at him the wrong way and tries to unload 7 bullets into his head...might one of the bullets not puncture the cabin and threaten the lives of all passengers and crew?!
Put you mind at ease:
"Sky marshals will be issued with Sig Sauer 9mm pistols, with special bullets which do not ricochet and damage the aircraft's fuselage."
Comment on this Editorial
Editorial: The Yugoslav Caldron: Jürgen Elsässer: "The CIA recruited and trained the jihadists"
By Silvia Cattori
In his latest book, How the Jihad Came to Europe, German journalist Jürgen Elsässer unravels the Jihadist thread. Muslim fighters recruited by the CIA to fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan were used successively in Yugoslavia and Chechnya, still supported by the CIA, but perhaps sometimes out of its control. Basing himself on diverse sources, mainly Yugoslavian, Dutch, and German, he reconstructed the development of Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants at the side of NATO in Bosnia-Herzegovinia.
Silvia Cattori: Your investigation into the actions of the secret services makes a frightening report. We discover that since the 80's the United States has invested billions of dollars to finance criminal activities and that by means of the CIA they are directly implicated in the attacks attributed to the Moslems. What is the contribution of your book?
Jurgen Elsässer: It is the only work that establishes the tie between wars in the Balkan of the 90's and the attack of September 11, 2001. All the large attacks, in New York, in London, in Madrid, would never have taken place without the recruitment by the American and British secret services of these jihadists who have been blamed for the attacks. I bring a new light on the manipulations of the intelligence agencies. Other books than mine have noted the presence of Ossama Ben Laden in the Balkans. But their authors presented the Moslem fighters in the Balkan as enemies of the west. The information that I collected from multiple sources, demonstrate that these jihadists are puppets in the hands of the west and are not, as one pretends, enemies.
Silvia Cattori: In the case of the war in the Balkan, the manipulations of various States are clearly designated in your book. The United States supported Ben Laden whose work was to form the Mujahidines. How can anyone continue to ignore that these attempts that horrify public opinion would never have existed if these «terrorists» had not been driven and financed by the western intelligence services?
Jürgen Elsässer: Yes, indeed, it is the result of facts that one can observe. But one cannot say that the western intervention in ex - Yugoslavia had for objective to prepare attack of September 11. To be precise: these attacks are a consequence of western politics of the 90's because NATO put these jihadists in place in the Balkans and collaborated with them. The Moslem militants who have been designated the persons responsible for the attacks of September 11 were part of this network.
Silvia Cattori: According to you, what was the interest of the United States and Germany to set the people of the Balkans one against the other?
Jürgen Elsässer: The west had a common interest to destroy Yugoslavia, to dismember it, because, after the end of the soviet bloc, it would have been a model of the intelligent combination of capitalist and socialist elements. But the west wanted to impose the neoliberal model on all countries.
Silvia Cattori: Is not Europe itself imprudently committed to a war manipulated by the neoconservatives?
Jürgen Elsässer: It is difficult to say. I believe that in the 90's, the politics of the United States was inspired by their victory against Soviets in Afghanistan. It was the model that they wanted to apply in Balkans. If, during those years, the economy of the United States had not fallen into depression, maybe the more realistic politicians, such as Kissinger, could have kept control of American politics. I think that the coincidence between the economic depression and the aggressiveness of the neoconservative school determined what happened.
Silvia Cattori: Do you think that a leader like Blair, for example, once embarked in the neoconservative project, has become a hostage to a certain point?
Jürgen Elsässer: I don't know the position of Blair enough well. It is easier to see what goes on in the United States. One can see that Bush is the hostage of those around him. And, as he is not very intelligent, he is not able to take decisions and must follow ideas of his entourage. It is clear that his father was against the attack on Iraq in 2003.
Silvia Cattori: Wasn't the first Gulf war part of a plan aiming to trigger other wars thereafter?
Jürgen Elsässer: No, there was no tie with the war in Iraq in 1991. There were two phases. Until the end of the Clinton period, the politics of the United States were imperialistic, but at the same time, pragmatic. They chased the Soviets out of Afghanistan. They defeated Iraq in 1991. Their war stopped once Kuwait was free. Then they attacked Bosnia and Yugoslavia; but it occurred stage by stage. Everything went out of control after September 11.
Silvia Cattori: The neoconservatives don't count for anything?
Jürgen Elsässer: The neoconservatives, grouped around Pearl, had written a document one year before September 11, according to which America had need of a catalyzing event similar to the attack on Pearl Harbor. September 11 was this catalyzing event. I believe that people around Pearl wished for the attacks of September 11.
Silvia Cattori: What was the objective pursued by the United States in attacking Serbia? Was it merely about, as is indicated in your book, the US getting itself installed in a strategic region situated on a transit line for the oil and the gas of central Asia? Or did the alliance of the United States with the Moslem fighters directed by Izetbegovic have a second objective: to create a Moslem extremism at the doors of Europe in order to make use of it in the setting of terrorist manipulations? And, if yes, towards what goal?
Jürgen Elsässer: The United States wanted, as did Austria at the end of the 19th century in Bosnia, to create a "European" Islam to weaken the Islamic states in the Middle East, meaning, at that time, the Ottoman empire, and today, Iran and the Arab states. The neoconservatives had other plans again: to construct a clandestine network of "fundamentalist" puppets to do the dirty work against "old" Europe.
Silvia Cattori: The result, a terrifying civil war. How could Europe have participated in the destruction of Yugoslavia, which appeared as an example of the perfectly successful cohabitation between ethnic groups? By making the Serbians the guilty party, didn't Europe destroy a country that was one of the major constructions of the postwar era? On what legitimacy did Europe base its intervention?
Jürgen Elsässer: First, in the beginning of the 90's, Germany led the attack based upon the principles of the self-determination of ethnic groups: in other words, Hitler's old ruse against Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1938/39. Then, the United States took the relay and praised "human rights", an obvious swindle.
Silvia Cattori: In your investigation Israel is never mentioned. Have you not minimized the importance of pro-Israeli neoconservatives inside the Pentagon, who serve interests of Israel more that those of the United States?
Jürgen Elsässer: There are Israelis who collaborated with the neoconservatives; it is a fact. But I am not sure of the role played by Israel in this business. Sharon was against NATO support for the Albanians of Kosovo. And, in 1998, he expressed his worry over the idea that NATO support the setting up of pro-Islamic elements in the Balkan. I also believe that he was not favorable to this war the following year.
Silvia Cattori: Don't you see ties between the Israeli secret services and the attacks of September 11, 2001?
Jürgen Elsässer: There are ties, but I didn't analyze the character of these ties. For example, immediately after September 11, a certain number of Israeli agents were arrested in the United States. They were present in places where the attacks were prepared. There are analysts who say this is proof that Israel was directly implicated in these attacks. But it could also mean something else. It could be that these agents were watching what happened, that they were aware that the American secret services supported these "terrorists" in the preparation of these attacks, but that they kept their knowledge to use it at the appropriate moment, and to be able to use it as blackmail when the moment came: "If you don't increase your support for Israel, we are going to hand over this information to the media". There is even a third possibility: that these Israeli spies wanted to warn about the attacks but failed. At the moment, we only know that these types were there and that they were arrested. Supplementary investigations are necessary.
Silvia Cattori: Do these ties put in evidence that the attacks of September 11, 2001 were part of a plan conceived a long time before?
Jürgen Elsässer: I am not certain that a plan had been established for a long time. It could be that people such as Richard Perle improvise a lot and use criminal elements that they put in place but that they don't permanently control. As, at the time of Kennedy's murder, it is clear that the CIA was implicated, but one doesn't know if it had been planned at the top, at Langley [the headquarters of the CIA], or if it was conceived among the most violent Cuban exiles working for the CIA, the headquarters of the CIA limiting themselves to tolerating it.
Silvia Cattori: If tomorrow these characters grouped around Pearl were removed, would that stop the anti-Muslim war strategy of the United States and the manipulations that justify it?
Jürgen Elsässer: It stops when they lose a war.
Silvia Cattori: The war, didn't they lose it in Iraq?
Jürgen Elsässer: The war will only be lost when they leave the country, as in Vietnam.
Silvia Cattori: These Moslems who, like Mohammed Atta, were just ordinary citizens before being enlisted by the CIA, how could they be driven to such terrifying actions, without knowing that they were being manipulated by intelligence agents of the opposite camp?
Jürgen Elsässer: There are some youth that can be turned into fanatics and manipulated very easily by intelligence services. High-placed characters are not unaware of what happens and know by who they are hired.
Silvia Cattori: Ben Laden, for example, did he know that he served the interests of the United States?
Jürgen Elsässer: I didn't study his case. I studied the case of Al Zawahiri, Ben Laden's right arm, who was the chief of operations in the Balkans. In the beginning of the 90's, he traveled all through the United States with an agent of the US Special Command to collect money for the Jihad; this man knew that he participated in this collection of money as an activity that was supported by the United States.
Silvia Cattori: All of this is very troubling. You bring the proof that that attacks that have occurred since 1996 (attacks in the subway of Paris), would never have been possible if the war in the Balkan had not taken place. And you impute these attacks, that left thousands of victims, to western intelligence services. Has opinion in West therefore been deceived by governments that have embarked on terrorist actions?
Jürgen Elsässer: The terrorist network that the American and British secret services formed during the civil war in Bosnia and later in Kosovo provided a reservoir of militants that we find implicated later in the attacks in New York, Madrid, London.
Silvia Cattori: How did this happen concretely?
Jürgen Elsässer: Once the war was finished in Afghanistan, Osama Ben Laden recruited these jihadist militants. It was his work. It was he that trained them, partially with the support of the CIA, and put them in place in Bosnia. The Americans tolerated the connection between the President Izetbegovic and Ben Laden. Two years later, in 1994, the Americans began to send weapons, in a common clandestine operation with Iran. After the treaty of Dayton, in November 1995, the CIA and the Pentagon recruited best of the jihadists that had fought in Bosnia.
Silvia Cattori: How does it happen that these Moslems got into the hands of services that served ideological interests opposed to theirs?
Jürgen Elsässer: I analyzed testimonies given by some jihadists interrogated by the German judges. They said that after the treaty of Dayton, which stipulated that all foreign ex-fighters had to leave the country, they didn't have any more money and had nowhere to go. As for those that could remain in Bosnia, because they had been provided with Bosnian passports, they were without work and without money. The day when the recruiters came and rang at their doors and proposed to pay them 3000 dollars a month to serve in the Bosnian army, they didn't know that they were recruited and paid by emissaries of the CIA to serve the United States.
Silvia Cattori: After, when they were sent to prepare the attacks in London in July 2005, for example, did they not become aware that they were in the hands of western intelligence agents who manipulated them?
Jürgen Elsässer: It is not clear that it was really the young Moslems from the suburbs of London that committed the attacks, as the police claim. There are other indications according to which the bombs were fixed under the trains. It is possible the bombs were attached under the trains without these young men knowing about it. In that case it is not sure that the young Moslems, incriminated by the investigation, committed these attempts.
Silvia Cattori: It is hard to understand the goal that the western States pursue when they engage their services in criminal manipulations?
Jürgen Elsässer: This is not easy to say. Remember Kennedy's murder. Who did it? It is certain that it was people from the CIA that supported the second killer, it is certain that Oswald was murdered by a man who had been mandated by the CIA. What is not clear is if these men recruited by the CIA acted on order of Johnson or Dulles, or if they were link to the milieu of extremist Cuban exiles, which means affiliated to the mafia. I don't believe that Bush or Blairs are chiefs. I don't believe in the theory of the big conspiracy. I believe that the secret services hire men who are ordered to carry out the dirty business; these agents act as they want. Perhaps you know that on September 11, 2001, someone tried to kill Bush. What does it mean? It is difficult to explain.
Silvia Cattori: Do you mean that Bush is, for example, himself hostage of the people who, inside the Pentagon, form a State within the state, one that also escapes the command of the American army?
Jürgen Elsässer: Yes. Bush is stupid. He is only an instrument in other people's hands.
Silvia Cattori: Are you thinking about people that are under the direct influence of characters such as Pearl, Wolfowitz, Feith? Do you think that it is they who, after the war of the Balkan, would have been the real backers of these attacks and that these attacks are not separate from each other, that there is a link between Madrid and London? Does it mean that the Americans are ready to ally with the devil to sow chaos everywhere under the pretext of this anti-Muslim, anti - Arabic war waged under the banner of terrorism? A fabricated terrorism?
Jürgen Elsässer: Yes, there is a duplicate government that escapes Bush's control. It is the neoconservatives, such as Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Pearl, the people tied into the oil and the military industries,. The global chaos is in the interest of the military industry: when there is the chaos all over the world, one can sell weapons and oil for a bigger price.
Silvia Cattori: Youssef Asckar described this State within in the state very well, to which you give credit [1]. Isn't Israel the first country interested by this strategy of chaos, therefore by the manipulation of terrorist attacks? Doesn't the propaganda of the pro-Israeli lobby have the tendency to make us believe that Israel is threatened by Arabs fanatics?
Jürgen Elsässer: It is not certain that this strategy can serve the interests of Israel because, if things continue this way, the whole Middle East will be in flames, including Israel. They used the same process during the war in Bosnia. In order to demonize the Serbs, the western media invented stories of concentration camps and made photo montages that compared the Serbs to the Nazis. This propaganda aimed to win opinion over to the war against Serbia, but, with regard to the United States, it was not nourished necessarily by the Jewish lobby, but by the Christian and atheist strategists. These strategists play the "Jewish" card. That is my thesis. One sees it currently with the propaganda against Iran; strategists of the war play the "Jewish" card to impress people that have more morals than intelligence.
Silvia Cattori: The recent manipulations confirm, in part, your thesis: at the same moment where the United States wanted the Security Council to pass sanctions against Iran, a Canadian newspaper wrote that Iran wanted to force Iranian Jews to wear the equivalent of a yellow star [2]. But I refer to these openly pro-Israeli personalities that, in France for example, play an important role in the formation of opinion because they occupy some strategic positions in the media, and whose community allegiance psuyhes them to support the policies of Israel and the United States, even if it is criminal. Remember the active support brought to Izetbegovic in Bosnia by Bernard-Henri Lévy and Bernard Kouchner. As soon as Serbia was on the knees, they immediately turned their propaganda against Arabs and Moslems; this time it was to mobilize opinion in favor of the so-called "war of civilizations". When they spoke of "concentration camps" to associate the Serbs with Hitler, didn't they participate in manipulations of NATO?
Jürgen Elsässer: We watched the same phenomenon in Germany. The Jewish journalists that supported the war against Yugoslavia had access to the televised studios. But the journalists that were against, whether they were Jewish or not, were excluded from the debate. I think that the media and politicians use the Jewish voices for geostrategic stakes.
Silvia Cattori: So, as you see it, what happened in the Balkan was only the repetition of what had happened in Afghanistan, what followed was part of the same process. Do you think that our authorities know risks of the wars provoked by their intelligence agencies?
Jürgen Elsässer: My hope is that there is a reaction on behalf of the military in the United States. There are among them people who know very well that all these wars are not intelligent. They know that the United States is going to lose this war. In the American army, they are imperialistic but they are not crazy, they don't agree with what is happening. But the neoconservatives are crazy, they want to wage the Third World War against all Arabs and all Moslems, just like Hitler who wanted to kill all Jews and to attack all other countries; the German generals had warned Hitler of all that he risked.
Silvia Cattori: Is your hope that a change occurs unexpectedly?
Jürgen Elsässer: To stop this madness I see possibility of change only among those forces that remained rational. The high command of the American army wrote a letter to Bush to say that it doesn't want to participate in an attack against Iran with nuclear weapons. Maybe Bush will attack; but the consequences would be more serious than in the case of Iraq. The same thing happened with the Nazis: they attacked, they attacked, and one day there was Stalingrad and the beginning of the defeat. But this adventure cost the lives of 60 million human beings.
Silvia Cattori: Is that what motivated your effort while writing this book: to alert people's consciences in order to avoid new disasters and new suffering? Moreover, that after Iraq it would be Iran's turn?
Jürgen Elsässer: Yes. But characters like Bush don't care about all of that. I am not completely pessimistic on Iran: one could see a repetition of the Paris, Berlin, Moscow axis. Our chancellor, who is normally a puppet of the United States, offered strategic cooperation with Russia, because Germany depends entirely on Russian oil and gas. It is a strong argument. Germans are imperialists, but they are not crazy.
Silvia Cattori: In the Balkans, was it not Germany that opened the door to the war?
Jürgen Elsässer: Yes, it is true. But, today, you see that Joschka Fischer and Madeleine Albright have sent an open letter to Bush to tell him not to attack Iran. Mrs. Albright specified that one cannot attack all the people that one doesn't like. It is rational.
Silvia Cattori: Were you able to collect these elements that illustrate the actions of the intelligence agencies because, today, people, worried of the evolution of international politics, are beginning to speak?
Jürgen Elsässer: Yes. I depended a great deal on information from people that work in the belly of "the beast".
Silvia Cattori: Everywhere in the world?
Jürgen Elsässer: I can only tell you that it is people from Western Europe. It is people that haven't stopped using their heads.
Silvia Cattori: To obtain the proof of the manipulations surroundeding the "Gulf of Tonkin Incident", the incident that permitted the United States to unleash the war against the Vietnamese people, it was necessary to wait a long time. Have things therefore changed today, permitting a response in time?
Jürgen Elsässer: There is a big difference between the situation in the 60's and the one today. In the Federal Republic of Germany, they were, for example, at that time in favor of the war against Communists in Vietnam. The official version that said our republic was in danger of being attacked by Communists was shared by a big part of public opinion. What has changed is that, today, the majority of the population is against the war, without discussion.
Silvia Cattori: You rightly underline the extremist religious character of Bosnia-Herzegovina under Izetbegovic, but, whereas you doubt the support of Israel to this sort of draft of the emirate of the Talibans, don't you overvalue the role of Iran and Saudi Arabia? Richard Perle was the principal political advisor to Izetbegovic. Didn't the Iranians and the Saudis raise the ante on the question of Islam hoping to take the control of a Moslem regime that only took its orders from Tel Aviv and Washington? In fact, was Izetbegovic not an agent of Israel?
Jürgen Elsässer: The Mossad helped the Bosnian Serbians, they even provided them weapons. There is nothing that indicates that the Israeli government helped Izetbegovic. It was supported by Americans, and Clinton depended upon the Zionist lobby in the United States, but this lobby didn't have the support of the Israeli government during the war of Bosnia.
Silvia Cattori: With regard to some of your sources, can one grant credit to the assertions of Yossef Bodanski, director of the Working Group on Terrorism and Non-Conventional war close to the American Senate?
Jürgen Elsässer: I don't trust anybody. They claim that Bodansky has ties with sources in Mossad and it renders a number of his findings suspect. On the other hand, he brings to our knowledge a lot of interesting facts that contradict the official propaganda. In my book I show the contradictions within the dominant elites of the United States, and, in this respect, Bodansky, is very interesting.
Silvia Cattori: It says in your book: "Terrorism exists in Kosovo and Macedonia, but in its majority it is not controled by Ben Laden but by US intelligence". Do you doubt the existence of Al Qaeda?
Jürgen Elsässer: Yes, as I wrote it in my book, it is propaganda manufactured by the west.
Silvia Cattori: One has a bit the impression that, to go to the end of its logic, your investigation is not finished. Certainly, Yugoslavia was a laboratory for the manufacture of the Islamic networks, and your book shows well that these networks serve the interests of the United States. However, you seem to believe in the existence of international Islamic networks who would have a popular base in the Moslem world, whereas at the same time your research demonstrates that these networks are only mercenaries of the United States and that they have never done anything for the Moslems?
Jürgen Elsässer: Look at the example of Hamas: in the beginning of the 80's, it was fomented by Mossad to counter the influence of the PLO. But thereafter, Hamas developed its own popular base and, now, it is part of the resistance. But I bet that there are still foreign agents inside Hamas.
Silvia Cattori: You mentioned that the inspectors of the United Nations are infiltrated by spies from the United States. Could we have some precisions?
Jürgen Elsässer: Some blue helmets of the UNPROFOR in Bosnia transported weapons to destinations of the Mujahidines.
Silvia Cattori: When Peter Handke affirms that Serbs are not the only guilty party, that they are victims of the war of the Balkans, one banish it. Who is right in this business?
Jürgen Elsässer: On all sides - Serbs, Croatians, Moslems - the ordinary people have all lost. Moslems won the war in Bosnia with the help of Ben Laden and Clinton but, now, their country is occupied by NATO. They have less independence today than at the time of Yugoslavia.
Silvia Cattori: How does your research relate to that of Andreas Von Bülow and Thierry Meyssan?
Jurgen Elsässer: We share the same opinion on the events of September 11, 2001: we think that the official version is not true. All this combined research is very useful to be able to continue to deepen the reality of the facts. My specialty is to have made the link between wars of the Balkans and September 11, while Thierry Meyssan analyzed the attack on the Pentagon to demonstrate that it was due to a missile and not to a plane, and Von Bülow arrived at the conclusion that planes were guided by a beacon.
Silvia Cattori: To having put into question the official truth, Thierry Meyssan was discredited and blocked by the media. Are you going to escape that?
Jürgen Elsässer: There is also a blockage against my book. It is not possible for one author alone to break this blockage. However, it can't prevent our theses from making their path. The public is not in agreement with what the media says: in spite of their blockage 35 to 40% of people don't believe what media tells them. There is the example of Kennedy's assassination: today, 90% of people don't believe in the official version and think that Kennedy's murder was an action of the CIA.
Silvia Cattori: Isn't it dangerous to uncover the manipulations of States that use their intelligence services in criminal ways?
Jürgen Elsässer: I believe that the danger only comes when one sells more than 100 000 books. In Germany, in eleven months, my book has only sold 6 000 copies.
Silvia Cattori
Swiss Journalist.
Comment le Djihad est arrivé en Europe by Jürgen Elsässer, preface by Jean-Pierre Chevènement. Éditions Xenia (Suisse), 304 pages, 19 euros.
[1] Read "La 'guerre contre le terrorisme' est une guerre contre les peoples" by Youssef Aschkar, Voltaire, 16 mars 2006.
[2] "Iran : les gouvernements anglo-saxons fabriquent de fausses nouvelles », Voltaire, 24 mai 2006.
Original
Comment on this Editorial
Editorial: Sham UN Resolution Guarantees No End To Israel's War of Illegal Aggression
by Stephen Lendman
14 August 2006
On August 11, the UN Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1701 jointly proposed by the US and France and with all provisions in it signed off on by Israel before it was put to a vote. Neither Lebanon nor Hezbollah was afforded that same right. In a UN dominated by the world's only superpower and having to operate within the constraints it sets, only US client states are allowed that privilege. It's victims never are. Resolution 1701 was a revised version of the one the US and France first proposed on August 6 which the French then backed down on because of strong Lebanese government and Arab League opposition. The new resolution only guarantees one thing - no end to the conflict and no justice for its Lebanese victims. It doesn't even address the concurrent hostilities ongoing against the Palestinians outrageously ignoring the fact that they're raging daily with no end in sight.
Resolution 1701 calls for a full cessation of hostilities on both sides but leaves in it a glaring loophole big enough apparently to get Israel to accept it. It calls on Hezbollah to cease "all attacks" immediately and implies, but doesn't explicitly state, Hezbollah must disarm. It won't because doing so would be to surrender. It only asks Israel to stop "all offensive military operations" without defining what that means or making a comparable disarmament demand on the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). It thus gives Israel the right to "respond" if, in its judgment, it faces what it believes is an imminent threat. In other words, Israel can attack Lebanon at will any time and claim, true or not, it's only responding to such a threat. It also proposes no fixed timetable for Israel to withdraw its troops from Lebanon and only "calls on the government of Israel" to do so once a UN mandated force is in place. It thus gives Israel what it wanted - more time for the IDF to continue its assault by air and to try on the ground to seize more territory so when both sides agree to halt hostilities, Israel will be in the strongest bargaining position. The resolution also authorizes the deployment of up to 15,000 UN (UNIFIL) troops in southern Lebanon from countries willing to supply them to assist an additional 15,000 Lebanese force.
The resolution is a litany of outrage ignoring why the conflict began and falsely accusing Hezbollah of starting it by launching "the attack on Israel on 12 July" which it did not. It mentions nothing about Israel's incursions into Lebanon by air and on the ground prior to the July 12 date when Hezbollah forces captured (not kidnapped) two IDF soldiers who it's believed illegally crossed the UN-monitored "blue line" into the country - something the IDF routinely has done almost daily since it withdrew from the country in May, 2000. It absolves Israel of any responsibility by failing to acknowledge it's been waging a war of illegal aggression against the country and thus, according to the Nuremberg Charter, is guilty of the "supreme international crime" for which convicted Nazis after WW II were hanged. It doesn't even mention the word "war" in its text or indicate in any way that Israel is guilty of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity against the people of Lebanon.
This is a resolution only an aggressor would love. It will do nothing to deter further aggression any time Israel believes, on its say alone and with no evidence, an imminent threat exists. Resolution 1701 blatantly violates the UN Charter which permits a nation to use force only under two conditions: when authorized to do it by the Security Council or under Article 51 that allows the "right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member....until the Security Council has taken measures to maintain international peace and security." In other words, necessary self-defense is allowed, which does not justify what the IDF initiated on June 25 and again on July 12. Israel's extreme response on both dates following the capture of its soldiers, known in both cases to have been planned well in advance awaiting only convenient pretexts to undertake them, are no acts of self-defense. They're acts of premeditated illegal aggression.
In sum, UN Resolution 1701 is little more than an outrageous and illegal expression of victor's justice. It allows Israel the right to resume hostilities any time it wishes and for any reason so long as the Israelis claim an imminent threat exists regardless of whether or not it's true. It gives no rights to the victims who remain vulnerable and are likely to come under further assaults just as they have almost daily since Israel first invaded Lebanon in 1978. And it does nothing to try to end the ongoing Israeli aggression against the Palestinians or address their long-standing grievances now ongoing for nearly 60 years. The resolution does guarantee one thing - no end to the conflict in either country or justice for the beleaguered people of them both.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
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Editorial: Mexican Electoral Fraud Wins Round One - Round Two Now Begins
by Stephen Lendman
It was no surprise on Sunday that the Mexican Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) ruled its partial recount of about 9% of the ballots cast in the disputed presidential election held on July 2 showed ruling National Action Party (PAN) candidate still the winner. In doing so, the IFE ignored the clear evidence of election irregularities and blatant fraud uncovered by losing Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. The IFE ignored the need for a total ballot recount Obrador justifiably demanded and instead relied on the small partial one it chose in areas of known Calderon strength making it unlikely from the start it would find enough of a change in the final tally to change the election result. Lopez Obrador aides cited evidence of overwhelming fraud in at least one-third of the polling stations and that any failure to do a recount in all of them would show clear IFE bias toward its announced winner on July 6 and would not be accepted without a concerted fight. Let the battle begin.
The fraud uncovered so far showed the preliminary vote totals were manipulated to allow PAN candidate Felipe Calderon to be the winner. In addition, three million votes were never counted at first and only in hindsight were 2.5 million of them added to the totals. Further, 900,000 supposedly void, blank and annulled ballots were declared null, discarded and never included in the official totals; 700,000 additional votes disappeared from missing precincts; thousands of voters were denied their franchise in strong Obrador precincts; there was evidence of ballot stuffing; and in about one-third of the polling stations only winning party PAN observers were present allowing ample opportunity for vote manipulation as has happened routinely in a country known for its history of electoral unfairness and where political dirty tricks and hardball tactics may have been invented. It takes no stretch to know it was no different this time, and Lopez Obrador now demands this injustice be addressed and corrected.
Obrador promised he will not go gently "into that good night" and will fight on to be declared the winner of the election it clearly looks like he won but so far has been denied. He now plans to file new charges of widespread fraud found during the recount process. The discoveries include broken seals on some ballot boxes and evidence showing the number of ballots in ballot boxes differed from the number of blank ballots cast. Additional evidence will seek to annul the results from thousands of polling stations Felipe Calderon won by a margin great enough to indicate significant manipulation of the count was likely. Lawyers for Mr. Obrador now claim these irregularities alone warrant a full ballot recount, and Mexico City Mayor-elect Marcelo Ebrard said: "There is now so much evidence of fraud that the court will have to act."
Part of that evidence is the illegal campaigning ruling PAN President Vincinte Fox did for Mr. Calderon and the fact that Felipe Calderon exceeded his legally allowed campaign spending limits. He did it to run vicious negative advertising through the business-friendly Mexican corporate media calling Obrador an evil twin of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, falsely accusing him of accepting campaign funds from the Venezuelan President, claiming Obrador was guilty of corruption as mayor of Mexico City with no evidence to prove it, and of being a "danger" for Mexico.
It was also learned early on that Felipe Calderon's brother-in-law Diego Hildebrando Zavala wrote the vote-counting software, and it was hacked during the electoral process. This discovery of a close family member having control of the computer systems is evidence enough of grossly improper activity that could easily have resulted in vote count manipulation to give the electoral victory to the candidate he obviously favored. Again, it takes no stretch to imagine Mr. Zavala took full advantage of his ability to decide the outcome.
It should be duly noted and stressed that in Latin America no greater contrast can be drawn in how elections are run than to compare the scrupulously honest and democratic process under Hugo Chavez in Venezuela to the hopelessly corrupted one in Mexico. It wasn't always that way in Venezuela, but once Hugo Chavez was elected he established constitutionally by national referendum a system of real participatory democracy where the Venezuelan people actually have a say in how the government is run including being the ones to decide in fair, open and honest elections who will be elected including the President. In Mexico, it's long been just the opposite. There the interests of wealth and power control the process and see to it their chosen candidates run the country for their benefit.
Round Two Now Begins As Lopez Obrador Intends To Fight On
Lopez Obrador made it clear after the July 6 announced results that he intended to continue fighting for electoral justice and has asked his supporters to rally in the streets around the country to demand it. Already major demonstrations have been held in Mexico City's huge Zocalo plaza. At a recent one as many as a record near-two million turned out to show their support for their candidate. Lopez Obrador now promises this will continue, and in a speech Sunday to many thousands assembled in the Zocalo to hear him he said his campaign for an honest recount will continue indefinitely in the courts and in the streets. With the many millions of Mexicans fed up with politics as usual, it now remains to be seen if their mass-people power can overcome a Mexican tradition of entrenched wealth and power always having it their way and the people be damned. It will be an uphill battle, but don't count the people out yet.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
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Editorial: Bush, the Religious Right and End Times
by Rodrigue Tremblay
August 14, 2006
The New American Empire
"I think that on balance the moral influence of religion has been awful.
With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil;
but for good people to do evil-that takes religion."
Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate, Physics
"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious."
Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Since U.S. President George W. Bush says that 'God' tells him what policies to pursue, maybe the religious side of the Israel-United States Axis should be more formally investigated. The more so since Bush has refused to answer a direct question regarding his own views about his religious allies' theory that 'God' is assumed to have a plan to end the world soon. He could have answered that such ideas originate from religious zealots and should be dismissed as hallucinations. -But he did not. What does this mean?
When religious extremists use their tax-free access to TV to openly call for a nuclear confrontation between America and Iran, and when they try to demonize the European Union by calling it "the Antichrist", it is time to ask what's going on in the U.S. -Is this wind of collective madness subsiding or getting up steam? Are the Armageddonite fanatics calling for the end of the world and the Second Coming of Christ, in an Armageddon war supposed to kill two billion people, turning the U. S. into a madhouse, where the inmates seem to be in charge?
There are, indeed, as many as 30 million Armageddonite Americans-ten percent of the population-most of them members of the evangelical religious fundamentalist movement, to which GWB subscribes as an evangelical born-again Christian, and from which he borrows his religious language in defense of his policies. (In the 2004 elections, exit polls showed that more than three-quarters of white evangelical Christians voted for President Bush.) Many among the evangelicals are known to nurture the crazy idea that if their preachers' end-of-the-world scenario were to be accomplished, they would be 'raptured' and would enter into some 'Heaven', without going through a 'Judgment Day'. Since the leaders of this movement are frequently invited to the White House for off-the-record policy sessions, and since many congressmen attend their meetings, it might not be so foolish after all to look at what these delusional characters have in store for the world.
What is frightening is the seeming convergence of interests between the pro-Israel and pro-war neoconservatives in the U.S., the Republican Party and its war-related electoral fortunes, and the religious radicals who are openly calling for a confrontation with Iran as a necessary precondition for their Armageddon. When a religious fanatic held a large meeting in Washington D. C., on July 18, 2006, to launch a war movement of Christian Zionists in favor of Israel and against Iran, the "Christians United for Israel" movement, President George W. Bush did not denounce such mad obsession with the end of the world, but rather sent words of support. He told them "God... bless and stand by the people of Israel and . . . bless the United States."
Not only that, but the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, Ken Mehlman, himself was one of the speakers at the meeting. The leader of the group, Texan John Hagee, proposed that the United States join Israel in a preemptive military strike against Iran to fulfill "God's plan" for both Israel and the West. Republican politicians, such as Sen. Sam Brownback (R- Kansas), Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pennsylvania) and Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), were attendees. Also among the guests were the Israeli Ambassador, Daniel Ayalon, and retired Israeli defense chief Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon. -Is it not true that reality beats fiction, when American religious radicals and foreign generals get together to team up for a religious war?
What is so disturbing is that George W. Bush and some leading Republicans seem to be listening to deranged religious people who, if they had their way, could precipitate a world war and a world economic depression, just to fulfill their religious fantasies. Considering that the policies of the Neocon-inspired Bush-Cheney administration are seen by many to be governed by an amalgam of "impulse and fantasy", shouldn't the world be worried? Indeed, the magazine Newsweek observed recently that President George W. Bush is a man who "still trusts his gut to tell him what's right", rather than relying on professional advice, logical analysis, factual evidence and experience to arrive at conclusions. Of course, in such an environment of constant improvisation, anything is possible.
In particular, one should not dismiss the influence that religious thinking and the political Religious Right movement have on Bush's decisions. Indeed, what has been the Religious Right's influence on the Bush-Cheney administration's foreign policy, especially as it relates to the Middle East? For example, could it be that Bush's religious beliefs were behind his announcement on January 30, 2001, at his first National Security Council meeting, that from then on the U.S. would tilt its policies sharply toward Israel? Also, could it be that the reason Bush II gave the Israeli government of Ehud Olmert such unconditional and uncritical support and a total blank check, both to repress the Palestinians in Gaza and for attacking and bombing Lebanon, be found in the religious Right's support for such policies? Is George W. Bush listening to televangelist Pat Robertson, when this wild-eyed fanatic encourages Israel to destroy Lebanon because "The Jews are God's chosen people. Israel is a special nation that has a special place in God's heart. He will defend this nation"?
In the past, some religious leaders, on the Far Right fringe, also argued for mixing a dangerous cocktail of religion and politics. A few among them did not hesitate in calling for the nuclear obliteration of the entire Soviet Union, because it was thought to be a godless communist empire. This demonstrates, if need be, that armaments without morality or without law equals anarchy and disasters. -In 1948, for example, a bellicose and delusionary evangelist preacher from New Jersey, the Rev. Carl McIntire, became famous when he proposed in a radio broadcast that the United States carry out a "pre-emptive" nuclear attack against the Soviet Union. A religious fundamentalist, founder of the Bible Presbyterian Church, McIntire was persuaded that a worldwide nuclear hecatomb was necessary to "purify" the world of communist countries. He believed that no country should have a system that differed from his own religious model, whatever the cost. At the time, such delirious persons were few and isolated.
Nowadays, McIntire's successors are the Falwells, Robertsons, Hagees, etc. of this world. They are much richer and more powerful than in the past, thanks to their tax-free religious status and thanks to the Reagan-era liberalization of the rules governing the use of the media as one-track propaganda tools. Because of that, they are assiduously courted by Far Right politicians and are welcomed to the White House, where they receive a sympathetic hearing.
After loosing its anticommunist struggle as a fund-raising technique, the new Christian Right seems to have found another way to raise fear, passions and money. Its new crusade is directed against the 'wrong god' Islamic world and is fanatically in favor of Israel, whatever it does, and against the Palestinians and the Middle East Muslim countries, whatever their sufferings. They talk of having a biblically prophesized "mission" to save Israel from the Muslims and propose a new vigorous "crusade" against them, not hesitating for that purpose to call for the unilateral unleashing of U.S. military power in the region. In the apocalyptic words of John Hagee, one of their more delusional leaders, "We are racing toward the end of time,...Israel is the only nation created by a sovereign act of God, and He has sworn by His holiness to defend Jerusalem, His Holy City. If God created and defends Israel, those nations that fight against it fight against God."
There are none more ferocious than those who kill with religious zeal.-That's where the world stands in the summer of 2006, a summer that may or may not duplicate the summer of 1914 or the summer of 1939.
In the 1930's, many people dismissed the German Nazis, later, to their bitter chagrin. They thought that the Nazis were somewhat extremist, but that they were also good Christians, good conservatives and good patriots. Just as the supporters of the Religious Right of today, Adolph Hitler professed that he regarded "Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life." In fact, the Far Right in Germany was composed of rabid pro-war militarists, and they were dangerous from day one. Tens of millions of people died because of them.
The amalgam of belligerent religiosity and simplistic politics creates a threat that many have not fully realized. Those who currently revel in Bush's political religiosity and his flirt with those who advance end-of-the-world scenarios should be more aware that sometimes, crazy ideas can lead to crazy policies. -People should brace themselves. There is nothing that says that inept, ignorant, incompetent and power-hungry politicians cannot also turn out to be crazy politicians.
Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@ yahoo.com. He is the author of the book 'The New American Empire'.
Visit his blog site at www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.
Author's Website:www.thenewamericanempire.com/
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Editorial: Open Letter to Stephen Hawking
by Alexander Popoff
July, 2006
Open Letter to Stephen Hawking, peers, and all individuals interested in origin and evolution of our Universe, life, and intelligence, the tough future of humankind, Fermi paradox, SETI, UFOs....and why dinosaurs couldn't land on Moon 65 million years ago.
by Alexander Popoff July, 2006
Hello,
In a CNN interview, June 2006, Prof. Hawking states that the encounter with alien intelligence would be more like the film "Independence Day" than "ET."
OK, a lot of people agree with this notion. There is every reason to believe in this warning. Humans should know more about the benefits and dangers result of extraterrestrial contact. But there is one more reason why researchers have to dwell on the problem with alien sentient life--the true resolution of the Fermi paradox could be a key to more correct understanding of the Universe, life, and intelligence which may be orchestrated by a vector: a genome-like structure and mechanism, inherited from many preceding universes back in time. Our genes made us. The vector made the Universe, life, and us.
The vector defines also the speed of evolution, the level of competition between the sentient species, the emerging and doom of life and intelligence...
Prof. Hawking, as a leading physicist of our time, interested also in SETI, survival of human race, the coming clash between AI and humans, is the person who could provide some right answers to these problems of tremendous importance for humankind in the near future.
But on his Internet web page (and also on the sites of others scientists) is written: "We have no facilities to deal with specific scientific enquiries, or theories....Please do not email us your scientific theories - although they may be valid." I hope this open letter will reach him and other thinking individuals capable to answer these burning questions of huge consequences for all humankind.
Continue...THE HIDDEN ALPHA
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Editorial: Pitch Black Void
Monday, August 14, 2006
Manuel Valenzuela
Freefall
The towers fell upon their own imprints, floor after floor cascading down upon the next in an avalanche of concrete, glass, steel and flesh, in the process pulverizing everything, and everybody, between them, over 200 combined stories of human ingenuity flattened in the span of seconds, their reign over gravity and the skies eviscerated, falling down to the land of mortals not with the chaos of randomness and malevolent physics but with the unexpected order and perfection of orchestration and wicked pre-planned intentions.
One building was followed by another in a near perfect duplication of the first, almost as if déjà vu had supplanted itself on Manhattan island, after morbidly disturbing airplane crashes had sent the collective conscious of the world on freefall, their fires blazing yet their inferno not scorching enough to melt the reinforced steel of towers designed to withstand airline crashes. Soon after the strikes black and gray smoke billowed out of the crash sites, proof that what had once burned was now dissipating, unable to breathe the oxygen it needed to burn or unable to chemically alter steel skeletons or cause the structural integrity of two separate skyscrapers to be compromised.
Yet less than one hour after each building was struck the monoliths of New York came crashing down, almost in perfect synchronization, more than half an hour apart, one after the other in a display of destruction too perfect to qualify as randomness, a form of controlled chaos never to befall a burning steel skyscraper in the histories of modern civilization or architecture. Strangely, not one hour passed before we were led to believe fire and heat compromised and melted reinforced steel, not for one but two separate buildings, as if lightning had struck twice in the same spot, as if the impossible had become normal, as if black smoke could bend, in the course of an hour, what usually would take multiple hours to achieve.
In America, however, where citizens have the attention spans of gnats, tuning out after ten-second sound bites, one minute news reports and having the patience only to accept rapid video flashes, even orchestrated, criminal mass murder must be accomplished on fast-forward time. And so the destruction by controlled demolition of the WTC, brilliantly executed, monstrously planned, hidden behind the charade of hijacked airliner crashes, yet so easily deciphered by open minds and through the magic of video and the passage of time, became a reality, in a few seconds of malevolent decimation killing close to 3,000 innocent human beings and plunging a nation of 300 million into the freefall of madness, shock, fear, hatred, rage and the collective blindness needed by criminals, warmongers and greed addicts to steer a nation down the precipice of human emotion and into the realm of total control and obedience.
While the nation, indeed the world entire, recovered its collective breath, paralyzed shock and ever-increasing fear at what we had just witnessed - and repeatedly seen over and over again thanks to the corporate media - a rather peculiar, and unexpected, event occurred that hundreds of millions were unable to see, either because of shock, fear or the blindness spawned by the psychological trauma we had just experienced. A few hours after the towers had fallen, entombing thousands and forever altering the course of history, another skyscraper came tumbling down, clandestinely falling almost inconspicuously to the ground below. This building, the fifty story WTC 7, seemingly untouched and unaffected by the destruction of her much larger brothers, with no fires or smoke apparent, with no structural damage noticeable, with no airplane smashing into her, decided to fall to earth in much the same way, falling exactly the way multiple buildings have fallen over the years thanks to controlled demolitions, seemingly imploding from within, her top falling down as if her structural skeleton had been turned to butter. It would later be said by authorities that WTC 7 fell due to structural and fire damage, yet video and eyewitness testimony, as well as the open eyes of any rational human being, beg to differ. If no rational reason can be found to explain how WTC 7 fell in such a "controlled" demolition sort of way, in the absence of damage, what, then, can be deduced? What, then, are we to make of the fate that befell the Twin Towers, in direct contradiction to the laws of physics and those of logic?
Make no mistake, 9/11 was, and continues to be, a war upon the American people, a psychological operation directed at our minds and hearts that was, from the very start, nothing but the catalyst needed to launch Project Empire by the delusional criminals and miscreants in power. The events of 9/11, with the destruction of the World Trade Center, as well as the hit on the Pentagon, were designed by the architects of mass murder as the oil needed to fine-tune and start the engine of the American war machine as well as those sparkplugs of blind and unthinking support, the American people. The targets were largely symbolic, landmarks entrenched into the American psyche, easily recognizable as pillars of American strength, the strikes upon their infrastructure calculated not only to inflict mass murder, but to deeply affect the collective psychology of hundreds of millions of Americans. In 9/11 the enablers of terror would have the birth pangs of their new American Century.
The Throne Determined
The individuals who planned and executed 9/11 knew that with the ascension of George W. Bush to the throne of the American presidency their plans and projects, long since created and written yet for years lacking the keys to power, would have the green-light to commence wars upon the American people as well as those long-planned against the Arab world. Indeed, well before Bush became president the decision had already been made, deep in the dark closets of clandestine meetings and arrangements, where deal making and power decisions are made, to attack and invade Iraq, along with other nations deemed "important," both for geopolitical and ideological reasons.
These wars and invasions, which were to be the centerpiece of the miscreants' master plans, creating the birth pangs of a New American Century, one based on unilateralism, resource domination, protection of Israel's vital interests and unequaled imperial hegemony, would, it was thought, catapult America into the realm of Empire, a kingdom untouched and unrivaled, in control of the world's energy resources, in full mastery of all potential rivals, possessed of vitally important lands and locations. All that was needed was a stolen election or two, a little luck and a new Pearl Harbor from which to spawn their dogma of controlled chaos upon the globe.
When seen in this light, the importance to the miscreants that George W. Bush become president after the 2000 election, by any means necessary, is more readily understood. To the corporatist and neoconservative cabal that has declared war on the American people, it was imperative that Bush be declared the winner versus Al Gore. Only with a Bush victory could their projects and sinister intentions be born and implemented, thereby creating the conditions needed to control the country and its citizens, and by extension the entire planet, for years and even decades into the future.
Indeed, they knew that to succeed, years and even decades would be needed to transform the world according to their ideology. The Project for the New American Century, or PNAC, full of corporatists and neoconservatives, could only commence their blueprint with the selection, no matter how devious it became or how unscrupulous the methods chosen, of George W. Bush to the White House, and not just for one term. Thus, the stolen election of 2000, especially in the state of Florida, was but one more strategic maneuver designed specifically to set in place the mechanisms by which their ideology could, after years of frustration, finally be allowed to blossom. The ascension of George W. Bush to the American throne thus became an inevitable conclusion well before the first vote was cast. It was the individuals that counted the votes, and not those that cast them, who would decide the 2000 election.
The election of 2000 was orchestrated to perfection by the corporatists and neoconservatives who clandestinely or openly supported the Republican ticket. Using the television and the unrivaled power of the corporate media, with its images, sound bites, editing magic and legions of journalist lackeys, they set out to tarnish the reputation and achievements of Bill Clinton and by consequence, those of his vice-president and most likely Democratic candidate, Al Gore. Knowing how easy the buttons of manipulation can be pressed upon an unsuspecting and dumbed down American populace, they created Clinton fatigue and dislike among millions of potential voters, knowing full well that by destroying the president's likeability they were at the same time decimating Al Gore's potential votes among moderates and independents. Using the television to their advantage, they thereby eliminated the president from the election picture, knowing that Clinton, if allowed to campaign for Gore, and ever the political charmer and genius, could have delivered the election to the Democrats, or at the least made Gore a more marketable personality to the electorate.
With Clinton out of the picture, the smearing of Gore and the adulation of Bush commenced, with the corporate media using all tools at its disposal to turn Gore into an unlikable candidate, using clever editing of sound and video, combined with the negative comments of embedded lackey journalists, to turn Gore, a much worthier candidate than Bush could ever become, into a mediocre politician with no personality or popularity. He became the unlikable candidate, the elitist Washingtonian whose candidacy was imputed to Bill Clinton fatigue. The corporate media did everything in its power to sway the unsure voter that Gore was not the right man to be president. In the era of corporatism, it is the corporations that decide who will run and who will win. We the People can only vote for those deemed acceptable by the corporate establishment, those that have shown loyalty not to the People, but to the interests of the corporate world.
Meanwhile, with the complete backing of big business, the military industrial energy complex and the neoconservatives in and out of the media, Bush was transformed from east coast elitist into average Joe six-pack, with the tools of television propelling and marketing Bush as an average middle class American, with a recently purchased Texas ranch to prove it. The creation of the Bush persona was carefully orchestrated, following the results of research, polls and focus groups, trying to recreate or imitate, at least in some psychological way, shape or form, the qualities inherent in or sought by those groups needed for Bush and his still clandestine cabal to garner the most votes in the general election. Meanwhile, the corporate media gave the dimwit Bush a pass at every turn, forgiving his penchant for idiocy and his quite apparent lack of knowledge. His shady past was ignored; his repeated failures as a businessman were glossed over. The corporatist world had its man and the will of the People would not stand in their way.
As such, Bush's persona is a fiction, in as much as he is made to represent the American middle-class, for deep inside, where genetics and environment and pathology meet on the superhighway of psychological fusion, Bush is a manifestation of the unthinking knuckle-dragger, a slight step above our primate cousins, incapable of deep thought, reasoned intelligence or logical decision making, preferring to dwell in the certainties of black and white thinking and the archaic beliefs of primitive theology. He remains a hollow poster child for elitist juniors, a pampered spoiled little boy given to temper tantrums when he does not get what he wants, a man who for too long nursed off the breast of superiority, apathy and greed, for decades living in a wealth-induced bubble devoid of discipline or suffering.
Deeply flawed mentally, never able to replicate the intelligence or the success of fathers and grandfathers, possessing a lack of empathy and a willingness to inflict suffering onto others, fully aware that everything he has achieved has been due to the laurels of his father and not the talents of his existence, Bush nonetheless exhibits many characteristics of a psychotic, with a penchant for incessant lying, for walking over anybody that gets in his way, for his appetite for destruction and murder, for his indifference for human life, in his ability to bully the world, in his love of greed and power, in his distaste for knowledge and intellectual stimulation, and in the unmistakable reality that whatever he has touched during his life has turned not to gold, but to pure, one-hundred percent fecal matter. This is the George W. Bush chosen by the cabal of corporatists and neoconservatives to help usher in a new era of American imperialism. With such a president at the helm of the most powerful state in the world, a man easily influenced and manipulated, lacking reason, logic and the wisdom of leaders, PNAC found itself the instrument of terror it so desperately needed.
Knowing for months the likely outcome of the 2000 election, after months of research, studies and historical analysis, and millions of dollars invested had shown them the direction, Bush's handlers focused on the one state they knew would decide the outcome. And so, with months to go before the 2000 election, the Republican machine set out, with help from George W. Bush's brother Jeb, to embed into the election system the mechanisms needed to steal Florida in favor of Bush, the Republicans, the neoconservatives and the corporatists.
They immediately set out to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters, most of them African-American, through a myriad of illegal yet methodical ways. Felons were purged from the voting records, as were thousands of law-abiding citizens whose names were erased from registration lists. Outdated voting machines, those most likely to tabulate wrong vote counts, were introduced into poor areas for the sole purpose of disenfranchising voters, most of whom would likely vote for Gore. The irregularities were many; the votes purged were in the hundreds of thousands. The corporatist/Republican voter disenfranchisement machine, so adept at Jim Crow, had come calling again.
This election, after all, was of paramount importance, both for the corporatists from the military industrial energy complex, who were depending on Bush for hundreds of billions of dollars in future oil and war profiteering profits, as well as a complete dismantling of burdensome corporate taxes, laws and environmental regulations, not to mention untold billions of dollars in stolen Iraqi money and American taxes, and the neoconservatives, whose main interests were ideological and strategic, through imperial domination of the Middle East and Central Asia, control of oil/gas resources and mechanisms, toward complete American hegemony and eventual Empire building through domination of potential rivals, not to mention the always present protection of Israel and her interests, assuring her regional domination in the Middle East through the elimination of her rivals. By any means necessary, the 2000 election would have to be won, irrespective of the will of the People.
After the Supreme Court selected their man as the new president of the United States, a decision that was a foregone conclusion, the wheels were set in motion, and soon the project for the New American Century would have its new and improved Pearl Harbor, a 21st century Reichstag fire whose usefulness would never subside and whose demons could always, at the whim of expediency, be resurrected. The dreaded Arab terrorist was about to be born, entering the grand stage of American produced enemies, becoming the bogeyman striking fear at the heart of a cowardly majority.
A new America was soon to be born from the smoke, dust and debris of falling monoliths and demolished lives. An obedient populace would soon surface, wide eyed in allegiance to fascism, ready to hate and fear and kill for the sake of the red, white and blue, proud to march lockstep with the drums of war, eager to unleash weapons of destruction upon the lands of the barbarians. Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Iran were only months away from being gobbled up, and the Bush cabal, assured by its delusions and its arrogance, could only salivate at the thoughts of what would surely soon arrive.
Enter the Darkness
If we ponder over the horizon of the last five years and ask ourselves who has benefited the most from the tragic events of 9/11 then surely the arrow would point to the Bush administration, along with the clandestine and known neoconservatives and corporatists controlling the military industrial energy complex. As a result of 9/11, these groups, the Bush cabal for short, have seemingly grown in absolute power and wealth, declaring wars, occupying nations, killing hundreds of thousands of human beings, manipulating the American populace, fleecing America's treasury, making obscene profits from war and death, curtailing Americans' civil liberties and rights, further instituting corporatist control over government and society, engendering fear and hatred into the people and ignoring the rule of law along with the Constitution of the United States.
The Bush cabal has succeeded in reaching many of the goals it had set for itself before taking office in 2000. In this war against the American people, the cabal has utterly defeated us, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. We are quite impotent, it seems, to their manipulation of our fears and the conditioning of our hatreds. It has been 9/11, that catalyst to population control and manipulation, that has cemented the Bush cabal firmly in power, doing with the American people as they wish, leading us further down the road to corporatism. The cabal has systematically declawed us of our bravery, making us babies crying out for our mother. It has succeeded at manipulating us through the use of fear and terror, actually convincing us to throw away liberties and flush down freedoms for the sake of protection and security, even though the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
It was 9/11, a devastating conduit of brain wave alteration, more than anything else, that has completely and systematically transformed the American people into the sheeple and lemmings needed by authoritarian rulers everywhere to govern and impose their tyrannical policies. The 9/11 psychological war upon the citizenry, or, in the words of the PNAC, the "new Pearl Harbor," was designed to nurture perpetual fear and hatred in hundreds of millions of minds, in the process harvesting loyal and obedient citizen soldiers. The attack, taking place on a few city blocks of the largest metropolis in the country, devastated two giant buildings but left the rest of the country, besides the Pentagon, physically unscathed.
What September 11, 2001, did, however, more than anything else, was destroy not the physical infrastructure of America, but the mental energy of the nation and its citizens. It was both a mental manipulation dirty bomb and a weapon of mass deception rolled into one, a direct hit against the very foundation of America's citizenry, creating the most fragile, and by extension subservient, populace since Nazi Germany. September 11th's tragedy, its morbid violence, its sinister evils were played and replayed countless times, from every possible angle, sending shockwaves into our pores, fear running through our veins, with every replay our mind succumbing further inside our fragile psyches, searching for answers, and vengeance. The thirst for Arab blood was what the cabal wanted, and it was what it got.
A direct hit upon the American psyche did more damage to the nation than two hits on colossal skyscrapers ever could, yet slowly but methodically, our mind became the dominion of the cabal. We became, over the course of a few days, possessed by the demons of fear and hatred, like zombies sleep-walking through our daily lives, not knowing what to do, experiencing emotions we had never felt, remembering tragedy we had just recently seen, searching in darkness for light, needing to place blind trust in the nation's authorities, needing to trust our security and freedom and democracy upon the leaders of the country.
We became putty in the hands of the cabal, and they knew it. Everything they wanted we would gladly give them for we had become, in the span of a few days, corralled sheep and caged lemmings, robbed of free thought, our bravery supplanted by the fear hovering throughout the land, our reason destroyed by the hate in our hearts. We wanted security, safety and most of all, vengeance. We failed to think logically about the mess the cabal was immersing us in. We failed to understand the ramifications of entering a hornet's nest and murdering tens of thousands of people. We failed to comprehend the vicious cycle of violence our acquiescence would soon spawn, nor the disaster that was to unfold. Standing behind the flag and our patriotism blind we became to the view of reality. We wanted revenge for 9/11; we wanted to unleash carnage upon Arab lands, whether they were a threat or not. We fell right into the cabal's master plans.
The tragic events of 9/11 became an instant myth in our collective consciousness, its story firmly entrenched in our minds, its official narrative becoming both national tragedy and inspiration, its fable unable to be altered, its façade unbending, its reality hidden by blind rage and closed minds. We were conditioned never to question the official narrative, or the obvious 9/11 Commission white wash. To question and even seek truth was to delve in realities we could not bare or wish to understand. The implications would be unfathomable, and deeply disturbing. For if our protectors had committed mass murder in New York and Washington, if our leaders were responsible for 9/11, then who and what was running the nation? If they could kill 3,000 citizens, what was stopping them from murdering many more? It was better to be brainwashed with the official story than to question the uncomfortable. It was easier to never question than to seek the truth. In the end, it was easier to drink the Kool-Aid than enter the rabbit hole.
In the end, it was simple to believe that we had been attacked by what we did not know or understand, by entities that wished to destroy our freedom and our democracy, by brown-skinned bogey men lurking in every corner and underneath every bed, waiting to come out of closets, ready to murder and rape, pillage and devastate. We were made to fear, and with fear we lost reason. We were made to hate, and with hate born free thought died. The Arab and the Muslim had become our enemy; almost overnight more than a billion humans were condemned by a barrage of corporate media propaganda and government manipulation, seemingly too conveniently, too prepared and scripted, as if the enemy had been concocted months and years before, its fault carefully planned and orchestrated, marketed for all its faults and none of its virtues, transforming a group of people into the monsters of our imaginations and the madmen of our corporate media indoctrination.
The Bush cabal had succeeded in concocting an enemy from the same lands and region where it wanted to wage war and occupation. Geopolitics, geostrategy, oil, gas and pipelines, imperial hegemony and absolute power, how lucky for the cabal that America's new bogeymen hailed from the same nations scheduled for invasion. The cabal's actions, or inaction, depending on how one looks at 9/11, embedded the lust for vengeance, and thus for war, on the American population. The Bush cabal, fully aware that the American people would never consent or give approval to multiple wars of choice upon lands and peoples that had not done us harm, thus needed a catalyst, a new Pearl Harbor, a 9/11-like event from which to alter the minds of 300 million Americans, making warmongers out of pacifists, vengeance-seekers out of peaceful citizens. Without the trauma and the shock and the fear and the hatred and the blind rage spawned by 9/11, the Bush cabal would never have been able to embark on their warmongering and profiteering ways. The anger and hatred and blind trust engendered thanks to 9/11 made sure that the cabal could proceed with long-held plans and ideologies.
Thus we were fed the lies and the deceits and the manipulations that exist in the lands of authoritarianism, where the citizenry is too dumbed down and unable, or unwilling, to question its own government. We followed the fable and the bull manure, believing, still to this day, a government that has lied about every single issue to ever arise in five years since usurping power. In a world where war is peace, slavery is freedom and ignorance is knowledge, let it also be said that lies are truth in these new days of "new normals" and "birth pangs" and "bringing democracy to the Middle East." Let it be said we have entered the darkness, from which light dare not enter.
Terrorist Cabal
The cabal, it must be understood, is comprised of pure blooded authoritarians, corporatist (fascists) tyrants that care not one ounce for the well-being of the population. To them we are but mere peasants, nothing but peons and pawns and patsies relegated to playing the grand game of geopolitical and greed-mongering chess, doing our part to advance the neocon Machiavelli wet dream of imperial hegemony. The death of 3,000 citizens means nothing to these monsters, much like the murder of 250,000 Iraqis or the death of 2,600 American soldiers. The Bush cabal is made up of madmen and monsters, incapable of living in reality or of understanding truth, yet tyrannical enough to create a new Pearl Harbor through the controlled demolition of the Twin Towers (not to mention WTC 7 and a strike on the Pentagon). They dwell in an infallible bubble of make believe and of unrealistic theories, a land of Kool-Aid drinkers and dependents of delusional cocktails.
The Bush cabal has no morals or scruples, preferring lies to truth, secrecy to transparency, life in a pitch black void over that in translucent light. They have no trouble murdering their own citizens to pursue and achieve their goals and ideology. They are authoritarians, tyrants more comfortable living in a police state than in an open society, inside their pores hating every facet of true democracy, for to them the will of the people should never be heeded. Democracy is a hindrance of governance, an uncomfortable principle that works to destroy their vision, though now made a charade for the masses to believe the system is as it has always been. The death of democracy and of the Constitution would send tears of joy running down their cheeks.
In their view citizens are incapable of making the right decision and should therefore be told what to think, how to act and who to follow and obey. The majority needs to be conditioned as to what to do and how to do it. To them the corporate media is but a tool of control and manipulation, a way to make good sheep and lemmings out of the citizenry, a loudspeaker to proclaim that the state is the only entity capable of protecting the nation, a disseminator of lies and half truths, a gatekeeper telling the people only what the cabal wants us to know.
The Bush cabal cares only about absolute power, hegemony, greed and wealth. They care nothing for American soldiers, all of whom are considered cannon fodder for the military industrial energy complex. Wars are fought not for defending "freedom and democracy," which to them is nothing more than a catchy focus group catchphrase, rather to expand and defend the interests of American corporations, as well as to enrich the military industrial energy complex. After all, instability in the Middle East is great for energy corporations; the more instability the higher the price of a barrel of crude will be and the higher will thus be a gallon at the American pump. The cabal thinks in black and white, not in shades of grey; it makes policy based on ideology, not reality. It operates under the theory of controlled chaos, unleashing hell to get to an eventual heaven.
The cabal makes enormous profits at our expense, helping shrink our wallets while fattening theirs. The cabal supplies billions of dollars in military arms to the Middle East, and to the world, only to see nations declare war on each other, killing and murdering with our weapons. Human life and human rights, along with international law are but bumps in the road to total hegemony, to be sidestepped on the road to Empire. Civil rights and freedoms in America are contrary to the authoritarian dream; if it was up to them America would be under martial law and under severe police powers, our civil liberties curtailed severely, our freedoms eroded. In time they will inevitably get their wish; each year the threat to our liberties and freedoms is exacerbated, not by terrorists but by the Bush cabal.
For five years we have been told to look far and wide for so-called terrorists, across the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, given a magnifying glass into the Middle East. It is here, we are made to believe, where they hate us for our freedoms and our democracy, for our "grand" way of life, though certainly not for our occupations, undying support for Israel and brutal foreign policy. It is said they hate us for our democracy, yet we refuse to grant them the same freedoms. It is said they strike us for our open society, yet we exploit their lands, rape their women and subjugate their daily lives. For five years our minds have been distracted with the threats posed by Arabs and Muslims, most of which happen to live below the last remaining fields of oil. If the French or the Germans lived in the Middle East, they too would today be America's enemy, our terrorist barbarians.
For five long years we alone have been responsible for sacrificing our civil liberties and our freedoms, not to mention our democracy, which in essence is today nothing but a charade, a banana republic façade exported to a first world nation. Our fear and cowardice has resulted in the loss of liberty at home and in warmongering escapades abroad, creating in Iraq the worst strategic disaster in the history of the nation. Our almost absurd over-reactions to bull manure infested terror warnings, nothing but control mechanisms implemented to remind us who is protecting us and who deserves our loyalty and our vote, make us the laughing stock of the world. Terror warnings laced in lies and manipulation should be questioned, not religiously followed. They should be understood for what they are, not feared like the end of the world. Terror warnings about dark-skinned Arabs and Muslims are but a ploy to control your thoughts and your lives, designed for you to place allegiance to the cabal, to distract you from the erosion of liberties or the disasters in the Middle East. They are, like 9/11, a figment of our imaginations, nightmares of our conditioned minds, stories meant to frighten us into giving away more of our freedoms and liberties. Sadly, however, these mechanisms seem to be working brilliantly.
All this time we have been looking to the Middle East for the dreaded terrorist, yet since 9/11 we should have been looking for terrorists within our own shores. It is the Bush corporatist and neocon cabal that is the real terrorist organization. It is they, a bunch of miscreants of the highest order, criminal minds addicted to power, wealth and greed, arrogant and monstrous in behavior, that are the cause of terror worldwide. It is they that have made our nation less safe, not more. It is they who are guilty of committing mass murder upon our shores and it is they who will not hesitate to murder many more if it suits their needs.
It is because of them that the so-called war on terror paralyzes and controls us. It is they that spawned it and continue nurturing it, carefully rearing it like a mother does a child, ever so proud of what it has become, looking forward to the greatness it can one day turn into. The war on terror is their brainchild, a creation designed to replicate its malevolent energy over and over, growing and expanding through the vicious cycle of hatred born and murder committed, repeated until a clash of cultures, civilizations and religions sustains and engorges it, creating the controlled chaos needed to satisfy the delusion of the Project for the New American Century.
The so-called war of terror is a figment of their imagination, now lingering in ours, a creation that has become a self-fulfilling prophesy. It was a war started by the cabal, a result of our foreign policy and our destruction of both people and land abroad, a vicious cycle that feeds itself more and more with each new death inflicted by our corporate controlled military. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, for every death or maiming the thirst for vengeance grows; for every brutal occupation calls for hatred and revenge arise. With every American made missile launched, artillery exploded, bullet released the war on terror is assured of new recruits, new reactions of opposite and intended consequences. This is the war on terror's mantra, its slogan, the law created by the cabal so that it never ends, just as it never began. The war on terror is designed to last into perpetuity, for America always needs an enemy to quench its war culture thirst. It always needs war and enemies to cause fright among the populace, the easier to control millions. War means profit, wealth and the sustained viability of the economy. In America, war, and thus enemies, is good for business.
The war on terror is but an illusion, a concoction disseminated by the Bush cabal and its journalist hacks to control the population into submission, into forcing us to abandon the freedoms and democracy we once enjoyed. We are being frightened by the cabal of terrorists using the corporate media and government loudspeakers, our strength and courage evaporating with each new terror threat or warning, with each new sermon advocating still another war of choice. We are being used and abused, our lives transformed, slowly but surely, methodically creating a "new normal," an American police state, an authoritarian system full of followers, full of yes-men and women, full of sheep and lemmings, unable to comprehend how we allowed our nation to become the reality of our nightmares.
We must open our eyes to the reality of the Bush cabal. They are the real terrorist organization. They are the murderers and the criminals, the destroyers of life and the butchers of the Middle East. They are preparing us for perpetual war, for a future devoid of security or freedom or democracy. The war on terror will not end; our troops will be in Iraq for decades to come; wars against Iran and Syria have been planned. There will be many more 9/11's to come, some real and some concocted, yet the next one will undoubtedly open the doors to a perpetual police state, altering dramatically our way of life, making George Orwell roll in his grave. According to the cabal of terrorists, it is inevitable.
One more attack on our soil is all it will take for the bastion of democracy and freedom to turn into the cesspool of authoritarian rule. The cabal of terrorists is looking for an excuse, an opportunity. How many of us will die this time? How many of our children will be sent to the next war(s)? How many liberties will we have left? How many of our friends and neighbors will be made to disappear? Will we accept their rule, and continue fighting a charade, or will we finally put an end to this madness? Will we change our ways, or will we continue living like the sheep and lemmings we are being conditioned to become?
We must put a stop to the madness before the madness puts a stop to us. We must reclaim America from the claws of authoritarianism and corporatism. We must show we are not pawns or patsies in the games the neocons play. We must show we are brave and strong, not fearful and weak. They are few, we are many. Truth and fairness and justice are on our side; karma and malevolence on theirs. The time for indifference and passivity are over. Enough fear mongering and war making, enough terror threat manipulation. We must show that we do not hate, that we actually think for ourselves, that we seek peace and international harmony. Enough death and suffering has gone on in our name. America is being made the laughing stock of the world, hated like never before, stirring anger and boiling rage for all we allow to happen. Only this time, the peoples of the world no longer differentiate between the government and the people. We are all hated now. The time to take a stand is now, for if not now, when? We were once loved and admired, respected and an inspiration. Let not five years of disarray become a lifetime of disaster. We know who the real terrorists are. It is up to us to show them that their America is not our America. It is time we show them the door out of the country.
Their America is not our America, for we are the People of the World; they but the Scourge of Humanity. We are Peace and they are War, they are few and we are many, many more.
Original
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Editorial: 30,000 fill the streets around the White House
Answer
15/08/2006
[Editor's Note: Get your butts out there and support them]
More then 30,000 demonstrators filled the streets around the White House today chanting, “Stop the US-Israeli war against Lebanon and Palestine.”
The New York Times reported today that the demonstration's “diverse crowd included many Arab-Americans and Muslims, college students and families, as well as veterans of prior demonstrations against the war in Iraq.” The NY Times goes on, “thousands of people rallied near the White House on Saturday to protest what they described as Israeli aggression in Lebanon and the United States’ unwavering support for Israel …At the rally on Saturday, the prevailing sentiments were expressed in signs held aloft by marchers: “Occupation is a crime — Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine.” “Stop Israeli terrorism.” “No justice, no peace.’’
This was the largest demonstration in the US since the commencement of the Israeli bombing campaign of Lebanon and Gaza in mid-July.
The demonstration was initiated by the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation and the National Council of Arab Americans. More then 150 buses brought demonstrators from, MI, IL, NY, MD, FL, VA, MA, NJ and 25 other states.
In San Francisco, 10,000 people marched in one of several other August 12 actions timed to coincide with the Emergency March on Washington. In Los Angeles 5,000 demonstrated. Smaller actions of about 600 people in Seattle and 300 people in Orlando Florida were also held.
August 12 a Global Day of Action
August 12 emerged as a day of coordinated worldwide protests. Street demonstrations were held in Mombasa and Nairobi, Kenya; Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, Canada;
San Francisco August 12
Madrid, Spain; Paraguay; Damascus, Syria; Santiago, Chile; Mumbai, India; Istanbul, Turkey; Mogadishu, Somalia; Dhaka, Bangladesh; Karachi, Pakistan; Jakarta, Indonesia; Sydney, Australia; Nablus, Palestine; Sao Paulo, Brazil; and many others.
Speakers at the Washington D.C. demonstration included, former Attorney General Ramsey Clark; Mahdi Bray the Executive Director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation; Mara Verheyden-Hilliard an attorney and co-founder of the Partnership for Civil Justice; Brian Becker the National Coordinator of the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition; Dr. Mounzer Sleiman of the National Council of Arab Americans; Osama Siblani Publisher at Arab American News; Peta Lindsay Howard University student and Coordinator ANSWER Student and Youth; and Dr. Clovis Maksoud the Former ambassador from the Arab League to the U.N, Arab-American Anti Discrimination Committee (ADC), and others.
The U.S.-Israeli war against Lebanon and Palestine has created immense suffering for the people but it has also created widespread resistance. The Bush administration and the Israeli government believed that this massive bombing campaign would force all of Lebanon into a new U.S. sphere of influence. Just the opposite has happened. This same fantasy has backfired in Iraq as well.
Overwhelming military power has inflicted unimaginable human suffering but failed in achieving its political objectives of transforming the entire oil rich region into a virtual colony. The effort to achieve the “new” colonialism by brute force has and will inspire continued resistance by the Lebanese, Palestinian, Iraqi, Syrian and Iranian people and all the peoples of the area.
The August 12 Emergency Demonstrations were an important step in forging the kind of U.S. anti-war movement in the United States that embraces the just cause of the peoples’ in the Middle East who are rejecting domination by the new imperial Empire. Instead of having the people of the United States pitted against the Arab people our message is one of solidarity.
People in the United States must struggle for jobs, justice, education, and in opposition to racism at home rather than be dragged along by the war makers in Washington D.C. Their chauvinistic campaign against those in the Middle East who are seeking to freely determine their own destiny is a calculated propaganda effort by the Bush administration -- and all those Republicans and Democrats alike -- who support its program of endless war. It is not the people of the United States but the big transnational corporations and banks, and especially the largest oil monopolies, who are the real beneficiaries of the Bush program.
Help take the next steps and stay involved as an activist or supporter of the anti-war movement. Congratulations to all the thousands of volunteers and supporters who made the August 12 demonstrations such an important step in continuing to build this movement. Contact one of the A.N.S.W.E.R. offices listed below and come out to the next volunteers and organizers meeting. If there is not a close A.N.S.W.E.R. office to your area but want to stay involved, contact the national office below.
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Lebanon
Bush says Israel defeated Hezbollah
By DEB RIECHMANN
Associated Press
August 15, 2006
WASHINGTON - President Bush said Monday that Israel defeated Hezbollah's guerrillas in the monthlong Mideast war and that the Islamic militants were to blame for the deaths of hundreds of Lebanese civilians.
Bush admonished Iran and Syria for backing Hezbollah, which captured two Israeli soldiers on July 12 igniting the conflict. Both sides claimed victory Monday, hours after a U.N.-brokered cease-fire took effect, while Bush said Israel prevailed.
"Hezbollah attacked Israel. Hezbollah started the crisis, and Hezbollah suffered a defeat in this crisis," the president said at the State Department after a day of meetings with his top defense, diplomatic and national security advisers.
The United States backed Israel in the war, and Bush made clear he was determined to help the Israelis in the post-fighting struggle of words about who wound up on top.
The president portrayed the war, which killed about 790 Lebanese and 155 Israelis, as part of a broader struggle between freedom and terrorism. He said one can only imagine how much more dangerous such a conflict would be if Iran possessed nuclear weapons.
Bush said Hezbollah lost, though Israel didn't knock out the guerrillas.
Israel's prime minister and Bush said the offensive eliminated the "state within a state" run by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, however, declared that his guerrillas achieved a "strategic, historic victory" over Israel.
"Hezbollah, of course, has got a fantastic propaganda machine, and they're claiming victories," Bush said. "But how can you claim victory when, at one time, you were a state within a state, safe within southern Lebanon, and now you're going to be replaced by a Lebanese army and an international force?"
Bush said a United Nations-brokered cease-fire was an important step toward ending the violence, yet he acknowledged that the truce was fragile.
"We certainly hope the cease-fire holds because it is step one of making sure that Lebanon's democracy is strengthened," Bush said.
The U.N. plan calls for a joint Lebanese-international force to act as a buffer between Israel and Hezbollah militiamen. France and Italy, along with predominantly Muslim Turkey and Malaysia, have signaled willingness to contribute troops to the joint force, but consultations are needed on the force's makeup and mandate.
Bush spoke on the phone early Monday to Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, and Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema said Italy's troops could be ready within two weeks.
"There's going to be a new power in the south of Lebanon, and that's going to be a Lebanese force with a robust international force to help them seize control of the country - that part of the country," Bush said.
On Bush's first day back from vacation, his motorcade traveled between the White House and State and Defense departments for meetings on transforming the U.S. military, on homeland security and on the warfare in Afghanistan and
Iraq.
Sectarian violence has surged in Iraq and created what some consider the greatest threat to stability there since
Saddam Hussein's government was toppled three years ago. Meanwhile, efforts to get North Korea and Iran to restrict their nuclear ambitions remained stalled.
"We live in troubled times, but I'm confident in our capacity to not only protect the homeland, but I'm confident in our capacity to leave behind a better world," Bush said at a meeting at the Pentagon where he sat between Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Vice President
Dick Cheney.
His words sought to calm jitters about last week's arrests of more than two dozen people in England and Pakistan accused of plotting to blow up as many as 10 passenger planes flying between Britain and the United States.
The nation's safety looms large as an issue in the midterm elections. Both Republicans and Democrats are maneuvering for political advantage with control of Congress at stake.
Comment: Just to clarify a few things in Bush's speech: Israeli forces entered Lebanon, and two of their soldiers were captured. Israel then started bombing Lebanon. THAT is what started the war. How can Hezbollah be blamed for the death of Lebanese civilians when it was Israeli weapons - supplied by the Bush administration and previous US administrations - that were launched by Israel against Lebanese civilians?? Furthermore, when even mainstream US media outlets were reporting that Israel had killed almost no members of Hezbollah and countless civilians, how can Bush actually stand there and claim that Hezbollah has been defeated? Even Israel claims that Hezbollah has NOT been defeated, and that means the war is not yet over. So, it's rather curious that Curious George has so brazenly (and incorrectly) declared that Hezbollah has been beaten...
"Bush said Hezbollah lost, though Israel didn't knock out the guerrillas." I know, I know, it doesn't make any sense and sounds like Bush is saying Israel beat Hizb'allah but didn't beat Hizb'allah, but who says Bush every said anything that made sense? And anyway, yours is not to wonder why, yours is but to listen to Bush and shut the hell up. Ok?
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Israel's verdict: We lost the war
By Donald Macintyre in Metulla, Israel
The Independent
15 August 2006
Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, was obliged to admit "shortcomings" in the 34-day-old conflict in Lebanon yesterday as he launched what may prove a protracted fight for his own political survival.
Mr Olmert's admission in a stormy Knesset session came in the face of devastating poll figures showing a majority of the Israeli public believes none or only a very small part of the goals of the war had been achieved.
Adding insult to injury, the leader of Hizbollah, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, crowed on television that his guerrillas had achieved a "strategic historic victory" over Israel.
The Prime Minister, who was repeatedly heckled by opposition MPs during his address, insisted the international commitments in Friday night's UN resolution would "change fundamentally" the balance of forces on the country's northern border.
But, facing his first major political crisis since winning the election five months ago, he acknowledged "the overall responsibility for this operation lies with me, the Prime Minister. I am not asking to share this with anyone." A number of Knesset members including the Israeli Arab Ahmed Tibi, a furious opponent of the war, were ejected from the chamber.
The opening of what is likely to prove a bitter post-mortem came as the two sides began an uneasy truce. The conflict is estimated to have cost well over 1,000 Lebanese lives as well as those of 156 Israelis - civilians and soldiers.
The fragility of the ceasefire was underlined by four incidents in which Israeli troops shot dead six Hizbollah fighters after the ceasefire began at 8am yesterday. The Israeli military insisted the incidents were within guidelines permitting troops to open fire when threatened and did not jeopardise the truce.
Promising that the government "will have to examine ourselves at all levels," Mr Olmert fought to pre-empt a probable campaign by the political right by declaring that Hizbollah had been dealt a "harsh blow". He added that the guerrilla group was no longer "a state within a state" or a "terrorist organisation that is allowed to act inside a state as an arm of the axis of evil", referring to Syria and Iran.
While refraining from a direct personal attack on Mr Olmert, Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the right- wing Likud opposition, lost little time in declaring "there were many failures, failures in identifying the threat, failures in preparing to meet the threat, failures in the management of the war, failures in the management of the home front."
Critics from right and left were fortified by a Globes Smith poll showing, remarkably given the degree to which the army is embedded in Israeli society, that 52 per cent of electors believed the Israel Defence Forces had been unsuccessful in its Lebanon offensive as opposed to 44 per cent who believed it did well.
Mr Netanyahu also pointedly chose to attack unilateral withdrawals - the issue on which Mr Olmert fought his election in March. Mr Netanyahu said: "We left Lebanon to the last centimetre and they are firing. We left Gaza to the last centimetre and they are firing."
Meanwhile, the Hizbollah leader said he believes the Lebanese army and international troops are "incapable of protecting Lebanon". He also said it was the "wrong time" for a public discussion on disarming the guerrilla group.
At the eastern end of the northern border, heavy artillery barrages and repeated tank machine-gun fire continued yesterday up to the ceasefire deadline.
But as the artillery batteries fell silent and firing stopped, there was a final single explosion at about 8.05pm, sending a plume of grey smoke upwards before the uneasy calm began.
Amid a wave of angry civilian reactions in Israel after more than a month in which an estimated 3,500 rockets were fired into northern Israel, Sam Echahid, the manager of a local supermarket, was asked whether he thought the ceasefire would hold. He said: "I hope not. We haven't done anything yet."
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Both sides claim victory
Monday 14 August 2006, 21:45 Makka Time, 18:45 GMT
Israel and Hezbollah both claimed victory as a UN-brokered truce to end the month-old fighting took effect.
Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, said his guerrillas had achieved a "strategic, historic victory" against Israel.
"We came out victorious in a war in which big Arab armies were defeated [before]," he said in a pre-recorded address on Al-Manar television on Monday.
Nasrallah also said that now was not the time to debate the disarmament of Hezbollah fighters, arguing that the issue should be done in secret sessions of the government to avoid serving Israeli interests.
"This is immoral, incorrect and inappropriate," he said. "It is wrong timing on the psychological and moral level particularly before the ceasefire.
"Who will defend Lebanon in case of a new Israeli offensive? The Lebanese army and international troops are incapable of protecting Lebanon."
Moments after his speech ended, celebratory gunfire erupted across Beirut.
Earlier, posters of Nasrallah were distributed in Beirut's Shia-dominant southern suburbs with the caption: "The divine victory."
Counter-claims
However, Israel maintained on Monday that it had won a diplomatic victory over Hezbollah because the UN resolution would put the group under international scrutiny.
"We have the diplomatic advantage as Hezbollah is now under the microscope of the international community," Yigal Palmor, a foreign ministry spokesman said.
Hezbollah and its chief, Hassan Nasrallah, "will have to respect resolution 1701", he said, which calls for an embargo on arms and training to fighters in Lebanon.
"This means that there will no longer be a state within a state along our northern border to keep provoking us," he said.
Palmor said: "Politically and militarily, Hezbollah can no longer do what it likes in Lebanon."
Shimon Peres, the deputy prime minister of Israel, said: "Hezbollah will not finish a huge hero, but with its tail between its legs."
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Ceasefire or Trojan Horse?
By Mike Whitney
Information Clearing House
08/14/06
"Israel's strategy is to establish positions as far north as possible to implement a fighting withdrawal, meaning they will try to take on as much of Hezbollah as they can as they work their way south. " Ha'aretz editorial 8-17-06
"As long as there is Israeli military movement, Israeli field aggression and Israeli soldiers occupying our land, it is our natural right to fight them and defend our lands, our homes, and ourselves." Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, head of the Lebanese armed resistance Hezbollah
Israel's sudden push to the Litani River is a blatant act of political desperation intended to conceal the humiliating defeat the IDF has suffered at the hands of Hezbollah. It comes in the wake of a UN ceasefire agreement worked out by friends of Israel in the Bush administration who were looking for a diplomatic way for Olmert to climb down from Israel's greatest debacle since the Yom Kippur war.
The so-called ceasefire is tailored to stop the victim of Israeli aggression from defending himself, but provides the IDF with the go-ahead to continue its rampage. Such is the Kafkaesque logic of the United Nations and their puppet-masters in Tel Aviv.
There is no longer any reasonable expectation that Israel will accomplish any of its stated objectives. The mighty IDF has been slapped around by a handful of tough-minded guerillas who kept Israel pinned-down to within a 5 mile radius of the northern border for a full month. It is, without question, one of the greatest triumphs in the history of asymmetrical warfare.
Hezbollah will not be "disarmed" as Ehud Olmert boasted just weeks ago. Instead, their fortunes look to be steadily improving as Israel continues to flail about dropping bombs indiscriminately on critical infrastructure and civilians with impunity. The conflict has simply reinforced widely-held suspicions that the Jewish State is a loose-cannon ready to go berserk at the slightest provocation.
Prime Minister Olmert, Defense Minister Peretz and Chief of Staff Dan Halutz have been the brunt of withering criticism in the Israeli press, and for good reason. They are, without question, the worst collection of bunglers in Israeli history; the political equivalent of the "3 Stooges". Sharon may have been a war criminal, but he was an astute strategist. Olmert and "wrongway" Halutz are completely clueless. As soon as it was decided that the war could not be won militarily, Halutz charged up to the Litani River backed by thousands ground-troops afraid that his chances for glory were quickly ebbing-away. In the process, another 31 soldiers were killed in a campaign that still has no clearly defined objectives. Meanwhile, Shaul Mofaz, the only Israeli general who could probably transform the current disaster into something resembling "a draw"; is left sitting on the sidelines.
What a fiasco.
Now that the ceasefire has been approved, the politicians and the generals are stumbling over themselves trying to cobble together the victory that has escaped them for the last 4 weeks. Olmert and co. know that as soon as the dust settles they will face an irate Israeli public looking for someone to hold accountable for the debacle. Ha'aretz op-ed writer Ari Shavit summed up the public mood this way:
"One thing should be clear: If Olmert runs away now from the war he initiated, he will not be able to remain prime minister for even one more day. Chutzpah has its limits. You cannot lead an entire nation to war promising victory, produce humiliating defeat and remain in power. You cannot bury 120 Israelis in cemeteries, keep a million Israelis in shelters for a month, wear down deterrent power, bring the next war very close, and then say, oooops, I made a mistake."
Columnist Moshe Arens added to Shavit's critique saying, "The task facing Israel now is to restore its deterrent posture and prepare for the attacks that are sure to come. But not with this leadership. They have exhausted whatever little credit they had when they were voted into office."
The anger that is growing in Israel is narcissistic and self-serving and has nothing to do with the vast devastation the IAF has visited on battered Lebanon.
Lebanon is in ruins. The country's main bridges, roads, industries, ports, canals, telecommunications, oil depots, water facilities and factories have been buried by a steady barrage of Israeli precision guided munitions. George Bush can be credited with a large part of the damage. He rushed an order of high-tech bombs to his friends in Tel Aviv to make sure that the slaughter would continue without interruption. He also blocked the ceasefire resolutions at the UN which allowed Israel to continue its withering bombardment of Lebanon.
The UN ceasefire agreement was clearly written in close collaboration with Israel. It allows the IDF to continue "defensive operations" while Hezbollah is required to stop fighting. Israel interprets this as a green light for aggressively pursuing Hezbollah.
According to Israeli daily newspaper Ha'aretz, "The army will stop its offensive as soon as it is ordered to do so by the political leadership and later it will begin to retrace its steps to uncover any pockets of resistance that may remain in the area." With troops presently located at the Litani River that could involve military operations throughout the entire south, which means that hostilities could continue for months.
Israel is at war with itself. It's trying to produce a victory where victory is impossible. With less than 24 hours until the ceasefire goes into effect, they've unleashed a massive aerial assault bombing more than 50 cities and towns north and south of the Litani River. The bombing campaign drew the immediate censure of Kofi Annan who said that the attack was not in keeping with the spirit of the ceasefire.
No matter. Israel will keep firing away; savaging what little is left of Lebanon's tattered infrastructure in the vain hope that they might patch together something that resembles success, but to what affect? Hezbollah may be badly damaged and its supply-lines ruptured, but they merely need to hang on to generate a reliable stream of new recruits and to win plaudits from around the world for standing up to the IDF.
Prime Minister Olmert is ambivalent about the sudden military escalation just prior to the ceasefire. Clearly, the war is controlling Olmert; Olmert does not control the war. The uproar in the media has left him vacillating and hesitant; searching for other solutions besides a quick withdrawal. He looks like a man gabbing at straws, hoping for a decisive event that will prove that Hezbollah is weakening. Meanwhile the IDF casualties continue to mount and the collective angst of the Israeli public becomes more palpable.
As for Sheik Nasrallah, he has resisted the usual inflammatory rhetoric and demonstrated Hezbollah's lethal proficiency on the battlefield where it counts. The guerillas have matched the IDF man-for-man and forced the world's 4th most powerful army into a stalemate.
In the early days of the war, Nasrallah described Hezbollah's abilities in modest terms:
"We are not a classic army extending form the sea to Mt Hermon. We are a popular and serious resistance movement that is present in many areas and axes. Our equation and principles are the following: When the Israelis enter, they must pay dearly in terms of their tanks, officers, and soldiers. That is what we pledge to do and we will honor our pledge, God willing".
Olmert should study this passage and commit it to memory. Nasrallah has laid out his very limited goals in the war in lucid but powerful language. These are realistic objectives and they are achievable, unlike Israel's. That's why he will probably prevail, if he perseveres. Nasrallah does not entertain the foolish idea that he will overwhelm the IDF or invade Israel. He simply plans to gnaw away day by day, hour by hour, at the occupying army forcing them eventually to retreat. He is a shrewd student of asymmetrical warfare and grasps how to exploit the vulnerabilities of a regular army as well as Israeli public opinion (which is already souring on the conflict)
Nasrallah has said that he will abide by the terms of the ceasefire, but will not disarm until the Lebanese Army and the UN forces are in place and the IDF has left Lebanese soil. In his mind, it is pointless to talk about disarmament now when Hezbollah is the only force capable of defending Lebanon from foreign invasion.
Will Hezbollah willingly disarm after Israel leaves?
That is what Israel wonders, but it is the wrong question. The real question is: What are the chances that the IDF will reinvade sometime in the future as they have 4 times before? And, who will provide the weaponry that will create a viable deterrent to Israeli aggression so that Lebanon can live in peace?
Nasrallah's promises to disarm mean nothing. His primary responsibility is to his own people, to protect their right to live free of Israeli violence and occupation.
If Sheik Nasrallah chooses to disarm and put his faith in Israel's assurances of non aggression, that's his choice. But he should pay close attention to the treatment of the Palestinians in Gaza before he sets his rifle down.
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Olmert faces Lebanon backlash
Tuesday 15 August 2006, 10:45 Makka Time, 7:45 GMT
Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, is facing growing criticism over his handling of the Lebanon crisis, as opposition politicians say the conflict was mismanaged.
On Monday, the Israeli premier was heckled during his speech to the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, with opposition MPs demanding a commission of inquiry into the conduct of the battle.
Olmert, who said that responsibility for the military operation lay with him, said there were "shortcomings" in the offensive against Hezbollah but urged patience, arguing that the Israeli army had "publically battered this murderous organisation".
However, Benyamin Netanyahu, opposition leader in the Knesset, said that the government's policy had "expressed weakness".
"There were failures in identifying the threat, in managing the war, and in comforting the home front," he said.
Netanyahu also dismissed the United Nations-brokered ceasefire which began on Monday morning as merely a brief lull which would only enable Hezbollah to re-arm.
More than 150 Israelis, mostly soldiers, died during the conflict in Lebanon, while about 1,100 Lebanese, mainly civilians, were also killed.
Domestic anger
An opinion poll conducted by an Israeli newspaper late on Monday showed support for Olmert's Kadima party had slumped since the conflict in Lebanon began, with more than half of those questioned saying they felt the Israeli army had not achieved its aims in Lebanon.
Critics of the campaign say that Olmert failed to crush the Hezbollah Shia militia group as promised and express doubt that the operation will halt rocket attacks into northern Israel.
Meanwhile, Israeli newspapers on Tuesday quoted Amir Peretz, the Israeli defence minister, as saying that he planned to assign a task force to investigate the Israeli army's conduct during the war in Lebanon.
"As defence minister, I intend to appoint a team that will conduct an intensive, comprehensive investigation of all the events leading up to the war and during the war," he said.
Israel's Jerusalem Post also reported that Micha Lindenstrauss, Israel's state comptroller, will lead a second investigation into preparations for the war in the home front, while the Knesset foreign affairs and defence committee will form a third parliamentary probe into the war.
Comment: It is a sign of the sorry state of our world that Olmert is being criticised for not having killed enough Lebanese civilians, for not having dropped enough bombs, for not having been more ruthless when the entire war was a well-planned war of aggression against a country that had done nothing.
Where are the real values? Where are the people of conscience to tear away the veil from these horrendous lies?
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Israel's war on Lebanon "planned aggression": Syria
www.chinaview.cn 2006-08-15 18:04:55
DAMASCUS, Aug. 15 (Xinhua) -- Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday told the opening session of a journalists conference that Israel's war on Lebanon was a "planned aggression".
"The Israeli aggression against Lebanon was not connected with its kidnapped soldiers (by Hezbollah), but had been prearranged for a period of time," Assad said.
He said the resistance in Lebanon had achieved victory, adding the people's support had helped the resistance achieve this victory.
"We choose peace as a strategic choice, but it does not mean we exclude other choices and does not mean we have given up resistance," the president said.
"Resistance is a strong force to face the Israeli aggression which is necessary to realize peace and restore rights," he added, dubbing resistance as "a thought which will play an essential role in the future."
Assad, however, noted that resistance was "not necessarily an armed one", but could also be embodied in different forms such as in the cultural and political fields.
Meanwhile, the president claimed the failure of the Middle East peace process, saying "the peace process has failed. It has failed since its inception" and "we do not expect peace in the near future."
Assad blamed the current U.S. administration for the failure because it "chooses war, not peace".
"For the peace process, the United State is necessary, but it should not be this administration," he said.
Israel launched massive attacks in neighboring Lebanon on July 12 after two soldiers was kidnapped by the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement in cross-border raids.
A ceasefire brokered by the United Nations took effect on Monday after the month-long war killed some 1,100 Lebanese people, mostly civilians, and about 156 Israelis.
Washington has repeatedly blamed Damascus, together with its ally Tehran, for the bloodshed in Lebanon because of their support to Hezbollah.
"Responsibility for the suffering of the Lebanese people also lies with Hezbollah's state sponsors, Iran and Syria," U.S. President George W. Bush said in his latest accusation on Monday.
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France to lead beefed-up UN force in Lebanon
PARIS, Aug 14, 2006 (AFP)
France and Italy are leading the scramble to beef up the small UN monitoring force in southern Lebanon which will be key to making the tenuous ceasefire that started Monday durable.
Under UN Security Council Resolution 1701, unanimously adopted Friday, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is to swell from its current 1,990-strong force to 15,000 international troops.
Here is a provisional breakdown of countries prepared to contribute troops:
FRANCE
French President Jacques Chirac, whose country drafted the UN resolution with the United States, has said France will assume its responsibilities, "particularly concerning the new UNIFIL force."
Reports say France would command the UNIFIL deployment.
The defence ministry has said it is "too early" to put a figure to France's troop contribution, although press reports have spoken of several thousand.
One French official, speaking anonymously, said 4,000 "seems a feasible number," while a military source said the actual number of French soldiers in Lebanon would likely be around 2,500.
A French military planning officer was due to arrive at the UN peacekeeping operations department in New York Monday. In addition, five military engineers were expected in Lebanon to assess road transport reconstruction needs.
ITALY
Italy has agreed to send some troops, according to both the Lebanese and Israeli governments.
Italian defence officials cited by the media have spoken of between 2,000 and 3,000 soldiers. The government is to meet on Friday to set out the details of the mission.
MALAYSIA
Malaysia's Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has said the country will send a battalion of 1,000 soldiers once the UN gives the green light.
RUSSIA
Russia is considering the possibility of participating but the foreign ministry said a decision had not been made.
BELGIUM
Belgian Defence Minister Andre Flahaut told AFP that Brussels intended to send troops but it was unclear how many because the mandate had not yet been defined.
SPAIN
A government official told AFP Spain planned to send 700 soldiers.
Defence Minister Jose Antonio Alonso said in a radio interview Monday: "It is especially important to arrive at a peace and Spain, as a member of the United Nations, is ready to help out."
GERMANY
Germany's interior and defence ministers have said they are in favour of contributing soldiers, but no number has been advanced and parliament has yet to vote on any deployment.
PORTUGAL
Portugal has said it is willing to contribute troops, without specifying how many.
THAILAND
Thailand has said it would consider "positively" a UN request for troops, without giving a number.
INDONESIA, MOROCCO and TURKEY
These three Muslim countries have all agreed to take part, according to the Lebanese prime minister's office, but Turkey indicated Monday that it would wait for an expected new UN resolution "to bring more clarity." Again, no firm numbers have been given.
These countries are undecided or have apparently ruled out supplying soldiers to the new force:
AUSTRALIA
Australian Prime Minister John Howard has said he was undecided whether to supply troops.
"If we were to make a decision to make a commitment it would be a very small, niche commitment," he said. "We have other responsibilities."
BRITAIN
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said his country's military -- engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan -- is too stretched to be involved in the reinforced UNIFIL deployment.
INDIA
India said there were no plans to add to its 672 soldiers already serving in the current UNIFIL. A foreign ministry spokesman said: "I see nothing leading to that."
NORWAY
A Norwegian foreign ministry spokeswoman said "it is too early to go into any detail about a Norwegian contribution to a peacekeeping force for Lebanon."
UNITED STATES
The United States, Israel's closest ally, is thought unlikely to contribute to a force in Lebanon.
Although frantic moves are being made to get the new UNIFIL deployed as quickly as possible, there is no firm timetable. Israel has said its soldiers will remain in strategic positions in southern Lebanon until UNIFIL troops take over.
UNIFIL, under its original mandate, has been in operating in southern Lebanon for 28 years. That rolling mandate was again extended for one month by a UN Security Council vote on July 31. It currently counts troops from China, France, Ghana, India, Ireland, Italy, Poland and Ukraine, under French command.
Under UN resolution 1701, the expanded force is to support the Lebanese army as it takes up positions in southern Lebanon, formerly a Hezbollah-controlled zone, and help in humanitarian work.
The resolution says UNIFIL will "take all necessary action in areas of deployment of its forces, and as it deems within its capabilities, to ensure that its area of operations is not utilized for hostile activities of any kind."
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IDF general: Troops lacking food can steal from Lebanese stores
Haaretz
14/08/2006
"If our fighters deep in Lebanese territory are left without food our water, I believe they can break into local Lebanese stores to solve that problem," Brigadier General Avi Mizrahi, the head of the Israel Defense Forces logistics branch, said Monday.
Mizrahi's comments followed complaints by IDF soldiers regarding the lack of food on the front lines.
"If what they need to do is take water from the stores, they can take," Mizrahi told Army Radio.
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Ceasefire broken in less than four hours
SMH.Com>au
15/08/2006
A CEASEFIRE to end a month of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah lasted less than four hours yesterday before shooting broke out in the town of Hadata, in southern Lebanon.
A spokesman for the Israeli Army said soldiers had shot and killed a Hezbollah militant. The spokesman said the soldiers opened fire at a group of militants who approached a patrol about 11am.
"The Israeli Defence Forces identified a cell of armed gunmen a few metres away who were approaching and threatening the force," the spokesman said. "To defend themselves, the soldiers identified the gunmen and shot at them. The soldiers shot first. I stress that we are committed to the UN decision but we will continue to defend our soldiers in southern Lebanon."
An Israeli Army spokeswoman said troops deployed in Faroun, elsewhere in southern Lebanon, shot another Hezbollah guerrilla who had approached them and aimed his gun at them. It was not known whether he survived.
Israel has maintained its air and sea blockade of Lebanon and has warned it will renew attacks if Hezbollah does not honour the ceasefire. The army said the blockade would continue until the Lebanese Government was able to prevent arms transfers to Hezbollah.
Seven Israeli solders were killed and 25 injured as the army continued its advance in southern Lebanon on Sunday, the last full day of the war.
The Israeli Government declared victory yesterday and began trumpeting the benefits of the truce amid public criticism of its handling of the campaign.
"We now have a framework for building a better Lebanon and for establishing better relations with Lebanon," said an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mark Regev.
"We have come out of this stronger, and destroyed Hezbollah's state within a state."
The Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, was due to explain the United Nations resolution to the Knesset, but was expected to face criticism from the Opposition Leader, Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Minister for Defence, Amir Peretz, has acknowledged the war would be followed by questions about intelligence failures and the home front's lack of readiness for the barrages of rockets fired by Hezbollah.
One minister, Shaul Mofaz, abstained during the cabinet's 24-0 vote to accept the UN ceasefire. Mr Mofaz said the ceasefire should have demanded the return of kidnapped Israeli soldiers and was unlikely to be honoured by Hezbollah.
At 8am, as the wails from the air-raid sirens died out, residents in northern Israel waited to see if the silence would endure.
Judith Jakab, who dared to keep her 24-year-old Haifa cafe open throughout the fighting, said she would wait another day before removing signs directing customers to a bomb shelter.
"I don't like having the signs there," she said. "It worries people. I think I'll take them down tomorrow."
About a third of the 1 million people in the north of the country have fled to the south. Few were expected to return yesterday.
In Gaza, Palestinian militants fired missiles at the coastal city of Ashkelon. There were no injuries. Reuters reported that an Israeli air strike killed three Palestinians in the Gaza Strip shortly afterwards.
Comment: Given that the Israeli government lied about who started the conflict with Hizb'allah (that Israeli used to kill 1,000 Lebanese civilians) why should we believe even ONE WORD that issues from the mouths of members of the Israeli government and its shills?
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Rockets hit Lebanon despite cease-fire
By STEVEN R. HURST
Associated Press
August 15, 2006
BEIRUT, Lebanon - Tens of thousands of Lebanese jammed bomb-cratered roads Monday as they returned to still-smoldering scenes of destruction after a tenuous cease-fire ended 34 days of vicious combat between
Israel and Hezbollah.
Highlighting the fragility of the peace, Hezbollah guerrillas fired at least 10 Katyusha rockets that landed in southern Lebanon early Tuesday, the Israeli army said, adding that nobody was injured. The army said that none of the rockets, which were fired over a two-hour period, had crossed the border and so it had not responded.
Lines of cars - some loaded with mattresses and luggage - snaked slowly around huge holes in the roads and ruined bridges. Many Lebanese expressed shock at finding houses and villages flattened in more than a month of Israeli air and artillery strikes.
Hezbollah fighters hugged each other and celebratory gunfire and fireworks erupted in Beirut as the Islamic militant group's leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah claimed a "strategic, historic victory."
But Israeli Prime Ehud Olmert also claimed success, saying the offensive eliminated the "state within a state" run by Hezbollah group and restored Lebanon's sovereignty in the south.
The Israeli army said Tuesday it planned to begin relinquishing parts of southern Lebanon to the Lebanese army on Wednesday, and hopes to complete the evacuation of its forces by next week.
In northern Israel, residents emerged from bomb shelters, hopeful that the barrage of nearly 4,000 Hezbollah rockets that had rained down on towns and villages since July 12 had ended - for now. Stores shuttered for weeks reopened and some people returned to the beaches in Haifa, which suffered most from guerrilla attacks.
President Bush said Monday that Hezbollah guerillas suffered a defeat at the hands of Israel and he blamed the guerrilla group for the devastation. "There's going to be a new power in the south of Lebanon," he said.
The conflict left nearly 950 people dead - 791 in Lebanon and 155 on the Israeli side, according to official counts. An estimated 500,000 Israelis and about 1 million Lebanese, or a quarter of the population, were displaced in the conflict, government officials said.
The truce that took effect at 8 a.m. (1 a.m. EDT) largely held through its first day, although skirmishes between Israeli forces and Hezbollah left six guerrillas killed as both sides promised to retaliate when placed on the defensive.
The odds of a durable end to the fighting depended on the quick deployment of the Lebanese army and an international force into the 18-mile-deep band of south Lebanon between the Litani River and the Israeli frontier.
A United Nations force that now has 2,000 peacekeepers in south Lebanon is to grow to 15,000 troops, and Lebanon's army is to send in a 15,000-man contingent.
Lebanon's Defense Minister Elias Murr said Lebanese forces would be ready to deploy north of the Litani River this week, but that was unlikely to satisfy Israel, which wants a force along the border to rein in Hezbollah.
Murr also said the current U.N. peacekeeping force known as UNIFIL would assume positions vacated by Israel before handing them over to the Lebanese army, and he expected international troops to begin arriving within the next 10 days.
The French commander of UNIFIL, Maj. Gen. Alain Pellegrini, told The Associated Press that additional troops were needed quickly because the stability of the cease-fire was fragile. The region is "not safe from a provocation, or a stray act, that could undermine everything," he said.
France and Italy, along with predominantly Muslim Turkey and Malaysia, have signaled willingness to contribute troops to the peacekeeping force, but consultations are needed on the force's makeup and mandate. Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema said Italy's troops could be ready within two weeks.
The Israeli army said Tuesday it had already begun thinning out its forces in Lebanon with the departure of a small number of troops. While Israel claimed to have flooded south Lebanon with 30,000 soldiers in its final offensive, an AP reporter who drove Monday from Tyre to the Israeli border and through several destroyed villages along the frontier saw only one Israeli tank.
Humanitarian groups sent convoys of food, water and medical supplies into the south, but the clogged roads slowed the effort. U.N. officials said 24 U.N. trucks took more than five hours to reach the port of Tyre from Sidon, a trip that normally takes 45 minutes.
Israel urged Lebanese to stay out of the conflict zone in south Lebanon, saying it was still dangerous because Israeli and Hezbollah fighters were in the area. "Of course, the army would not open fire on civilians in the area," said Capt. Jacob Dallal, an army spokesman.
The rush to return home came despite a standoff that threatened to keep the cease-fire from taking root. Israel threatened to retaliate against any attacks, while Nasrallah said the militia would consider Israeli troops legitimate targets until they leave.
In a letter sent to the prime ministers of Lebanon and Israel Sunday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the two countries to refrain from responding to any attacks "except where clearly required in immediate self-defense" and warned them against occupying additional territory.
Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz said that aside from the isolated skirmishes that killed six Hezbollah fighters, the cease-fire was holding and could have implications for future relations with Israel's neighbors. Both sides appeared under strict orders to avoid confrontation.
The slain militants "were very close, they were armed, and they posed a danger to the troops," Dallal said. "We're going to shoot anybody who poses an imminent threat to the troops."
Hezbollah was believed to have suffered heavy casualties - it reported only 68 fighters killed, but Israel said the number was closer to 400.
Olmert also claimed his army largely destroyed the Hezbollah arsenal in the conflict, which began when militants from the Shiite Muslim group crossed the border and kidnapped two Israeli soldiers.
But the guerrilla organization emerged with far broader support in Lebanon and the rest of the Arab world than it had going into the fight, meaning it will be harder for the Lebanese government to enforce international demands for Hezbollah's disarmament.
Now was not the time to debate the disarmament of his guerrilla fighters, Nasrallah asserted confidently after his forces stood toe-to-toe against Israel's vaunted military.
"Who will defend Lebanon in case of a new Israeli offensive?" he asked, sitting in front of Lebanese and Hezbollah flags. "The Lebanese army and international troops are incapable of protecting Lebanon."
But Nasrallah said he was open to dialogue about Hezbollah's weapons at the appropriate time. He also credited his group's weapons with proving to Israel that "war with Lebanon will not be a picnic. It will be very costly."
The militant Shiite Muslim group, sponsored by Iran and
Syria, claimed to have killed vast numbers of opponents. The Israelis said they lost 118 in combat.
The civilian toll was enormous - 692 in Lebanon and 39 in Israel - and damage to Lebanese infrastructure was sure to run into billions of dollars.
Whole towns and villages in the south were largely flattened, especially along the border with Israel and a broad swath of the Hezbollah dominated suburbs in south Beirut. Bridges and roads throughout the country were destroyed and the Beirut airport remained closed. Israel said it would continue its blockade of Lebanese ports but was no longer threatening to shoot any car that moved on the roads south of the Litani.
Jamila Marina screamed and collapsed when she saw her destroyed home in Yaroun, a mainly Christian village a few miles south of hard-hit Bint Jbail.
"Why did this happen. What have we done to deserve this!" she yelled.
Rosetta Ajaka, also just returned, found her badly damaged home had been used as a Hezbollah outpost. A rocket launcher still sat in the front garden.
The political fallout was significant.
The unity that has governed Israeli politics was expected to quickly fracture. Three Knesset members were ejected from the parliament during an Olmert speech Monday for heckling and several others had called for a commission of inquiry into the offensive.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora faced the threat of a government collapse as well, given the task of disarming Hezbollah fighters. The group has two Cabinet ministers and 14 votes in Parliament and could easily undo government unanimity when a vote is taken on the Hezbollah disarmament issue - as is demanded by the international community.
The dangers for Lebanese civilians were great as well. At least one child was killed and 15 people were wounded by ordnance that exploded as they returned to their homes in south Lebanon, security officials said.
Many of those filtering back in looked dazed, unable to recognize their neighborhoods.
"I just want to find my house," said Ahmad Maana, an old man who wandered back on foot after spending more than a week hiding in the nearby hills.
Comment: Of course, we're supposed to believe that the firing of the rockets was purely the result of crazed Hezbollah fanatics. We're also supposed to forget that the Zionist leadership in Israel just finished a devastating assault on Lebanon that destroyed much of the infrastructure of their neighbor and killed hundreds of civilians - and all because two Israeli soldiers were taken into custody after crossing into Lebanese territory.
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As the 6am ceasefire takes effect... the real war begins
By Robert Fisk
The Independent
08/14/06
The real war in Lebanon begins today. The world may believe - and Israel may believe - that the UN ceasefire due to come into effect at 6am today will mark the beginning of the end of the latest dirty war in Lebanon after up to 1,000 Lebanese civilians and more than 30 Israeli civilians have been killed. But the reality is quite different and will suffer no such self-delusion: the Israeli army, reeling under the Hizbollah's onslaught of the past 24 hours, is now facing the harshest guerrilla war in its history. And it is a war they may well lose.
In all, at least 39 - possibly 43 - Israeli soldiers have been killed in the past day as Hizbollah guerrillas, still launching missiles into Israel itself, have fought back against Israel's massive land invasion into Lebanon.
Israeli military authorities talked of "cleaning" and "mopping up" operations by their soldiers south of the Litani river but, to the Lebanese, it seems as if it is the Hizbollah that have been doing the "mopping up". By last night, the Israelis had not even been able to reach the dead crew of a helicopter - shot down on Saturday night - which crashed into a Lebanese valley.
Officially, Israel has now accepted the UN ceasefire that calls for an end to all Israeli offensive military operations and Hizbollah attacks, and the Hizbollah have stated that they will abide by the ceasefire - providing no Israeli troops remain inside Lebanon. But 10,000 Israeli soldiers - the Israelis even suggest 30,000, although no one in Beirut takes that seriously - have now entered the country and every one of them is a Hizbollah target.
From this morning, Hizbollah's operations will be directed solely against the invasion force. And the Israelis cannot afford to lose 40 men a day. Unable to shoot down the Israeli F-16 aircraft that have laid waste to much of Lebanon, the Hizbollah have, for years, prayed and longed and waited for the moment when they could attack the Israeli army on the ground.
Now they are set to put their long-planned campaign into operation. Thousands of their members remain alive and armed in the ruined hill villages of southern Lebanon for just this moment and, only hours after their leader, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, warned Israel on Saturday that his men were waiting for them on the banks of the Litani river, the Hizbollah sprang their trap, killing more than 20 Israeli soldiers in less than three hours.
Israel itself, according to reports from Washington and New York, had long planned its current campaign against Lebanon - provoked by Hizbollah's crossing of the Israeli frontier, its killing of three soldiers and seizure of two others on 12 July - but the Israelis appear to have taken no account of the guerrilla army's most obvious operational plan: that if they could endure days of air attacks, they would eventually force Israel's army to re-enter Lebanon on the ground and fight them on equal terms.
Hizbollah's laser-guided missiles - Iranian-made, just as most Israeli arms are US-made - appear to have caused havoc among Israeli troops on Saturday, and their downing of an Israeli helicopter was without precedent in their long war against Israel
In theory, aid convoys will be able to move south today to the thousands of Lebanese Shia trapped in their villages but no one knows whether the Hizbollah will wait for several days - they, like the Israelis, are physically tired - to allow that help to reach the crushed towns.
Atrocities continue across Lebanon, the most recent being the attack on a convoy of cars carrying 600 Christian families from the southern town of Marjayoun. Led by soldiers of the Lebanese army, they trailed north on Saturday up the Bekaa valley only to be assaulted by Israeli aircraft. At least seven were killed, including the wife of the mayor, a Christian woman who was decapitated by a missile that hit her car.
In west Beirut yesterday, the Israeli air force destroyed eight apartment blocks in which six families were living. Twelve civilians were killed in southern Lebanon, including a mother, her children and their housemaid.
An Israeli was killed by Hizballoh's continued Katyusha fire across the border. The guerrilla army - "terrorists" to the Israelis and Americans but increasingly heroes across the Muslim world - have many dead to avenge, although their leadership seems less interested in exacting an eye for an eye and far more eager to strike at Israel's army.
At this fatal juncture in Middle East history - and no one should underestimate this moment's importance in the region - the Israeli army appears as impotent to protect its country as the Hizbollah clearly is to protect Lebanon.
But if the ceasefire collapses, as seems certain, neither the Israelis nor the Americans appear to have any plans to escape the consequences. The US saw this war as an opportunity to humble Hizbollah's Iranian and Syrian sponsors but already it seems as if the tables have been turned. The Israeli military appears to be efficient at destroying bridges, power stations, gas stations and apartment blocks - but signally inefficient in crushing the "terrorist" army they swore to liquidate.
"The Lebanese government is our address for every problem or violation of the [ceasefire] agreement," Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, said yesterday, as if realising the truce would not hold.
And that, of course, provides yet another excuse for Israel to attack the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon.
Far more worrying, however, are the vague terms of the UN Security Council's resolution on the multinational force supposed to occupy land between the Israeli border and the Litani river.
For if the Israelis and the Hizbollah are at war across the south over the coming weeks, what country will dare send its troops into the jungle that southern Lebanon will have become?
Tragically, and fatally for all involved, the real Lebanon war does indeed begin today.
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iWar
US sending 300 newly returned troops back to Iraq
By Will Dunham
Reuters
Mon Aug 14, 2006
WASHINGTON - About 300 U.S. soldiers who just weeks ago returned home to Alaska after a year in Iraq are being ordered back to try to help bolster security in Baghdad, the U.S. Army said on Monday.
The soldiers are part of the 3,900-strong 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team from Fort Wainwright in Alaska. Facing rising sectarian violence in Baghdad, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on July 27 ordered the unit to remain in Iraq for up to four months past its scheduled departure.
That order provoked anger and disappointment among some of the soldiers' families in Alaska. It also made clear that any significant reduction in the 135,000-strong U.S. force in Iraq was unlikely in the immediate future.
The brigade was so far along in the process of flowing out of Iraq after its yearlong tour that 378 soldiers had returned home to Alaska and about 300 had arrived in Kuwait en route home, the Army said.
All of the soldiers who had reached Kuwait were sent back to Iraq, the Army said. Now, 301 of the 378 who made it to Alaska will be sent back to Iraq in roughly a week, with the remainder allowed to remain home, said Maj. Gen. Charles Jacoby, head of Army forces in Alaska.
"Of course, this comes as a huge disappointment to the families and perhaps a greater disappointment to kids that were really expecting dads and moms home," Jacoby told reporters.
But Jacoby said the brigade, which uses the Stryker wheeled armored vehicle, needed the soldiers, mainly infantrymen, back in Iraq to "reassemble a proven team."
"From a tactical and military standpoint, this makes all the sense in the world," Jacoby said.
Most of the soldiers returned to Alaska three weeks ago but some have been back for as long as five weeks, said Paul Boyce, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon.
Mary Cheney, a soldier's wife who gave birth to her fourth child just weeks ago, said at a briefing in Alaska arranged by the Army: "Am I happy about him being gone? No. But I accept what he's doing."
Pentagon policy is for Army units to serve 12-month tours in Iraq and Marine Corps units to serve seven-month tours. Army soldiers kept longer than one year in Iraq get an extra $1,000 in pay per month, the Army said.
The 172nd had operated primarily in the Mosul area in relatively calm northern Iraq, but is being shifted into Baghdad, the site of unrelenting violence despite attempts at a security crackdown by U.S. and Iraqi government forces.
The brigade now is due to return to Alaska starting in late November through early January, officials said.
After some troops and families complained earlier in the war about lack of predictability in the length of tours in Iraq, the Pentagon instituted the rules on deployment duration. This was intended to reduce emotional stress for troops serving in a hostile and unpredictable environment.
Comment: Does anyone actually still believe that the Bush administration has plans to reduce troop numbers in Iraq?!
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Israel humbled by arms from Iran
By Adrian Blomfield in Ghandouriyeh
The Telegraph
15/08/2006
Abandoned Hizbollah positions in Lebanon yesterday revealed conclusive evidence that Syria - and almost certainly Iran - provided the anti-tank missiles that have blunted the power of Israel's once invincible armour.
After one of the fiercest confrontations of the war, Israeli forces took the small town of Ghandouriyeh, east of the southern city of Tyre, on Sunday evening, hours before a ceasefire brokered by the United Nations took effect.
At least 24 Israeli soldiers were killed in the advance on the strategic hilltop town as Hizbollah fighters were pushed back to its outskirts, abandoning many weapons.
The discovery helped to explain the slow progress made by Israeli ground forces in nearly five weeks of a war which Hizbollah last night claimed as "a historic victory." Israeli political and military leaders are facing mounting criticism over the conduct of the offensive, which was intended to smash the Iranian-backed Shia militia.
Outside one of the town's two mosques a van was found filled with green casings about 6ft long. The serial numbers identified them as AT-5 Spandrel anti-tank missiles. The wire-guided weapon was developed in Russia but Iran began making a copy in 2000.
Beyond no-man's land, in the east of the village, was evidence of Syrian-supplied hardware. In a garden next to a junction used as an outpost by Hizbollah lay eight Kornet anti-tank rockets, described by Brig Mickey Edelstein, the commander of the Nahal troops who took Ghandouriyeh, as "some of the best in the world".
Written underneath a contract number on each casing were the words: "Customer: Ministry of Defence of Syria. Supplier: KBP, Tula, Russia."
Brig Edelstein said: "If they tell you that Syria knew nothing about this, just look. This is the evidence. Proof, not just talk."
The discovery of the origin of the weapons proved to the Israelis that their enemy was not a ragged and lightly armed militia but a semi-professional army equipped by Syria and Iran to take on Israel. The weapons require serious training to operate and could be beyond the capabilities of some supposedly regular armies in the Middle East. The Kornet was unveiled by Russia in 1994. It is laser-guided, has a range of three miles and carries a double warhead capable of penetrating the reactive armour on Israeli Merkava tanks. Russia started supplying them to Syria in 1998.
Israeli forces were taken by surprise by the sophistication of the anti-tank weapons they faced. They are believed to have accounted for many of the 116 deaths the army suffered. Dozens of tanks were hit and an unknown number destroyed.
The missiles were also used against infantry, in one case bringing down a house and killing nine soldiers. They played an important part in Hizbollah's tactics of using a network of concealed positions to set up ambushes for the Israelis as they inched in. Last night, Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader, said his men had achieved "a strategic, historic victory" over "a confused, cowardly and defea-ted" enemy. He said the militia would not disarm, as Israel and the UN Security Council were demanding. It would be "immoral, incorrect and inappropriate," he said. "It is the wrong timing on a pyschological and moral level."
As the militia leader was claiming victory, Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, defended his handling of the crisis and said that the massive air, ground and sea attack had changed the face of the Middle East. But he admitted that the military and political leadership was guilty of "shortcomings", not least in underestimating the threat from anti-tank weapons.
Critics say that he placed too much faith in the ability of the air force to break the back of Hizbollah and delayed launching a major ground offensive until it was too late.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Likud Party leader and a rival, said: "There were many failures - failures on identifying the threat, failures in preparing to meet the threat, failures in the management of the war, failures in the management of the home front."
Last night, President George W. Bush blamed Iran and Syria for fomenting the conflict between Israel and Hizbollah. "We can only imagine how much more dangerous this conflict would be if Iran had the nuclear weapon it seeks," he said.
Comment: Well, we all knew it was coming. Iran and Syria are both centered in the crosshairs now.
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Watching Lebanon - Washington's interests in Israel's war
The New Yorker
By Seymour M Hersh
14/08/06
In the days after Hezbollah crossed from Lebanon into Israel, on July 12th, to kidnap two soldiers, triggering an Israeli air attack on Lebanon and a full-scale war, the Bush Administration seemed strangely passive. "It's a moment of clarification," President George W. Bush said at the G-8 summit, in St. Petersburg, on July 16th. "It's now become clear why we don't have peace in the Middle East." He described the relationship between Hezbollah and its supporters in Iran and Syria as one of the "root causes of instability," and subsequently said that it was up to those countries to end the crisis. Two days later, despite calls from several governments for the United States to take the lead in negotiations to end the fighting, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that a ceasefire should be put off until "the conditions are conducive."
The Bush Administration, however, was closely involved in the planning of Israel's retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah's heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel's security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran's nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground.
Israeli military and intelligence experts I spoke to emphasized that the country's immediate security issues were reason enough to confront Hezbollah, regardless of what the Bush Administration wanted. Shabtai Shavit, a national-security adviser to the Knesset who headed the Mossad, Israel's foreign-intelligence service, from 1989 to 1996, told me, "We do what we think is best for us, and if it happens to meet America's requirements, that's just part of a relationship between two friends. Hezbollah is armed to the teeth and trained in the most advanced technology of guerrilla warfare. It was just a matter of time. We had to address it."
Hezbollah is seen by Israelis as a profound threat-a terrorist organization, operating on their border, with a military arsenal that, with help from Iran and Syria, has grown stronger since the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon ended, in 2000. Hezbollah's leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, has said he does not believe that Israel is a "legal state." Israeli intelligence estimated at the outset of the air war that Hezbollah had roughly five hundred medium-range Fajr-3 and Fajr-5 rockets and a few dozen long-range Zelzal rockets; the Zelzals, with a range of about two hundred kilometres, could reach Tel Aviv. (One rocket hit Haifa the day after the kidnappings.) It also has more than twelve thousand shorter-range rockets. Since the conflict began, more than three thousand of these have been fired at Israel.
According to a Middle East expert with knowledge of the current thinking of both the Israeli and the U.S. governments, Israel had devised a plan for attacking Hezbollah-and shared it with Bush Administration officials-well before the July 12th kidnappings. "It's not that the Israelis had a trap that Hezbollah walked into," he said, "but there was a strong feeling in the White House that sooner or later the Israelis were going to do it."
The Middle East expert said that the Administration had several reasons for supporting the Israeli bombing campaign. Within the State Department, it was seen as a way to strengthen the Lebanese government so that it could assert its authority over the south of the country, much of which is controlled by Hezbollah. He went on, "The White House was more focussed on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because, if there was to be a military option against Iran's nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel. Bush wanted both. Bush was going after Iran, as part of the Axis of Evil, and its nuclear sites, and he was interested in going after Hezbollah as part of his interest in democratization, with Lebanon as one of the crown jewels of Middle East democracy."
Administration officials denied that they knew of Israel's plan for the air war. The White House did not respond to a detailed list of questions. In response to a separate request, a National Security Council spokesman said, "Prior to Hezbollah's attack on Israel, the Israeli government gave no official in Washington any reason to believe that Israel was planning to attack. Even after the July 12th attack, we did not know what the Israeli plans were." A Pentagon spokesman said, "The United States government remains committed to a diplomatic solution to the problem of Iran's clandestine nuclear weapons program," and denied the story, as did a State Department spokesman.
The United States and Israel have shared intelligence and enjoyed close military coöperation for decades, but early this spring, according to a former senior intelligence official, high-level planners from the U.S. Air Force-under pressure from the White House to develop a war plan for a decisive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities-began consulting with their counterparts in the Israeli Air Force.
"The big question for our Air Force was how to hit a series of hard targets in Iran successfully," the former senior intelligence official said. "Who is the closest ally of the U.S. Air Force in its planning? It's not Congo-it's Israel. Everybody knows that Iranian engineers have been advising Hezbollah on tunnels and underground gun emplacements. And so the Air Force went to the Israelis with some new tactics and said to them, 'Let's concentrate on the bombing and share what we have on Iran and what you have on Lebanon.' " The discussions reached the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, he said.
"The Israelis told us it would be a cheap war with many benefits," a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. "Why oppose it? We'll be able to hunt down and bomb missiles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran."
A Pentagon consultant said that the Bush White House "has been agitating for some time to find a reason for a preëmptive blow against Hezbollah." He added, "It was our intent to have Hezbollah diminished, and now we have someone else doing it." (As this article went to press, the United Nations Security Council passed a ceasefire resolution, although it was unclear if it would change the situation on the ground.)
According to Richard Armitage, who served as Deputy Secretary of State in Bush's first term-and who, in 2002, said that Hezbollah "may be the A team of terrorists"-Israel's campaign in Lebanon, which has faced unexpected difficulties and widespread criticism, may, in the end, serve as a warning to the White House about Iran. "If the most dominant military force in the region-the Israel Defense Forces-can't pacify a country like Lebanon, with a population of four million, you should think carefully about taking that template to Iran, with strategic depth and a population of seventy million," Armitage said. "The only thing that the bombing has achieved so far is to unite the population against the Israelis."
Several current and former officials involved in the Middle East told me that Israel viewed the soldiers' kidnapping as the opportune moment to begin its planned military campaign against Hezbollah. "Hezbollah, like clockwork, was instigating something small every month or two," the U.S. government consultant with ties to Israel said. Two weeks earlier, in late June, members of Hamas, the Palestinian group, had tunnelled under the barrier separating southern Gaza from Israel and captured an Israeli soldier. Hamas also had lobbed a series of rockets at Israeli towns near the border with Gaza. In response, Israel had initiated an extensive bombing campaign and reoccupied parts of Gaza.
The Pentagon consultant noted that there had also been cross-border incidents involving Israel and Hezbollah, in both directions, for some time. "They've been sniping at each other," he said. "Either side could have pointed to some incident and said 'We have to go to war with these guys'-because they were already at war."
David Siegel, the spokesman at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, said that the Israeli Air Force had not been seeking a reason to attack Hezbollah. "We did not plan the campaign. That decision was forced on us." There were ongoing alerts that Hezbollah "was pressing to go on the attack," Siegel said. "Hezbollah attacks every two or three months," but the kidnapping of the soldiers raised the stakes.
In interviews, several Israeli academics, journalists, and retired military and intelligence officers all made one point: they believed that the Israeli leadership, and not Washington, had decided that it would go to war with Hezbollah. Opinion polls showed that a broad spectrum of Israelis supported that choice. "The neocons in Washington may be happy, but Israel did not need to be pushed, because Israel has been wanting to get rid of Hezbollah," Yossi Melman, a journalist for the newspaper Ha'aretz, who has written several books about the Israeli intelligence community, said. "By provoking Israel, Hezbollah provided that opportunity."
"We were facing a dilemma," an Israeli official said. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert "had to decide whether to go for a local response, which we always do, or for a comprehensive response-to really take on Hezbollah once and for all." Olmert made his decision, the official said, only after a series of Israeli rescue efforts failed.
The U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel told me, however, that, from Israel's perspective, the decision to take strong action had become inevitable weeks earlier, after the Israeli Army's signals intelligence group, known as Unit 8200, picked up bellicose intercepts in late spring and early summer, involving Hamas, Hezbollah, and Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader now living in Damascus.
One intercept was of a meeting in late May of the Hamas political and military leadership, with Meshal participating by telephone. "Hamas believed the call from Damascus was scrambled, but Israel had broken the code," the consultant said. For almost a year before its victory in the Palestinian elections in January, Hamas had curtailed its terrorist activities. In the late May intercepted conversation, the consultant told me, the Hamas leadership said that "they got no benefit from it, and were losing standing among the Palestinian population." The conclusion, he said, was " 'Let's go back into the terror business and then try and wrestle concessions from the Israeli government.' " The consultant told me that the U.S. and Israel agreed that if the Hamas leadership did so, and if Nasrallah backed them up, there should be "a full-scale response." In the next several weeks, when Hamas began digging the tunnel into Israel, the consultant said, Unit 8200 "picked up signals intelligence involving Hamas, Syria, and Hezbollah, saying, in essence, that they wanted Hezbollah to 'warm up' the north." In one intercept, the consultant said, Nasrallah referred to Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz "as seeming to be weak," in comparison with the former Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Barak, who had extensive military experience, and said "he thought Israel would respond in a small-scale, local way, as they had in the past."
Earlier this summer, before the Hezbollah kidnappings, the U.S. government consultant said, several Israeli officials visited Washington, separately, "to get a green light for the bombing operation and to find out how much the United States would bear." The consultant added, "Israel began with Cheney. It wanted to be sure that it had his support and the support of his office and the Middle East desk of the National Security Council." After that, "persuading Bush was never a problem, and Condi Rice was on board," the consultant said.
The initial plan, as outlined by the Israelis, called for a major bombing campaign in response to the next Hezbollah provocation, according to the Middle East expert with knowledge of U.S. and Israeli thinking. Israel believed that, by targeting Lebanon's infrastructure, including highways, fuel depots, and even the civilian runways at the main Beirut airport, it could persuade Lebanon's large Christian and Sunni populations to turn against Hezbollah, according to the former senior intelligence official. The airport, highways, and bridges, among other things, have been hit in the bombing campaign. The Israeli Air Force had flown almost nine thousand missions as of last week. (David Siegel, the Israeli spokesman, said that Israel had targeted only sites connected to Hezbollah; the bombing of bridges and roads was meant to prevent the transport of weapons.)
The Israeli plan, according to the former senior intelligence official, was "the mirror image of what the United States has been planning for Iran." (The initial U.S. Air Force proposals for an air attack to destroy Iran's nuclear capacity, which included the option of intense bombing of civilian infrastructure targets inside Iran, have been resisted by the top leadership of the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps, according to current and former officials. They argue that the Air Force plan will not work and will inevitably lead, as in the Israeli war with Hezbollah, to the insertion of troops on the ground.)
Uzi Arad, who served for more than two decades in the Mossad, told me that to the best of his knowledge the contacts between the Israeli and U.S. governments were routine, and that, "in all my meetings and conversations with government officials, never once did I hear anyone refer to prior coördination with the United States." He was troubled by one issue-the speed with which the Olmert government went to war. "For the life of me, I've never seen a decision to go to war taken so speedily," he said. "We usually go through long analyses."
The key military planner was Lieutenant General Dan Halutz, the I.D.F. chief of staff, who, during a career in the Israeli Air Force, worked on contingency planning for an air war with Iran. Olmert, a former mayor of Jerusalem, and Peretz, a former labor leader, could not match his experience and expertise.
In the early discussions with American officials, I was told by the Middle East expert and the government consultant, the Israelis repeatedly pointed to the war in Kosovo as an example of what Israel would try to achieve. The NATO forces commanded by U.S. Army General Wesley Clark methodically bombed and strafed not only military targets but tunnels, bridges, and roads, in Kosovo and elsewhere in Serbia, for seventy-eight days before forcing Serbian forces to withdraw from Kosovo. "Israel studied the Kosovo war as its role model," the government consultant said. "The Israelis told Condi Rice, 'You did it in about seventy days, but we need half of that-thirty-five days.' "
There are, of course, vast differences between Lebanon and Kosovo. Clark, who retired from the military in 2000 and unsuccessfully ran as a Democrat for the Presidency in 2004, took issue with the analogy: "If it's true that the Israeli campaign is based on the American approach in Kosovo, then it missed the point. Ours was to use force to obtain a diplomatic objective-it was not about killing people." Clark noted in a 2001 book, "Waging Modern War," that it was the threat of a possible ground invasion as well as the bombing that forced the Serbs to end the war. He told me, "In my experience, air campaigns have to be backed, ultimately, by the will and capability to finish the job on the ground."
Kosovo has been cited publicly by Israeli officials and journalists since the war began. On August 6th, Prime Minister Olmert, responding to European condemnation of the deaths of Lebanese civilians, said, "Where do they get the right to preach to Israel? European countries attacked Kosovo and killed ten thousand civilians. Ten thousand! And none of these countries had to suffer before that from a single rocket. I'm not saying it was wrong to intervene in Kosovo. But please: don't preach to us about the treatment of civilians." (Human Rights Watch estimated the number of civilians killed in the NATO bombing to be five hundred; the Yugoslav government put the number between twelve hundred and five thousand.)
Cheney's office supported the Israeli plan, as did Elliott Abrams, a deputy national-security adviser, according to several former and current officials. (A spokesman for the N.S.C. denied that Abrams had done so.) They believed that Israel should move quickly in its air war against Hezbollah. A former intelligence officer said, "We told Israel, 'Look, if you guys have to go, we're behind you all the way. But we think it should be sooner rather than later-the longer you wait, the less time we have to evaluate and plan for Iran before Bush gets out of office.' "
Cheney's point, the former senior intelligence official said, was "What if the Israelis execute their part of this first, and it's really successful? It'd be great. We can learn what to do in Iran by watching what the Israelis do in Lebanon."
The Pentagon consultant told me that intelligence about Hezbollah and Iran is being mishandled by the White House the same way intelligence had been when, in 2002 and early 2003, the Administration was making the case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. "The big complaint now in the intelligence community is that all of the important stuff is being sent directly to the top-at the insistence of the White House-and not being analyzed at all, or scarcely," he said. "It's an awful policy and violates all of the N.S.A.'s strictures, and if you complain about it you're out," he said. "Cheney had a strong hand in this."
The long-term Administration goal was to help set up a Sunni Arab coalition-including countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt-that would join the United States and Europe to pressure the ruling Shiite mullahs in Iran. "But the thought behind that plan was that Israel would defeat Hezbollah, not lose to it," the consultant with close ties to Israel said. Some officials in Cheney's office and at the N.S.C. had become convinced, on the basis of private talks, that those nations would moderate their public criticism of Israel and blame Hezbollah for creating the crisis that led to war. Although they did so at first, they shifted their position in the wake of public protests in their countries about the Israeli bombing. The White House was clearly disappointed when, late last month, Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, came to Washington and, at a meeting with Bush, called for the President to intervene immediately to end the war. The Washington Post reported that Washington had hoped to enlist moderate Arab states "in an effort to pressure Syria and Iran to rein in Hezbollah, but the Saudi move . . . seemed to cloud that initiative."
The surprising strength of Hezbollah's resistance, and its continuing ability to fire rockets into northern Israel in the face of the constant Israeli bombing, the Middle East expert told me, "is a massive setback for those in the White House who want to use force in Iran. And those who argue that the bombing will create internal dissent and revolt in Iran are also set back."
Nonetheless, some officers serving with the Joint Chiefs of Staff remain deeply concerned that the Administration will have a far more positive assessment of the air campaign than they should, the former senior intelligence official said. "There is no way that Rumsfeld and Cheney will draw the right conclusion about this," he said. "When the smoke clears, they'll say it was a success, and they'll draw reinforcement for their plan to attack Iran."
In the White House, especially in the Vice-President's office, many officials believe that the military campaign against Hezbollah is working and should be carried forward. At the same time, the government consultant said, some policymakers in the Administration have concluded that the cost of the bombing to Lebanese society is too high. "They are telling Israel that it's time to wind down the attacks on infrastructure."
Similar divisions are emerging in Israel. David Siegel, the Israeli spokesman, said that his country's leadership believed, as of early August, that the air war had been successful, and had destroyed more than seventy per cent of Hezbollah's medium- and long-range-missile launching capacity. "The problem is short-range missiles, without launchers, that can be shot from civilian areas and homes," Siegel told me. "The only way to resolve this is ground operations-which is why Israel would be forced to expand ground operations if the latest round of diplomacy doesn't work." Last week, however, there was evidence that the Israeli government was troubled by the progress of the war. In an unusual move, Major General Moshe Kaplinsky, Halutz's deputy, was put in charge of the operation, supplanting Major General Udi Adam. The worry in Israel is that Nasrallah might escalate the crisis by firing missiles at Tel Aviv. "There is a big debate over how much damage Israel should inflict to prevent it," the consultant said. "If Nasrallah hits Tel Aviv, what should Israel do? Its goal is to deter more attacks by telling Nasrallah that it will destroy his country if he doesn't stop, and to remind the Arab world that Israel can set it back twenty years. We're no longer playing by the same rules."
A European intelligence officer told me, "The Israelis have been caught in a psychological trap. In earlier years, they had the belief that they could solve their problems with toughness. But now, with Islamic martyrdom, things have changed, and they need different answers. How do you scare people who love martyrdom?" The problem with trying to eliminate Hezbollah, the intelligence officer said, is the group's ties to the Shiite population in southern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and Beirut's southern suburbs, where it operates schools, hospitals, a radio station, and various charities.
A high-level American military planner told me, "We have a lot of vulnerability in the region, and we've talked about some of the effects of an Iranian or Hezbollah attack on the Saudi regime and on the oil infrastructure." There is special concern inside the Pentagon, he added, about the oil-producing nations north of the Strait of Hormuz. "We have to anticipate the unintended consequences," he told me. "Will we be able to absorb a barrel of oil at one hundred dollars? There is this almost comical thinking that you can do it all from the air, even when you're up against an irregular enemy with a dug-in capability. You're not going to be successful unless you have a ground presence, but the political leadership never considers the worst case. These guys only want to hear the best case."
There is evidence that the Iranians were expecting the war against Hezbollah. Vali Nasr, an expert on Shiite Muslims and Iran, who is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and also teaches at the Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey, California, said, "Every negative American move against Hezbollah was seen by Iran as part of a larger campaign against it. And Iran began to prepare for the showdown by supplying more sophisticated weapons to Hezbollah-anti-ship and anti-tank missiles-and training its fighters in their use. And now Hezbollah is testing Iran's new weapons. Iran sees the Bush Administration as trying to marginalize its regional role, so it fomented trouble."
Nasr, an Iranian-American who recently published a study of the Sunni-Shiite divide, entitled "The Shia Revival," also said that the Iranian leadership believes that Washington's ultimate political goal is to get some international force to act as a buffer-to physically separate Syria and Lebanon in an effort to isolate and disarm Hezbollah, whose main supply route is through Syria. "Military action cannot bring about the desired political result," Nasr said. The popularity of Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a virulent critic of Israel, is greatest in his own country. If the U.S. were to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, Nasr said, "you may end up turning Ahmadinejad into another Nasrallah-the rock star of the Arab street."
Donald Rumsfeld, who is one of the Bush Administration's most outspoken, and powerful, officials, has said very little publicly about the crisis in Lebanon. His relative quiet, compared to his aggressive visibility in the run-up to the Iraq war, has prompted a debate in Washington about where he stands on the issue.
Some current and former intelligence officials who were interviewed for this article believe that Rumsfeld disagrees with Bush and Cheney about the American role in the war between Israel and Hezbollah. The U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said that "there was a feeling that Rumsfeld was jaded in his approach to the Israeli war." He added, "Air power and the use of a few Special Forces had worked in Afghanistan, and he tried to do it again in Iraq. It was the same idea, but it didn't work. He thought that Hezbollah was too dug in and the Israeli attack plan would not work, and the last thing he wanted was another war on his shift that would put the American forces in Iraq in greater jeopardy."
A Western diplomat said that he understood that Rumsfeld did not know all the intricacies of the war plan. "He is angry and worried about his troops" in Iraq, the diplomat said. Rumsfeld served in the White House during the last year of the war in Vietnam, from which American troops withdrew in 1975, "and he did not want to see something like this having an impact in Iraq." Rumsfeld's concern, the diplomat added, was that an expansion of the war into Iran could put the American troops in Iraq at greater risk of attacks by pro-Iranian Shiite militias.
At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on August 3rd, Rumsfeld was less than enthusiastic about the war's implications for the American troops in Iraq. Asked whether the Administration was mindful of the war's impact on Iraq, he testified that, in his meetings with Bush and Condoleezza Rice, "there is a sensitivity to the desire to not have our country or our interests or our forces put at greater risk as a result of what's taking place between Israel and Hezbollah. . . . There are a variety of risks that we face in that region, and it's a difficult and delicate situation."
The Pentagon consultant dismissed talk of a split at the top of the Administration, however, and said simply, "Rummy is on the team. He'd love to see Hezbollah degraded, but he also is a voice for less bombing and more innovative Israeli ground operations." The former senior intelligence official similarly depicted Rumsfeld as being "delighted that Israel is our stalking horse."
There are also questions about the status of Condoleezza Rice. Her initial support for the Israeli air war against Hezbollah has reportedly been tempered by dismay at the effects of the attacks on Lebanon. The Pentagon consultant said that in early August she began privately "agitating" inside the Administration for permission to begin direct diplomatic talks with Syria-so far, without much success. Last week, the Times reported that Rice had directed an Embassy official in Damascus to meet with the Syrian foreign minister, though the meeting apparently yielded no results. The Times also reported that Rice viewed herself as "trying to be not only a peacemaker abroad but also a mediator among contending parties" within the Administration. The article pointed to a divide between career diplomats in the State Department and "conservatives in the government," including Cheney and Abrams, "who were pushing for strong American support for Israel."
The Western diplomat told me his embassy believes that Abrams has emerged as a key policymaker on Iran, and on the current Hezbollah-Israeli crisis, and that Rice's role has been relatively diminished. Rice did not want to make her most recent diplomatic trip to the Middle East, the diplomat said. "She only wanted to go if she thought there was a real chance to get a ceasefire."
Bush's strongest supporter in Europe continues to be British Prime Minister Tony Blair, but many in Blair's own Foreign Office, as a former diplomat said, believe that he has "gone out on a particular limb on this"-especially by accepting Bush's refusal to seek an immediate and total ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. "Blair stands alone on this," the former diplomat said. "He knows he's a lame duck who's on the way out, but he buys it"-the Bush policy. "He drinks the White House Kool-Aid as much as anybody in Washington." The crisis will really start at the end of August, the diplomat added, "when the Iranians"-under a United Nations deadline to stop uranium enrichment-"will say no."
Even those who continue to support Israel's war against Hezbollah agree that it is failing to achieve one of its main goals-to rally the Lebanese against Hezbollah. "Strategic bombing has been a failed military concept for ninety years, and yet air forces all over the world keep on doing it," John Arquilla, a defense analyst at the Naval Postgraduate School, told me. Arquilla has been campaigning for more than a decade, with growing success, to change the way America fights terrorism. "The warfare of today is not mass on mass," he said. "You have to hunt like a network to defeat a network. Israel focussed on bombing against Hezbollah, and, when that did not work, it became more aggressive on the ground. The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result."
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Iran says to retaliate with missiles on Israel if attacked
www.chinaview.cn 2006-08-15 15:55:09
TEHRAN, Aug. 15 (Xinhua) -- An Iranian top cleric warned on Tuesday that his country would retaliate on Tel Aviv with ballistic missiles if Iran is attacked by the United States and Israel, the state television reported.
"If they (the U.S. and Israel) intend to carry out an aggression against our country, they should worry someday that our 2000-kilometer range missile will strike the heart of Tel Aviv," Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami was quoted as saying.
Khatami is a member of Iran's Assembly of Experts, a body which elects supreme leader and supervises his work.
"(Lebanese) Hezbollah has missiles of 70 kilometers, and the missiles have turned Israeli cities into ghost cities, (U.S. President Gorge W.) Bush and (Israeli Prime Minister Ehud) Olmert should learn a lesson and know that antagonizing Islam is like messing with the lion's tail," said the top cleric.
Iran has a long mid-range missile of Shahab-3 missile, which is capable to cover a range of 2000 kilometers, it was reported.
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Israel should pack up and go
Haaretz.com
By Nadim Shehadi
15/08/06
What is the logic that will emerge from this war? If Israel can exist only by destroying the neighborhood, then it's time to declare it a failed state. The Zionist dream has turned into a nightmare and is not viable. If the future holds more of the same, then the time has come to reconsider the whole project. Every state has a duty to defend its citizens, but also it has a duty to provide them with security and the two are different. The prospects are for more destruction, fanaticism, violence and hatred. No unilateral separation can isolate Israel from this, nor can the region or the world live with the consequences. This seems to be the only choice, and Israel must do itself and others a favor and go away.
The occupation of the West Bank and Gaza shows a country deprived of all humanity. The West Bank is unliveable, the population strangled into three prison clusters. Concrete barriers, barbed wires, bypass roads, human beings emerging like rats from underground tunnels, daily humiliation from hundreds of checkpoints. Gaza has been under siege since the population dared to elect Hamas, its infrastructure has been obliterated and its population has been driven to despair in what now seems like a dress rehearsal for what was to come in Lebanon.
Lebanon woke up on July 12 to a reality that can destroy the very fabric of society. Divided between those who believe in a "riviera" with consensus politics, power sharing and a weak state, and those who, like Hezbollah, see the necessity of having a fortress to resist an evil and dangerous enemy. Israel's behavior will see the logic of the latter prevail.
Yet the Lebanese system is resilient. PM Fouad Siniora, under the bombs, was able to extract a consensus for a seven-point plan where the victorious fortress accepted to go back to the political process to resolve the crisis. Lebanon still managed to challenge the U.S. and Israel through sheer persistence, and in a diplomatic tour de force it was successful in steering the UN Security Council toward a political rather than military solution. For the first time, Arab foreign ministers have been mobilized and actively lobbied international legality.
There is deliberate targeting of civilians: Israel can deny it, but at the very least, those Israelis who are doing it know it is true. Over 17,000 people were killed in the invasion of 1982, and the net result was the creation of Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. There is a doctrine that says Arabs need to be crushed, that they can be bombed into submission, that they will eventually fall on their knees. It is the doctrine, not its application, that is flawed. It says that by terrorizing the population, they will respect us and make peace; it says that those who dare resist need to be eradicated through targeted assassination and their supporters annihilated no matter what the cost. The only lessons Israel learned is that it should do it better next time.
Three Arab countries have peace treaties or diplomatic relations with Israel, most of the Gulf states have or had commercial bureaus, Saudi Arabia came up with the King Abdallah plan offering Israel normalization - something that was not achieved in nearly 30 years of peace with Egypt. Tunisia and Morocco have excellent relations with Israel. Even rogues like Syria and Libya give out positive vibes - the former desperate to resume peace talks unconditionally. The region has a history of tolerance and coexistence; minorities, including Jews, have survived and prospered for centuries. Israel is blind to any positive developments, and this will soon make these positions and those who hold them disappear, their stance untenable.
Lebanon can reconstruct airports, roads, bridges, and factories; bury and mourn the dead, rebuild shattered lives. Israel has barely been there for 60 years, a millisecond in history, but enough time to judge the results. If the fundamental moral logic is flawed, then it is time to give up, pack up and go.
The writer, a Lebanese economist, is an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Program at Chatham House.
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Outsiders Should Stay Out of Israel-Lebanon Conflict - Russian Envoy
Created: 15.08.2006 12:27 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 12:38 MSK
MosNews
While Russia said it had played a crucial role in seeking the long-awaited ceasefire to the Israel-Lebanon conflict which killed more than 1,000 people, it cautioned outside parties not to meddle in the Middle East crisis.
"It is very important to leave the main parties of this conflict alone, without instigation or supplying of ideas or ideology by any side.
"They should be left alone without being instigated from outside, be it from the western hemisphere or its immediate neighbors," Russian Ambassador to Malaysia Alexander A. Karchava told Bernama news agency in an interview Tuesday.
He said Russia did not distance itself from the crisis but instead played a key role, using its vast influence in the Arab world and the West to adopt the United Nations-brokered ceasefire to end the fighting.
"Russia is very much concerned about the situation. President Putin spoke to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
"I think we did a lot to have (UN Security Council) Resolution 1701 adopted because the initial draft proposed by France and the United States was not appropriate in view of the suffering of the Lebanese and the Palestinian people," he added.
The one-month bloody fighting ended at 05:00 GMT following the UN-led truce, but the war witnessed heavy casualties and displaced nearly 100,000 people in southern Lebanon.
Karchava said the recent Middle East crisis was just the tip of the iceberg but the underlying problem was broader and more serious. However, the important step taken was to halt the bloodshed.
Russia's position, he said, was to seek a stable and durable peace in the region, which had been prone to political instability that often led to security threats.
"Russia's image and reputation in the Arab world is very high because we have always been concerned about the interests of these countries.
"But this does not mean that we are lined-up together with the Arab countries to confront Israel. No.
"We do have good diplomatic relations with Israel. And we cannot accept some extreme positions like 'throwing Israel into the sea'," he said.
On the issue of Hamas-led Palestine, Karchava said Russia had already declared its readiness to work with the newly elected government and urged the international community to continue their dialogue with Hamas leaders.
"To avoid double standards, we have to talk to the Hamas leaders as the representatives of a political movement... a political establishment.
"We were not happy when the newly elected government of Palestine was deprived of resources (by some states), especially financial resources to maintain everyday normal activities," he added.
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Assad warns Israel to seek peace or risk defeat in the future
Haaretz.com
By Eli Ashkenazi, Haaretz Service, and The Associated Press
15/08/06
DAMASCUS, Syria - Syrian President Bashar Assad said Tuesday that America's plan for a "new Middle East" has collapsed after what he described as Hezbollah's successes in fighting against Israel, and warned Israel to seek peace or risk defeat in the future.
Assad, speaking to a journalists' association, said the region had changed "because of the achievements of the resistance [Hezbollah]."
"The Middle East they [the Americans] aspire to ... has become an illusion," he said.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said early on in the month-long war between Hezbollah and Israel that any settlement should be durable and lead to a "new Middle East" where extremists have no influence.
But after 34 days of fighting, a cease-fire brought a fragile truce, with Hezbollah surviving and Israeli forces unable to score a decisive victory. Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah has already declared "strategic, historic victory" against Israel.
"We tell them [Israelis] that after tasting humiliation in the latest battles, your weapons are not going to protect you - not your planes, or missiles or even your nuclear bombs ... The future generations in the Arab world will find a way to defeat Israel," Assad said.
He warned Israeli leaders to give up on their "follies and arrogance" and work for peace.
"They should know that they are before a historic crossroads. Either they move toward peace and the return of [Arab] rights or they move in the direction of continued instability until one generation decides the matter," he said.
The fighting in Lebanon had been planned by Israel for some time, he said, but the endeavor failed.
"The result was more failure for Israel, its allies and masters," Assad said.
Assad defended Hezbollah and criticized a UN cease-fire resolution for holding the Syrian-backed militant group responsible for the violence.
"Israel is the one who is responsible," he said. He added that Israel's supporters in Lebanon - an allusion to the anti-Syrian parliamentary majority in Beirut - also bear responsibility.
"The resistance is necessary as much as it is natural and legitimate," he said.
Assad said this war revealed the limitations of Israel's military power.
In a 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Israeli forces surrounded Beirut within seven days of invading, he said. "After five weeks it [Israel] was still struggling to occupy a few hundred meters."
"From a military perspective, it [the battle] was decided in favor of the resistance [Hezbollah]. Israel has been defeated from the beginning," Assad said. "They [Israelis] have become a subject of ridicule."
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, speaking in northern Israel shortly after the Syrian president's remarks, said Syria must "understand that Lebanon is taking off, or is at least meant to take off, in a different direction without them."
She said Syria would no longer be able "to influence [Lebanon] through such groups like Hezbollah.
"There is international agreement regarding the role Syria played until today and the change it has to make in order to be accepted by the international community and to play a more positive role," Livni said.
Assad strikes out at Arab regimes
Assad also lashed out at Arab regimes, without naming them, who have criticized Hezbollah for kidnapping two Israeli soldiers and starting the war.
Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan - all allies of the United States - criticized Hezbollah's actions at the start of the conflict.
"We do not ask anyone to fight with us or for us ... But he should at least not adopt the enemy's views," Assad said.
Syria has been sharply criticized by Washington, and U.S. officials have called on Damascus and its ally Iran to withdraw support for Hezbollah. Syria has rejected such demands.
The Syrian leader said U.S. participation was needed for a peace settlement in the Middle East, but he said peace cannot be achieved under the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush.
"This is an administration that adopts the principle of
pre-emptive war that is absolutely contradictory to the principle of peace," he said. "Consequently, we don't expect peace soon or in the foreseeable future."
Midway through Assad's speech, members of the audience who said they were Lebanese stood up loudly thanked Assad.
"Without the support of our sister country Syria, we would not be able to achieve what we have achieved," one woman screamed.
The audience then broke into applause and shouts of "With our blood, with our soul, we redeem you, Oh Bashar!"
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IDF General Staff sources: Halutz cannot escape resignation
Haaretz.com
15/08/06
Senior sources in the Israel Defense Forces General Staff and field officers who took part in the war in Lebanon said on Tuesday that Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, who went to his bank branch and sold an NIS 120,000 investment portfolio only three hours after two soldiers were abducted by Hezbollah on the northern border, cannot escape resignation.
The sources say there is a clear ethical flaw in the chief of staff's behavior during the hours when soldiers were killed in Lebanon and others were attempting to rescue wounded. Halutz should resign the moment the military completes its pullout from south Lebanon, they said.
At this stage, it does not appear that Halutz intends to resign of his own accord.
Several hours after the July 12 abduction, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared war on Hezbollah and Israeli warplanes began bombing targets deep inside Lebanon.
But as the country's political and military echelons met urgently to discuss the possible declaration of war, Halutz went at 12:00 P.M. to sell an investment portfolio, the Ma'ariv newspaper reported on Tuesday.
In response to the report, Halutz confirmed to Ma'ariv that he sold the portfolio on that date and at that time, but denied it had anything to do with the possibility of an imminent war. The IDF chief said he sold the portfolio because of recent losses he took prior to July 12.
"It was my portfolio of shares, on which I had lost NIS 25,000," Halutz told Maariv. "It is true that I sold the portfolio on July 12, 2006, but it is impossible to link that to the war. At the time I did not expect or think that there would be a war."
Halutz described the Ma'ariv article exposing the affair as "malicious and tendentious?I don't intend to be dragged down to such a low level and blemish my integrity. I am a citizen too and have my own economic affairs. This has stained [my reputation] for no reason and is unworthy of any further comment."
MKs call for resignation
No government figures have yet related to the affair but lawmakers from across the political spectrum have called for Halutz's resignation.
National Union-National Religious Party MK Zevulun Orlev called on Attorney General Menachem Mazuz to open an investigation into the affair.
MK Collette Avital of Labor, Likud MK Gilad Erdan and MK Aryeh Eldad of the National Union led calls for Halutz to resign in the wake of the disclosures.
The IDF Spokesperson said that Halutz has a bank account like any other Israeli citizen and needs to perform transactions in the account from time to time. Any attempt to link between personal matters of the chief of staff and Israel's national security is inappropriate, the army said.
No laws broken
The Israel Securities Authority commented that Halutz's act had not broken the Companies Law in respect to insider information. Section H.1 rules that insider information relates only to traded companies, not estimations in respect to the general situation of the market.
However, that in itself does not end the affair. If it turns out that Halutz sold shares in marketing companies or banks, assuming they would be facing hard times during the war, then his actions may be subject to investigation.
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Israel: 'We did not plan war with US'
JPost
Aug. 14, 2006
Israel's bombing of Lebanon over the past month was not merely a response to the unprovoked attack by Hizbullah on July 12 but a planned operation coordinated ahead of time with the Bush administration - this, at least, according to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, in an article published in this week's The New Yorker magazine.
Hersh wrote that Israeli officials "visited Washington separately to get a green light for the bombing," and that the IAF bombing offensive could "serve as a prelude to a potential American preemptive attack to destroy Iran's nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground."
Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev expressed outrage at the allegations.
"The whole idea that the Israeli campaign in Lebanon was a premeditated military operation that we chose to initiate in coordination with others is simply not true," he said. "We were attacked. We had no interest in the escalation of violence in the North. The escalation was forced upon us by a premeditated, deliberate and unprovoked act of aggression of Hizbullah.
"They succeeded in having tactical surprise. They killed some of our soldiers and took two as hostages. Anyone who looks at those events can clearly witness that Israel was responding to an act of aggression, the timing of which was chosen by Hizbullah."
The American Embassy did not respond to requests for a comment.
Hersh, quoting many unnamed US diplomatic and intelligence sources, elaborated his assertion that the US had prior knowledge of Israel's plans for Hizbullah.
An unnamed "Middle East expert" said the State Department "had several reasons for supporting the Israeli bombing campaign... It was seen as a way to strengthen the Lebanese government so that it could assert its authority over the south of the country."
According to the piece, the White House believed that if a "military option against Iran's nuclear facilities" became necessary, Hizbullah's arsenal must be destroyed as it could be used "in a potential retaliation at Israel."
The article began with a statement given by President George Bush at the G-8 summit in St. Petersburg on July 16: "It's now become clear why we don't have peace in the Middle East."
Bush went on to describe the relationship between Hizbullah and its supporters in Iran and Syria as one of the "root causes of instability" in the region.
The article also claimed that since Hizbullah is supported by Syria and Iran, the need to strengthen the Lebanese government is part of larger US hopes for democratizing the region. Another long-term US goal, wrote Hersh, is to set up a Sunni coalition with Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, which will pressure Shi'ite Iran.
Vali Nasr, an expert on Shi'ites and Iran, is quoted as saying, "Every negative American move against Hizbullah was seen by Iran as part of a larger campaign against it. And now Hizbullah is testing Iran's new weapons. Iran sees the Bush administration as trying to marginalize its regional role, so it fomented trouble."
Regev remarked that everyone "knew of Iran's involvement with Hizbullah." But, that information did not factor into Israel's response to Hizbullah's provocation.
Shabtai Shavit, national security adviser to the Knesset and former head of the Mossad, is quoted as saying, "We do what we think is best for us, and if it happens to meet America's requirements, that's just part of a relationship between two friends. It was just a matter of time."
Comment: Well of course he expressed "outrage" at the truth being exposed! The American, British and Israeli governments thrive on lies and deception. The truth is their 'kryptonite'!
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No evidence Iran active in Iraq: US general
Mon Aug 14, 2006
Reuters
There is no evidence the Iranian government is stirring trouble in Iraq, a U.S. general said on Monday, playing down suggestions that Tehran will retaliate for U.S. backing of Israel's war on Hizbollah.
"There is nothing that we definitively have found to say that there are any Iranians operating within the country of Iraq," Major General William Caldwell, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, told a news conference.
U.S. officials have previously said the war between Israel and Iran-backed Hizbollah might encourage Tehran to make mischief in Iraq to pressure the United States, which has some 130,000 troops in the country.
"Iran has got Hizbollah in Lebanon. Iran has got some forces here. There is the possibility they might encourage those forces to create increased instability here," U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters last week.
Caldwell said recently-manufactured Iranian weapons and munitions had been found in Iraq.
"We do believe that some Shi'ite elements have been in Iran receiving training. But the degree to which this is known and endorsed by the government of Iran is uncertain," he said.
Several powerful Shi'ite militias, including the Badr Organization and the Mehdi Army, supporters of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al Sadr, have long-standing ties with Tehran.
Caldwell said the contacts were via "third elements associated with Iran".
"We do know that weapons have been provided and IED (improvised explosive device) technolo
Comment: Who cares, bomb them anyway. Right?
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Disaster!
Heavy rain mars Ethiopia rescue
BBC
Tuesday, 15 August 2006
Bad weather is preventing helicopters from reaching thousands of villagers marooned by southern Ethiopian floods.
At least 125 people died when the Omo River burst its banks on Sunday. Residents spent Monday night outside as houses in five villages were submerged.
Officials have sent five boats to help. A week ago, floods caused more than 250 deaths in the east of the country.
Flooding often hits low-lying parts of Ethiopia between June and September, when heavy showers fall on dry regions.
"As the weather is too difficult for helicopters, we were unable to fly," local police commissioner Tsegay Muluneh told AFP news agency.
"We have dispatched more boats from the area and from the federal government with more personnel, medical teams, swimmers, divers and emergency food," he said.
Over the past two years flooding has afflicted several areas of eastern and southern Ethiopia, killing hundreds and displacing hundreds of thousands.
The flooding of the river and tributaries, which flow into Lake Turkana on Ethiopia's border with Kenya, also destroyed many homes and swept away hundreds of livestock.
Warnings
Weather forecasters say heavier than usual rains are expected in the coming weeks across much of Ethiopia.
Officials have issued a fresh warning for people living near the Awash River, which is some 300 km (190 miles) east of Addis Ababa, and which flooded earlier this month.
The authorities in Dire Dawa in the east have banned the rebuilding of settlements on the river banks and declared the areas a disaster zone.
There are 256 confirmed deaths from last week's flooding, but some 250 people are still missing and 10,000 were displaced.
The UN's World Food Programme is distributing relief supplies there. "The extensive flooding was a cruel blow for already vulnerable people, many of whom have now lost everything, including their families," WFP's acting country representative Ebenezer Ngowi said in a statement.
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Human Tampering Threatens Planet's Life-Sustaining Surface
SPX
Aug 15, 2006
Los Angeles - In a report released today, scientists call for a new systematic study of the Earth's "critical zone"--the life-sustaining outermost surface of the planet, from the vegetation canopy to groundwater and everything in between.Understanding and predicting responses to global and regional change is necessary, they say, to mitigate the impacts of humans on complex ecosystems and ultimately sustain food production.
"Development is having a great effect on the critical zone," said soil scientist Donald Sparks of the University of Delaware and co-chair of the NSF workshop that led to the report, entitled Frontiers in Exploration of the Critical Zone. "Converting some of the best land around the world into buildings, roads and concrete has implications for air and water quality and biodiversity, and over time could put pressure on our ability to produce food.
Critical zone sites include an extraordinary diversity of soils and ecosystems ranging from the tropics to the poles, from deserts to wetlands, and from rock-bound uplands to delta sediments.
"Because the critical zone includes air, water and soil and is the focal point of food production, it has a major effect on human life," Sparks said. "It is imperative that we better understand the interactions that occur there."
The report calls for an international Critical Zone Exploration Network, as well as a systematic approach across a broad array of sciences--including geology, soil science, biology, ecology, chemistry, geochemistry, geomorphology and hydrology--to study critical-zone processes.
"We need to understand how living organisms interact with the solid earth at the scale of a billionth-of-a-meter as well as the scale of landscapes, how these effects have changed over geologic time, and how they will change into the future as humans continue to drastically alter the earth's surface," said Sue Brantley, a Penn State University geoscientist who co-chaired the workshop.
Scientists need to determine "how the physical, chemical and biological components of Earth's weathering transforms mineral and organic matter, sculpts terrestrial landscapes, and controls the exchange of greenhouse gases and dust with the global atmosphere," said Enriqueta Barrera, program director in the National Science Foundation's Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the workshop that led to the report.
Scientists believe four key questions surround activity of the atmosphere, landforms, ecosystems and water.
+ What processes control fluxes of carbon, particulate and reactive gases in the atmosphere?
+ How do variations in, and changes to, chemical and physical weathering processes impact the critical zone?
+ How do weathering processes nourish ecosystems?
+ How do biogeochemical processes govern long-term sustainability of water and soil resources?
Funding for the critical zone workshop and associated activities was provided by grants from NSF's Division of Earth Sciences to the University of Delaware and Penn State, and by the NSF Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) program in Delaware.
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China's natural disaster death toll at six-year high
AFP
Aug 14, 2006
Beijing - The death toll from natural disasters in China this year is the highest in at least six years, the government said Monday, as the number of confirmed fatalities climbed past 1,900. A total of 1,699 Chinese died in natural disasters from January 1 to August 9 this year, the largest number since at least 2000, the civil affairs ministry said in a statement on its website.
The ministry said another 415 people had been reported missing during the period.
Typhoons, eight of which have struck since May, were the main killer, accounting for 1,045 dead or missing, followed by floods and landslides with 758, the ministry said.
The previous highest death toll for the same period was 1,556 in 2003, the government said. Last year the death toll over that time was 1,328, with 1,376 lives lost during that particular period in 2000.
The data, which confirms a report on this year's death toll published by the nation's Red Cross Society last week, did not provide figures for years before 2000.
The data from the civil affairs ministry also did not take into account the lives lost from Typhoon Saomai, which struck on Thursday last week and killed at least 255 people, according to the latest official figures on Monday.
This would bring the official death toll to well over 1,900.
Government officials have said that this year's typhoon season started about a month earlier than usual, with the storms fiercer and more frequent than usual partly due to the impact of global warming.
"Against the backdrop of global warming, more and more strong and unusual climatic and atmospheric events are taking place," the head of the China Meteorological Administration, Qin Dahe, said recently.
"The strength of typhoons is increasing, the destructiveness of typhoons that have made landfall is greater."
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Quake off eastern Indonesia, no tsunami warning
Reuters
Tue Aug 15, 2006
JAKARTA - A 5.9 magnitude earthquake struck eastern Indonesia in the Banda sea area on Tuesday, an official at the national earthquake center said, but there were no reports of damage or a tsunami.
"There was a quake in Banda sea at 10:05 a.m. Jakarta time (0305 GMT)," said Fauzi at the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (MGA). "There is no potential tsunami and also no damage."
The U.S. Geological Survey put the earthquake's magnitude at a strong 6.1 and at a depth of 39 km (24 miles).
It said the quake struck 188 km southwest of Ambon in Indonesia's Moluccas. The MGA official said the quake could be felt in Ambon.
There was no immediate tsunami warning posted on the Pacific
Tsunami Warning Center's Web site (www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc)
Earthquakes occur frequently near Indonesia, which lies on a seismically active stretch of the Pacific basin known as the "Pacific Ring of Fire."
In May this year, a strong earthquake also hit the city of Yogyakarta in Java killing at least 5,000 and a tsunami after a quake on July 17 off the south coast of Java killed at least 600.
A 9.15 magnitude earthquake on December 26, 2004 in the sea off the Aceh province triggered a tsunami in the Indian Ocean that killed more than 220,000 people in the region.
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World now has more fat people than hungry ones: expert
by Lawrence Bartlett
AFP
Mon Aug 14, 2006
SYDNEY - The world now has more overweight people than hungry ones and governments should design economic strategies to influence national diets, a conference of international experts have heard.
The transition from a starving world to an obese one had happened with dramatic speed, US professor Barry Popkin told the annual conference of the International Association of Agricultural Economists on Monday.
"The reality is that globally far more obesity than undernutrition exists," Popkin said, adding that while hunger was slowly declining, obesity was rapidly spreading.
There are more than a billion overweight people in the world and 800 million who are undernourished, he said at the Gold Coast convention centre near Brisbane. The world population is estimated at about 6.5 billion.
"Obesity is the norm globally and undernutrition, while still important in a few countries and in targeted populations in many others, is no longer the dominant disease."
The "burden of obesity", with its related illnesses, was also shifting from the rich to the poor, not only in urban but in rural areas around the world, he said.
China typified the changes, with a major shift in diet from cereals to animal products and vegetable oils accompanied by a decline in physical work, more motorised transport and more television viewing.
But all countries had failed to address the obesity "boom", the University of North Carolina professor said.
Food prices could be used to manipulate people's diets and tilt them towards healthier options, he suggested.
"For instance, if we charge money for every calorie of soft drink and fruit drink that was consumed, people would consume less of it.
"If we subsidise fruit and vegetable production, people would consume more of it and we would have a healthier diet."
University of Minnesota professor Benjamin Senauer used a comparative study of lifestyles in the United States and Japan to show how the costs of food and transport play a role in the problem.
Japan has one of the world's lowest rates of obesity and the US one of the highest.
"The average Japanese household spends almost a quarter of its income on food compared to under 14 percent in the US," Senauer said.
While a direct tax on food in the US to reduce obesity would not be politically acceptable, agricultural subsidies which resulted in cheap food could be reduced.
But other factors such as exercise also played an important role and again economic influences were involved, he said.
"Japanese cities are based on efficient public transport -- and walking. The average American commutes to work, drives to the supermarket and does as little walking as possible."
The average Japanese man walks four miles (6.4 kilometres) a day while almost a quarter of US adults may only walk between 1,000 and 3,000 steps a day, Senauer said.
While the relative cost of calories and fat had decreased over time, technology had eliminated much of the need for physical activity during work.
For most Americans, getting enough physical activity now required a conscious commitment to exercise and often cost money, such as the price of a round of golf or membership of a gym."
"Obesity and overweight bring with them significant risks of chronic disease and premature death and adjusting domestic policy to encourage a less sedentary lifestyle is literally a matter of life and death," he told the conference.
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Yangtze River suffers rare drought in flood season
www.chinaview.cn 2006-08-14 18:51:23
YICHANG, Aug. 14 (Xinhua) -- The Yangtze, China's longest river, is gripped by a rare drought this summer with water in many sections of the river at historically low levels.
The Yangtze River Hydrological Bureau said that, in August, the volume of water entering the Three Gorges Reservoir, in the middle reaches of the river, was only 8,400 cubic meters per second, about the same as the February dry season.
The bureau's monitoring station in Yichang City, Hubei Province, home to the Three Gorges Reservoir, the world's largest hydro-power project, said the local hydrological figure set a new low record.
River navigation authorities have reinforced patrols and assistance operations along the waterway, warnings vessels against running aground.
Flood control experts say that the river's flood season will end in a month. Despite the current drought, summer or even autumn flooding is still a possibility.
Weather forecasts offer little hope of rainfall in the next few days in the upper and middle reaches of the river, including Sichuan, Hubei provinces and Chongqing Municipality, where farming is suffering from the blistering drought.
Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality is suffering the worst drought of the past 50 years. Water supplies for nearly 7.5 million people have been threatened, local authorities said Monday.
To date, more than 19 million mu (1.3 million hectares) of cropland have been affected and more than 6.8 million head of livestock are facing temporary water shortages, according to a spokesman with the Chongqing Municipal Disaster Relief Office.
"Two thirds of the communities and townships in the municipality have reported water supply difficulties," he said.
The drought has caused direct economic losses of about 2.5 billion yuan (312.5 million U.S. dollars), including nearly 1.8 billion yuan (225 million U.S. dollars) in the agricultural sector, he said.
The drought struck Chongqing in early July, 10 to 15 days earlier than in past years. But in total the dry spell has lasted for more than 50 days in most areas in the municipality, and 70 days in some, the spokesman said.
Since July, there have been 13 to 24 high temperature days in most parts of Chongqing, with maximum temperatures of 38 to 40 degrees Celsius, he said.
Prolonged high temperatures and scarce rain have dried out two thirds of the rivers in the municipality, said a spokesman with Chongqing Waterway Bureau.
In neighboring Sichuan Province, the drought has made it difficult for more than 3 million people and 4 million livestock to access drinking water. Meanwhile, nearly 21 million mu (1.4 million hectares) of cropland have been affected, or 39 percent ofthe total in the drought-hit areas.
The drought has caused direct economic losses of more than 7 billion yuan (8.75 billion U.S, dollars), according to the provincial disaster relief office.
"Sichuan is suffering its worst drought since 1972," said ZhangShilin, director of the office responsible for artificially influencing weather.
In a bid to relieve the drought, Sichuan will trigger artificial rain in 12 cities, including the provincial capital of Chengdu, if weather conditions permit, Zhang said.
Local governments in the drought-affected areas have allocated funds to help residents tap ground water and improve water conservation facilities.
Government departments concerned have been asked to make daily reports on the drought situation.
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Large Oil Spill Occurs in Indian Ocean
Los Angeles Times
By Chisaki Watanabe
15/08/06
TOKYO -- A Japanese tanker spilled about 1.4 million gallons of crude oil in the eastern Indian Ocean following a collision with a cargo ship, the tanker's operator said Tuesday. Japan's Kyodo news service said the spill -- which would be about 4,500 tons -- may have been the largest ever involving a Japanese tanker.
In a separate oil spill, the Philippines said that a tanker had sunk in rough seas Friday off the coast of Guimaras Island, about 312 miles southeast of Manila. About 528,000 gallons of industrial fuel was leaking from the accident, officials said.
A central Philippine island province declared a "state of calamity" following what authorities called the country's worst spill.
Faced with a potential "environmental catastrophe," the Philippine coast guard called for a national mobilization of resources to mitigate the impact of the large amount of leaking fuel, "which is now considered as the biggest major oil spill that has hit our country."
The Japanese tanker Bright Artemis spilled the oil following a collision Monday with the Amar, a smaller cargo ship, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines said in a statement. It said the accident took place when the tanker maneuvered near the Amar, which was in distress about 300 miles west of India's Nicobar islands.
The exact amount of the spill was not clear, the announcement said. The tanker was carrying about 77.6 million gallons, or 250,000 tons, of crude. It had left port in Oman bound for Japan.
There were no reports of injuries aboard the tanker, which had a Croatian captain and crew of 23, or the Amar, which was registered in Singapore.
Mitsui said the spill had been reported to Singaporean and Indian Coast Guard officials.
The largest oil spill involving a U.S. vessel occurred when the Exxon Valdez oil tanker emptied 11 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound off the coast of Alaska in 1989, killing hundreds of thousands of birds and marine animals and soiling more than 1,200 miles of rocky beach.
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Farmers called to report ugly sheep
Reuters
15/08/06
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian scientists have called on the country's farmers to report any ugly sheep found in their flocks.
A campaign called "Xtreme sheep" aims to study sheep with undesirable wool features to unlock the genetic makeup of the prized merino and ensure production of its high quality fleece.
The South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI) said Tuesday its search for "Australia's ugliest merino lambs" may hold the key to securing the nation's A$2.8 billion (US$2.1 billion) wool industry.
The institute said ugly lambs -- with uneven wool, strange fibres, clumps of wool that fall out, bare patches, no wool, or highly wrinkled skin -- are usually culled by farmers.
"Before sending them to the abattoir, we'd like farmers to talk to us first, because studying animals with extreme features offers one of the most efficient ways to find good genes that can impact on certain wool traits," said project leader Simon Bawden.
"It might seem a paradox that ugly wool may be good, but when looking through a genetic profile, the random genetic mistakes act like a flag, speeding up our search to finding genes critical to wool formation and synthesis," Bawden told reporters
The institute hopes to the DNA study will lead to improvements in Australia's merino wool, making it stretchier, less scratchy, shinier and easier to spin, and better able to compete against synthetic fibres.
So far only 10 ugly sheep have been found this lambing season, which stretches from April to September, when statistically there could be hundreds, said the institute.
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Extinction of Languages Puts Plants and Animals at Risk
Live Science
By Corey Binns
11/08/06
The ears of linguists, anthropologists, and conservationists perked up with the recent announcement that the federal government will continue to support the digital documentation of languages on the brink of extinction.
More than half of the world's 7,000 languages are endangered; many face extinction in the next century.
Interestingly, the projects funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) could save more than just a few mother tongues. It might also protect plants and animals.
Talk about diversity!
When the nonprofit organization Terralingua mapped the distribution of languages against a map of the world's biodiversity, it found that the places with the highest concentration of plants and animals, such as the Amazon Basin and the island of New Guinea, were also where people spoke the most languages.
As well as serving as indicators of biodiversity, languages also act as good signs of cultural diversity and a group's understanding of surrounding environments, because people store communal knowledge in their language.
"Wherever humans exist, they have established a strong relationship with the land, and with the biodiversity that exists there," said anthropologist and Terralingua President Luisa Maffi. "They have developed a deep knowledge of the plants and animals, the local ecology, as well as a knowledge about how to use and manage the resources to ensure continued sustenance of biodiversity."
Languages hold valuable knowledge about how to preserve biodiversity.
Native languages have many names for plants that describe how and where they grow, as well as their medicinal uses. But the meanings often do not survive translation from one language to another.
"If you've learned something about a plant from a speaker of an indigenous language, but you don't use the language, it's harder to pass on that knowledge," said linguist Pamela Munro of UCLA.
Destabilizing a forest
As one example, members of the Native American group called the Sekani practiced controlled burning of the forests of British Columbia to regenerate the forest and keep the understory clear for game animals. Their methods also kept the mountain pine beetle pest at bay.
A small pox epidemic decimated the indigenous people and the timber industry took over the management of the forests, putting a stop to the controlled burns.
Since the 1990's, without the regular burnings, the beetle's outbreak has destroyed more than 7 million acres of forest.
"The forests have been made unusable because the native populations have not been allowed to continue those practices," Maffi said. "Ultimately their communities will have to disperse, which will lead to a loss of cultural and linguistic diversity."
Ancient respect for fish
In Thailand, new protective measures are observing an age-old respect for one of the world's largest freshwater fish by following ancient fishing practices.
The Mekong giant catfish, called the "king of fish" in Cambodian, can grow to more than 10 feet in length and has a regal history.
Cave paintings in Thailand dating back 3,500 years illustrate the Mekong giant catfish's long-lived importance. Traditional fishermen in the northeast of Thailand have historically believed that they should not catch the fish. If they do, they hold a religious ceremony to ward off bad luck, burning an image of the fish.
This summer, in celebration of Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej, fishermen in Thailand and Laos took an oath to abide by these ancestral fishing taboos to avoid fishing the critically endangered beast. The fish is also legally protected in Cambodia.
By following tradition, the fishermen may save the catfish from being the first extinct casualty in the Mekong River, a diverse habitat that is home to more than 1,200 species.
Saving the salmon
Similarly, in Washington State, time-honored lessons are being heard.
Generations of the Tulalip and Yakima tribes and other Native American groups have relied on Pacific salmon as a key resource; they also value the fish very highly and harvest with forethought.
"They treat salmon with respect so that the fish return every year," said ethnobiologist Eugene Hunn of the University of Washington.
The tribes hold annual salmon ceremonies to honor the fish. The first catch of the season is celebrated with singing, dancing, and the passing of salmon tales from generation to generation.
Yet commercial fishing has led to drastic reductions in salmon populations-some species face endangerment.
Since a 1974 decision upheld the Indian's rights to harvest fish, the tribes and the Washington Department of Fisheries have collaborated to maintain a healthy population of Pacific salmon that will return to spawn in the Columbia River and east of the Cascade Mountains.
"Salmon is sacred to them not just as a matter of maximizing profit," Hunn told LiveScience. "To preserve a resource for the people of your community for the future without end imposes a different attitude toward the fish. Now, these attitudes have become more widely recognized."
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Bush Reich
New Data Shows Immigrants' Growth and Reach
By RICK LYMAN
The New York Times
August 15, 2006
The number of immigrants living in American households rose 16 percent over the last five years, fueled largely by recent arrivals from Mexico, according to fresh data released by the Census Bureau.
And increasingly, immigrants are bypassing the traditional gateway states like California and New York and settling directly in parts of the country that until recently saw little immigrant activity - regions like the Upper Midwest, New England and the Rocky Mountain States.
Coming in the heart of an election season in which illegal immigration has emerged as an issue, the new data from the bureau's 2005 American Community Survey is certain to generate more debate. But more than that, demographers said, it highlights one reason immigration has become such a heated topic.
"What's happening now is that immigrants are showing up in many more communities all across the country than they have ever been in," said Audrey Singer, an immigration fellow at the Brookings Institution. "So it's easy for people to look around and not just see them, but feel the impact they're having in their communities. And a lot of these are communities that are not accustomed to seeing immigrants in their schools, at the workplace, in their hospitals."
By far the largest numbers of immigrants continue to live in the six states that have traditionally attracted them: California, New York, Texas, Florida, New Jersey and Illinois.
Immigrants also continue to flow into a handful of states in the Southeast, like Georgia and North Carolina, a trend that was discerned in the 2000 census.
But it is in the less-expected immigrant destinations that demographers find the most of interest in the new data.
Indiana saw a 34 percent increase in the number of immigrants; South Dakota saw a 44 percent rise; Delaware 32 percent; Missouri 31 percent; Colorado 28 percent; and New Hampshire 26 percent.
"It's the continuation of a pattern that we first began to see 10 or 15 years ago," said Jeff Passel, senior research associate at the Pew Hispanic Center, who has examined the new census data. "But instead of being confined to areas like the Southeast, it's beginning to spill over into some Midwestern states, like Indiana and Ohio. It's even moving up into New England."
Over all, immigrants now make up 12.4 percent of the nation's population, up from 11.2 percent in 2000. That amounts to an estimated 4.9 million additional immigrants for a total of 35.7 million, a number larger than the population of California.
Unlike the full census, which measures all population, the American Community Survey covers only what census officials call "household" population - that is, people living in households, rather than in "group quarters" like universities, long-term care facilities and prisons.
Thus, the 16 percent increase in immigrants since 2000 refers only to the household population. (The nation's household population in 2005 was 288,378,137, up from 273,637,296 in 2000.)
From 1990 to 2000, the total population showed a 57 percent increase in the foreign-born population, to 31.1 million, from 19.8 million.
Still, the rise in the immigrant household population since 2000 seems to indicate that the blazing pace of immigration seen throughout the 1990's has continued into the first half of this decade.
And along with the increase in the overall number of immigrants, the survey found an increase in the numbers who are not United States citizens - an estimated 2.4 million more since 2000. The survey did not try to distinguish between noncitizens in the country legally, like students or guest workers, and those in the country illegally.
Georgia and North Carolina, states that had already seen significant increases in their immigrant population in the 1990's, continue to see rising numbers. In Georgia, for instance, foreign-born residents accounted for 7.2 percent of the state's population in 2000, and 9 percent in 2005.
"We've been getting very diverse down here," said Judy Hadley, statistical research analyst for the Georgia Office of Planning and Budget. "You name any country and we've got it."
Ms. Singer pointed out that much of the growth in immigrants was in "suburban areas and a lot of other places that really have no history of immigration."
Immigration was just one area covered by the first release of data from the American Community Survey, which also covered such demographic information as race, age, education and marital status.
The survey detected a significant increase in the number of Americans over age 25 who hold a bachelor's degree or higher - 27.2 percent of that population in 2005 compared with 24.4 percent in 2000.
This contributes to what has been a half-decade surge in Americans' educational attainment. In 1940, only 4.6 percent of Americans held a bachelor's degree.
The survey found that the percentage of Americans who are 65 or over is shrinking, from 12.6 percent of the population in 1990 to 12.4 percent in 2000 and 12.1 percent in 2005.
Partly, this is driven by the huge influx in immigrants, who tend to be of working age or younger. But demographers caution against seeing this as a long-term trend.
"It's more like the lull before the storm," said William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. "Before long, the baby boomers are going to start getting into that age group in large numbers and the percentage will shoot up."
The survey is intended as an annual bolster to the bureau's constitutionally mandated census of the country's population every 10 years. It began as a test program in 1996 and has gradually expanded to where it can now provide detailed data for nearly 7,000 geographic areas, including all Congressional districts and counties or cities of 65,000 or more.
In coming months, more data from the survey will cover income, poverty and housing.
Besides getting larger, the survey found shifts in the composition of the nation's immigrant population.
"Essentially, it's a continuation of the Mexicanization of U.S. immigration," said Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies. "You would expect Mexicans to be increasing their share in places like Georgia and North Carolina, which already saw some increases, but they've also increased their share of the population, and quite dramatically, in states like Michigan, Delaware and Montana."
More of America's immigrants, legal or not, come from Mexico than any other country, an estimated 11 million in 2005, compared with nearly 1.8 million Chinese and 1.4 million Indians.
Conversely, the percentage of immigrants who were born in European countries has dropped sharply - 29.4 percent in the last five years, demographers say, because immigrants who came to the United States in the mid-20th century are now dying.
A study of this data by Mr. Passel for the Pew Hispanic Center showed that while 58 percent of the immigrants who arrived in the United States since 2000 settled in 5 of the traditional gateway states, 24 percent settled in 9 second-tier states (including Georgia, Massachusetts and Washington) and 11 percent found homes in 11 third-tier states, many of which have seen little immigration before (stretching from Connecticut to Minnesota to Nevada).
And while many of those first- and second-tier states saw the largest numbers of new arrivals from Mexico, Mr. Passel found, it was some of the third-tier states that saw the largest percentage increases: Alabama, South Carolina, Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Two decades ago, demographers said, some 75 percent to 80 percent of new immigrants settled in one of the half-dozen gateway states and tended to stay there. Then, in the last 10 to 15 years, the pattern shifted and increasing numbers began to stay in the gateways briefly and then move. Now, they say, the pattern is that more immigrants are simply bypassing the gateways altogether.
"The biggest thing that drives immigration to specific destinations is that the immigrant already knows someone who is living there," Mr. Camarota said.
The common pattern, demographers said, is that a handful of immigrants move to a new region from one of the gateway states and put down roots. Then, once settled, they become a pipeline for others in their family or their home village to move directly into the same area.
"It's looking like what happens is that a person from a given community, say in Nicaragua, is getting established," said Bob Coats, the governor's census liaison in North Carolina. "And then they send word home that they have a good job and other people - neighbors, family members - come to join them and you have these enclaves of people from one country, one region, becoming established in the same area."
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Donors say Lieberman will be well-funded; Supporters of Israel from both parties will be crucial to senator's effort
By Tom Curry
MSNBC
Aug. 14, 2006
WASHINGTON - Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut will be able to raise the funds necessary to mount a campaign to keep his Senate seat, both Democratic and Republican donors say.
Having lost last week's Democratic primary to Ned Lamont, Lieberman is running as an independent against Lamont and Republican Alan Schlesinger.
Lamont, a Greenwich, Conn. businessman who self-financed about two-thirds of his campaign, ran against Lieberman's support for the Iraq war, his refusal to use a filibuster to block a vote on Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito and a number of other issues.
Lieberman's decision to run as an independent is causing angst within the ranks of Democratic donors, some of whom were unwilling to talk on the record about his campaign because his candidacy has so divided Democrats.
The three-term Democrat will turn to donors to his previous Senate campaigns and his 2004 presidential bid. He'll also get some money from Republican and independent donors, especially those who agree with Lieberman's support of Israel and continued U.S. troop presence in Iraq.
At a moment when Israel is at war with Hezbollah, Lieberman's candidacy has become a rallying point for those who think it would be a singularly bad time to end the Senate career of such a staunch champion of the U.S.-Israel alliance.
Ira Forman, executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) said, "He can raise the money" to run a campaign. "There is a pro-Israel network of folks who are going to give to Lieberman because of his friendship to the Jewish community and because of who he is. Will he get all the money he'd have gotten as the Democratic nominee? Probably not, but I do think he can raise the money" to sustain a very credible campaign, Forman said.
Big donor base to draw on
In his presidential campaign in 2003-004, Lieberman got nearly 15,000 individual contributions; in his primary campaign this year he had received more than 5,700 individual contributions by July 19, according to the Federal Election Commission. (Lamont had gotten 1,100 individual contributions by July 19, according to the FEC.)
That's a base from which Lieberman can start. If even a third of those donors write his campaign a $1,000 check, he'd have nearly $7 million, enough to mount a robust campaign. That figure does not include new Republican donations which will soon begin to flow in.
Contributions from political action committees (PACs) will be somewhat crimped. A number of corporate PACs, such as the National Beer Wholesalers' PAC, have already given Lieberman the maximum amount permitted, $5,000 for the primary, and $5,000 for the general election
Democrat Mitchell Berger, a Florida lawyer who has given money to the campaigns of Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. John Kerry in the past and who was finance chairman for Lieberman's 2004 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, said he will donate money to Lieberman's independent run and help raise money by talking to other donors.
"It would be tragic for the country to lose a man of his ability if he's willing to serve," said Berger.
Berger said many donors in Lieberman's existing network will continue to back him because "usually that person has an independent relationship with Sen. Lieberman" that exists outside of their connection to the Democratic Party.
But he said Democrats are grateful for the work Lieberman has done in the past for the party. "He did a fundraiser for the Florida Democratic Party two years ago and raised a million dollars. People are going to remember him for things like that."
'He stood up to George Bush...'
Berger acknowledges that some Democrats have disagreements with Lieberman over Iraq. But, he added, "He stood up to George Bush to implement the reforms of the 9-11 Commission and to create the Department of Homeland Security. And he stood up to make sure we don't have drilling off the coast of Florida. It is hard to walk away from that."
Berger said Lieberman loyalists know he's still a Democrat. "If Sen. Lieberman had said he's not going to caucus with the Senate Democrats, that would be a problem, but he has said he will caucus with them," Berger pointed out.
One Democrat who gave $1,000 to Lieberman's primary campaign, Washington attorney Heather Podesta, said Monday, when asked whether she'd chip in for his independent bid, "I'd rather not talk abut my political giving and what my plans are."
But quite willing to speak was Bruce Bialosky, a leading Republican donor in California, who said he will raise more than $10,000 for Lieberman.
On Tuesday night, once Lamont had defeated Lieberman, Bialosky sent an e-mail to the 2,000 people on his political list "expressing my despair over Lieberman's loss in the primary" and making it clear he'd raise money for Lieberman's independent bid. "I've never seen such a tremendous response" from his list, Bialosky said.
"This is not an issue of partisanship. This is a great American," he said. "There are certain times when we have to cross party lines. Sen. Lieberman has clarity on the most important issue of our time. His opponent doesn't have a clue."
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Military's Discharges for Being Gay Rose in '05
By JOHN FILES
The New York Times
August 15, 2006
WASHINGTON - The Defense Department discharged 726 service members last year for being gay, up about 10 percent from 2004, figures released by a gay rights group show.
The group, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, obtained the information through a Freedom of Information Act request. A spokeswoman for the Defense Department, Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, confirmed that it had released the information.
On Monday, the legal group released a breakdown of discharges by installation. A sharp increase occurred at Fort Campbell, Ky., where in 1999 a soldier was bludgeoned to death in his barracks by fellow soldiers who thought he was homosexual. In 2004, 19 service members from the base were discharged, a number that climbed to 49 last year.
Fort Sill, Okla., had 27 dismissals last year, up from 8 in 2004. Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., had 60 dismissals, up from 40 in 2004, and the Marine base at Parris Island, S.C., discharged 22, up from 12.
The Army, by far the largest branch of the military, discharged more gay personnel last year than the other branches with 386, the figures show, followed by the Navy with 177, the Air Force with 88 and the Marines, the smallest force, with 75.
The overall number of men and women dismissed because they were found to be gay or because they disclosed their sexuality fell in the three years from 2002 to 2004. From Sept. 11, 2001, through last year, the discharge rate dropped 40 percent.
The total of such discharges in 2004 was 653. That compares with 770 in 2003, 885 in 2002 and 1,227 in 2001.
Under a policy introduced by the Clinton administration known as "don't ask, don't tell," the military cannot inquire into service members' sex lives unless there is evidence of homosexual conduct.
Those who volunteer the information have to be discharged. More than 11,000 members have been discharged for that reason, the legal group said.
In a review by the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, the Pentagon said last year that more service members had been discharged for drug offenses, pregnancy and weight problems than for being gay.
Colonel Krenke said: "The Department of Defense policy on homosexual conduct in the military implements a federal law enacted in 1993 following extensive hearings and debate. The law would need to be changed to affect the department's policy."
The military has argued that allowing openly gay troops would disrupt unit cohesion and undermine the services' missions. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said that the Bush administration will not revisit the policy.
Representative Martin T. Meehan of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities, introduced a bill last year to repeal the policy on gay service members.
In an interview on Monday, Mr. Meehan pointed to "the seamless integration of openly gay service members into the militaries of many of our closest allies, namely the United Kingdom, Australia and Israel." His bill has 118 supporters, including 5 Republicans.
A spokesman for the legal group, Steve Ralls, said it had detected no increased effort to oust members under the policy last year. Mr. Ralls said that some bases reporting increases in discharges had few, if any, reports of unchecked harassment. It often boils down to the tolerance of individual commanders, he said.
"In the end," Mr. Ralls said, "we just don't know what exactly led to these dismissals."
Some service members have used the policy to escape their military obligations as morale has dipped and multiple overseas deployments have caused strain, Mr. Ralls added.
The legal group has also seen an increase in the malicious use of the Internet and e-mail to disclose the sexual orientation of service members, Mr. Ralls said. Sites like MySpace.com are routinely visited by service members and military officials, and service members who identify themselves as gay or lesbian on the Internet risk expulsion.
In one case, the orientation of a gay sergeant was disclosed to his superiors by anonymous e-mail messages. The sergeant was honorably discharged this year from the Army.
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Seven dwarfs more famous than US judges: poll
Reuters
Mon Aug 14, 2006
NEW YORK - Three quarters of Americans can correctly identify two of Show White's seven dwarfs while only a quarter can name two Supreme Court Justices, according to a poll on pop culture released on Monday.
According to the poll by Zogby International, commissioned by the makers of a new game show on pop culture called "Gold Rush," 57 percent of Americans could identify J.K. Rowling's fictional boy wizard as Harry Potter, while only 50 percent could name the British prime minister, Tony Blair.
The pollsters spoke to 1,213 people across the United States. The results had a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.
Just over 60 percent of respondents were able to name Bart as Homer's son on the television show "The Simpsons," while only 20.5 percent were able to name one of the ancient Greek poet Homer's epic poems, "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey."
Asked what planet Superman was from, 60 percent named the fictional planet Krypton, while only 37 percent knew that Mercury is the planet closest to the sun.
Respondents were far more familiar with the Three Stooges -- Larry, Curly and Moe -- than the three branches of the U.S. government -- judicial, executive and legislative. Seventy-four percent identified the former, 42 percent the latter.
Twice as many people (23 percent) were able to identify the most recent winner of the television talent show "American Idol," Taylor Hicks, as were able to name the Supreme Court Justice confirmed in January 2006,
Samuel Alito (11 percent).
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US military recruiting irregularities rose last year
AFP
Mon Aug 14, 2006
WASHINGTON - Irregularities by US military recruiters rose by 50 percent last year as the war in Iraq made it more difficult to find volunteers for military duty, a government audit said.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said irregularities are probably more widespread than official statistics show because of spotty oversight by the Defense Department.
But while the military services likely underestimated the true number of violations, they still reported increases in all categories of recruiter irregularities from the 2004 to the 2005 fiscal years, the GAO said.
"Allegations and service-identified incidents of recruiter wrongdoing increased from almost 4,400 to about 6,600 cases," the report said.
"Substantiated irregularities increased from just over 400 to almost 630 cases; and criminal violations more than doubled from just over 30 to almost 70 cases," it said.
The number of criminal violations reported by the army doubled during the period from 19 to 38, according to the report.
The GAO did not detail the types of irregularities that are being reported.
Of all the services, the army annually recruits the most new personnel each year, and has had the most trouble meeting its recruitment goals.
Last year, it fell 8.3 percent short of its goal of signing 80,000 new recruits.
Army officials have said the service is on track to meet the same goal this year.
The improved recruiting performance has come only after big increases in signing bonuses and moves to broaden the pool of those eligible by admitting more lower-scoring candidates and raising the maximum age from 35 to 42.
The GAO report cited an internal Defense Department survey in 2005 in which two thirds of military recruiters said the war in Iraq had made it difficult for them to achieve their goals.
The survey also found that over half of military recruiters, and two thirds of army recruiters, said they were dissatisfied with their jobs, which may have contributed to the increase in irregularities.
Comment: Yup, there's no recruiting problem in the US... Everything's fine...
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Colorado Republican redistricting rejected by court
By JON SARCHE
Associated Press
Mon Aug 14, 2006
DENVER - A panel of federal judges has delivered a blow to Colorado Republicans and dismissed the last lawsuit filed over congressional boundaries imposed by a state court.
The ruling, handed down Friday, means district lines drawn by a Denver judge remain in effect.
The dispute dates to the 2000 census, which showed Colorado's population grew enough to earn the state a seventh seat in the U.S. House. The Legislature, then split between Republicans and Democrats, failed to agree on new boundaries in time for the 2002 elections, prompting a Denver judge to map the districts.
By 2003, Republicans had gained control of the Legislature and adopted a new redistricting map to replace the court-imposed map.
When Democrats challenged the GOP-favored map, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that the Legislature gets only one chance a decade to redistrict and lawmakers missed that chance when they failed to agree on a plan in 2002. Justices threw out the 2003 map and restored the state court's map.
The federal lawsuit had asked judges to reinstate the district lines drafted by the Republican-controlled Legislature.
The lawsuit argued that the court-imposed map violates the constitutional right of citizens to vote for congressional candidates in districts created by the Legislature.
In dismissing the lawsuit on Friday, the federal judges asserted that the case has already been decided by Colorado's Supreme Court.
Brett Lilly, the attorney for the plaintiffs in the federal suit, said Monday the judge's redistricting map and the state Supreme Court ruling violated the U.S. Constitution, which says redistricting must be handled by the Legislature. Lilly also objected to the state justices' conclusion that the Colorado Constitution prohibits mid-decade redistricting.
Lilly said he plans to appeal the ruling to the
U.S. Supreme Court.
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The Myth of Health Insurance
By Thomas Szasz
Forty million Americans are said to have no health insurance. Those who do have health insurance are frustrated by having to pay ever-increasing premiums for steadily diminishing medical services. Conventional wisdom tells us that we are facing a "health insurance crisis."
It is important to recognize that what we call "health insurance" has little to do with health and nothing to do with insurance. We do not face a "health insurance crisis." We face the consequences of a set of economic and social problems rooted in a futile effort to make the distribution of health care-unlike the distribution of virtually every other good and service in our society-egalitarian.
The typical contractor of homeowner's insurance is the homeowner. He buys insurance to protect himself from costly loss caused by events outside his control, such as fire, not to defray the recurring expense of maintaining it. The ideal outcome for both the buyer and the seller of home and automobile insurance is for the policyholder to never make use of his policy.
The typical contractor of health insurance is not the insured person but his employer. Neither party is free to negotiate the terms of the policy. The employee cannot bargain for a lower premium in exchange for a high deductible or for choosing to be not covered for alcoholism or schizophrenia. The employer is not free to decline coverage for state-mandated medical services. In New York State, for example, the Women's Wellness Act mandates group health-insurance plans to cover contraceptives including abortifacients, and the Infertility Coverage Act mandates that they cover infertility treatments, including selective fetal reduction (abortion of multiple fetuses conceived by artificial means).
The economic survival of an insurance company depends in large part on collecting more in premiums than it pays out in claims. To bring about that outcome the insurer employs certain methods, some complicated, some very simple. Although embarrassingly obvious, some of these simple measures need to be mentioned because they are absent from what we mislabel "health insurance." For example, a person cannot buy a policy to protect himself from a loss caused by his own actions, such as burning down his own home. But so-called health insurance protects the individual from the medical consequences of his own actions, for example, injuring himself by smashing his car while drunk. Not surprisingly, all the participants in the complex scheme we call "health insurance" are unhappy with the result.
In the case of genuine insurance, there is a direct relationship between the dollar value of the protection purchased and its cost to the insured. The premium for a life-insurance policy with a face value of $100,000 is less than for a policy for a multiple of that amount. In health insurance no such relationship exists between premium paid and compensation received. Moreover, the health-insurance company, acting on its own behalf, can write a contract with a "cap" on claims, that is, for the maximum amount it will pay the insured, regardless of the health-care cost he incurs. The insured person, who typically does not act on his own behalf but is "provided" insurance as an important part of his job benefit, has no reciprocal options.
The sole rational purpose of true insurance is to protect the insured from an unanticipated economic loss so large as to jeopardize his economic well-being. No one sells or buys insurance to cover the cost of maintaining his property. Home insurance does not pay for plumbing repairs; automobile insurance does not pay for replacing worn-out windshield wipers. Yet people demand precisely this kind of reimbursement from so-called health insurance.
"Health Insurance": The Illusion of Equality
If health insurance is not insurance, what is it? It is a modern version of the illusion that all men are equal-or, when ill, ought to be treated as if they were equal. When religion was the dominant ideology, death was (supposed to be) the great equalizer: once they departed the living, prince and pauper were equal. Today, when medicine is the dominant ideology, health care is (supposed to be) the great equalizer: everyone's life is "infinitely precious" and hence deserves the same protection from disease. Of course, prince and pauper did not receive the same burial services, and rich and poor do not receive the same medical services. But people prefer the illusion of equality to the recognition of inequality.
Actually, the ruled have always longed for "universal health care," and the rulers have always supplied them with a policy that the masses accepted as such a service. In the Middle Ages, universal health care was called Catholicism. In the twentieth century, it was called Communism. In the 21st century, it is called Universal Health Insurance. What we choose to call "health insurance" is, in fact, a system of cost-shifting masquerading as a system of insurance. We treat a public, statist political system of health care as if it were a system of private health insurance purchased for the purpose of obtaining private medical care.
Everyone knows but no one admits that health insurance is not really insurance. In fact, Americans now view their health insurance as an open-ended entitlement for reimbursement for virtually any expense that may be categorized as "health care," such as the cost of birth-control pills or Viagra. The cost of these services is covered on the same basis as the cost of medical catastrophes, such as treatment for the consequences of a brain tumor. Such distorted incentives produce the perverted outcomes with which we are all too familiar.
From a public-health point of view, the state of our health is partly, and often largely, in our own hands and is our own responsibility, even if we have a chronic illness, such as arthritis or diabetes. It is an immoral and impractical endeavor to try to reject that responsibility and place the burden for the consequences on others.
Thomas Szasz is professor of psychiatry emeritus at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. His latest book is Liberation by Oppression: A Comparative Study of Slavery and Psychiatry (Transaction, 2002).
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Bush's Political Survival Depends on Terror Threats - The president is trying for the third time to make terrorism his big campaign issue -- are Americans going to finally snap out of it?
By William Greider
TheNation.com
August 14, 2006.
An evil symbiosis does exist between Muslim terrorists and American politicians, but it is not the one Republicans describe. The jihadists need George W. Bush to sustain their cause. His bloody crusade in the Middle East bolsters their accusation that America is out to destroy Islam. The president has unwittingly made himself the lead recruiter of willing young martyrs.
More to the point, it is equally true that Bush desperately needs the terrorists. They are his last frail hope for political survival. They divert public attention, at least momentarily, from his disastrous war in Iraq and his shameful abuses of the Constitution. The "news" of terror -- whether real or fantasized -- reduces American politics to its most primitive impulses, the realm of fear-and-smear where George Bush is at his best.
So, once again in the run-up to a national election, we are visited with alarming news. A monstrous plot, red alert, high drama playing on all channels and extreme measures taken to tighten security.
The White House men wear grave faces, but they cannot hide their delight. It's another chance for Bush to protect us from those aliens with funny names, another opportunity to accuse Democrats of aiding and abetting the enemy.
This has worked twice before. It could work again this fall unless gullible Americans snap out of it. Wake up, folks, and recognize how stupid and wimpish you look. I wrote the following two years ago during a similar episode of red alerts: "Bush's 'war on terrorism' is a political slogan -- not a coherent strategy for national defense -- and it succeeds brillantly only as politics. For everything else, it is quite illogical."
Where is the famous American skepticism? The loose-jointed ability to laugh at ourselves in anxious moments? Can't people see the campy joke in this docudrama called "Terror in the Sky"? The joke is on them. I have a suspicion that a lot of Americans actually enjoy the occasional fright since they know the alarm bell does actually not toll for them. It's a good, scary movie, but it's a slapstick war.
The other day at the airport in Burlington, Vermont, security guards confiscated liquid containers from two adolescent sisters returning home from vacation. The substance was labeled "Pure Maple Syrup." I am reminded of the Amish pretzel factory that was put on Pennsylvania's list of targets. Mothers with babes in arms are now told they must take a swiq of their baby formula before they can board the plane. I already feel safer.
The latest plot uncovered by British authorities may be real. Or maybe not. We do not yet know enough to be certain. The early reporting does not reassure or settle anything (though the Brits do sound more convincing than former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who gave "terror alerts" such a bad reputation). Tony Blair is no more trustworthy on these matters than Bush and Cheney. British investigators are as anxious as their American counterparts to prove their vigilance (and support their leaders). The close collaboration with Pakistani authorities doesn't exactly add credibility.
One question to ask is: Why now? The police have had a "mole" inside this operation since late 2005, but have yet to explain why they felt the need to swoop down and arest alleged plotters at this moment (two days after the Connecticut primary produced a triumph for anti-war politics).
The early claim that a massive takedown of a dozen airliners was set for August 16 is "rubbish," according to London authorities. So who decided this case was ripe for its public rollout? Blair consulted Cheney: What did they decide? American economist Jamie Galbraith was on a ten-hour flight from Manchester, England, to Boston on the day the story broke, and has wittily reflected on other weak points in the official story line.
The point is, Americans are not entirely defenseless pawns. They can keep their wits and reserve judgment. They can voice loudly the skepticism that Bush and company have earned by politicizing of the so-called "war" from the very start. Leading Democrats are toughening up. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid uses plain English to explain what the Republicans up to -- using genuine concerns of national security "as a political wedge issue. It is disgusting, but not surprising."
Instead of cowering in silence, the opposition party should start explaining this sick joke. Political confusion starts with the ill-conceived definition of a "war" that's best fought by police work, not heavy brigades on a battlefield. Forget the hype, call for common sense and stout hearts.
All we know, for sure, is that Bush and his handlers are not going to back off the fear-and-smear strategy until it loses an election for them. Maybe this will be the year.
William Greider is the author of, most recently, "The Soul of Capitalism" (Simon & Schuster).
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All 50 State Governors Resist Bush's Push for New Power Over National Guard
by Pamela Hess
UPI
Aug 14, 2006
Washington - All 50 state governors and the governor of Puerto Rico are opposing a White House effort to wrest control of the National Guard in times of crisis from the states. The move comes almost exactly a year after the White House and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco squared off on this very issue in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, when New Orleans was flooded by failed levies.
The House of Representatives included in its version of the 2007 defense authorization bill a provision that would give the president control over Guard troops during "a serious natural or man-made disaster, accident, or catastrophe that occurs in the United States, its territories and possessions, or Puerto Rico."
This could be done without the governor's consent, according to the legislation.
"This provision was drafted without consultation or input from governors and represents an unprecedented shift in authority from governors as Commanders and Chief of the Guard to the federal government," states the Aug. 6 letter to the leaders of the House and the Senate.
"We take very seriously our constitutional duty to protect our citizens and lead our Guard. We are responsible for the safety and welfare of our citizens and are in the best position to coordinate all resources to prepare for, respond to and recover from disasters. The current process by which we use our National Guard in emergencies and request federal assistance when necessary works well and should not be changed," the letter states.
National Guard troops under governor control occupy a special legal status under Title 32 of U.S. Code that is particularly suited to civil unrest or natural disaster: among their powers is the power to act as a police force and arrest and detain citizens, useful in a riot or a looting scenario.
When under federal control - that is, activated by the president under Title 10 of U.S. Code -- they are considered the "ready reserve" and are limited to the same powers as active-duty troops. That means they cannot arrest and detain U.S. citizens, unless there is an insurrection and martial law is declared.
The House language does not address those different powers and roles, said Nolan Jones, deputy director for federal relations at the National Governor's Association in Washington. Under this language, if the president activated the Guard to use in a domestic crisis, it would not have the power to arrest, and would therefore be less effective.
More worrisome, however, is the White House usurping state powers, said Jones.
"It's frightening because it's not insurrection. This gives him blanket power to do this at any time," said Jones. "The president can call the Guard at any point in time and take over."
The White House said last year it would be seeking special powers over the Guard which would allow the president to act in a crisis even if a governor does not request federal help.
"It wouldn't be necessary to get a request from the governor or take other action," then White House spokesman Scott McClellan said in September.
When McClellan made his comment, the White House was still reeling from its poor showing in New Orleans after the levies were breeched and flooded the city, and was blaming Gov. Blanco for failing to request federal aid and troops.
In fact, Blanco had declared Louisiana a disaster area on Aug. 26 in anticipation of Hurricane Katrina which hit on Aug. 29.
In the week that followed Blanco, on the advice of National Guard commander Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, resisted White House pressure to "dual-hat" National Guard troops, putting them under the command of an active duty military general while at the same time keeping her own command.
On Thursday, Sept. 1, Blum met with Blanco in Louisiana to discuss the National Guard response to the disaster. Blum agreed to an accelerated schedule for the influx of 20,000 more National Guard troops, and told Blanco there would not be a material benefit to Louisiana in terms of additional personnel or materiel if she gave up command of the Guard to the federal government.
On Friday, Sept. 2, however, White House Chief of Staff Andy Card told Blanco if she signed a memorandum of agreement dual-hatting the troops in Louisiana -- putting them all under the command of active duty Army Lt. Gen. Russ Honore as well as the governor's office -- the recovery operation would move more quickly, Blanco's chief of staff told congressional investigators last year.
Card told Lt. Gen. Blum, then back in Washington, to make the offer.
"I was asked to deliver an option, which I did, and the option was to federalize this," Blum told the Senate Governmental Affairs investigation committee Jan. 19 during an interview. "It wasn't my option. I was delivering an option that was put together by someone else and they said call and see if she'll like this. So I called them, and she didn't like it."
Blum told the Governmental Affairs Committee in February Blanco "absolutely" made the right decision in resisting the pressure to dual-hat the National Guard commander.
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Security Paul McHale, a former Marine, agreed. He told the committee in February such an arrangement would have been untenable, as it would have placed officers in the cross-fire between the White House and a governor if there were conflicting priorities or orders for the troops.
According to the NGA, the House language would create the very same problem.
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Manufacturing Terrorism
How to organise a major terrorist scare - The Big Dummy's guide to security booga-booga
Gavin Gatenby
Possum News Network
August 14, 2006
How easy is it to organise a major terrorist scare like the one that's currently gridlocking the world's airports? Dead easy. If you follow a few simple points you can panic the populace and stampede the media with virtually no risk of getting caught. All it takes is a little confidence. Here's a simple "how-to" for aspiring top-level spooks:
1. The politicians don't want to know
Have confidence that the government really doesn't want to know what it is you're getting up to, as long as the effect benefits them. By their very nature, secret police intelligence and espionage organizations operate in secret and often do, "in the national interest", illegal things or stuff which ordinary folk would regard as grossly unethical - things that would embarrass the government if they were to be exposed. If anything goes wrong the politicians want to be able to "plausibly deny" they were involved. This relationship hands enormous, uncontrolled, power to your small, ultra-secretive, self-governing elite clustered at the top of the nation's security "service". Your colleagues are invariably drawn from the upper reaches of the political and economic elite and of course you know better than anybody what's in "the national interest" and you have a God-given right to rule. Breaking ranks and talking isn't in your colleagues' class nature.
2. Keep things on a need-to-know basis
Keep your security organization compartmentalised and discourage specialist sections from talking to each other. You can plausibly plead security reasons for this. Make sure all information gets passed up the line to your small group at the top who compile and "assess" the overall threat and decide when to act. Thus you control the "narrative" and the timing of the scam. The foot soldiers may shake their heads and wonder at some of the things you come up with, but they'll be in no position to contradict you. And if they do, it's a very serious offence. It'll ruin their careers and could land them a very long stretch in gaol.
3. At the right time, get the president or prime minister involved
When you've decided on the optimum time for your security scare and sorted out who your "plotters" will be, it's important to involve the head of the government. He'll want to broadcast to the nation, taking credit for keeping the people safe from the terrible plot. He'll automatically be followed by the leaders of the mainstream opposition parties, all eager to prove their credibility, responsibility and patriotism. As soon as you've made the official line clear, the media and the state apparatus will fall into line.
4. "Prove that we lie"
Always remember: it's breathtakingly easy to claim you've "thwarted" something horrible and almost impossible for sceptics to prove that you haven't. This applies especially if you "thwart" the plot in its early stages. Invariably you're acting against individuals from a group that's already been demonised and will be scared to speak up or fight back. The majority will be inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt. Questioning the government in a time of "national emergency" isn't an easy gig.
5. Don't worry, they'll all play their part
Complex conspiracies involving lots of people are entirely unnecessary. All that's needed is for your close knit, unaccountable group to order those lower down the chain to act on "information received". They don't even have to know what the information was. They just have to know the addresses to raid and who to arrest. When they do, they're sure to find some political or religious literature, or something on the hard drives, or some household chemicals that will, under the circumstances you've created, look suspicious. If you're using agents provocateur, they'll be able to plant "evidence" and report suspicious conversations to "sex-up" the case. Of course, details will never be available officially or in a verifiable form, but fragments and hints of purported "evidence" can be leaked to selected journalists (see below).
6. Feed the chickens
Keep information in official news releases to an absolute minimum. There's a plausible excuse for this: more information will harm ongoing investigations and might prejudice the case when it gets to court. In place of any hard attributable facts, provide a steady stream of small leaks "under condition of anonymity" to selected journalists from politically reliable mainstream news organizations. These people are carefully selected for political conservatism and journalistic "responsibility". Even if they weren't, they need a story and they're totally reliant on you for one. It doesn't matter if the leaked details are outrageously illogical. Even if they're suspicious of the story, your contacts will run it rather than lose a scoop. In this way you'll establish an unofficial official narrative that most members of the public will be inclined to accept as something like the truth. They've already been conditioned by the media attack-dogs to thoroughly distrust the group from which your victims come so they'll figure that if the charges are a fit-up the victims are probably guilty of something and it would be prudent to put them away.
7. Politicians who aren't 100 per cent with you are friends of terrorists
No politician enjoys being attacked as "irresponsible" or accused of being unpatriotic or soft on terrorists. Very few will dare question the allegations in case they're proved wrong. Most are venal politics junkies making a very good living doing something they enjoy. It's safer for them to join the chorus condemning terrorism and congratulating you on your vigilance. With any luck, some politicians will show their credentials by loudly criticising you for not acting sooner and more ruthlessly. Those few who are troubled will probably just say nothing.
8. Don't worry about proving links to real terror groups
Once upon a time, not so long ago, it was felt necessary to show that your local "terrorist cell" was recruited by, and in communication with, al-Qaeda, or some group with actual form some time in the not-too-distant past. This requirement brought its own problems, since evidence of the links often failed to convince, or, worse still, unearthed shady figures with a track record of collaboration with the CIA or M16 or Mossad.
It's still a good idea to hint at such links but it isn't de rigueur because the problem disappeared with the happy invention of the "spontaneously-forming, self-activating" (SFSA) terror cell theory in the aftermath of the 7/7 London bombings. According to the SFSA theory, terrorists don't have to be recruited or trained. Wherever any three integrated, happy, and successful young Muslim men get together to discuss politics or religion or even just to play cricket, they spontaneously decide to set up a do-it-yourself terror cell. They scour the internet for recipes for powerful but highly unstable explosives made from sports drinks, peroxide, hair gel, acetone and baby formula. Without outside direction they select targets and decide the day. All you need to "prove" conspiracy was that they met, discussed politics and had in their possession common household chemicals, fizzy drinks and a mobile phone. It doesn't matter if their conversations show nothing explicit. Just say they were talking in code. If you can show at least one of them has travelled overseas, that's a plus. If not, assert that they "investigated" booking airline tickets or showed an interest in travelling overseas.
The SFSA theory not only relieves you of having to prove connections to international terror groups, there's a bonus: it also increases public fear. Any group of young Muslims kicking a ball around in the park is actually planning to blow up trains. Or airliners. Anything you do to these people is likely to be "overlooked", if not vocally supported by patriotic simpletons.
9. It doesn't really matter if a court finds them innocent
Your victims won't get their day in court for months, maybe years, and if you've organised things well, you'll be operating under laws that ensure that the public and your tame media are prevented from reporting key details or even excluded from court altogether. By the time your victims get to court, the scare you used them to create will have done its job. Even if your victims are found innocent, that fact will get little press attention from a media who are embarrassed by their role in such an obvious scam, and anyway, the accused terrorists' acquittal will be lost in the next big scare.
Good luck, and have fun.
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Terror war doubts rise
BY CRAIG GORDON
Newsday Washington Bureau
August 11, 2006
WASHINGTON -- President George W. Bush likes to boast of five attack-free years in the United States since 9/11. He claims to have decimated the al-Qaida network.
But the re-emergence of an al-Qaida-style mega-plot -- even a foiled one -- shows just how little headway Bush's war on terrorism has made in defeating Islamic extremism, several analysts said yesterday.
Some gave Bush and British officials good marks on the cops-and-robbers part of stopping the plot, but most sharply criticized Bush's broader war-on-terror campaign as severely disjointed and distracted by the decision to go to war in Iraq.
Not only did the war cause Bush to draw time and attention away from the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other extremists, it fueled anti-U.S. hatred in the Islamic world that creates a seemingly endless supply of plotters and would-be martyrs, they said.
More than that, several analysts said the sophistication and coordination of the current plot show that far from being out of business as a driving force in terrorism, as Bush would suggest, al-Qaida still has the brains and muscle to mount a major attack.
"We took our eye off that ball when we didn't finish that job in Afghanistan at the outset, and when we decided to add Iraq," said Leslie Gelb, a longtime foreign policy analyst with the Council on Foreign Relations.
Now Gelb sees the United States facing a decades-shaping battle for influence with Muslim extremists, one in which everyday people in the Middle East are deciding whether to cast their lot with America or the terrorists.
And the terrorists are making headway in the battle for public opinion, whether among insurgents in Iraq or with Hezbollah in Lebanon, fighting the U.S. ally Israel.
"This is a time when we would hope Muslims would be turning against extremists in their midst who are killing other Muslims, but that isn't happening," Gelb said.
This debate flared in the political arena yesterday as well, with Democrats like Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid saying the plot shows that Bush's anti-terror fight has failed. Republicans shot back that Reid and others were trying to score political points off the near-tragedy.
And one analyst for the conservative Heritage Foundation, James Jay Carafano, scoffed at the notion of yesterday's arrests as anything but a success story for Bush.
But the criticism of Bush's anti-terror fight runs broad and deep in foreign policy circles, particularly because of the Iraq war. Bush calls it the central front in the war on terror and says the administration has separately captured or killed two-thirds of senior al-Qaida leadership.
Many analysts consider the war a distraction from what should be the major focus of U.S. foreign policy -- finding a way to hunt down terror leaders and stop the attacks at their source.
In the Bush administration, insiders acknowledge there is little day-to-day focus on bin Laden, mainly because U.S. officials believe he is no longer in a position to dictate attacks and organize major plots.
"I don't think anybody thinks he has any command and control," said one administration official, referring to this plot. "I don't think anyone thinks he called this in."
But experts insist that any White House comfort over that belief is severely misplaced. They say the fact that al-Qaida appears able to regenerate itself so readily suggests a serious long-term problem -- one allowed to fester and grow as the administration focused on the military aspects of the fight.
"We have rolled up some key guys, no doubt about it, but when we roll up the third, fourth, fifth operations chief of al-Qaida, that's nothing to celebrate," said Tom Sanderson, an expert on terrorist threats at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "That's a signal that good people are taking over as soon as the other guy gets knocked off."
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De Menezes Gun Cop To Train Sky Marshals
UK Mirror
15/08/2006
ONE of the officers who shot Tube blunder man Jean Charles de Menezes is to train new British sky marshals.
The armed cop, in his 30s, has been picked because top brass say he has "proven ability to act swiftly and decisively" in emergencies.
Officers from his unit will be secretly placed on some jets feared to be at particular risk on routes from the UK to America.
Ministers first raised the idea of the undercover armed units in 2002 following US pressure. But they refuse to reveal if the teams are already being deployed.
The decision to have the detective involved in last year's tragedy at Stockwell, South London, as their instructor will spark fury in some quarters.
No policemen will face charges over Mr de Menezes's death.
But security services insiders insist the officer - part of Scotland Yard's elite CO19 gun squad - is the best man for the job.
One senior source said: "The shooting was a terrible mistake, but it was made in response to a genuine fear that this man was a terrorist about to blow up innocent people.
"We need the best to counter the very real threat posed by international terrorism.
"Sky marshals have to act quickly and decisively in any situation.
"They have to be ruthless in bringing down potential terrorists before they can bring down an aircraft."
All UK police forces have been told to send firearms officers for the eight-week course because of the heightened terror alert.
The teams will attend the Metropolitan Police's Specialist Training Centre in Gravesend, Kent -one of the best in the world.
They will learn how to tackle hijackers and use firearms in mid-air.
Sky marshals will be issued with Sig Sauer 9mm pistols, with special bullets which do not ricochet and damage the aircraft's fuselage.
Officers will also be taught how to man cockpit controls when the crew have been killed or injured.
Following 9/11, Washington put pressure on European governments to have at least three sky marshals on US-bound flights. Many, notably Sweden, Portugal and Denmark, fiercely opposed the plan, as did the British Airline Pilots' Association.
The UK is thought to have started training undercover air guards in 2002.
In 2004, following speculation that the Government had secretly axed the plan, the Department of Transport said: "We could deploy sky marshals if we wanted to. It's just that we don't talk about it."
They have been in use on US planes for more than 40 years.
The programme was set up in 1961 by US president John F Kennedy amid growing fears over hijacks.
Ronald Reagan boosted their numbers after a Lebanese gun gang seized a TWA jet in Athens in 1985, shot a US passenger and hurled his body on to the tarmac.
American marshals take a seven-week course at a training academy in Artesia, New Mexico. They then have four weeks at a specialist air marshal training centre in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
In December last year, sky marshals killed for the first time when a mentally disturbed airline passenger who pretended that he had a bomb in his bag was shot at Miami airport.
Brazilian Mr Menezes, 27, was gunned down on July 22 last year after officers mistook him for a suicide bomber.
The Crown Prosecution Service says there is "insufficient evidence" to prosecute any individual. But the Met Police will be charged under health and safety laws. An Independent Police Complaints Commission report given to the CPS in January, but not yet made public, is said to be highly critical of the police operation.
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Fox Suggests That the Citizens of New Orleans are Potential Terrorists
News Hounds
15/08/2006
Fox is tripping over itself trying to help the Bush administration terrorize the nation, using the London "terror plot" to distract the American people from the anti-war, anti-Bush conversation that began yesterday after Ned Lamont won Tuesday's Connecticut primary.
Case in point: Charles Payne, of "WStreet.com" and the only African-American who very, very regularly appears on Fox's "business" programs, was a guest today (August 10, 2006) on Your World.
Payne participated in the daily roundtable discussion, today's topic being, "Terror Plot Fear: Will it Damage America's Economy?" According to Payne, the citizens of our own New Orleans are potential terrorists too:
...[W]e have a silent majority here that really believes in violence and believes that America's against them. You remember the ramifications from New Orleans, that a lot of dissatisfied people here could ultimately join up with the Muslims or sympathize with them. It's a scary thing here as well as in the UK.
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Imad Moustapha - MUST WATCH VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH ISRAELI TERRORIST
BBC
9 August 06
Stephen Sackur talks to Syria's Ambassador to Washington about his country's role in the Middle East and concerns over links to Hezbollah.
VIDEO INTERVIEW
Much is riding on the fate of the Security Council resolution to end the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.
The Arab League have sent a delegation to the United Nations to present their recommendations after criticising the draft for not being favourable to Lebanon.
Imad Moustapha is Syria's Ambassador to the United States.
Stephen Sackur asks him if Damascus is helping or hindering the push for peace.
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Fox News priest tricked us into talking, says mosque's imam
Paul Lewis
Monday August 14, 2006
The Guardian
Representatives of an east London mosque used by several of the terror suspects reacted angrily yesterday to what they called a "sick stunt" by Rupert Murdoch's Fox News channel.
Mohammed Shoyaib, the imam of the Musjid-e-Umer mosque in Walthamstow, complained that he and other elders were tricked by a representative from the cable channel, a priest who said he was working for the Vatican and wanted to talk peace.
"He introduced himself as priest working in Rome," said Mr Shoyaib. "Then he said he was working for peace in the world, that all faiths should work together for peace, that he needs a united message of peace for the American people. Only later he said he was from 'a sister network of Sky News', but never mentioned Fox."
The man spent several minutes conversing on camera with the imam and elders, but they reacted furiously when they learned he was Father Jonathan Morris, a religious pundit for Fox News.
At one point he had asked them where the hatred in the minds of bombers comes from.
His ID listed his name as Mr Jonathan Morris, under the title "freelance".
"We would never have spoken to him if we had known - we've been tricked," said Mr Soyaib.
Mr Morris denied he had misled the local community but, in the face of criticism, he hastily left the scene. He later returned for a haircut in a nearby barber's shop, but was again surrounded by worshippers at the mosque who claimed they had been the victims of a devious trick.
On Thursday, in the aftermath of the arrests by anti-terrorist police, Mr Morris wrote on his Fox News blog: "Today, officials have uncovered a major terrorist plot to blow up a group of planes on that same route.
"This is America and the world in 2006, and we are getting used to it. This time they got the bad guys, thank God.
"As we move forward as a country in these troubling times, our war must be first and foremost against the ideas that shape the hearts of the Muslim masses."
A spokesman for Fox News was not available for comment.
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H.E.R.B. - Had Enough Religious Bullshit! - A Collection of Articles, Quotations, and Cartoons For Those Of Us Who Prefer Not To Live In A Theocracy
Ed Krebs
The World is divided into armed camps ready to commit genocide just because we can't agree on whose fairy tales to believe.
In the end, Religion will kill us all.
-- Ed Krebs
I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!
-- Rev. Jerry Falwell
Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith.... We need believing people.
-- Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933
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Stop Belittling the Theories About September 11
Bill Christison
www.dissidentvoice.org
August 14, 2006
However horrendous the crimes of two of the world's great liars and terrorists in Gaza and Lebanon, it is imperative that we not let the deeds of Ehud Olmert and George W. Bush distract us from another recent event.
The U.S. alliance with Israel and the power of the lobby that lets Israel so easily influence U.S. foreign policy have been major factors in allowing the monstrous slaughter of innocent civilians in Gaza and Lebanon. What is happening in these lands may also encourage Olmert and Bush to start new hostilities in Syria and heavy, possibly nuclear, bombings in Iran -- and this entire mess of neocon pottage may lead to a new World War and clashes of civilizations and religious fundamentalisms that these two wretched politicians seem quite literally to want to impose on the rest of us. It's a tough case to make that anything else going on in the world -- anywhere -- could possibly be of equal importance.
But on July 29 and 30, and then again on August 1, something else happened that increasing numbers of people believe is of equal importance. On these dates C-SPAN rebroadcast a panel discussion, held originally in late June, sponsored by an organization called the American Scholars' Symposium to discuss what really happened on September 11, 2001. Held in Los Angeles, the meeting lasted two days, and the C-SPAN rebroadcast covered one almost two-hour wrap-up session. The meeting was attended by 1,200 people interested in hearing something other than the official story of 9/11. The TV audience was evidently large enough to spur C-SPAN to broadcast the panel discussion five separate times in four days.
Even a month late, this is a lot of airtime for stories that many people call conspiracy theories -- and for which many others use nastier descriptions. It is possible that the head of C-SPAN, Brian Lamb, so strongly disbelieves the conspiracy theories that he felt giving them ample publicity would discredit them further. It is equally possible, however, that Lamb, who seems honestly to believe in presenting various sides of most issues as fairly as he can (although not always giving every side equal time), tried to do exactly that on the many legitimate questions raised about what actually happened on September 11. In any event, C-SPAN has made a major effort to bring information on the principal theories about 9/11 to the mainstream U.S. media. Lamb cannot be blamed for the coincidence that recent heavy military activity in Gaza and Lebanon is nearly drowning out his efforts.
Let's address the real issues here. Why is it important that we not let the so-called conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11 be drowned out? After spending the better part of the last five years treating these theories with utmost skepticism, I have devoted serious time to actually studying them in recent months, and have also carefully watched several videos that are available on the subject. I have come to believe that significant parts of the 9/11 theories are true, and that therefore significant parts of the "official story" put out by the U.S. government and the 9/11 Commission are false. I now think there is persuasive evidence that the events of September did not unfold as the Bush administration and the 9/11 Commission would have us believe. The items below highlight the major questions surrounding 9/11 but do not constitute a detailed recounting of the evidence available.
ONE: An airliner almost certainly did not hit The Pentagon. Hard physical evidence supports this conclusion; among other things, the hole in the Pentagon was considerably smaller than an airliner would create. The building was thus presumably hit by something smaller, possibly a missile, or a drone or, less possibly, a smaller manned aircraft. Absolutely no information is available on what happened to the original aircraft (American Airlines Flight 77), the crew, the "hijackers," and the passengers. The "official story," as it appeared in The 9/11 Commission Report simply says, "At 9:37:46, American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, traveling at approximately 530 miles per hour. All on board, as well as many civilians and military personnel in the building, were killed." This allows readers to assume that pieces of the aircraft and some bodies of passengers were found in the rubble of the crash, but information so far released by the government does not show that such evidence was in fact found. The story put out by the Pentagon is that the plane and its passengers were incinerated; yet video footage of offices in the Pentagon situated at the edge of the hole clearly shows office furniture undamaged. The size of the hole in the Pentagon wall still remains as valid evidence and so far seems irrefutable.
TWO: The North and South Towers of the World Trade Center almost certainly did not collapse and fall to earth because hijacked aircraft hit them. A plane did not hit Building 7 of the Center, which also collapsed. All three were most probably destroyed by controlled demolition charges placed in the buildings before 9/11. A substantial volume of evidence shows that typical residues and byproducts from such demolition charges were present in the three buildings after they collapsed. The quality of the research done on this subject is quite impressive.
If the judgments made on Points ONE and TWO above are correct, they raise many "Who done it" questions and strongly suggest that some unnamed persons or groups either inside or with ties to the government were actively creating a "Pearl Harbor" event, most likely to gain public support for the aggressive foreign policies that followed -- policies that would, first, "transform" the entire Middle East, and second, expand U.S. global domination.
These first two points provide the strongest evidence available that the "official story" of 9/11 is not true. If the government could prove this evidence false, and its own story on these points correct, all the other data and speculation supporting the conspiracy theories would be undermined. It has provided no such proof and no answers to growing questions.
Other, less important points supporting the theories include the following.
THREE: For at least one hour and 45 minutes after the hijacking of the first aircraft was known, U.S. air defense authorities failed to take meaningful action. This strikes some "conspiracy theorists" as valid evidence that the U.S. Air Force was deliberately restrained from acting. Maybe so, but my own skepticism tells me that the inefficiency of U.S. defense forces is likely to be just as plausible an explanation.
FOUR: Some of the theorists believe that the 19 named hijackers were not actually the hijackers. One claim is that the names of the hijackers were not on the manifests of any of the four aircraft.
FIVE: None of the 19 hijackers' bodies were ever autopsied (since they were allegedly totally destroyed in the crashes, including even the people in the Pennsylvania crash).
SIX: At least five of the alleged hijackers (or persons with identical names) have since turned up alive in the Middle East. Nonetheless, the FBI has never bothered to re-investigate or revise the list of hijackers. Does this suggest that the FBI knows that no one in the administration is interested in reopening any further investigations?
SEVEN: Numerous pilots have allegedly told the theorists that none of the 19 hijackers could have flown the airliners well enough to hit the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon with as much accuracy as was displayed. The debate on this issue simply raises more doubt about the government's charge that the people it has named as hijackers are the real hijackers.
EIGHT: No one, except possibly government investigators who are not talking, has seen the plane that went down in Pennsylvania. Some of the conspiracy theorists suggest that it was deliberately destroyed before it hit the ground; others suggest that the plane actually landed in Cleveland and that passengers then were whisked away to some unknown destination. What happened to them at that point is simply a large question mark that makes it more difficult to believe this particular scenario.
NINE: Machinations in the U.S. stock market in the days before 9/11 suggest that some inside players in the market knew or suspected that United and American Airlines stock would soon drop. Two of the four of the aircraft involved in 9/11 were, or course, United planes and the other two were American Airlines planes.
It should be reemphasized that these items do not make up a complete list of all the charges made by the theorists, but they are a good sample. Anyone interested in perhaps the best summary of these charges should watch the video "Loose Change."
To repeat, points ONE and TWO above are the most important. If something other than an airliner actually did hit the Pentagon on 9/11, and if the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center actually were dropped to the ground by controlled demolitions rather than by anything connected to the hijackings, the untrue stories peddled by The 9/11 Commission Report are clearly susceptible of being turned into major political issues.
A Scripps Howard News Service/Ohio University poll taken from July 6 to 24, 2006 concluded that "more than a third [36 percent] of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them, so that the United States could go to war in the Middle East." The poll also found that "16 percent of Americans speculate that secretly planted explosives, not burning passenger jets, were the real reason the massive twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed."
A poll done by the Zogby polling organization two months earlier, between May 12 and 16, 2006, and using questions worded somewhat differently, suggested even more strongly that the issue could become a "big one" if aggressively publicized. This poll concluded that 42 percent of Americans believed there had indeed been a cover-up of the true events of 9/11, and an additional 10 percent of Americans were "unsure." The co-author of the poll, W. David Kubiak, stated that, "despite years of relentless media promotion, whitewash, and 9/11 Commission propaganda, the official 9/11 story still can't even muster 50 percent popular support."
Whichever of these polls is closer to the truth, it would seem that there is considerable support for making a major political issue of the subject.
This should be worked on at two different levels. At the first level, the objective should be long-term, centered on making a maximum effort to find out who the individuals and groups are that carried out the attacks in New York and Washington. Then, these people should be tried in an international court and, if possible, convicted and punished for causing so many deaths. Such a trial, accompanied by actual change in U.S. policies, would show that some people on this globe are at least trying to move closer to more just and decent behavior in human relationships around the world.
At the second level, the short term, the task should be to immediately set to work as hard as is humanly possible to defeat in this year's congressional election any candidate who refuses to support a no-holds-barred investigation of 9/11 by the Congress or a high-level international court. No more evidence than is now available is needed in order to begin this process.
A manageable volume of carefully collected and analyzed evidence is already at hand on both items ONE and TWO above. Such evidence should be used right now to buttress charges that elements within the Bush administration, as well as possibly other groups foreign or domestic, were involved in a massive fraud against the American people, a fraud that has led to many thousands of deaths.
This charge of fraud, if proven, involves a much greater crime against the American people and people of the world than any other charges of fraud connected to the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. It is a charge that we should not sweep under the rug because what is happening in Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq, Syria, and Iran seems more pressing and overwhelming. It is a charge that is more important because it is related to all of the areas just mentioned -- after all, the events of 9/11 have been used by the administration to justify every single aspect of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East since September 11. It is a charge that is more important also because it affects the very core of our entire political system. If proven, it is a conspiracy, so far successful, not only against the people of the United States, but against the entire world. Finally, it is a charge too important to ignore simply because the U.S. government refuses to discuss it. We must force the Bush administration to discuss it.
Discussions aggressively pushed day after day about what really happened on 9/11 will be one of the most important tasks between now and early November. Such discussions can, one hopes, provide progressives with a way to jolt voters out of their apathy and inchoate willingness to support the status quo that they think gives them security -- and encourage more voters to stop supporting Bush, the Republicans, and the wobbly Democratic politicians who might as well be Republicans. A major issue like this, already supported by many voters, may prove particularly important in a congressional election year when new uncertainties in the Middle East, new possibilities of terrorism against the U.S. in retaliation for recent large-scale acts of Israeli/U.S. terrorism in Gaza and Lebanon, and the corrupt almost-single-party U.S. political system combine to make it more likely that supporters of Bush will retain their majority this November.
In terms of electoral impact, it would not matter whether heavy publicity did in fact force the administration to accept a new high-level investigation of the 9/11 events. Initially, the principal goal would be to contribute heavily to the defeat of both Republicans and Democrats who refuse to support wholeheartedly a major new investigation by Congress or an international court. This might result in the defeat of more Republicans than Democrats in November, but ultimately the hoped-for goal should be the end of a system in which Democrats are barely different from Republicans, along with cutbacks in the political power of wealth and the foreign and domestic lobbies paid for by wealth. These are the dominant features of our system today that have practically eliminated meaningful democracy in the U.S. This failure of democracy has happened before in U.S. history, but this time it is likely to last longer -- at least until U.S. policies begin to pay as much attention to the needs of the world as they do to selfish or thoughtless needs of the U.S. and of its military-industrial complex. Attacks on the criminal events surrounding 9/11 might speed this process.
Virtually no members of Congress, Democratic or Republican, will relish calling for a further investigation of 9/11. For right now, in addition to other motives, the issue should be used to go after those political prostitutes among elected office-holders who should also be defeated because they are so easily seduced by money and power to vote for immoral wars against weak enemies.
At the Los Angeles meeting of the American Scholars' Symposium, one of the main speakers, Webster Tarpley, summarized his own views on the events of 9/11. He emphasized that "neocon fascist madmen" had perpetrated the 9/11 "myth." He went on to say, "The most important thing is that the 9/11 myth is the premise and the root of the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War and the coming attack on Iran. ... We must ... deprive [the myth's perpetrators] of the ability to stampede and manipulate hundreds of millions of people [with their] ... cynically planned terrorist events."
Let's give Webster Tarpley and other mistakenly labeled conspiracists who have labored in the wilderness for so long three cheers.
Bill Christison is a former senior official of the CIA. He was a National Intelligence Officer and the Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis before his retirement in 1979. Since then he has written numerous articles on U.S. foreign policies. He can be reached at: kathy.bill@christison-santafe.com.
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FLASHBACK! UN Resolution to Ban Nukes - 147 in favour to 1 against (United States), with 2 abstentions (Israel, United Kingdom)
UN Press Release
2004
Text urging negotiations on Fissile Material Treaty
approved by Disarmament Committee
The General Assembly would urge the Conference on Disarmament to agree on a programme of work that included the immediate commencement of negotiations on a fissile material cut-off treaty, according to one of threedrafts approved this morning by the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security).
That draft resolution was approved by a recorded vote of 147 in favour to 1 against (United States), with 2 abstentions (Israel, United Kingdom), as the Committee continued taking action on all draft resolutions and decisions. (For details of the vote, see Annex I.)
The Committee has organized its draft texts into subject "clusters", and this morning it approved texts in its clusters on nuclear weapons, other disarmament measures, and international security.
Explaining her negative vote on the fissile material cut-off treaty draft, the representative of the United States said that, while her country stood behind the idea of such an instrument, its experts had decided that effective verification would not be possible. Since verification was central to the draft at hand, she had therefore been forced to vote in opposition.
Having abstained from the same vote, the speaker from Israel said non-compliance with international treaties and the unchecked dissemination of sensitive materials had become among the most pressing nuclear non-proliferation challenges facing the world today. However, instead of adequately addressing such challenges, a fissile material cut-off treaty could actually complicate them. In that regard, he called for a new effective non-proliferation arrangement pertaining to the nuclear fuel cycle. Focusing on his own region, he added that issues related to nuclear disarmament could only be dealt with after achieving lasting peace and reconciliation.
By two texts approved without a vote this morning, the Assembly would express its appreciation to all parties that had implemented the recommendations made in the United Nations study on disarmament and non-proliferation, and call upon all States to continue to take measures to help prevent conflicts in South-Eastern Europe.
The Committee will meet again at 9:30 a.m. Friday, 5 November, to finish taking action on all draft texts.
Background
The First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) met this morning to continue and possibly conclude action on all draft resolutions and decisions on disarmament and international security. It had before it texts related to clusters dealing with nuclear weapons, disarmament machinery, other disarmament measures, and international security.
Expected to be acted on under cluster 1, which concerns nuclear weapons, is a draft on the Conference on Disarmament decision to establish an ad hoc committee to negotiate a fissile material cut-off treaty. The Committee is also expected to take up three draft resolutions from cluster 7, disarmament machinery. All three deal with improving the effectiveness of the methods of work of the First Committee.
From cluster 8, other disarmament measures, action is expected on a draft resolution on the United Nations study on disarmament and non-proliferation. The Committee is also expected to take action on a draft from cluster 10, which concerns international security. That text concerns the maintenance of international security in South-Eastern Europe.
Draft Summaries
Cluster 1
A draft resolution on the Conference on Disarmament decision to establish an ad hoc committee to negotiate a non-discriminatory, multilateral, internationally verifiable treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons (document A/C.1/59/L.34) would have the Assembly urge the Conference to agree on a programme of work that includes the immediate commencement of negotiations on such a treaty, under the conviction that such a treaty would be a significant contribution to nuclear disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation.
The draft resolution is sponsored by Algeria, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Côte d'Ivoire, CzechRepublic, Germany, Grenada, Ireland, Kenya, Luxembourg, Morocco, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, San Marino, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand and Turkey.
Cluster 7
By a draft resolution sponsored by the United States on improving the effectiveness of the methods of work of the First Committee (document A/C.1/59/L.1), the Assembly would decide to adopt seven measures to better the body's operation.
First, the Assembly would limit the number of studies commissioned by the Committee to one per year. Second, it would set a numerical limit on the number of draft resolutions and decisions tabled each year. Third, it would introduce resolutions traditionally adopted by consensus only on a biennial or triennial basis. Fourth, it would institute automatic "sunset" provisions for all the United Nations activities generated by the Committee.
Fifth, the Assembly would consolidate reports initiated by the Committee with other reports on related issues that the Secretariat was required to produce. Sixth, it would elect the Committee's full Bureau one year in advance. Finally, it would work towards improving the accuracy of projections related to the programme budget implications and increasing the advance notice provided to Member States regarding the financial implications of draft resolutions and decisions.
A draft resolution sponsored by Malaysia on behalf of the Non-Aligned Movement, also on improving the effectiveness of the methods of work of the First Committee (document A/C.1/59/L.13), would have the Assembly request Member States to elect the Chairman and other members of the Bureau at least three months before the meeting of the session.
By further terms, the Assembly would invite Member States to hold more interactive debates and urge them to submit draft resolutions in a more concise and action-oriented manner. The Assembly would also invite Member States to consider the biennialization or triennialization of the Committee's agenda items, on a voluntary basis, and in particular when no specific action is required to be taken for the implementation of the relevant resolutions.
The Assembly would further recommend that the Committee hold more informal consultations, with the participation of all interested Member States for furthering discussions on draft resolutions. It would also urge the Committee to continue its existing methods of work in clustering its agenda items as a means of facilitating the thematic discussions and action on the draft resolutions.
The draft resolution would also have the Assembly consider that any change in the disarmament agenda and machinery, including the Committee, shall be made in the context of the fourth special session of the General Assembly devoted to disarmament.
A third draft on improving the effectiveness of the methods of work of the First Committee (document A/C.1/59/L.60), sponsored by Indonesia, would have the Assembly invite Member States to consider the biennialization or triennialization of the agenda items discussed in the First Committee, on a voluntary basis, and particularly when no specific action was required to be taken for implementation.
It would also invite Member States to continue to hold interactive debates based on a programme and format elaborated through informal consultations between the Bureau and Member States in advance of each Committee session, and to submit draft resolutions in a more concise, focused and action-oriented manner and, where practical, to consider the possibility of submitting draft decisions.
By a further term, the Assembly would recommend that the respective sponsors of draft resolutions hold informal consultations, both before and during Committee meetings, with the participation of all interested Member States for furthering discussions on draft resolutions already submitted or yet to be submitted to the Committee.
Under a related provision, it would encourage Member States to introduce draft resolutions on related or complementary issues to find commonalities in the language and purpose of those draft resolutions, and invite Member States to consider pursuing mergers of such texts through consultations with all sponsors.
Cluster 8
By the terms of a draft resolution on the United Nations study on disarmament and non-proliferation (document A/C.1/59/L.53/Rev.1) the Assembly would express its appreciation to the Member States, the United Nations and other international and regional organizations, civil society and non-governmental organizations, which, within their purview, implemented the recommendations made in the United Nations study, as discussed in the report of the Secretary-General.
It would also convey, once again, those recommendations to Member States, the United Nations and other international and regional organizations, civil society and non-governmental organizations and encourage them to report to the Secretary-General on steps taken to implement them. In addition, it would request the Secretary-General to prepare a report reviewing the results of the implementation of the recommendations and possible new opportunities for promoting disarmament and non-proliferation education and to submit it to the General Assembly at its sixty-first session.
The draft resolution is sponsored by Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Egypt, Estonia, France, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Monaco, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sweden, Thailand and Ukraine.
Cluster 10
According to a draft resolution on the maintenance of international security -- through good-neighbourliness, stability and development -- in South-Eastern Europe (document A/C.1/59/L.55/Rev.2), the Assembly would call upon all States the relevant international organizations and the appropriate organs of the United Nations to respect the principles of territorial integrity and sovereignty of all States and the inviolability of international borders.
The Assembly would also call upon all States to continue to take measures in accordance with the Charter and the commitments of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and through further development of regional arrangements, as appropriate, to eliminate threats to international peace and security and to help to prevent conflicts in South-Eastern Europe, which could lead to the violent disintegration of States.
Under a further term, the Assembly would call upon all participants in the Stability Pact for South-Eastern Europe, as well as all concerned international organizations, to continue to support the efforts of the States of South-Eastern Europe towards regional stability and cooperation so as to enable them to pursue sustainable development and integration into European structures, taking also into account trans-Atlantic relations.
The Assembly would also call upon all States and relevant international organizations to contribute to the full implementation of Security Council resolution 1244 (1999), on Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro, as well as of Security Council resolutions 1345 (2001) of 21 March 2001 and 1371 (2001) of 26 September 2001, and emphasize the importance of the standards review process, of the implementation of the "Standards for Kosovo" document endorsed by the Security Council in its presidential statement of 12 December 2003, and of the Kosovo Standards Implementation Plan of 31 March 2004.
By additional provisions, the Assembly would reject the use of violence in pursuit of political aims, and stress that only peaceful political solutions could assure a stable and democratic future for South-Eastern Europe. It would also urge the strengthening of relations among the States of South-Eastern Europe on the basis of respect for international law and agreements, in accordance with the principles of good-neighbourliness and mutual respect.
The Assembly would also urge all States to take effective measures against the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons and to help promote the collection and safe destruction of surplus stocks of such arms and light weapons. In addition, it would stress the importance of closer cooperation among States, inter alia, in crime prevention, combating terrorism, trafficking in human beings, organized crime and corruption, drug trafficking and money-laundering.
It would also call on all States to intensify cooperation with and render all necessary assistance to the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia since 1991 to bring all at-large indictees to surrender to the Tribunal in line with Security Council resolutions 1503 (2003) and 1534 (2004).
The draft resolution is sponsored by Algeria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russian Federation, San Marino, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and United States.
Action on Drafts
The Committee first took up the cluster on nuclear weapons.
The representative of Egypt, in explanation of vote before the vote on the draft resolution on the Conference on Disarmament decision to establish an ad hoc committee to negotiate a non-discriminatory, multilateral, internationally verifiable treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons, said that his country's support was based on the belief that a convention could be reached and that such a convention would be an instrument to ensure progress toward disarmament. His country supported the draft resolution and the document adopted by the Conference on Disarmament. That document stated that such a convention should deal with nuclear disarmament. That meant that it should extend its scope in order to include fissile materials for nuclear weapons. The reserves with regard to scope covered reserves on stockpiles of fissile materials.
The Committee then took action on the draft resolution on the negotiation of a treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons (document A/C.1/59/L.34). The draft resolution was approved by a recorded vote of 147 in favour, to 1 against (United States), with 2 abstentions (Israel, United Kingdom) (Annex I).
Speaking after the vote, the representative of France said he had voted in favour of the draft because he had wished to demonstrate his support for the launch of negotiations on a fissile material cut-off treaty. However, he regretted that this year's text, which was identical to previous versions, had not taken into account relevant developments. Noting that the draft had always enjoyed consensus in the past, he found it unfortunate that this year the concerns of a number of delegations, which had wished to avoid division in the Committee, had not been taken into account.
The representative of the United Kingdom expressed regret over the fact that he had been forced to abstain from the vote, especially since his delegation had co-sponsored it in previous years. Acknowledging that he was fully committed to a fissile material cut-off treaty, that such a treaty was already an agreed priority of the international community, and that he would continue to support the effective verification of arms control treaties, he lamented that the draft at hand, as currently worded, had divided the international community at a time when progress should be a prime objective.
The representative of Israel also explained his abstention, which had been made in light of both regional and global concerns. In the regional context, issues related to nuclear disarmament could only be dealt with after achieving lasting peace and reconciliation, and he had already explained his country's approach, which had been inspired by other regions, during his explanation of vote on the draft on a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East. In the global arena, non-compliance with international treaties and the unchecked dissemination of sensitive materials had become among the most pressing nuclear non-proliferation challenges. However, instead of adequately addressing such challenges, a fissile material cut-off treaty could actually complicate them, he said. In that regard, he called for a new effective non-proliferation arrangement pertaining to the nuclear fuel cycle.
The representative of the Russian Federation said that his country had voted in favour of the draft resolution on the Conference on Disarmament decision to establish an ad hoc committee to negotiate a treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons. It was, however, concerned that once again, there had been a need to have a vote on that text. His Government was ready to begin discussion on the production on fissile materials for nuclear weapons at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva on the basis of its mandate.
The representative of the United States, also on the draft resolution on the fissile material treaty, said that her country supported negotiations in the Conference on Disarmament on a treaty banning fissile materials for use in nuclear weapons and other nuclear explosives devices. Such a treaty would contribute to disarmament. The United States had, however, concluded that effective verification of such a treaty was not achievable. Since the draft resolution called for effective verification, her country must, as such, vote in opposition.
The Committee then turned to the cluster on disarmament machinery. The Chairman announced that two draft resolutions on improving the effectiveness of the methods of work of the First Committee (documents A/C.1/59/L.1 and A/C.1/59/L.13) had been withdrawn and were being replaced by another draft resolution of the same title (document A/C.1/59/L.60). The Chairman then proposed that the Committee dispense with the 24-hour rule in order to take up the new draft text.
The representative of the United States said that his delegation was not in a position to waive that rule. He added that his country had joined as a co-sponsor of the new draft text.
The Committee decided to take up the draft resolution at its next meeting.
The Committee then took up the draft resolution on the United Nations study on disarmament and non-proliferation education (document A/C.1/59/L.53/Rev.1).
Prior to action, the representative of Mexico introduced an oral amendment to the draft's fourth operative paragraph, which would have the Assembly "request the Secretary-General to utilize electronic means to the fullest extent possible in the dissemination, in as many languages as feasible, of information related to that report and any other information that the Department for Disarmament Affairs gathered on an ongoing basis in regard to the implementation of the recommendations of the United Nations study."
The amendment would add the word "official" before "languages".
The draft as a whole, including the amendment, was approved without a vote.
The representative of Albania, in a general statement on the cluster on international security, said that his country had the intention of co-sponsoring the draft resolution on maintenance of international security through good-neighbourliness, stability and development in South-Eastern Europe, despite its reservations about it. That had, however, not been possible. The main sponsor, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, had not held a single consultation to bring together the most interested parties in the region. Albania had wanted to propose an amendment to the eleventh preambular paragraph in order to improve it. That paragraph was vague and unclear and ran counter to the positive efforts that had been undertaken to counter illicit arms in the region. He hoped that the situation with the current draft resolution would not be the case in future resolutions. Because of his country's reservations, it was not co-sponsoring the draft, but would join the consensus on it.
The Committee then approved without a vote the draft resolution on maintenance of international security through good-neighbourliness, stability and development -- in South-Eastern Europe (document A/C.1/59/L.55/Rev.2).
The representative of Saudi Arabia, said that he had not been present during the voting on the draft resolution on the treaty. His country would have voted in favour of the text.
The representative of Egypt said his country had requested that the Committee consider the amount of resources allocated to servicing the Conference on Disarmament. It had now been able to confirm that that amount was $3.7 million per year. It was regrettable that the Conference on Disarmament had not agreed on a programme of work for seven years. The amount allocated to the Conference was more than the amount allocated to the First Committee. Egypt strongly urged that the Conference agree on a programme of work and hoped that it would meet substantively this year.
ANNEX
Vote on Fissile Material Treaty
The draft resolution on the Conference on Disarmament decision to establish an ad hoc committee to negotiate a treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons (document A/C.1/59/L.34) was approved by a recorded vote of 147 in favour to 1 against, with 2 abstentions, as follows:
In favour: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Chile, China, Colombia, Congo, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Gabon, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malaysia, Maldives, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russian Federation, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Senegal, Serbia and Montenegro, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Thailand, The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Republic of Tanzania, Uruguay, Venezuela, Viet Nam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
Against: United States.
Abstain: Israel, United Kingdom.
Absent: Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Burundi, Central African Republic, Comoros, Costa Rica, Côte d'Ivoire, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Dominica, Equatorial Guinea, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Gambia, Ghana, Honduras, Kiribati, Malawi, Mali, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Monaco, Namibia, Nauru, Niger, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Seychelles, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu.
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U.S. and Israel Planned Lebanon Attacks - MUST SEE VIDEO - Bush saw attack on Lebanon as a "Demo"
DemocracyNow and AFP
13th August 2006
AFP Story:
The US government was closely involved in planning Israel's military operations against Lebanon's Hezbollah militia even before the July 12 kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers, a US magazine reported.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh writes in The New Yorker magazine that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were convinced that a successful Israeli bombing campaign against Hezbollah could ease Israel's security concerns and also serve as a prototype for a potential US preemptive attack to destroy Iran's nuclear installations.
Citing an unnamed Middle East expert with knowledge of the current thinking of the Israeli and US governments, Hersh said Israel had devised a plan for attacking Hezbollah -- and shared it with Bush administration officials -- well before the July 12 kidnappings.
"When they grabbed the soldiers in early July, that was then a pretext" for Israel's assault on Hezbollah, Hersh said Sunday on CNN television.
"We (the US) worked closely with them (Israel) months before, not necessarily ... knowing when it was going to happen, but when there was an incident they will take advantage of the incident, what I call a fortunate timing'," Hersh said.
"Nobody is suggesting that Israel wouldn't have done what it did without the Americans," he added.
Hezbollah responded to Israel's attacks by firing missiles into Israel to escalate the month-long conflict that killed some 1,200 people on both sides.
A UN-organized cessation of hostilities planned for Monday, it was hoped, could bring an end to the fighting.
In the article Hersh suggests the White House had several reasons for supporting an Israeli bombing campaign in Lebanon.
If Washington wanted to pursue a military attack against Iran over its nuclear program, the United States had to get rid of the weapons Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation against Israel, he writes.
Citing a US government consultant with close ties to Israel, Hersh also reports that before the Hezbollah kidnappings, several Israeli officials visited Washington "to get a green light" for a bombing operation following a Hezbollah provocation, and also "to find out how much the United States would bear".
"The Israelis told us it would be a cheap war with many benefits," the magazine quotes the consultant as saying. "Why oppose it? We'll be able to hunt down and bomb missiles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran."
US government officials have denied the charges, but Hersh defended his piece Sunday saying he had strong sources for the article which was thoroughly vetted by New Yorker editors.
"This White House will find a way to view what happened with the Israelis against Hezbollah as a victory, and they'll find a way to see it as a positive for any planning that is going towards Iran," he told CNN.
In the magazine Hersh writes that a former senior intelligence official said some officers serving with the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- a council of the president's top military advisors -- remain concerned that the administration will have a far more positive assessment of the air campaign than they should.
"There is no way that (Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld and Cheney will draw the right conclusion about this," Hersh quotes the former official as saying.
"When the smoke clears, they'll say it was a success, and they'll draw reinforcement for their plan to attack Iran."
Comment From HERE: I have typed and retyped my response to this article so many times now but I simply cannot get across my sheer anger, sadness, frustration, despair and disgust at what can only be described as the most appaling waste of human life in the history of our planet.
I am almost at a loss for words as to how repugnant this is all getting.
I have little to say other than read the following and get ready for yet another war in yet another Muslim nation with yet further huge human and financial cost.
And remember, all of these pre-planned and pre-scheduled wars are taking place IN YOUR NAME.
If you know a soldier in either the US, UK or Israel then ask them, no, BEG them to resign their position or, if necessary, go AWOL. If these bastards have no soldiers left to sacrifice with no thought for their families then there cannot be another war, can there?
To be honest, I am sick and tired of hearing about all of the soldiers who are dedicated family men and women.
Family men and women do not go to other countries to kill other family men and women, leaving their families behind to pick up the pieces once they are dead.
STOP FIGHTING FOR THEM AND THEY CANNOT START ANY MORE WARS.
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America's one-eyed view of war: Stars, stripes, and the Star of David
The Independent
15 August 2006
There are two sides to every conflict - unless you rely on the US media for information about the battle in Lebanon. Viewers have been fed a diet of partisan coverage which treats Israel as the good guys and their Hizbollah enemy as the incarnation of evil. Andrew Gumbel reports from Los Angeles.
If these were normal times, the American view of the conflict in Lebanon might look something like the street scenes that have electrified the suburbs of Detroit for the past four weeks.
In Dearborn, home to the Ford Motor Company and also the highest concentration of Arab Americans in the country, up to 1000 people have turned out day after day to express their outrage at the Israeli military campaign and mourn the loss of civilian life in Lebanon. At one protest in late July, 15,000 people - almost half of the local Arab American population - showed up in a sea of Lebanese flags, along with anti-Israeli and anti-Bush slogans.
A few miles to the north, in the heavily Jewish suburb of Southfield, meanwhile, the Congregation Shaarey Zedek synagogue has played host to passionate counter-protests in which the US and Israeli national anthems are played back to back and demonstrators have asserted that it is Israel's survival, not Lebanon's, that is at stake here.
Such is the normal exercise of free speech in an open society, one might think. But these are not normal times. The Detroit protests have been tinged with paranoia and justifiable fear on both sides. Several Jewish institutions in the area, including two community centres and several synagogues, have hired private security guards in response to an incident in Seattle at the end of July, in which a mentally unstable 30-year-old Muslim walked into a Jewish Federation building and opened fire, killing one person and injuring five others.
On the Arab American side, many have expressed reluctance to stand up and be counted among the protesters for fear of being tinged by association with Hizbollah, which is on the United States' list of terrorist organisations. (As a result, the voices heard during the protests tend to be the more extreme ones.) They don't like to discuss their political views in any public forum, following the revelation a few months ago that the National Security Agency was wiretapping phone calls and e-mail exchanges as part of the Bush administration's war on terror.
They are even afraid to donate money to help the civilian victims of the war in Lebanon because of the intense scrutiny Islamic and Arab charities have been subjected to since the 9/11 attacks. The Bush administration has denounced 40 charities worldwide as financiers of terrorism, and arrested and deported dozens of people associated with them. Consequently, while Jewish charities such as the United Jewish Communities are busy raising $300m to help families affected by the Katyusha rockets raining down on northern Israel, donations to the Lebanese victims have come in at no more than a trickle.
Outside Detroit and a handful of other cities with sizeable Arab American populations, it is hard to detect that there are two sides to the conflict at all. The Dearborn protests have received almost no attention nationally, and when they have it has usually been to denounce the participants as extremists and apologists for terrorism - either because they have voiced support for Hizbollah or because they have carried banners in which the Star of David at the centre of the Israeli flag has been replaced by a swastika.
The media, more generally, has left little doubt in the minds of a majority of American news consumers that the Israelis are the good guys, the aggrieved victims, while Hizbollah is an incarnation of the same evil responsible for bringing down the World Trade Centre, a heartless and faceless organisation whose destruction is so important it can justify all the damage Israel is inflicting on Lebanon and its civilians.
The point is not that this viewpoint is necessarily wrong. The point - and this is what distinguishes the US from every other Western country in its attitude to the conflict - is that it is presented as a foregone conclusion. Not only is there next to no debate, but debate itself is considered unnecessary and suspect.
The 24-hour cable news stations are the worst offenders. Rupert Murdoch's Fox News has had reporters running around northern Israel chronicling every rocket attack and every Israeli mobilisation, but has shown little or no interest in anything happening on the other side of the border. It is a rarity on any of the cable channels to see any Arab being tapped for expert opinion on the conflict. A startling amount of airtime, meanwhile, is given to the likes of Michael D Evans, an end-of-the-world Biblical "prophet" with no credentials in the complexities of Middle Eastern politics. He has shown up on MSNBC and Fox under the label "Middle East analyst". Fox's default analyst, on this and many other issues, has been the right-wing provocateur and best-selling author Ann Coulter, whose main credential is to have opined, days after 9/11, that what America should do to the Middle East is "invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity".
Often, the coverage has been hysterical and distasteful. In the days following the Israeli bombing of Qana, several pro-Israeli bloggers started spreading a hoax story that Hizbollah had engineered the event, or stage-managed it by placing dead babies in the rubble for the purpose of misleading reporters. Oliver North, the Reagan-era orchestrator of the Iran-Contra affair who is now a right-wing television and radio host, and Michelle Malkin, a sharp-tongued Bush administration cheerleader who runs her own weblog, appeared on Fox News to give credence to the hoax - before the Israeli army came forward to take responsibility and brought the matter to at least a partial close.
As the conflict has gone on, the media interpretation of it has only hardened. Essentially, the line touted by cable news hosts and their correspondents - closely adhering to the line adopted by the Bush administration and its neoconservative supporters - is that Hizbollah is part of a giant anti-Israeli and anti-American terror network that also includes Hamas, al-Qa'ida, the governments of Syria and Iran, and the insurgents in Iraq. Little effort is made to distinguish between these groups, or explain what their goals might be. The conflict is presented as a straight fight between good and evil, in which US interests and Israeli interests intersect almost completely. Anyone who suggests otherwise is likely to be pounced on and ripped to shreds.
When John Dingell, a Democratic congressman from Michigan with a large Arab American population in his constituency, gave an interview suggesting it was wrong for the US to take sides instead of pushing for an end to violence, he was quickly - and loudly - accused of being a Hizbollah apologist. Newt Gingrich, the Republican former House speaker, accused him of failing to draw any moral distinction between Hizbollah and Israel. Rush Limbaugh, the popular conservative talk-show host, piled into him, as did the conservative newspaper The Washington Times. The Times was later forced to admit it had quoted Dingell out of context and reprinted his full words, including: " I condemn Hizbollah, as does everyone else, for the violence."
The hysteria has extended into the realm of domestic politics, especially since this is a congressional election year. Republican have sought to depict last week's primary defeat of the Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, one of the loudest cheerleaders for the Iraq war, as some sort of wacko extremist anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli stand that risks undermining national security. Vice-President Dick Cheney said Lieberman's defeat would encourage "al-Qa'ida types" to think they can break the will of Americans. The fact that the man who beat Lieberman, Ned Lamont, is an old-fashioned East Coast Wasp who was a registered Republican for much of his life is something Mr Cheney chose to overlook.
Part of the Republican strategy this year is to attack any media that either attacks them or has the temerity to report facts that contradict the official party line. Thus, when Reuters was forced to withdraw a photograph of Beirut under bombardment because one of its stringers had doctored the image to increase the black smoke, it was a chance to rip into the news agency over its efforts to be even-handed. In a typical riposte, Michelle Malkin denounced Reuters as "a news service that seems to have made its mark rubber-stamping pro-Hizbollah propaganda".
She was not the only one to take that view. Mainstream, even liberal, publications have echoed her line. Tim Rutten, the Los Angeles Times liberal media critic, denounced the "obscenely anti-Israeli tenor of most of the European and world press" in his most recent column.
It is not just the US media which tilts in a pro-Israeli direction. Congress, too, is remarkably unified in its support for the Israeli government, and politicians more generally understand that to criticise Israel is to risk jeopardising their future careers. When Antonio Villaraigosa, the up-and-coming Democratic Mayor of Los Angeles, was first invited to comment on the Middle East crisis, he sounded a note so pro-Israeli that he was forced to apologise to local Muslim and Arab community leaders. There is far less public debate of Israeli policy in the US, in fact, than there is in Israel itself.
This is less a reflection of American Jewish opinion - which is more diverse than is suggested in the media - than it is a commentary on the power of pro-Israeli lobby groups like Aipac, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which bankrolls pro-Israeli congressional candidates. That, in turn, is frustrating to liberal Jews like Michael Lerner, a San Francisco rabbi who heads an anti-war community called Tikkun. Rabbi Lerner has tried to argue for years that it is in Israel's best interests to reach a peaceful settlement, and that demonising Arabs as terrorists is counter-productive and against Judaism.
Lerner is probably right to assert that he speaks for a large number of American Jews, only half of whom are affiliated with pro-Israeli lobbying organisations. Certainly, dinner party conversation in heavily Jewish cities like New York suggest misgivings about Israel's strategic aims, even if there is some consensus that Hizbollah cannot be allowed to strike with impunity.
Few, if any, of those misgivings have entered the US media. "There is no major figure in American political life who has been willing to raise the issue of the legitimate needs of the Palestinian people, or even talk about them as human beings," Lerner said. "The organised Jewish community has transformed the image of Judaism into a cheering squad for the Israeli government, whatever its policies are. That is just idolatry, and goes against all the warnings in the Bible about giving too much power to the king or the state."
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Fear
Jet evacuated at LAX after toy spooks crew
Reuters
Aug 14, 2006
LOS ANGELES - An Alaska Airlines flight was evacuated on landing at Los Angeles International Airport on Monday after the flight crew became suspicious of a toy found on board.
Alaska Airlines Flight 281 from Guadalajara, Mexico, landed normally at LAX but taxied to a remote part of the airport, where passengers were quickly taken off while police using bomb-sniffing dogs investigated, an FBI spokesman said.
"The device was identified as a type of toy transmitter and a thorough search of the plane and cargo hold for explosives came up negative," he said.
He declined to elaborate on the nature of the device.
The passengers were taken by bus to a terminal, where Transportation Safety Administration agents searched luggage and personal belongings by hand before allowing passengers to leave, the spokesman said.
Amanda Tobin Bielawski, a spokeswoman for Alaska Airlines, said there were 129 passengers and six crew members on Flight 281, a Boeing 737-400.
The crew found the suspicious item shortly before its scheduled landing in Los Angeles. The spokeswoman said she had no information on where the item was found.
No other flights were affected.
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Britain, US lower security alert as attack no longer deemed imminent
by Lachlan Carmichael
AFP
Mon Aug 14, 2006 5:53 PM ET
LONDON - British and US authorities eased curbs for airline passengers Monday as Britain lowered its terror alert, deeming the threat of attack to be no longer imminent though still "highly likely".
However, officials at Heathrow and Gatwick, the main airports serving the capital London, reported dozens more flight cancellations as security measures remained tight, albeit less stringent, for a fifth day.
Hundreds of flights were canceled Thursday at both airports, with further disruptions Friday and through the weekend. On Monday there were 68 flight cancellations at Heathrow and 27 at Gatwick, the British Airports Authority (BAA) said.
British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and other airlines criticized BAA for needing until around dawn Tuesday to communicate and implement fully the relaxed measures at Heathrow and Gatwick.
The carriers earlier criticized BAA's instruction for airlines at Heathrow to cut flights to ease congestion.
Under new government guidelines, passengers could Monday take aboard one small bag or case that held books, magazines, a laptop, mobile phones and other electrical devices, but were still denied non-essential liquids and gels.
Since the government announced Thursday it had foiled a plot to blow up US-bound airliners, passengers could take aboard only essential items like money, tickets, keys, medicine and eyeglasses in see-through plastic bags.
BAA said the five other British airports it operates -- Stansted, Southampton, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen -- had put the new measures into effect by noon (1100 GMT) Monday.
At airports throughout Europe, the backlog created by Thursday's arrests, and the subsequent stringent baggage restrictions, eased somewhat, with Air France passengers on flights to the United States facing much shorter delays on Monday compared with three-hour waits at a Paris airport during the weekend.
The new measures in Britain were announced after the government downgraded the alert level early Monday to "severe," the fourth highest of five levels, from an unprecedented "critical," where it had stood since Thursday.
Britain's Home Secretary John Reid said that the threat of attack was no longer imminent as police "believe that the main suspects in the alleged plot were arrested last week."
British authorities on Thursday arrested 24 people suspected of plotting to smuggle volatile chemicals on to several passenger jets headed for the United States with intent to set off explosions in mid-flight.
One was released on Friday. The remaining 23 suspects, including one who had a court hearing Monday, can now be detained until Wednesday, London's Metropolitan Police said.
Reid nonetheless warned that an attack remained "highly likely" as police investigated other suspected plots.
Following the British decision, the US Department of
Homeland Security announced it was downgrading the threat level for inbound flights from Britain to "code orange" from "code red," its highest security risk alert.
The US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) now allows airline travelers to take in their carry-on luggage limited amounts of baby milk, personal prescription medicine and personal insulin.
Four ounces of non-prescription medicine will be allowed as well.
However, all passengers in the United States will now be required to remove their shoes for X-ray inspection alongside their carry-on bags at airport checkpoints.
US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff echoed Reid's warning. "Let me be clear: this does not mean the threat is over," he said.
Chertoff also told Fox News on Sunday that British and US investigators were still digging to see whether or not the plot broken up on Thursday was directed by Al-Qaeda.
Reid on Sunday told BBC television that Britain had thwarted "at least four major plots" since the July 7, 2005 bombings in London that left 56 people dead, and indicated that up to a dozen were under investigation.
Meanwhile, the global investigation into the alleged plot is turning increasingly to Pakistan and the Al-Qaeda network, amid media suggestions that worse plans could be afoot.
Photographs of British Al-Qaeda suspect Rashid Rauf also appeared in newspapers after Pakistani authorities claimed he was a "key person" in the plot.
In Pakistan, two senior officials told AFP that Britain's intelligence services had asked their Pakistani counterparts to trail Rauf after he entered the country. He was arrested on August 4 in the eastern city of Bahawalpur.
One of the officials said that British police carried out Thursday's raids after Rauf told Pakistani interrogators of the plot to blow up airplanes, which was apparently not yet known to British or US authorities.
Comment: So, Bush declared yesterday that the threat may never be over, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff states that the threat isn't over, and yet the security restrictions are being relaxed...
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CNN wants you to be afwaid, be vewy vewy afwaid
8/14/200
America Blog
It's a little early for a Labor Day telethon. A terr-athon? But instead of raising money, they raise fear. And Republican poll numbers.
George Bush and the Republican party would have no issue to run on if Osama and the terrorists didn't exist. They've lowered taxes until we've gone bankrupt. They can't start any more wars, though they really want to. And they've pretty much bashed everyone from women to immigrants to gays to Muslims, so it's hard to find any more internal enemies. All they have left is the fear of terror to keep the public on their side.
Ironically, the best way for the terrorists to "win" and destroy George Bush? Just go away.
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Critics warn against attempt to push through 90-day detention
UK Independent
14 August 2006
John Reid has provoked anger by signalling he is likely to make a fresh attempt to push through 90-day detention without charge for terrorist suspects in the wake of the alleged transatlantic bomb plot.
Last November the Government was forced to settle for a limit of 28 days in the face of opposition from the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and a sizeable minority of Labour MPs.
The Home Secretary was warned last night that any new attempt would also be doomed because of massive opposition.
The measure was championed by Tony Blair and senior ministers after they were lobbied by police chiefs who said the complexity of international terrorism meant they needed more time to prepare cases.
Mr Reid told BBC1 yesterday he was concentrating entirely on the anti-terror operation and said: "In the heat of something like this, it's not always a good idea ... to start talking about introducing measures."
But he made clear the Government was preparing to return to the issue, which suggests it could be included in new anti-terror powers in the Queen's Speech in the autumn.
The Home Secretary argued that the "awful, terrible consequences" of knowing something might be about to happen and being unable to detain suspects long enough "now should be apparent to everyone".
He said: "When we come back to that, I hope we all remember that the police and security services say they need up to 90 days."
David Winnick, the Labour MP who came up with the 28-day formula, said it was obvious ministers would use the terror alert to argue again for a longer limit. He said: "Under no circumstances should they be allowed to raise [it]."
David Davis, the shadow Home Secretary, said: "The argument hasn't changed. We are not aware of suspects being held more than 14 days, let alone the full 28."
Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said it would be unacceptable to reopen the subject simply because there was a political opportunity to do so.
Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, said the measure was equivalent to internment and would be as counterproductive as it was when first rejected.
John Reid has provoked anger by signalling he is likely to make a fresh attempt to push through 90-day detention without charge for terrorist suspects in the wake of the alleged transatlantic bomb plot.
Last November the Government was forced to settle for a limit of 28 days in the face of opposition from the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and a sizeable minority of Labour MPs.
The Home Secretary was warned last night that any new attempt would also be doomed because of massive opposition.
The measure was championed by Tony Blair and senior ministers after they were lobbied by police chiefs who said the complexity of international terrorism meant they needed more time to prepare cases.
Mr Reid told BBC1 yesterday he was concentrating entirely on the anti-terror operation and said: "In the heat of something like this, it's not always a good idea ... to start talking about introducing measures."
But he made clear the Government was preparing to return to the issue, which suggests it could be included in new anti-terror powers in the Queen's Speech in the autumn.
The Home Secretary argued that the "awful, terrible consequences" of knowing something might be about to happen and being unable to detain suspects long enough "now should be apparent to everyone".
He said: "When we come back to that, I hope we all remember that the police and security services say they need up to 90 days."
David Winnick, the Labour MP who came up with the 28-day formula, said it was obvious ministers would use the terror alert to argue again for a longer limit. He said: "Under no circumstances should they be allowed to raise [it]."
David Davis, the shadow Home Secretary, said: "The argument hasn't changed. We are not aware of suspects being held more than 14 days, let alone the full 28."
Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said it would be unacceptable to reopen the subject simply because there was a political opportunity to do so.
Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, said the measure was equivalent to internment and would be as counterproductive as it was when first rejected.
Comment: No, no, no! You don't understand! The Blair government is creating "heat" so that they CAN push through draconian measures! Please, stop trying to talk sense and leave off with the logic and urgings for rational thought, it's just not British! (or American or Israeli). Just be scared and do what you are told for heaven's sake!
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"Fear! Fear!" shouted hawks and profiteers
By Brian Bogart
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Aug 14, 2006
As soon as it came out that the apparent "new 9-11" threat had been thwarted with the help of Pakistani Intelligence Services (ISI), it also became clear that it was a political tool for further legitimizing the lucrative "war on terror." After all, the ISI with Saudi financing and covert CIA training created al-Qaeda in the first place, to counter another "threat": Soviet "communist enslavement."
In 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt appointed a handful of Wall Street lawyers and investors to posts in his administration, including James Conant, James Forrestal, and Paul Nitze. Upon Roosevelt's death (and the coinciding fall of the Third Reich), this influential group began an attempt to fill the trade vacuum left in postwar Europe. While Europeans and Soviets would have preferred a neutralist trade environment, these State Department officials in the final years of the 1940s sought US trade supremacy, and thus set about creating a Soviet "communist threat" that ran counter to the CIA's own National Intelligence Estimates.
By 1951, this group had formed the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), which by March of that year successfully motivated Congress and the public to buy into the "threat of communist enslavement" through fear-based rhetoric in the media, setting in motion the Cold War and a US economy driven by conflict.
As CPD members moved from administration to administration regardless of party affiliation, the Cold War policy of "containment militarism" ran strong through the late 1960s. In the wake of the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam, according to Richard Falk, a split between foreign policy elites emerged: Imperialists, who sought to remilitarize the US for global conquest still using the fear-inciting Soviet "communist threat," and managers (Trilateralists), who attempted to rally the corporate spheres of Europe, East Asia and the US to adopt a new era of interdependent international trade.
In 1976, this split led to the first CPD-free administration in the office of President Carter, though CPD quickly regrouped to kill détente, oust Carter, and reestablish itself in the Reagan administration, using "Soviet-backed international terrorism" as the new fear factor.
Around June of 1979, according to Zbigniew Brzezinski, "The United States launched a covert operation to bolster anticommunist guerrillas in Afghanistan at least six months before the 1979 Soviet invasion of that country. We did not push the Russians into invading, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would."
The US had actively recruited Afghan warlords to form terrorist groups along the northern border, forcing the USSR to conduct a full-scale invasion in December 1979 to counter the US destabilization program. Among the methods used by the US in this program was the production and distribution of textbooks to schools (madrassas), promoting the war-values of murder and fanaticism, and fostering a generation steeped in violence.
Upon taking office in January 1981, Reagan outlined his new foreign policy in a speech by Alexander Haig, which boiled down to: "International terrorism will take the place of human rights in our concern." Thus, the 1979 US destabilization program using terrorist groups to lure the Soviets into Afghanistan was used by the US to call the Soviet invasion "terrorism" and to point to that invasion as a model for the newly invented phenomenon of "Soviet-backed terrorism" around the world.
This cemented the CPD's original hegemonic goal of a fear-based structure. Despite the collapse of the Soviet Union and its "communist threat," this structure still prevails, requiring new external threats to maintain today's US-global trade supremacy. Absent the old communist threat, the degree of deceit necessary to sway public opinion increasingly grew, ultimately employing first strikes against Western assets both to satisfy this demand for public acceptance and acquiescence, and to serve as pretexts for the placement of US forces in geostrategic regions. The US currently has 750,000 troops in 135 countries.
What we are left with is simply "international terrorism," a perpetual "threat" straight out of the plotline of the film V for Vendetta, and one that satisfies most corporate executives and serves to cover such inconvenient truths as climate change - imperialism's product and archenemy - the raging and disproportionate conflict in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, and the criminal invasion of Iraq (not to mention that this particular "thwarted 9-11" is a timely boost for the pro-war Senator Joe Lieberman).
Immediately after 9-11, Vladimir Putin promised support for George Bush's "war on terror," with the caveat that NATO cease its eastward push. Bush agreed, and just as immediately set about pushing NATO eastward. Professor Stephen Cohen of New York University points out that with the US today openly stating that Georgia and Ukraine are to become NATO partners - and with Putin having drawn the line with Ukraine, as Russia subsidizes much of Ukraine's economy - a new and very real tension has risen between the two largest possessors of nuclear arms. In fact, a US warship and 200 Marines were recently chased out of the Russian province of Crimea by a group of protesters.
The heightened illusion of what Bush calls a "global war against Islamic fascists" also serves to back Putin into a corner, as Putin must be perceived as even-handed toward the 25 million Muslims in Russia.
Most people would find all of this easy to digest had they the time to read two excellent books on US post-World War II and post-Cold War imperialism respectively: Peddlers of Crisis, by Jerry Sanders, and The War on Truth, by Nafeez Ahmed. Unfortunately, few will take the time to do so, and thus the rush of fear derived from such an event as just occurred means a near total success for maintaining the Conflict Incorporated status quo.
In other words, in the last 25 years the US created the threat and, through the resultant fear, the worldwide authoritarian means to pretend to deal with it while exercising the full scope of its imperial ambitions, with friends and puppets tagging along. Moreover, that the US (and apparently now the UK) knowingly harbored al-Qaeda cells throughout the 1990s and up to and beyond 9-11 lends a new perspective to President Bush's post-9-11 promise to "make no distinction between those who committed these terrible acts and those who harbor them."
Who gained? The ruling elite (the minority). Who lost? The majority, everywhere. Who were the "terrorists"? Patsies. The need for a new and real (fully allowed to unfold) 9-11 has been forestalled for the moment as one waits for the other shoe to drop: the linking of Syria and Iran and whomever else to the current "investigation."
Funny how Bush administration officials denied any foreknowledge that planes could be used as weapons after 9-11, particularly when the same officials are now saying that they recognized this plot because of its similarities to one carried out by Ramsey Yousef in 1995. What a fine spin.
Already, US news outlets are calling the 24 suspects "Pakistanis," failing to mention that most if not all are British citizens, born and raised.
"If ever there was a verification that there is a war on terror, this was it," said one reporter - and that is precisely what it was intended to be. And so much for the so-called "national threat level," which apparently stays low during months of intensely high threat levels and rises after a threat is "thwarted."
The state of global affairs from the US perspective can be summed up in one statement from a lengthy essay, Constant Conflict, by Major Ralph Peters: "There will be no peace. The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy, and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing."
Where once they shouted "Hear! Hear!" toward progress in public chambers, one can almost catch the resonant echoes of some Western leaders happily whispering in private "Fear! Fear!" while their profits soar and their people tremble. Somebody should be checking market "put options" right about now.
A human rights activist for 45 years, Brian Bogart is the first graduate student in Peace Studies from the University of Oregon. He can be reached at bdbogart@gmail.com.
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UK made arrests on Washington pressure: Plane attack was not imminent: official
Dawn
14/08/2006
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration pressured the British authorities to arrest the suspects of a London terror plot at least a week before they had planned to do so, a US television channel reported on Sunday.
NBC News reported that US and British authorities had a significant disagreement over when to move in on the suspects in the alleged plot to bring down trans-Atlantic airliners bound for the United States.
A British official said the uk police were planning to continue to run surveillance for at least another week to try to obtain more evidence, while American officials pressured them to arrest the suspects sooner.
In contrast to previous reports, the official suggested an attack was not imminent, saying the suspects had not yet purchased any airline tickets. In fact, some did not even have passports.
The source did say, however, that police believe one UK-based suspect was ready to conduct a 'dry run'. British authorities had wanted to let him go forward with part of the plan, but the Americans balked.
An aide to President George Bush denied the account.
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UK made arrests on Washington pressure: Plane attack was not imminent: official
By Our Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Aug 13: The Bush administration pressured the British authorities to arrest the suspects of a London terror plot at least a week before they had planned to do so, a US television channel reported on Sunday.
NBC News reported that US and British authorities had a significant disagreement over when to move in on the suspects in the alleged plot to bring down trans-Atlantic airliners bound for the United States.
A British official said the uk police were planning to continue to run surveillance for at least another week to try to obtain more evidence, while American officials pressured them to arrest the suspects sooner.
In contrast to previous reports, the official suggested an attack was not imminent, saying the suspects had not yet purchased any airline tickets. In fact, some did not even have passports.
The source did say, however, that police believe one UK-based suspect was ready to conduct a 'dry run'. British authorities had wanted to let him go forward with part of the plan, but the Americans balked.
An aide to President George Bush denied the account.
"There was unprecedented cooperation and coordination between the US, the UK and Pakistani officials throughout the case," said Frances Townsend, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, "and we worked together to protect our citizens from harm while ensuring that we gathered as much info as possible to bring the plotters to justice. There was no disagreement between US and UK officials."
The British official said the Americans also argued over the timing of the arrest of suspected ringleader Rashid Rauf in Pakistan, warning that if he was not taken into custody immediately, the US would 'render' him or pressure the Pakistani government to arrest him.
British security was concerned that Mr Rauf be taken into custody "in circumstances where there was due process," according to the official, so that he could be tried in British courts. Ultimately, the official says, Mr Rauf was arrested over the objections of the British.
The official said that some suspects were known to the security services even before the London subway bombings last year.
Monitoring of Mr Rauf, in particular, apparently played a critical role, revealing that the plotters had tested the explosive liquid mixture they planned to use at a location outside Britain.
NBC News had previously reported that the explosive mixture was tested in Pakistan.
Comment: Having accepted that the "terror alert" was consciously used by the Bush and Blair administrations, take the next logical step to investigating the possibility that they manufactured it from scratch.
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FBI: No terror groups in cell phone case
AP
15/08/2006
The FBI said Monday it had no information to indicate that the three Texas men arrested with about 1,000 cell phones in their van had any direct connection to known terrorist groups.
Also, a prosecutor in a separate Ohio case said he can't prove a terrorism link between two men arrested after buying large numbers of cell phones and won't proceed for now with terrorism charges against them.
In the Michigan case, authorities had increased patrols on the 5-mile-long Mackinac Bridge after local prosecutors said investigators believed the men were targeting the span.
Local authorities didn't say what they believed the men intended to do with the phones, most of which were prepaid TracFones, but Caro's police chief noted that cell phones can be untraceable and used as detonators.
The FBI issued a news release Monday saying there is no imminent threat to the bridge linking Michigan's upper and lower peninsulas.
The release also said the FBI had no information indicating that the men, Palestinian-Americans living in Texas, had any direct links to any known terrorist groups or to the alleged plot to bomb trans-Atlantic jetliners that was announced in London last week.
William Kowalski, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's Detroit field office, said authorities believe concern about the bridge was connected to images of the Mackinac Bridge found on a digital camera belonging to the men.
Kowalski said there was nothing illegal about buying cell phones in bulk, but that profits from that kind of activity can be suspicious.
Adham Abdelhamid Othman, 21, of Dallas, and Maruan Awad Muhareb, 18, and Louai Abdelhamied Othman, 23, both of Mesquite, Texas, were stopped by police Friday outside a Wal-Mart store in Caro, about 80 miles north of Detroit after employees became suspicious when they purchased about 80 cell phones.
Local prosecutors charged them with collecting or providing materials for terrorist acts and surveillance of a vulnerable target for terrorist purposes.
The men told a magistrate Saturday that they were buying the phones for resale.
Louai Othman's wife, Lina Odeh, told The Associated Press on Saturday that she thought her husband and relatives were targeted because of their Arab descent. She said the men's families come from Jerusalem.
Tuscola County Prosecutor Mark E. Reene said Monday that representatives of his office and Caro police had met with Sunday with officials from the FBI, the Department of
Homeland Security and the U.S. attorney's office. He said all the agencies were working together on the investigation.
Messages seeking further comment from Reene were not immediately returned.
In Ohio, prosecutor James Schneider said he didn't have enough evidence to present felony terrorism charges for Ali Houssaiky and Osama Abulhassan, both of Dearborn, Mich., to a grand jury.
The two men face a misdemeanor count of falsification accusing them of lying about why they bought the phones, Schneider said.
"We're grateful the Washington County Prosecutor's Office has been willing to keep an open mind and look at all the evidence and make their decisions based on the evidence," said William Swor, who is representing Houssaiky.
The FBI is reviewing the Ohio case and staying in touch with local authorities. No federal charges are pending, said special agent Mike Brooks of the FBI.
Authorities stopped the men on a traffic violation in Marietta, Ohio, on Aug. 8 and said they found airplane passenger lists and information on airport security checkpoints, along with $11,000 cash and 12 phones, in their car.
Abulhassan and Houssaiky admitted buying about 600 phones in recent months at stores in southeast Ohio and selling them to someone in Dearborn.
Defense attorneys said the government had no evidence the phones were being used illegally and the men planned to resell the phones simply to make money. They also said the airport and airplane information were old papers left in the car by a relative who worked at an airport.
Comment: Who cares...torture and lock 'em up anyway. Right? It's the land of the free after all, right? Built on the concepts of free enterprise and gaining by the sweat of one's brow.
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British airliner turned back over security scare
Reuters
14/08/2006
A British Airways flight to New York was turned back to London's Heathrow airport on Sunday because of a security scare over a mobile phone that did not belong to any of the 217 passengers, officials said.
The phone was later found to be safe, as the government said the threat to Britain of a terrorist attack had been downgraded to severe from the critical level last week when police said they had foiled a plot to blow up transatlantic airliners.
Despite the downgrading, the Transport Department warned in a statement: "This (still) means that a terrorist attack is still highly likely."
The United States said it had also scaled back the threat level for flights from Britain but would remain vigilant.
British Airways said the captain of the airliner had decided to return to London as a precautionary measure.
"A mobile phone was located on board the aircraft which none of the passengers appeared to own," it said in a statement.
Mobile phones were banned from flights departing from British airports under new tough security measures introduced after the disclosure of the alleged plot to smuggle bombs on to aircraft disguised as drinks.
Police said on Thursday they had foiled an attempt by would-be suicide bombers to blow up simultaneously up to 10 airlines flying to the United States. Twenty-four people were arrested
Comment: So say you find a cell phone on a plane and hand it to an airhostess, telling her that someone from a previous flight probably forgot it?
Of course not! It could be a BOMB for christ's sake! I mean, don't they use cell phones to trigger bombs!!
Well, since you have it now, no one can call from it, so no problem, right?
No! the "terrorists" might call the phone! Oh god! we're all going to die!
Well, turn if off, then they can't use it.
No!, it could be a special phone that turns itself on when called!
Well, take the battery out then.
No! The phone itself might be a bomb! Well, does it seem heavier or in any way different from a normal phone? Well, no, but still...
Well, why not just take the back cover off, if there is a battery in there remove it, then take the front cover off and you'll see that it is just a key pad and a small circuit board, you can dissasemble the whole thing in about 20 seconds.
Are you crazy?! Captain! Turn the plane around we have a super double plus CRITICAL emergency here! Call in the troops! Call Jesus! We're all going to DIE!
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Meanwhile, back in Gaza...
Israeli air strike levels Gaza building
Last Updated Mon, 14 Aug 2006 23:02:22 EDT
CBC News
An Israeli air strike destroyed a house in Gaza on Monday night, injuring at least eight people.
The Israeli military said the target housed an Islamic Jihad post, but Palestinian officials said the building had been evacuated two days ago ahead of an imminent strike.
There were no reports of fatalities, with hospital officials saying two had been injured "moderately."
Monday's UN-mandated ceasefire between Israeli troops and Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon does not apply to Gaza.
Israel waded into Gaza in earnest after the cross-border abduction of one of its soldiers on June 25. The military wing of Hamas claimed responsibility for the raid.
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2 Fox News Reporters Kidnapped in Gaza
By DIAA HADID
Associated Press
Aug 15, 2006
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Masked Palestinian gunmen ambushed a car carrying a Fox News crew in Gaza City on Monday and kidnapped two journalists, including one American, witnesses and Fox said.
"We can confirm that two of our people were taken against their will in Gaza," Fox News said in a statement.
A Fox employee in Gaza, who declined to give his name because he was not authorized to release information about the incident, said American reporter Steve Centanni and New Zealand cameraman Olaf Wiig were kidnapped.
The men, along with a bodyguard, were parked near the headquarters of the Palestinian security services when two trucks filled with masked gunmen pulled up and boxed them in, the Fox employee said. The gunmen took the two men out of their sports utility vehicle, which was marked "TV," and drove away, he said.
Major militant groups in Gaza denied any connection to the incident; there was no immediate word of any demands made.
However, Wiig's wife Anita McNaught said Fox representatives had told her negotiations for their release were already under way.
"There will be people working through the Palestinian Authority, through the authorities in Gaza ... but Fox News are vastly experienced on the ground there, so they have all the contacts they need," said McNaught, who is a BBC World television presenter.
McNaught, who is currently in Syria, told New Zealand's National Radio she intends to come to the area soon to help secure the release of the two men.
Also, New Zealand was sending a diplomatic team to the area, said Rosie Patterson, head of consular services at New Zealand's Foreign Ministry. New Zealand has no representation in the immediate area, and currently is working through British diplomats, she said.
The government was "very concerned" for the safety of Wiig, Prime Minister Helen Clark said in brief comments in New Zealand.
Security officials put police across Gaza on alert and set up roadblocks to find the gunmen and free the reporters, said Interior Ministry spokesman Khaled Abu Hilal.
The Committee to Protect Journalists called for the men to be freed.
"We are gravely concerned about our colleagues' safety and call for their immediate and unconditional release," said executive director Joel Simon. "These are well established journalists who are not participants in the conflict. They should be treated accordingly and freed."
Several foreigners have been kidnapped in Gaza in recent months with their abductors demanding jobs from the Palestinian Authority or the release of people being held in Palestinian jails. All those kidnapped have been released within hours without harm.
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FOX News Reporters Kidnapped In Gaza
MediaBistro.com
Monday, Aug 14, 2006
FNC senior VP John Moody's internal message to Fox News personnel about the kidnapping:
"The rumors are true: two of our employees have been abducted in Gaza. We will report this fact via our Israel correspondents. Do NOT do any other segments on it. Do not book guests on this topic. Do not comment officially and of course, not on the air, about it. DO pray for their release. I will keep you posted."
Here is Jennifer Griffin's 10pm update: "Greta, as you know, we have been reporting today that two of our colleagues were kidnapped in Gaza earlier today. They were taken against their will from the vehicle they were driving in. Fox News at this time is doing everything within its power to get them safely returned back home and we will report more on that as we have details."
Fox News Channel is carefully and wisely limiting coverage of its two kidnapped employees. Since 2pm, when TVNewser started monitoring FNC coverage, the net has aired four brief updates about the kidnapping by Jennifer Griffin. Apart from those, FNC hasn't mentioned the situation, preferring to handle it behind the scenes. When Nihad Awad of the Council on American Islamic Relations prefaced his appearance on The O'Reilly Factor with an expression of sympathy, Bill O'Reilly quickly responded:AWAD: Bill, thanks for having me and allow me first to share with you and your viewers that our organization CAIR has issued a statement demanding the release of the Fox crew who were abducted or kidnapped today in Gaza and we pray and hope for their safe return to do their job back to their families.
O'REILLY: I just meant to tell everybody we are not going to have much more on that because we are, you know, in the process of trying to get that solved.
As Jack Shafer noted in January, "it's an article of faith for some that no news is the best news when it comes to kidnappings."
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Ariel Sharon's condition deteriorates
Last Updated Mon, 14 Aug 2006 12:05:28 EDT
CBC News
The condition of Ariel Sharon has deteriorated sharply, Israeli hospital officials said Monday.
The latest scan on the former Israeli prime minister shows a deterioration in his brain function. His urine output has fallen and a chest scan indicates a new infection.
Sharon has been in a coma since his stroke on Jan. 4. He is currently in the Chaim Sheba Medical Center, a long-term care facility. His doctors have said the chances of the former leader coming out of his coma are very slim.
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As the World Burns
Resurgent Germany overtakes Britain and US
David Gow in Brussels
The Guardian
Tuesday August 15, 2006
The mainland European economy, buoyed by a resurgent Germany, is expanding at its fastest rate for six years, outstripping Britain and the US, fresh figures showed yesterday.
Domestic euphoria over the football World Cup held in Germany boosted the country's economy, which grew by 0.9% in the second quarter, the fastest growth for more than five years, government figures showed.
Domestic investment and a rise in consumer spending have overtaken exports as the main impetus for economic growth. "For years we Germans have seen the glass as half-empty; now, at long last, it is half-full," one chief executive said, expressing the hope that the optimism generated by the summer Fussballfest would continue for the rest of the year.
The bounce in the German economy was reflected elsewhere in Europe, according to EU figures. The French economy expanded 1.2% in the second quarter, its fastest rate for six years, and economists expect the European Central Bank to raise interest rates twice more this year to 3.5%. In the second quarter, the US economy grew by 0.6% and the UK 0.8%. "Europe is in the lead," said Holger Schmieding, economist at the Bank of America.
The European commission indicated it could raise its 2006 full-year growth forecast for the eurozone in the autumn. It is now at 2.1%. Brussels edged up its third-quarter forecast but trimmed its final-quarter estimate, partly due to evidence that some of the steam went out of the economy in July.
But the second quarter could mark the peak for eurozone growth, according to Howard Archer, chief UK and European economist at researchers Global Insight. "A stronger euro, slowing global growth, very high oil prices, higher interest rates and tighter fiscal policy in several countries (notably Germany and Italy) threaten to exact an increasing toll on eurozone growth ... We forecast it to moderate from 2.3% in 2006 to 1.6% in 2007," he said.
Germany is finally shaking off the gloom of the past decade when consumers reacted to record postwar unemployment by saving rather than spending. Official forecasts showed the economy expanding by 1.6% this year but many economists have raised their forecasts to 2.3%. The Federal statistics office in Wiesbaden revised its first-quarter figures from 0.4 to 0.7% growth and said growth in the first half was 2.4% compared with the same period last year.
Michael Glos, economy minister, stuck to the official forecast but declared: "The economic knot of the last few years has finally been broken. The upturn has gained in strength and breadth. The situation on the labour market has significantly improved. Therefore the prospects for this year are exceptionally positive."
Business confidence was close to a 15-year high, although chief executives were divided on the prospects. One emerged from a recent meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel and senior ministers in despair about the chances of reform, notably in tax, health and the labour market.
Another, an avowed supporter of Ms Merkel, insisted Germany's first woman chancellor had breathed new optimism into a more youthful, more flexible society. Companies, having shed hundreds of thousands of jobs, were now starting to take on labour and invest.
Further evidence of a German upturn came with confirmation that the tax take in the first seven months was €20bn (£13.5bn) more than a year ago, and €10bn more than budgeted. This prompted calls for corporate tax cuts and reductions in national insurance contributions.
Economists have calculated that the planned 3% jump in VAT from January 1 next year to 19% will spur consumer spending in the second half of this year. Opponents of the increase have begun arguing that the government's healthier fiscal position made the rise redundant.
Wolfgang Franz, head of the Centre for European Economic Research, told Spiegel online that there were early signs that the economy could weaken and the disproportionate rise in domestic demand was proof that consumers were reacting to the forthcoming rise in VAT.
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War paint plant 'tackles cancer'
BBC
13/08/06
A plant Celts used to get blue dye for their war paint is a rich source of a compound that fights breast cancer, scientists have found.
Woad, which belongs to the same plant family as cauliflower and broccoli, contains high levels of the compound glucobrassicin.
The Italian team at Bologna University discovered woad contains 20 times more glucobrassicin than broccoli.
They were also able to boost its concentration by damaging the plant.
When the leaves are damaged, glucobrassicin is released by the plant as a defence mechanism.
Its derivatives can kill some plant pests. Notably, they also have anti-tumour properties and are particularly effective against breast cancer.
Researchers have already suggested that eating vegetables rich in chemicals such as glucobrassicin might help protect people against cancer.
Studies suggest that glucobrassicin flushes out cancer-causing compounds including derivatives of oestrogen.
Anti-cancer foods
A recent study found people who ate foods rich in glucosinolates had reduced levels of chemicals linked to smoking-related lung cancer.
But it has been difficult for scientists to extract enough glucobrassicin from plants to test its effect.
Dr Stefania Galletti and her team hope their findings will make it easier to perform such studies.
"The availability of glucobrassicin in good amounts and at low cost could finally permit studies to be performed in order to clarify the anti-cancer role of glucobrassicin-rich vegetables, like broccoli, in the human diet," she told the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture.
Dr Kat Arney of Cancer Research UK said: "The natural world is a rich source of molecules that can benefit human health. This new way of growing woad, a plant from the same family as broccoli and cauliflower, could allow researchers to get hold of larger quantities of potential anti-cancer agents.
"These can then be tested further in the lab and in patients. Chemicals like these could one day prove to have an important part to play in the prevention and treatment of cancer."
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French love Zidane more than ever: poll
PARIS, Aug 12, 2006 (AFP)
Zinedine Zidane's infamous head-butt on Italian defender Marco Materazzi seems to have increased rather than decreased his popularity in France.
Zidane, the captain of the French team in their World Cup final defeat to the Italians last month, has been voted as the most popular French personality in Sunday's edition of Le Journal du Dimanche.
The former footballer, of Algerian origin, displaced former tennis star and now musician Yannick Noah, who had held the top spot since July last year.
Other notable names in the top 10 were singer Johnny Hallyday at four, actor Jean Reno at five, Arsenal striker Thierry Henry in sixth and ageing crooner Charles Aznavour in 10th.
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Ukraine's New PM Heads to Russia for Talks
Created: 15.08.2006 10:22 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 10:39 MSK, 6 hours 29 minutes ago
MosNews
Newly appointed Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych is heading to Russia for talks on Tuesday.
Russia has welcomed what it says are potentially friendlier ties, after backing Yanukovych in 2004's controversial presidential election. But Yanukovych had to agree to tone down his pro-Moscow policies in the deal to receive the job as prime minister. He now says he wants closer links with the West.
He is due to meet Russian leaders in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, the BBC reports.
In March's parliamentary election, Viktor Yanukovych stood on a platform of making Russian a second official language and opposing eventual NATO membership for Ukraine.
Now, he says that Ukrainian children should learn good Ukrainian, calls for Ukraine to "truly move" towards NATO and has even set the ambitious goal of joining the World Trade Organization by the end of this year.
These are dramatic u-turns that have left many Ukrainians wondering just who represents whom. In his first live television interview after assuming the prime ministership, Yanukovych tried to explain them. Russia and Ukraine, he said, were economic competitors, fighting for the same markets. And relations with Moscow would always be difficult, he added, assuring the public that Ukraine could build closer relations with both the West and Russia.
Some Ukrainian analysts say this is reminiscent of the strategy pursued by the former president, Leonid Kuchma. Namely, of paying lip service to Moscow while actually doing what he thought was in his own - and not Russia's - best interests.
The thorny issue of gas prices and deliveries will be top of the agenda for Yanukovych's visit to Russia. And with Gazprom remaining keen to push its customers towards paying the full, market rates, the negotiations are likely to be tough.
Russia backed Yanukovych strongly during the 2004 presidential election, providing him with money, exposure on prime-time media, advisers and technical specialists. It is likely that Russia, in return for this support and a possible discount on gas prices, might want to see a more malleable policy from Kiev, BBC News wrote in ahead of Yanukovych's arrival in Sochi.
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61 schoolgirls killed, 129 wounded in Sri Lankan airstrike - Bombed compound, a well-known humanitarian zone - ..
TamilNet
August 14, 2006
At least 61 schoolgirls were killed and 129 were wounded when Sri Lankan Kfir jets bombed a children's home compound in Mullaithivu district Monday morning where schoolgirls were attending a residential course on first aid, reports said. Ambulances were rushing the wounded, many of whom are bleeding badly, to hospitals, sources said. Officials of the Liberation Tigers' Peace Secretariat, briefing reporters in Kilinochchi, described the attack as "a horrible act of terror" by the Sri Lankan armed forces. UN's child agency, UNICEF, and international truce monitors have visited the scene of the carnage.
our Kfir jet bombers of the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) dropped 16 bombs on the premises of the Sencholai children's home in Vallipunam on Paranthan-Mullaithivu road, killing at least 61 schoolgirls who were attending
33 bodies have been taken to Puthukudiyiruppu hospital. Other bodies, in severely damaged state, were being identified.
More than 400 schoolgirls were staying in Chencholai. Kfir bombers were flown to the target without circling over the attack site, civilian sources said.
52 wounded girls were rushed to Mullaithivu hospital. 13 were admitted at Puthukudiyiruppu hospital. At least 64 wounded were taken to Kilinochchi hospital.
Girls from various schools in the Mullaitivu district were staying overnight at the compound, attending a course in first-aid, LTTE officials in Kilinochchi said.
The officials at the LTTE Peace Secretariat denounced the Sri Lankan airstrike as "a horrible act of terror."
They condemned the "deliberate, cold-blooded and inhumane" targeting of the schoolgirls compound by the daylight air raid.
The LTTE Peace Secretariat urged representatives of international agencies in Kilinochchi, including UNICEF, to visit the site of the bombing.
They also urged the international Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission (SLMM), overseeing the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) to attend the site.
In September 1999, SLAF jets killed 21 people in a similar daylight raid.
Commenting at the time, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said: "We can confirm that 21 civilians were killed consequent to the air strike at Manthuvil junction ...The ICRC deplores the fact that the air strikes were carried out in a civilian area."
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Woman sues weather forecasters
Ananova.com
15/08/06
A Russian woman is suing weather forecasters for ruining her holiday with incorrect predictions.
Alyona Gabitova told the court in the central Russian town of Uljanovsk that she had been promised temperatures of 28 degrees and constant sunshine during her weekend camping trip to a nearby nature park, but instead got wet through when it did nothing but pour down with rain the entire time.
She added that she had come back from the short holiday with a cold and is now demanding the local weather service refund her travel costs, according to Nowyje Iswestija newspaper.
The court is yet to make a decision on the woman's claim.
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The Poodle's Corner
Britain downgrades terror threat
Last Updated Mon, 14 Aug 2006 09:32:47 EDT
CBC News
The British government downgraded its terror threat level from critical to severe Monday while police hold 23 people accused of plotting to blow up as many as 10 commercial flights heading to the United States.
The level was declared critical last week after the alleged plot was made public and the suspects arrested.
"I want to stress ... that the change in the threat level does not mean that the threat has gone away," Home Secretary John Reid said Monday.
"There is still a very serious threat of an attack. The threat level is at severe, indicating the high likelihood of an attempted terrorist attack at some stage, and I urge the public to remain vigilant," he added.
In the aftermath of the arrests, Britain's air services continued to move more slowly than normal. At London's busy Heathrow airport on Sunday, about one-third of the flights were cancelled.
Officials blamed stringent new screening rules imposed on Aug. 10, which include a ban on all carry-on luggage.
Police arrested 24 people across England on Thursday in connection with an alleged plot to blow up as many as 10 passenger planes flying between Britain and the United States. Authorities have accused the suspects of planning to smuggle explosives onto the flights.
One suspect was released without charge, and a court will decide Monday on the detention of another.
The suspects are said to be British nationals with links to Pakistan. The Bank of England released the names of 19 suspects on Friday and said that their assets had been frozen.
Brothers accused of leading plot
On Saturday, officials in Pakistan said two brothers arrested in that country and in Britain have emerged as lead figures in the investigation of the alleged plot.
Rashid Rauf, who was arrested along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan about a week ago, has been listed as a "key person" in the investigation, authorities with Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said.
Rauf's brother, Tayib Rauf, 22, was arrested in Britain. Police there have refused to comment on reports that a third brother is among the 40 people who have been detained in the two countries.
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Why Tony Blair has lost all moral authority amid Middle East war
Bianca Jagger
Scotsman
15/08/2006
WITH a shaky ceasefire now in place, what hope is there for a lasting peace and justice for the people of Lebanon, Israel and the wider region? I must admit I am not very optimistic.
More than a month of carnage was allowed to unfold while the United Nations Security Council remained impotent. It failed to condemn Israel for the massacre of civilians at Qana, as it failed even to condemn the apparently deliberate killing of four UN observers.
Meanwhile, while precious days were being lost to United States-led wrangling over the precise terms of the UN's much-delayed ceasefire resolution, George Bush's administration continued to send arms to Israel - some via Scotland. Days and weeks of shameful time-wasting slipped by, days and weeks of bloodletting and horror.
What are the lessons from this war? I think there have been three main ones. First, the international community must be prepared to condemn all war crimes against civilians without hesitation and strenuous efforts must be made to bring perpetrators to justice, not least as a means of preventing new generations of embittered victims. Second, the UN Security Council has been turned into a sort of club for the benefit of US interests, threatening to bankrupt its legitimacy. Last week, Kofi Annan confessed his "profound disappointment" at Security Council delays over Lebanon, admitting "its inability to act sooner has badly shaken the world's faith in its authority and integrity". Thirdly, Tony Blair has further degraded what little stock he has on the international stage as a diplomat or "honest broker".
ON WAR crimes, the evidence is now considerable. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), Israel's Lebanon offensive "systematically failed to distinguish between combatants and civilians". In some cases, "attacks constitute war crimes", it said. It is equally obvious that, with their deadly barrage of Katyushas or longer-range "Khaibar-1" missiles, Hezbollah rained indiscriminate death on to cities in northern Israel.
What was especially shocking, however, was the massively one-sided nature of the killings and the fact that Israel sought to justify its actions by pointing to Hezbollah tactics. Detailed investigations by HRW disproved the Israeli line that Hezbollah had positioned its missiles in residential locations. The Israeli claim was false.
Lest we forget, Israel's offensive in the sovereign state of Lebanon was a clear act of aggression under international law. Indeed it is the fifth separate occasion Israel has invaded Lebanon.
Israel's indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force was in breach of humanitarian law. The calculated destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure - roads, bridges, factories, hospitals, generators and oil containers - all constituted collective punishment, another imputable crime under international law. War crimes like this must not be ignored.
The second key point is that the UN Security Council, with its 15 countries (and inner club of five big powers calling the shots), can never be relied on to respond to crises like this without prevarication and politicking that will cost lives. We desperately need UN reform and, in future, the UN's full General Assembly must be empowered to act. The General Assembly must be far more prepared to convene emergency sessions, ones that can speedily call for diplomacy, talks, ceasefires and investigations and settlements.
Third, it simply has to be acknowledged that the UK under Tony Blair has played an unconscionable role in this and other critical situations in the Middle East. The simple truth is that in countless situations no progress can be made if the world is reliant on either the US or UK as supposed "honest brokers". Israel's military hardware, for example, is overwhelmingly American-made (with some hi-tech British components) and throughout this war, the UK government allowed massive 1,000lb "bunker-buster" bombs passage through UK airports.
Heaven knows what holidaymakers at Prestwick made of the news that bunker-busters bound for the Israeli air force had been sitting alongside them at the airport. Or indeed, what they thought of recent reports that Sunday's Israeli air offensive against the Rweis district of southern Beirut involved these weapons. People at the scene reported at least seven bodies, including three children, being pulled out of the rubble of demolished apartment blocks after the attack.
Even cluster bombs have been among the arsenal of US weapons supplied to Israel. In light of all this, are we really to suppose Messrs Bush and Blair could ever have had a sensible role in negotiating a peace settlement? After they'd given Israel a green light to continue its onslaught in Lebanon? Aiding and abetting war crimes is an unusual basis on which to broker peace.
THE stark truth is Tony Blair's policies have failed miserably over Lebanon, just as they have over Iraq. This time his efforts were too little, too late, and his "diplomacy" riddled with bias. Let us put it this way: how many civilians, including women and children, have to die before Blair's diplomacy becomes anything other than a dead letter? Even now, achieving a lasting peace out of this inferno will be incredibly difficult. But it requires - as a minimum - even-handedness and a genuine respect for justice.
On the one hand, I have condemned Hezbollah's rocket attacks. I genuinely understand the suffering of many people in Israel. During a visit a few years ago, I was particularly moved by an encounter I had with an Israeli mother whose son, a soldier in the Israeli Defence Forces, was killed by a Palestinian sniper at a West Bank checkpoint. Still raw with grief, she nevertheless managed to speak of peace, compromise and reconciliation, not the hatred and bitterness you might have expected.
On the other hand, Lebanese people have suffered grievously. My experience is that people in this multi-ethnic democracy are genuinely committed to finding a peaceful solution to live with Israel.
The calculated viciousness of the slaughter in this war and the compromised, immoral response of nations like the US and the UK are heinous acts from which recovery will be difficult. But one route away from future anarchy and further conflict is a renewal of a meaningful sense of justice for the people of this region.
If your home has been bombed, on either side of the border, there should be an independent fact-finding body to whom you can report this. Amnesty International has called for an International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission to be established.
This could investigate incidents where serious violations of the Geneva Conventions are alleged to have taken place. This is where the UN can exert influence, breaking out of the deadlock of Security Council politicking and getting down to facts on the ground.
We can't allow the war crimes of this conflict to be buried along with innocent civilians. For example, the shocking killings at Qana - when dozens of Lebanese civilians died on 30 July while sheltering from an Israel air raid - have been met only with a hasty internal Israeli investigation that quickly exonerated its forces of any wrongdoing. It has been dismissed by Amnesty International as a whitewash, typical of the Israeli army's flawed self-investigations.
Qana has happened before. In 1996 an Israeli air force bombing at Qana killed 106 Lebanese civilians seeking refuge in a UN shelter. The UN's own report, initially highly critical of Israel, was later toned down following, it seems, pressure from Israel.
This time around, the UN must demand these sham inquiries are set aside and real investigations allowed. Bombing outrages followed by condemnations, lightweight "investigations" and inaction are not the way forward for the bereaved and injured in Lebanon, just as they are not for their partners in suffering in Israel.
THERE is already an excess of historical grievance - because justice and a "lasting peace" is so often promised by politicians on all sides, then snatched away again. The UN General Assembly should tackle this head-on. If the ceasefire holds, the GA should act to implement all outstanding UN resolutions regarding Palestine, Israel and Lebanon - and instigate reform of the addled Security Council. Withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon should be the kick-start for the withdrawal of Israel from all occupied territories.
Meanwhile, Tony Blair's actions over Lebanon and Iraq have demonstrated one thing: he has lost all moral authority and is no longer fit to be Prime Minister of this country.
- Bianca Jagger is a human rights campaigner
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NBC: U.S. Rushed Brits to Bust Terror Plot, Says Source
By Justin Rood
August 12, 2006
NBC News has learned that U.S. and British authorities had a significant disagreement over when to move in on the suspects in the alleged plot to bring down trans-Atlantic airliners bound for the United States.
A senior British official knowledgeable about the case said British police were planning to continue to run surveillance for at least another week to try to obtain more evidence, while American officials pressured them to arrest the suspects sooner. The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the case.
In contrast to previous reports, the official suggested an attack was not imminent, saying the suspects had not yet purchased any airline tickets. In fact, some did not even have passports.
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Whereto, Amerika?
Whether You're Left or Right, It's Time to Fight the Bullies
by Brian Vaszily
It is one of the few things I did in my youth that haunts me still. To be precise I should say it is one of the few things I didn't do. I didn't stand up for Bobbie T.
Every school classroom has a Bobbie T or two. They come from both sides of the gender line. On the female side, she may be an overweight girl who wears hand-me-down clothes and appears to take little interest in make-up or styling her hair or pop stars. On the male side, he may be the too-thin boy with effeminate characteristics who shows no skill or interest in sports or muscle cars or blowing things up.
And they are attacked for it. They are whispered about, taunted to their face, the butt of endless jokes, sometimes physically abused, and things are said and repeated until most everyone - often including the Bobbie T - believes them to be true.
Though the harassment and its effects certainly spill over to the opposite gender, the Bobbie Ts are primarily attacked from those within their gender.
So it was with our Bobbie T.
There was that small handful of boys within our class who routinely launched the attacks, calling him a wimp, a dork, a fag, tripping him as he entered the classroom, yanking his pants down in front of the giggling girls on the playground. Etcetera.
And then there was that larger handful of boys who, though they didn't land the verbal and physical blows, hit Bobbie T even harder -- because they laughed when he was taunted and because they shunned him. Because they did nothing.
I belonged to that larger handful.
Though I secretly felt sorry for Bobbie, though sometimes I felt rage for him when the bullies went to particularly cruel extremes, I never did or said anything to stand up for him for one reason alone: I did not want to get taken down along with him.
I did not want to risk being ridiculed and laughed at by the bullies and therefore laughed at and shunned by everyone else for defending a "wimp." No one wanted to take that risk (save some of the teachers, which only made matters worse.) So no one did anything.
We're Still Afraid of the Bullies... and We're Paying for It
Most adults have not grown up. They just suffer from the delusion that they have grown up. In reality, they've only developed more sophisticated ways to repeat the behaviors of their youth.
As I have suggested throughout my previous columns -- and as I am telling you outright here -- those in the business of marketing in all its names and variations take full advantage of this delusion by targeting the unaware with tactics that prey directly upon it.
The reason I am still haunted by not standing up for Bobbie T - versus merely feeling a bit guilty - is because I repeated this behavior well into adulthood. In fact, I stood silently by and watched certain peers transform this same type of bullying without fear of repercussion into a sinister but highly effective marketing tactic, building their careers, their clients' careers, and their pocketbooks on it.
The tactic even has a name - "jeer pressure" - whose basic definition is "conformity to a harsh, demeaning, or otherwise divisive viewpoint out of fear that you, too, will become the subject of the ridicule."
This tactic is used to moderate extent in the marketing of products and services, though I predict that if patterns discussed below don't change soon its use will escalate there.
BUT it is now being used to an excessive and deadly extent by those in U.S. politics and media who are marketing their chosen party, their set of ideas about what is right and wrong, and their representatives.
I am of course referring to certain Republican and Democrat politicians and especially to certain well-known "commentators" who champion rightist or leftist agendas and who dominate talk TV and radio ... "commentators" of course being just another word for rabid marketers.
As many and perhaps most American adults now readily agree, the political divide between the right and left has widened to a disgusting and deadly degree -- particularly disgusting and deadly for the horrid lessons it is teaching our youth about how to deal with those who hold viewpoints different than their own (i.e., call them names, defame their character, attack the individual not the ideas!)
And make no mistake: it IS primarily the sinister, extremely effective marketing tactics these politicians and commentators and editorialists are using to increase their own position and power that is contributing to the great big ugly divide.
Case in point?
Well, before I go there, let me stress that endless examples exist from BOTH the left and right, such as Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and Don Imus. But by way of example I will focus on Ann Coulter, who is by far the Queen of Vitriol and Jeer Pressure.
In her new book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, she writes about "Miss Landolphi," a sex educator who appears to have gone way overboard in her presentation to a high school ... so overboard that if presented in a diplomatic and rational manner Coulter could have used it to solidly support her overall case. INSTEAD though here is part of what Coulter writes:
Like most people who enjoy talking to strangers about sex, Miss Landolphi, to put it as charitably as possible, is physically repulsive in appearance.
Huh? More personal attacks on Miss Landolphi follow, and the book is loaded with similar personal insults, including the infamous attacks on 9/11 widows. (What's funny is that most of these attacks, if you ponder them just a bit, are also often bizarre and plain stupid ... at that moment in her writing above, for example Ann Coulter is talking to strangers - her readers - about sex... think about it.)
The irony is that Ann Coulter claims to support Christian values (love thy neighbor, turn the other cheek, Christ's compassion, etc.) but she is an ace practitioner of vitriol. She claims to support traditional family values but practices harsh language and name-calling as the way to handle those whose opinions differ from your own (and children are of course led by example.)
Of course, Coulter and her advisors - marketers such as producers and editors -- are 110% aware that the reason she is one of the most popular "commentators" and a #1 bestselling author is because of these attacks, because of the vitriol. Hate is a powerful lure. Her advisors undoubtedly help her "spice up" her act where she may forget to personally insult someone she disagrees with.
Like all the other politicians and "commentators" from the right and left using these same despicable marketing tactics, if you administered truth serum into Coulter's veins she'd admit aloud that she actually doesn't give a damn about improving America and families and children, etc. ... how could she if what she does is so contrary to what she preaches?
What she definitely does give a damn about is improving her power and fortune. And that is certainly working.
Breaking Through the Jeer Pressure
Ann Coulter and her ilk from both sides of the political divide are going to keep doing the deadly thing they do as long as you keep giving them money and attention for doing it. So...
IMPORTANT Reminder to Those Who Consider Themselves Conservatives: You ARE allowed to continue to voice and explain and debate your support for conservative ideals while publicly denouncing the ugly, divisive (un-family values, un-Christian) tactics of Ann Coulter and all the rest. They are two quite different things, and must be separated ... like removing a parasite from its host.
IMPORTANT Reminder to Those Who Consider Themselves Liberals: You ARE allowed to continue to voice and explain and debate your support for liberal ideals while publicly denouncing the ugly, divisive (uncompassionate, intolerable) tactics of all the Ann Coulter-with-a-liberal-twist wannabes (NONE of them even good enough at copycatting the sinister tactics to mention by name here.)
With so many people proclaiming how sad and dangerous the growing political divide is - but then so many people's behavior supporting those (being "entertained by" those) doing the dividing - there is an obvious disconnect here.
That disconnect is due to the jeer pressure tactic --- most people are still afraid of standing up and saying something aloud, same as back in elementary school, because of what everyone else might say about you if you do.
Maybe for criticizing Don Imus' tactics, Mr. Liberal, you're afraid all your liberal friends will say YOU FASCIST, YOU MUST LOVE GEORGE BUSH!
Maybe for criticizing Bill O'Reilly's approach, Mrs. Conservative, your conservative friends will holler YOU COMMUNIST, YOU MUST ADORE HILLARY CLINTON!
But so what. That would make them the ignorant ones still repeating the insecure behaviors of their youth. That would make you the strong one for standing up for what you believe in - and living it.
Time to grow up, adults. On a personal basis for each individual, and as a nation and even world, we will all greatly benefit from some courage and fortitude from the public. I can't change a past of not standing up to the bullies, and neither can you, but we can do the Bobbie Ts and ourselves the honor of not repeating the same mistake now, when we really do know better.
Columnist Brian W. Vaszily (pronounced "vay zlee') is the author of several books including the acclaimed novella Beyond Stone and Steel and co-author of the bestselling Dr. Mercola's Total Health Program. He is President of TopMarketingPro, a "conscientious marketing" consultancy, and has over fourteen years of marketing and management experience in Fortune 500 and entrepreneurial environments. More than any of that, he is a father, husband, son, explorer, messenger, and humble appreciator. Even Ann Coulter would like him.
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Bush Caught Lying: Claims Terror Plot Included "New" Explosive Threat...
Eat The Press
August 13, 2006
From the President's Radio Address, August 12, 2006:
This plot is further evidence that the terrorists we face are sophisticated, and constantly changing their tactics... We're dealing with a new enemy that uses new means of attack and new methods to communicate.
From the New York Times, Aug. 12, 2006:
In 1995, a plot to bomb 12 American jumbo jets over the Pacific with a liquid explosive was discovered when the bomb makers accidentally set fire to their laboratory in Manila.
From the New York Times editorial, Aug. 12, 2006:
The most frightening thing about the foiled plot to use liquid explosives to blow up airplanes over the Atlantic is that both the government and the aviation industry have been aware of the liquid bomb threat for years but have done little to prepare for it.
From the Associated Press:
As the British terror plot was unfolding, the Bush administration quietly tried to take away $6 million that was supposed to be spent this year developing new explosives detection technology....Rep. Martin Sabo, D-Minn., who joined Republicans to block the administration's recent diversion of explosives detection money, said research and development is crucial to thwarting future attacks, and there is bipartisan agreement that Homeland Security has fallen short. ''They clearly have been given lots of resources that they haven't been using,'' Sabo said.
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Most Recent Bush Quarter Worst for a President Since 1992
by Jeffrey M. Jones
Gallup
George W. Bush's most recent quarter, his 22nd office, was the worst of his presidency and the worst for any president since 1992, based on his 35.8% average approval rating during that quarter. It also ranks in the bottom 20 quarters out of more than 200 that Gallup has measured since Harry Truman's presidency.
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Increasingly, Bush Escapes the Media Pack
By Peter Baker
Washington Post
August 12, 2006
GREEN BAY, Wis. -- On one of the scariest days yet in the five-year battle with terrorists, President Bush prepared to make a speech to reassure the American people. But the White House press corps was 1,000 miles away in Texas.
Bush had left his ranch vacation and jetted north for a scheduled closed-door fundraiser. No press plane accompanied him. And so when news broke that Britain had broken up a major terrorist plot, the only ones there to convey the president's reaction were a handful of local reporters and a few pool journalists who ride in the back of Air Force One.
The idea that Bush could travel across the country without a full contingent of reporters, especially in the middle of a war, highlights a major cultural shift in the presidency and the news media. In the four decades since the assassination of John F. Kennedy, presidents traditionally have taken journalists with them wherever they traveled on the theory that when it comes to the most powerful leader on the planet, anything can happen at any time.
But increasingly in recent months, Bush has left town without a chartered press plane, often to receptions where he talks to donors chipping in hundreds of thousands of dollars with no cameras or tapes to record his words for the public. Barred from such events, most news organizations will not pay to travel with him. And so a White House policy inclined to secrecy has combined with escalating costs for the strapped news media to let Bush fly under the radar in a way his predecessors could not.
"A lot of it is a reflection of the times," said C-SPAN's Steve Scully, president of the White House Correspondents' Association. "The whole thing is changing."
For veterans of past administrations, the changes are striking. "When the president moved it was a big deal, and I can't even remember an occasion when we didn't take a charter," said Ed Rollins, who was Ronald Reagan's White House political director.
"Go back 20 or 25 years and say we're at war and the president is traveling around the country and there are only, what, three people with him?" asked Joe Lockhart, who was Bill Clinton's White House press secretary. "That would have been unthinkable."
In some ways, it may not seem to make much difference. Like presidents before him, Bush still always travels with a small media pool that includes wire services, television cameras and a single newspaper reporter who files a report to others left behind. The advent of instant video feeds, cable television, the Internet, e-mail and transcripts of the president's every public word has made it possible to cover Bush without being anywhere near him.
Yet fewer eyeballs on a president means less scrutiny, in the view of some media and government watchdog groups. Fewer reporters, they say, means fewer questions and fewer versions of what happens available to the public. News accounts written from a different time zone invariably miss context and texture. And in closing the doors of some fundraisers, the White House has reversed a policy adopted under Clinton after fundraising scandals raised questions about what donors are seeking when they hobnob with presidents.
Patrice McDermott, director of OpenTheGovernment.org, a coalition formed three years ago that includes groups such as the American Library Association, Common Cause, the League of Women Voters and the Society of Professional Journalists, called the changing pattern of coverage "quite disturbing" and part of a "rising tide of secrecy" in Washington.
"It's another way of closing off responsibility and accountability and shutting themselves off from public view," she said. "I think the public would prefer that somebody be in the room who is not there for their own interests to be served."
White House spokesman Tony Snow said there is nothing insidious about closing fundraisers in private homes and noted that news organizations choose whether to pay for a plane follow the president. "It's really all about money," he said. "It used to be that media organizations had more dough."
Given the changes in communication technology, he added, "I think presidents are more widely available than at any point in American history." And he said he makes a point of finding ways for at least some reporters to see Bush when there are major developments. "If there is big news, we make sure the president's available," Snow said.
The cost of covering the president has risen dramatically at a time when the news media, anxious about economic pressures, are aggressively cutting costs. For a one-day trip to St. Louis, for instance, the White House billed The Washington Post $3,317. To go to Yuma, Ariz., for a day, the bill came to $3,795. A two-day trip to Europe cost $8,283, not counting hotel charges.
And so even for trips where there is a press plane, sometimes only a handful of journalists are on board. Newspapers that used to travel regularly, including USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune and others, now do so more sporadically. The Boston Globe no longer even has a White House correspondent, focusing on breaking exclusive stories rather than writing about the president's everyday activities.
"It's not like we're ignoring it completely," said Joe Williams, the Globe's deputy Washington bureau chief. "But the lineup we're using right now gives us flexibility to attack a broader range of stories than we would if we had a designated White House correspondent."
Bush is not the only one to find ways of escaping much public notice as he flies around the country. Vice President Cheney manages to leave Washington for days, and sometimes weeks, at a time without public announcement. Few in the capital even knew he was in Texas in February, for instance, until he accidentally shot a companion while hunting quail. And he has been in Jackson, Wyo., since July 29 without any national news media mentioning it.
The Jackson Hole News & Guide found out Cheney was there only because it spotted his plane and the radar dish that serves an anti-missile battery that protects his house when he's in town. "In the past, they've been kind of weird about it," said Thomas Dewell, the paper's co-editor. "They'd say, 'His airplane's here and the missile base is here, but we can't tell you if he's here.' " This time, he said, Cheney's office confirmed his presence when asked.
Cheney aides said they announce his movements only when he makes public appearances but will provide his whereabouts if reporters call to ask. The vice president, who has already headlined 81 fundraisers in this election cycle, plans to return to Washington on Sunday before heading out to events in Arizona, New Mexico, Montana and Idaho next week, his office said.
Clinton agreed to stop holding closed fundraisers in response to criticism of his campaign finance tactics. When a fundraiser was held in a private home, the White House permitted a single print reporter into the room to record the scene and the president's words for the rest of the pack. The Bush White House changed that, leaving fundraisers open if located in hotels or public spaces but closing them in private homes. "The thought was having the presence of reporters would disrupt the intimacy of the events," said Ari Fleischer, who was then White House press secretary.
Lanny J. Davis, who was White House special counsel during the Clinton fundraising scandals, expressed surprise that the change has not generated more criticism. "I marvel at their ability to get away with it," he said. "I have to grudgingly admit to some envy. I admire their chutzpah."
Bush has traveled out of the Washington area at least seven times this year without a press plane, including four times in the past month to closed Republican fundraisers -- in Milwaukee, in Cleveland, in Charleston, W.Va., and on Thursday here to Green Bay to raise $500,000 for House candidate John Gard. He also headlined a fundraiser in Texas yesterday that was closed to the media. That may serve the interests of candidates who want the money Bush can raise but don't want a public embrace with a president suffering low approval ratings.
Scully said he may raise the issue of closed fundraisers with Snow. "As we move into the fall campaign, if this happens more often, we're going to put pressure on Tony and others to open these events," Scully said. "He is the president. He is traveling at government expense. . . . We should be in there to hear what he has to say."
In the past, major media organizations felt it was important to be near the president even if they were kept out of the room, a "body watch" mentality sparked by the Kennedy assassination and reinforced over the years by any number of unexpected crises, including the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"There's going to be a time when something's going to happen and the major national media's not going to be there," Lockhart said. "They're going to have to rely on technology. Will this have a major impact on our democracy? Smarter people than me will have to answer that."
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
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Danger! You Are What You Eat!
Hot Dogs May Cause Genetic Mutations
Charles Q. Choi
LiveScience.com
Mon Aug 14, 2006
Everyone knows hot dogs aren't exactly healthy for you, but in a new study chemists find they may contain DNA-mutating compounds that might boost one's risk for cancer.
Scientists note there is an up to 240-fold variation in levels of these chemicals across different brands.
"One could try and find out what the difference in manufacturing techniques are between the brands, and if it's decided these things are a hazard, one could change the manufacturing methods," researcher Sidney Mirvish, a chemist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, told LiveScience.
Mirvish and his colleagues examined hot dogs because past research had linked them with colon cancer. Hot dogs are preserved with sodium nitrite, which can help form chemicals known as N-nitroso compounds, most of which cause cancer in lab animals.
Extracts from hot dogs bought from the supermarket, when mixed with nitrites, resulted in what appeared to be these DNA-mutating compounds. When added to Salmonella bacteria, hot dog extracts treated with nitrites doubled to quadrupled their normal DNA mutation levels. Triggering DNA mutations in the gut might boost the risk for colon cancer, the researchers explained.
"I won't say you shouldn't eat hot dogs," Mirvish said. Future research will feed hot dog meat to mice to see if they develop colon cancer or precancerous conditions, he explained.
James Hodges, president of the American Meat Institute Foundation in Washington, noted this study is "a preliminary report that the author concedes requires further investigation. The carcinogenic risk to humans of the compounds studied has not been determined."
The possible hazard presented here is not just limited to hot dogs. Salted dried fish and seasonings such as soy sauce may contain similar levels of these chemicals, Mirvish said.
Mirvish and his colleagues reported their findings in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
Comment: Ark Sez: I've been eating hotdogs for 20 years and I mutated the RIGHT way!
Of course, Ark was eating Polish hot dogs most of those years!
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The top ten things food companies don't want you to know
News Target
14/08/2006
The giant food corporations have one mission: selling more food and beverage products to consumers. Succeeding with that mission depends on keeping consumers in the dark on certain issues such as the presence cancer-causing chemicals found in popular food products.
Here are ten things the food corporations, whose products dominate grocery store shelves across the United States and other countries, absolutely do not want you to know.
1. The ingredients listed on the label aren't the only things in the food. Cancer-causing chemicals such as acrylamides may be formed in the food during high-heat processing, yet there's no requirement to list them on the label. Residues of solvents, pesticides and other chemicals may also be present, but also do not have to be listed. The National Uniformity for Food Act, currently being debated in the U.S. Congress, would make it illegal (yes, illegal) for states to require cancer warnings on foods that contain cancer-causing chemicals (such as California's Proposition 65.) See articles on the Food Uniformity Act.
2. Monosodium glutamate (MSG), which is added to thousands of food and grocery products through a dozen different innocent-sounding ingredients, imbalances endocrine system function, disabling normal appetite regulation and causing consumers to keep eating more food. This chemical not only contributes to nationwide obesity, it also helps food companies boost repeat business. See articles on MSG.
3. MSG is routinely hidden in foods in these ingredients: yeast extract, torula yeast, hydrolyzed vegetable protein and autolyzed yeast. Thousands of common grocery products contain one or more of these chemical taste enhancers, including nearly all "vegetarian" foods such as veggie burgers (read labels to check). See Food manufacturers hide dangerous ingredients in everyday foods by using confusing terms on the label.
4. ADHD in children is caused almost entirely by the consumption of processed food ingredients such as artificial colors and refined carbohydrates. Eighty percent of so-called ADHD children who are taken off processed foods are cured of ADHD in two weeks. See articles on ADHD.
5. The chemical sweetener aspartame, when exposed to warm temperatures for only a few hours, begins to break down into chemicals like formaldehyde and formic acid. Formaldehyde is a potent nerve toxin and causes damage to the eyes, brain and entire nervous system. Aspartame has been strongly linked to migraines, seizures, blurred vision and many other nervous system problems. See articles on aspartame.
6. Most food dips (like guacamole dip) are made with hydrogenated oils, artificial colors and monosodium glutamate. Many guacamole dips don't even contain avocados.
7. Plastic food packaging is a potent health hazard. Scientists now know that plastics routinely seep the chemical bisphenol A into the food, where it is eaten by consumers. Cooking in plastic containers multiplies the level of exposure. Bisphenol is a hormone disruptor and can cause breast formation in men and severe hormonal imbalances in women. It may also encourage hormone-related cancers such as prostate cancer and breast cancer. See Plastics chemical bisphenol A found to promote prostate cancer in animal studies.
8. Milk produced in the United States comes from cows injected with synthetic hormones that have been banned in every other advanced nation in the world. These hormones help explain why unusually young teenage girls develop breasts at such a young age, or why hormone-related cancers like prostate cancer are being discovered in unprecedented numbers. In order to protect Monsanto, the manufacturer of hormones used in the industry, the USDA currently bans organic milk producers from claiming their milk comes from cows that were not treated with synthetic hormones. Even organic milk is now under fire as the Organic Consumers Association says Horizon milk products are falsely labeled as organic. See Horizon milk, Wild Oats named in consumer boycott of "false" organic products. (The solution to all this? Drink raw almond milk instead. Make it yourself with a Vitamix, water and a nut milk bag.)
9. Most grocery products that make loud health claims on their packaging are, in reality, nutritionally worthless (like meal replacement shakes, instant chocolate milk, etc.). The most nutritious foods are actually those the FDA does not allow to make any health claims whatsoever: fresh produce. See articles on food labeling.
10. Food manufacturers actually "buy" shelf space and position at grocery stores. That's why the most profitable foods (and hence, the ones with the lowest quality ingredients) are the most visible on aisle end caps, checkout lanes and eye-level shelves throughout the store. The effect of all this is to provide in-store marketing and visibility to the very foods and beverages that promote obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease and other degenerative conditions now ravaging consumers around the world. See articles on food marketing.
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What's in My Food?
By Pallavi Gogoi
AOl
15/08/2006
Few people know that the food coloring listed as cochineal extract comes from female beetles (and their eggs). Food activists want to spread the word.
When you dig into a strawberry Yoplait yogurt, take a moment to contemplate where the beautiful pink color comes from. Strawberries? Think again. It comes from crushed bugs. Specifically, from the female cochineal beetles and their eggs. And it's not just yogurt. The bugs are also used to give red coloring to Hershey Good & Plenty candies, Tropicana grapefruit juice, and other common foods.
What Companies Do to Improve the Look & Taste of Your Food
You won't find "crushed bugs" on the list of ingredients for any of these foods, however. Companies have a bit of latitude in describing exactly what they put in our food. Many larger companies, such as General Mills, the manufacturer of Yoplait and Pepsi, the maker of Tropicana, identify the dye in their products as either carmine, or cochineal extract. Still, many companies simply list "artificial color" on their ingredients list without giving any details.
Food activists are trying to change disclosure requirements. The Food & Drug Administration has received numerous complaints over the issue and is now in the process of considering a proposal to require color additives like the cochineal extract to be disclosed on the labels of all foods that use them. "Hopefully we'll see something by the end of the year," says Michael Jacobson, executive director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a food advocacy group in Washington, D. C.
ALLERGIC REACTIONS. Jacobson says that consumers want to know what they're eating. Some are allergic to bug extract; others are vegetarians. "The food product should indicate that it comes from insects so that vegetarians at least can avoid the product," he says.
Food Poll
Carmine may be the least of food activists' worries. It is known to cause allergic reactions in just a small percentage of the population. Food producers sometimes add much more dangerous chemical additives to make their products look attractive (see BusinessWeek.com, 3/27/06, "Hershey: A Sweeter Bid").
Indeed, who would think that chicken, eggs, and salmon are often artificially enhanced to look more appetizing to consumers? The plump, juicy chicken sitting on the supermarket shelf is likely to have been fed canthaxanthin, a pigment added to chicken feed to enhance poultry's yellow color and make it look palatable. And egg-laying hens are also given a dye along with their feed, making egg yolks vary in color from light yellow all the way to bright orange.
IN THE PINK. Farmers can have their pick from a color chart that goes from the numbers 1 to 15, coinciding with colors from yellow to red. The yellow color comes from xanthophyll and carotenoids in the feed absorbed through the intestine, metabolized, and deposited in the egg yolk. In an article published last year, R. Scott Beyer, a poultry specialist from the Kansas State University, recommended different levels of xanthophylls, depending on what color of yolk is desired. He says 23 mg of xanthophyll per pound of feed results in a "medium orange" color.
The fresh, farm-raised salmon that shoppers buy also get their orange-red hue from eating the chemicals astaxanthin and canthaxanthin. Wild salmon are pink because they eat shrimp-like creatures called krill. But to achieve the same pink color, farmed salmon need chemicals, which are mixed with their feed. In the past couple of years, the European Union significantly reduced the level of such dyes that can be fed to salmon because of concerns that the dyes, at high levels, can affect people's eyesight.
Two years ago, in the U.S., Seattle law firm Smith & Lowney filed two class actions against grocers Kroger and Safeway in Washington and California, contending that they should disclose that their salmon are dyed pink. Both lawsuits got thrown out of court. However, Knoll Lowney, a partner at the law firm, says that the lawsuits raised enough public awareness that many grocers voluntarily use "color added" labels to their salmon.
Still, Lowney says that such dyes are totally unnecessary. "This is a growing problem because the food companies are using more artificial means to enhance the appearance of the product and make it appear like something that it is not," he says. A walk down the grocery aisle for processed food is an eye opener-the bacon and ham get their red tint from sodium ascorbate, an antioxidant and color stabilizer, and the Betty Crocker icing gets its bright white color not from natural cream and egg whites but from titanium dioxide, a mineral that is also used in house paints. Betty Crocker manufacturer General Mills didn't return phone calls seeking comment.
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USA WARNS India: Drink Coke and Pepsi or Else...
Razib Ahmed
August 13, 2006
US warns India of investment fallout from Coca-Cola, PepsiCo row
This is the headlines of a report in Forbes.com. Clearly, American government and the business community are very unhappy about the problem regarding Pepsi and Coke in India. The situation is only becoming more and more complicated every day. There is sign of a solution to this problem at this moment. I am quoting from the report of Forbes:
'This kind of action is a setback for the Indian economy,' Undersecretary for International Trade Franklin Lavin told Agence France-Presse.
'In a time when India is working hard to attract and retain foreign investment, it would be unfortunate if the discussion were dominated by those who did not want to treat foreign companies fairly,' he said.
So, US government has come forward to support Coke and Pepsi. I think that US government is going to push the Indian government for better treatment of the two cola companies. What is interesting to me is that Franklin Lavin has avoided the main issue- whether products of these two cola giants in India contain dangerous level of pesticide or not. Instead, he supported Coke and Pepsi and viewed that it would damage Indian effort to attract foreign investment. However, I feel that this would only irritate a lot of people in India and the campaign against the two cola companies will only gain more momentum.
The best thing for US government to do is to offer scientific support to India about this whole matter. I feel that independent scientists from India and USA should carry out tests on cola products. However, warning India will not help Coke and Pepsi.
Am I right?
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Spaced Out
NASA can't find original tape of moon landing
Reuters
Mon Aug 14, 2006
WASHINGTON - The U.S. government has misplaced the original recording of the first moon landing, including astronaut Neil Armstrong's famous "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," a NASA spokesman said on Monday.
Armstrong's famous space walk, seen by millions of viewers on July 20, 1969, is among transmissions that NASA has failed to turn up in a year of searching, spokesman Grey Hautaloma said.
"We haven't seen them for quite a while. We've been looking for over a year and they haven't turned up," Hautaloma said.
The tapes also contain data about the health of the astronauts and the condition of the spacecraft. In all, some 700 boxes of transmissions from the Apollo lunar missions are missing, he said.
"I wouldn't say we're worried -- we've got all the data. Everything on the tapes we have in one form or another," Hautaloma said.
NASA has retained copies of the television broadcasts and offers several clips on its Web site.
But those images are of lower quality than the originals stored on the missing magnetic tapes.
Because NASA's equipment was not compatible with TV technology of the day, the original transmissions had to be displayed on a monitor and re-shot by a TV camera for broadcast.
Hautaloma said it is possible the tapes will be unplayable even if they are found, because they have degraded significantly over the years -- a problem common to magnetic tape and other types of recordable media.
The material was held by the National Archives but returned to NASA sometime in the late 1970s, he said.
"We're looking for paperwork to see where they last were," he said.
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Report: X-rays don't detect explosives
By LESLIE MILLER
Associated Press
August 15, 2006
WASHINGTON - The government's new order that all airline passengers put their shoes through X-ray machines won't help screeners find a liquid or gel that can be used as a bomb.
The machines are unable to detect explosives, according to a
Homeland Security report on aviation screening recently obtained by The Associated Press.
The Transportation Security Administration ordered the shoe-scanning requirement as it fine-tunes new security procedures.
Those procedures were put in place after British police last week broke up a terrorist plot to assemble and detonate bombs aboard as many as 10 airliners crossing the Atlantic Ocean from Britain to the U.S.
Among the new procedures are a ban on liquids and gels in airline passenger cabins, more hand searches of carryon luggage, and random double screening of passengers at boarding gates.
On Sunday, the TSA made it mandatory for shoes to be run through X-ray machines as passengers go through metal detectors. They were begun in late 2001, after the arrest of Richard Reid aboard a trans-Atlantic flight when he tried to ignite an explosive device hidden in his shoe. The shoe scans have been optional for several years.
In its April 2005 report, "Systems Engineering Study of Civil Aviation Security - Phase I," the Homeland Security Department concluded that images on X-ray machines don't provide the information necessary to detect explosives.
Machines used at most airports to scan hand-held luggage, purses, briefcases and shoes have not been upgraded to detect explosives since the report was issued.
TSA spokeswoman Yolanda Clark said putting shoes on the X-ray machines makes the screening process more efficient and eliminates confusion. "We do not have a specific threat regarding shoes," Clark said. "In an abundance of caution we require all shoes to be removed and X-rayed to mitigate a variety of threats," such as potential weapons.
The Homeland Security report said that "even a 1/4-inch insole of sheet explosive" could create the kind of blast that reportedly brought down Pan Am flight 103, the airliner that blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988, killing 270 people in the air and on the ground.
The Homeland Security report recommends that explosives trace detection, or ETD, be used on the shoes and hands of passengers when the screeners determine they must be checked more thoroughly.
"To help close this gap, the percentage of shoes subjected to explosives inspection should be significantly increased," the report said.
"Within the current state of the art, they afford the only meaningful explosives detection capability at the checkpoint," the report said.
ETD involves a screener using a dry pad on the end of a wand to wipe a surface - baggage, shoes, clothing - and then putting the pad into a machine called an ion mobility spectrometer. The machine can detect tiny particles, or traces, of explosives.
Screeners do use ETD on passengers who have been selected to be screened a second time after going through the checkpoint.
TSA chief Kip Hawley recently acknowledged that the threat from liquid explosives isn't going away - and new security measures designed to thwart the threat may be around for awhile.
The agency is testing equipment to detect liquid explosives at six airports, Hawley said, and he called the technology "very promising."
But, he said, "with a million and a half to 2 million passengers every day, it is not practical to think that we are going to take every bottle and scan it through these liquid scanners."
"We are not going to wait for the perfect device to be deployable," Hawley said in an interview Friday. "We're going to look for a total system to be at the level to make us comfortable."
The agency wants to make better use of a limited resource - airport screeners, whose numbers have been capped by Congress at 45,000. The TSA handles security for 450 commercial airports.
Among the changes the TSA is considering, according to TSA spokeswoman Ellen Howe:
- Hire more people to take baggage-handling responsibilities from screeners so the screeners can focus on security responsibilities.
- Have screeners, instead of contract employees hired by airlines, check IDs and boarding passes.
- Expand a program that trains screeners to look for unusual behavior in passengers that might indicate malicious intent. Called SPOT - Screening Passengers by Observation Technique - it's used in at least 12 airports, Howe said.
Those changes may require approval by Congress and agreement with airports and the airline industry, which might have to bear some of the cost, Howe said.
The airlines might go along with the plan, an industry spokesman said.
"We favor this proposal provided it doesn't add costs to the carriers," said David Castelveter, spokesman for the Air Transport Association.
Comment: Well, of course X-ray scanners can't detect bomb materials! The important thing is that you remain scared out of your mind.
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Strange object falls from sky in Missouri City
ABC13 KTRK News
08/14/06
MISSOURI CITY, TX - There's a bizarre mystery in Fort Bend County. A strange piece of metal fell right out of the sky, just missing a Missouri City woman.
Lynn Moore was parked at a convenience store at the intersection of US 90 and Pitts Road last Thursday when the object came crashing down.
There are two small holes in the piece of metal. Moore thinks it was once bolted to something. She says the object hit her van and a truck parked next to her.
Fort Bend County sheriff's deputies filed a report, but there's no word yet what the object might be.
You may remember back in June, a strange metal object fell out of the sky in Porter and hit the hat a man was wearing while standing in his garden. Amazingly, he wasn't hurt. The homeowner lives just a few miles away from Bush Intercontinental Airport. There were no identifying marks on the object, but aviation experts agreed it looked like something from a small airplane.
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All "signs" point to Firefox
Fox tales
14/08/06
It seems there may be intelligent life out there after all.
Or maybe the Oregon State Linux Users Group is just at it again. To celebrate 50 million downloads, they took back the sidewalk with an enormous painting on their campus quad. At 100 million, they took back the sky with a huge Firefox weather balloon. How do you beat that?
Well, a 45,000+ square foot crop circle might do it. This past weekend, they descended on a field in beautiful Amity, Oregon for two days of plotting and stomping. By Sunday, over an acre of oats was emblazoned with the Firefox logo. To get the pictures, they pulled out the planes and the helicopters.
Check out the team's official Wiki (and here) for tons of additional photos and info on how all the planning and execution was done, as well a list of the people involved.
Some videos of the, uh, crop circling are already available from the Firefox Flicks team, and more are on the way!
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