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Editorial: Faking Palestinian Resistance
Joe Quinn
Signs of the Times
24/08/2006
I'm pretty sure no one was as unsurprised as I was when two Fox news employees were kidnapped in Gaza 10 days ago, 'coincidentally' right after the Israeli-Hizb'allah 'ceasefire'. Israel and America's dog and pony terror show must go on after all, and 'ceasefire' is a dangerous word when your goal is perpetual war. Use the word "ceasefire", and before you can say "nuke Iran" the damn bleeding heart pinko commies are talking about "Middle East peace".
In order to secure American and Israeli interests therefore, and to stay the hysterical peacemongering of such liberal types (one and the same thing), there's nothing quite like a well-timed abduction of Western citizens to reaffirm the irrefutable 'fact' that all Arabs "hate us because of our freedoms".
And so it was that the Fox News van of Cameraman Olaf Wiig, from New Zealand, and correspondent Steve Centanni, an American, was stopped at gun point by 'Arab terrorists' in Gaza on August 14th and the two men whisked away to an unknown location.
Nothing was heard from the men or their captors until yesterday when my unsurpise reached new and dizzying heights as a "previously unknown group" calling itself "Holy Jihad Brigades" released a video of the two men and made their demands.
Now I know what you are thinking: just where did this "holy Jihad brigades" come from? Well, they are the same outfit as "al-Qaeda in Iraq", "al-Qaeda in the UK" "al-Qaeda in Spain" "the al-Qaeda group for Jihad in Europe", "the Jihad Brigades of holiness" "the holy Brigades of Jihadiness" "the holy moly brigades of Islamic Islaminess", "the al-Qaeda group for holy hullabaloo in America" "the Palestinian Jihadi group for Holy Jihad in Jihadilandia" and of course, who could forget "Allah's Holy shi'ite Islamic army of Mohammed for Holy Islamic Jihad against the unholy infidel pigs."
In short, they don't exist, except in the twisted imaginations of Israeli, American and British intelligence agents.
In keeping with the idea that this particular Palestinan group does not actually exist, Hamas, Abbas and every other known Palestinan grouping denied any involvement and indeed condemned the kidnapping, with Haled Abu Hilal, Hamas interior ministry spokesman saying "this is not acceptable at all" and stating that Hamas security officials have put police across Gaza on alert and set up roadblocks to find the gunmen and free the reporters. Sadly, to no avail.
Furthermore, it is generally agreed that the type of language used in the statement by the kidnappers and their references to the Quran differed from the usually terse demands issued by other Palestinian groups and was more similar to those of al-Qaida and Jihadist Web sites.
So exactly what are these would-be Palestinans militants demanding? In their own words:
"We demand the release of the Muslim prisoners, males and females, in the prisons of America, in exchange of our prisoners. We will give you 72 hours starting noon today to look into this, and if you meet our demands, we will deliver on our promise, otherwise, wait and see, and we will wait with you until the order comes from God."
A point to note: When masquerading as Arab terrorists and staging the kidnap of Western citizens, it is essential to make demands that are very vague and more or less impossible to meet. For example, you could demand that America release all Muslims prisoners from its jails. The logic, of course, is that by making such demands you ensure that the only possible outcome is that you are 'forced' kill the captives (ideally in a gruesome way) when your impossible demands are not met and as a result, the further demonization of legitimate Arab resistance groups as crazed bloodthirsty terrorists is assured.
Of course, you are now thinking to yourself, well, ok, so it is pretty clear that such abductions play directly into the hands of the American and Israeli government's agenda to portray Arabs as evil terrorists in the minds of Western peoples, but if we are not dealing with any real Palestinan or Arab group, then who are we dealing with? Then you think about it for another second and conclude that, ok, so it is very likely that the kidnappers are working for the Israeli internal intelligence agency - Shabak - (which would explain why the Fox employees cannot be found in tiny Gaza), but teh question remains as to how exactly agents of the state of Israel are able to successfully pass themselves off as Arabs.
I will let Rima Merriman, a Palestinian American author living in the Palestinian town of Ramallah explain:
"With a cadre of well-trained, Arabic-speaking Israeli informants who are indistinguishable physically from the Palestinian population, Shabak has little problem gathering intelligence on a people whose every movement is regulated by hundreds of check points and by total Israeli control on their borders. These infiltrators prey on Arab innate hospitality and friendliness. The Palestinians call them "musta'ribeen", i.e., "those who appear to be Arabs". Palestinians are not surprised when someone, somewhere comes up to them and says: Got you!"
Fox News reporters on the other hand, never ones to sincerely attempt to understand or report the brutal nature of the reality of life in Israeli-occupied Palestine, tend to be a little more surprised when such brutality is visited upon them.
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Editorial: Dear "Terrorist" Child
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Manuel Valenzuela
Valenzuela's Veritas
Imprisoned in the Vortex of the Pax Americana
Growing up, young child, as you surely are, affected in some way, shape or form by the tentacles of America's malevolent imperialism in the Middle East, whether by market colonialism, economic genocide or military occupation, surely bitterness, hatred, rage and a thirst for vengeance are slowly yet inevitably building inside your tiny body. Like a seed planted into the fertile soils of American hegemony, sprouting in anger with every downpour of American interference in your land, over time nurtured to become a tree bearing the blowback fruit America will be forced to reap, ready to ripen at maturity, your emotions against the Empire growing stronger with every year that passes, with every act of further humiliation and dehumanization, with every display of blatant hypocrisy or lost opportunity, with every new maiming and death upon your family and people.
Whether living in lands overrun by American-sponsored and supported despotic, undemocratic puppets depriving you of real "freedom and democracy," whether living under the billions-of-dollars-a-year in financial and military assistance American subsidized brutal Israeli occupation and apartheid in the world's largest concentration camps, Gaza and the West Bank, whether living in lands under constant American military threats, sanctions and embargoes imposed on their citizens, depriving you of healthcare, opportunity, full nourishment and a chance to grow up as a child should, simply because your people happen to resist the Empire's gluttonous desire for your nation's location and/or resources, or whether subjected to American styled "birth pangs" of a new Middle East, living amongst the violence-riddled, security-absent, depleted uranium-infested, radioactive-filled rubble and destroyed infrastructures of Iraq, Afghanistan and recently Lebanon, now but birth pangs of death and destruction, not life and freedom, the claws of America's appetite for the lands of the Middle East are as omnipotent as they are malfeasant, an inescapable reality for millions of Arab and Muslim children such as yourself whose only crime is being born Arab in lands deemed strategic and vital to the continued expansion of the greed-mongering American Leviathan.
Over the last several decades children just like you have had to confront the all-encompassing grip of American domination in the region, some, thankfully, less than others who have not been so lucky. Directly or indirectly, your destiny has in large part been engineered by the claws of American intervention in your country, creating, in large sectors of the population, vicious cycles of endemic poverty, uneducation, misery, bitterness, resentment and a simmering longing to release, sometimes violently, boiling emotions of pent up anger, if not at America directly then at her stooges acting as leaders. It has been you, the children of the region, who have suffered the most at the hands of the Evil Empire, millions upon millions of vibrant human energies ranging in age from the recently born to those teenagers forced by circumstance and tragedy to grow old before youth disappears.
The curse upon your lands is that which they call the devil's excrement, for millions of years sitting idly below your ground, unseen, unknown and undiscovered, enormous fields of primitive energy, remaining the untapped resource that would transform the modern world in the short term and condemn Earth, along with civilization, in the long term. For one-hundred years stolen and pillaged from where you live, it has become the energy that has created untold wealth, power, comfort and hegemony to the lands of the North, yet becoming but an oasis of misery and pain for the vast majority of those who inhabit the lands where the wells of sustenance and greed of the Pax Americana flow.
It is oil, little one, that has condemned you and your people to futures beholden to the arrogant Empire from America, for black gold has become like a heroin addiction to the world, making your lands the syringe feeding comfort and wealth and greed into the veins of billions. It is the devil's excrement that makes deaf the ears of humanity to your plight; that spawns the greed that darkens and blinds the eyes of understanding; that makes your life an expendable happenstance to the powers in pursuit of securing as much control over the fields of oil that lie below your feet.
It is your lands, sweet child, harsh environs of heat and desert, inhospitable and burdensome ecosystems to the human being, yet the birthplace of civilization, home to the Fertile Crescent and the crossroads of humanity, where history began and flourished, where so much of what made the Western world flourish was first studied and discovered, where the precursor to Judaism, Christianity and Islam rose, where yesterday was born and today began, that at present is but the pumping station for yesterday's colonizers, the present's superpower and tomorrow's rising stars, where future wars will invariably be fought, over and over, for the last remaining vestiges of the black gold that has only caused you pain and suffering.
The Proconsuls of Empire
Since your birth America's strangle on your life has been endemic, causing your family tremendous hardship as the indigence created by the stooges and despots ruling your land, all sponsored and supported by the Empire, has not been alleviated. Indeed, you have never known prosperity or a semblance of opportunity. You are but peasants in the lands of kings and princes, surviving on slave wages and slave work, having no choice but to receive the crumbs royalty throws your way. Meanwhile, lazy, corrupt and ignorant princes, born to wealth and prestige, living in gluttony and greed, are granted the spoils of your land's oil, making goat and sheep herders of yesterday the billionaires of today. Given monthly royalties for the simple fact of having been born into the royal family, being called so-called princes, these elites of your nation build palatial estates endowed with the greatest luxuries in the world. They purchase the most expensive goods, they spend without regard or care, the world becomes their playground, with no empathy to spare.
While you live in poverty, scrapping to make a living, destined to never escape the caste you were born into, the elites of your nation sell your resources to the West's energy conglomerates, selling out your future and your fate to those companies willing to exploit what rightfully belongs to you. For decades your oil has been stolen and pillaged from under your feet, with very few drops of the precious liquid allowed to trickle down to you. Meanwhile, pipelines saturated with oil are directed westward, with spigots tightly under the control of foreign multinationals. Your nation's royalty has sold you out, leaving you in poverty, a future peasant forced to work for the energy companies or for self-aggrandized princes.
The elite of your land have made a pact with the Empire, making themselves wealthy and powerful beyond their wildest dreams in exchange for very favorable oil concessions to the West's energy industrial complex, in exchange for the plundering and control of your resources. Artificially created kings, princes and emirs, mere stooges and puppets to the Empire, chosen proctors and proconsuls paid to guard Empire's lifeblood, have been put in place to prevent you from claiming your land, your resources, your future. They have been selected because of their loyalty, not to the interests benefiting you or your fellow citizens, but to Empire's wishes and goals. Every decision they make benefits the Empire; every edict they proclaim furthers the goals of America. They have been propped up by the West, protected and assisted if they obey, threatened and replaced if they deviate from script. Their role is to keep you under control, pacified and obedient, keeping you ignorant to the reality of your life and the intentions of the Empire. They are but puppets sitting on a throne of charades, kings and princes and emirs, preferring to subjugate their population, doing the bidding of the West, rather than return to days herding goats and sheep, becoming, once again, a mere peasant walking among dunes of sand.
In the inexperience and naïveté that youth naturally affords you may believe, in your desire for a better world, the bold statements and revolutionary pronouncements coming from the bully pulpit of the president of the United States who, in the proud tradition of historical hypocrisy prevalent in Washington, has announced his intention to bring "freedom and democracy" to the Middle East. Do not be fooled, little one, for this slogan is meant more for the consumption of the tens of millions of brain dead, brainwashed and xenophobic American citizens whose ignorance is only surpassed by their gluttony than at you and your people. This slogan is but the latest fascist propaganda used to justify the continued wars and carnage America has imported into the Middle East. You are no closer to having "freedom and democracy" than you are of getting rid of American interests in the region. Indeed, it is because of America's presence in the region that you are denied the right to ever have "freedom and democracy."
It is the dictators and kings of Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, America's best friends in the region, none of which was ever democratically elected by your people, that have never and will never allow freedom and democracy to reign free in their nations. For to do so would risk their long-standing reign of power, their long-standing control over the citizenry, their long-standing penchant for accumulating wealth at the expense of the population. Without freedom and democracy they are rulers; with freedom and democracy they would be overthrown rulers. It is in America's best interests to deny you the same freedoms and democracy it claims exists for its own citizens, for to offer you a semblance of freedom and democracy would be to guarantee its expulsion from your lands.
Imagine, for one second, that authoritarian rule did not exist in your country, that democracy meant one person, one vote, that fraud was non-existent and that you were allowed to have freedom of the press and freedom of expression, without fear of retribution or of imprisonment. The current tyrants and kings would undoubtedly be defeated, thereby getting rid of America's current crop of stooges and puppets. With them on the street America's interests would be curtailed. With a press free to critique leaders, inform and report truth the population would become more educated to the reality of their lives and of the nation. If elections were fair and free the will of the people would trump the control of the Empire, giving way to positions at odds with American hegemony, possibly putting at risk the one-sided and overtly unfair petroleum contracts that ensure the complete pillage of a nation's oil wealth.
Imagine, for a minute, how different your nation would be if the will of the people triumphed, succeeding in kicking out corrupt dictators and puppet kings. America is no fool; she knows perfectly well that without her chosen proconsuls her interests in the region would be compromised, quite possibly severely. America fears "freedom and democracy" in the Middle East; she fears the voice of the people and the energy of the masses. She fears Islam, and what it stands for. She cares not one ounce for the plight of women, or for the fact that they are oppressed, subjugated and robbed of opportunity in many of her client states, or for the malnourishment of children such as you, or for the fact that less nutrition invariably leads to less intelligence over time. She could care less if you ever learn to read a book or study math or learn history, for a dumbed down populace is easier to control and manipulate, easier to transform into obedient producers and consumers.
There is a reason why millions of Arabs are cemented to the bottom of the caste system, engineered to be poor, not for one generation or two, but for perpetuity. There is a reason poverty is allowed to prosper, why education is eviscerated and gutted, why government wishes to impoverish the masses and make ignorant the minds of millions. An unthinking populace, without education, forced to survive day to day, is a population that can readily be controlled and subjugated by its masters. The poor have no time to think about changing the nation; no time to act out in defiance. They are too busy surviving day to day, finding the food, medicine, shelter and clothing to subsist twenty-four more hours.
Living at the periphery of society, growing up on the streets, without education, with no chance at opportunity, no future job to take, many children like you become casualties of the American Leviathan and its puppet leaders, forced, due to your plight, to attend a madrassah, where you are indoctrinated in fundamentalist Islam, though at least they clothe and feed you, taking over where the state has failed you, offering you love and support. It is here where you might come to know who is responsible for your poverty and your inability to escape the chains placed at your feet from birth. It is here where many of your fellow students learn what the state refuses to teach.
With authoritarian rule and a strong police state, both prevalent among America's Middle East allies, any random uprising can easily be squashed, any demonstration quieted. Through the use of intimidation activists are silenced. Through threat of death, torture or disappearance a movement can be made to vanish. With a controlled state media the masses never see or hear or are informed about the truth facing their lives. Through censorship and control over all forms of media the state maintains control and order. This is the reason "freedom and democracy" will never exist among the Empire's client states, for both America and her puppets fear the power of the People, preferring to offer a charade of freedom and democracy, yet in reality forced to increase authoritarian rule as well as a police state mentality as the level of poverty increases, the bitterness of the citizenry against the state rises and the overall frustrations of the people expands.
It is authoritarian rule, and not "freedom and democracy," that America and its corporatist Establishment wants to maintain in the Middle East. It is obedience to American hegemony that must be preserved. The will of the People is and will always be trumped by the pursuit of the Almighty dollar. In an area of such vital strategic and geopolitical significance to the interests of the Empire as is the Middle East, with the supply of petroleum dwindling, with the demand for oil increasing exponentially, with its lands vital for pipelines and energy infrastructure, with its global location of such importance, you can be assured, young one, that you will never see America pursue the "freedom and democracy" it so valiantly, and hypocritically, hails in its quest to introduce the "birth pangs" of a new Middle East.
Only after the oil and gas cease to flow, only after America is sure it has nothing left to exploit, only then might you free yourself of the massive tentacles of a most voracious and gluttonous Empire. Perhaps after the oil stops flowing from under your feet, when America has no more need for despots and royalty or for your inhospitable land, will you have the possibility of ridding yourself of dictators and kings, finally establishing the "freedom and democracy" you have heard so much about.
So feared is the introduction of fair, honest and just elections in the Middle East by America that in the case of Palestinian elections, where the population, under decades of brutal occupation and apartheid by Israel, elected Hamas to power in the hopes that it would succeed where others only failed, even after America and Israel gave the opposition party millions of dollars in funds to help it win the election. America and Israel immediately began a campaign of collective punishment on the Palestinian people for having the temerity to democratically elect a party not chosen or wanted by both nations. Tens of millions of dollars in funds that flow to Palestine from the American government were frozen, never to see Palestinian soil. Vital tax revenues from the occupied territories were kept by Israel, purposefully withheld due to Palestinian democracy. Israel, with American political, financial and military support, began a series of campaigns aimed at destroying, or at least severely damaging, key infrastructure in the Territories. Water was siphoned away form Gaza, sewer service was interrupted, electrical plants were bombed. Food and medicine became scarce in Gaza, leading to malnourishment and a plethora of medical problems.
Without water, electricity, tax revenues to pay government workers and the food and medicine needed for children to survive, the Palestinian people suffered horribly. To add insult to injury, dozens of democratically elected Palestinian officials were kidnapped and imprisoned, including high level Cabinet ministers and members of Parliament. The clear intent by Israel, and by consequence America, was to teach the Palestinian people a lesson in Middle East democracy. Collective punishment was imposed on the population of the occupied territories for the simple act of democratically voting and electing a party not of Tel Aviv's or Washington's choosing. Thus, Hamas, elected because it stood with the Palestinian people in their great cause for freedom from apartheid, occupation, imprisonment and tyranny, was hamstrung from the very beginning by two foreign powers, its hands cut off by actions detrimental to the interests of millions of Palestinians. "You will have democracy," America and Israel seemed to say, "but only if you vote for whomever we tell you to vote for." Thus through the Palestine example can we see the idea of "freedom and democracy," American style.
Life inside Occupation, Violence and Destruction
In Iraq and, most recently in Lebanon, can we observe the devastating war America is waging against the Arab world, especially Arab children. Iraq has been transformed into a land ruled by violence and anarchy, creating a hornet's nest of hatred and internecine fighting that did not previously exist. With no threat to the American people, incapable even of inflicting damage to its immediate neighbors, Iraq was invaded and subsequently occupied by American forces, creating the greatest strategic disaster in American history and sending Iraq spiraling down into the gates of Hades. The American occupation has created the birth pangs of sectarian civil war, with ethnic cleansing of entire neighborhoods now the rule, not the exception.
The occupation has succeeding in introducing a level of violence unheard of in Iraq and the Middle East. Every month, for example, more than 3,000 people lose their life in a country being torn apart at its western-imposed seams. Just in July 2006, a little bit more than 3,400 Iraqis lost their life. How many of these, are we to wonder, were children? How many more have been injured, maimed, or otherwise mentally and psychologically traumatized? How many children have been forced to confront a world their young, innocent minds simply cannot comprehend? Every month, the equivalent of one 9/11 is taking place in Iraq, all thanks to America's arrogant blunder into Mesopotamia. After America's 9/11, millions of children suffered nightmares and post-traumatic stress disorder for weeks and even months, forced to experience and relive in their minds the devastating controlled demolition of the Twin Towers. How can Iraq's children be expected to react to the level of violence and death and destruction currently afflicting their own nation?
Prior to the invasion of Iraq by America, it must be remembered, genocidal sanctions were supported, placed and enforced on Iraq by America, beginning in the early 1990's, that lasted until George W. Bush's disastrous foray into the Middle East. It is estimated that anywhere from 500,000 to one million children died in the decade long economic genocide of an entire generation of Iraqi children. Denied vital food and medicines, hundreds of thousands of innocent children died of malnutrition or from disease. As hospitals rotted from within, due to lack of supplies, all denied by sanctions, entire extended families perished, their children unable to withstand the lack of nutrition or the absence of vital medicines.
Untold thousands also died as a result of the weapon of mass destruction, also known as America's version of the dirty bomb, depleted uranium munitions, used during Gulf War One in the early 1990's. Hundreds of tons of bombs, artillery, shells, missiles and bullets coated with depleted uranium were released into Iraq's environment, cities and atmosphere, each containing radioactive material embedded inside its coating. The results have been disastrous. Cancers, childhood leukemia and diseases once unheard of in Iraq began to spike in large numbers not long after the war ended, affecting tens of thousands of people, many of them children. Birth deformities and fetus mutations never before seen began to appear after the end of many pregnancies.
With an additional hundreds of tons of depleted uranium also dropped and dispersed on Iraq during George W. Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq, in much higher quantities than in the first Gulf War, Iraq has become a virtual radioactive desert, a land full of WMD, delivered by America onto the people of Iraq. For generations to come Iraqis will be forced to confront the premature death of their children due to cancers and disease, not to mention having to give birth to babies whose deformities and mutations the world has never been witness to. America's dirty bomb had unleashed its invisible yet destructive forces aura upon the population of Iraq. Who would have believed that it would be America, and not Iraq, who possessed and even used WMD during the course of war?
What must it be like to have your home searched, rummaged and eventually destroyed? What must occupation be like for the young, who are forced to confront death, destruction and violence on a daily basis? What must it be like to have your family humiliated, dehumanized, robbed of its few possessions and amounts of money, your room ransacked in the middle of the night by American patrols designed to intimidate and scare more than anything else? To be an Iraqi child during this most criminal and malevolent act of premeditated aggression is to be condemned to live life in hell on Earth, with destruction and death all around, bullets whizzing by and improvised explosive devices booming in the distance, with buildings you once recognized now turned but rubble and a normal life you once knew suddenly turned upside down, an unrecognizable nightmare that you cannot wake from, no matter how hard you try to escape the reality of what you are witness to.
Friends you once knew and loved are either dead or missing, ethnically cleansed from your neighborhood because they are Sunni or Shia, forced to leave rather than die at the hands of death squads. You visit cousins in the hospital, their limbs shredded and/or torn off thanks to American ordnance or cannon fire, their eyes having become a vacuum of darkness, a vastness of nothingness inside their pupils, unable to comprehend how a game of football could lead to broken arms and amputated feet. The empty void of rage you must feel inside knowing that your older sister has been raped by American soldiers, humiliated in front of her parents, now castigated and banished from what was once a normal life, her life apparently over.
You see the valiant resistance waging guerilla war against the Americans, they with tanks and fighter jets, the resistance with IEDs and mortar fire. You most likely know members of the resistance, some might be friends of the family, others might be relatives, still others your father or older brothers. They are waging a relentless battle with the weapons they have, slowly bleeding the American military, knowing the city better than anyone, blending into buildings, hiding amongst shadows, becoming experts at guerilla warfare and at placing IED's throughout the city streets.
They are fighting for your freedom and for Iraqi independence, freedom fighters destined to proclaim victory, if not soon then after patient determination, for morality and justice are with them, as is the population and the parameters of guerilla warfare. They fight occupation and the pillaging of Iraq's resources by the Empire; they fight to expel the American military from your land, knowing full well that if not forced to leave by the resistance the armies of the Empire will never depart; they fight both to make right and bring a sense of justice to the myriad of American war crimes, torture, murder, dehumanization, false imprisonment, destruction and the taunts the American military, ignorant of history or of alien cultures, has imported into Iraq. They fight for vengeance, for honor, for Iraq, becoming a valid resistance against illegal occupation.
They are called terrorists by the American military and its propaganda machine, the corporate media. You know better. Anything and anyone against the American government and its imperial ambitions gets labeled a terrorist. Any group that does not bow down to honor the Empire and lick its stained boots becomes an evildoer. Any entity that fights the injustice and the devastating policies of America is smeared as an insurgent. Terrorist is the term used to frighten and manipulate the gullible and brain dead American citizenry, making millions believe that if the government labels a group a terrorist organization, then that group or entity is evil and wicked and fighting America because they hate America for her freedoms and democracy and her way of life, and therefore must be defeated and fought in battle, in this charade called the "war on terror." With such an unthinking, ignorant population, willing to believe anything and everything told them, manipulation and propaganda serves to hide truths better left unknown.
No, you don't fall for the bull manure of lies and propaganda and manipulations, you are smarter than that, with a mind that thinks on its own. You know your friends and neighbors and relatives and fathers are freedom fighters, interlocked in a war of resistance, much like those in Vietnam and in the American War for Independence. You are proud of the resistance, for they fight in your name, for your land and your resources, fighting to remain free of American hegemony, with its vast arsenal of plundering policies and pillaging techniques. You know very well Bush does not care for the Iraqi people, or for bringing freedom and democracy to your country. He wants your oil, your slave labor, your wallets and your strategic location. You know that your people must fight the Americans, for if not then you will become an American colony, occupied into perpetuity, a nation oppressed inside its own borders, a people robbed of their freedom.
And so you imitate your elders, brave freedom fighters that they have become, abandoning jobs as taxi drivers, teachers, construction workers and managers, forced into armed conflict by the brutal oppression and occupation of Iraqis by the American military. You have no AK-47, no IED's or mortars, and so you and your remaining friends imitate the poor Palestinian children, reaching down and around the rubble of destroyed buildings, creating the rocks thrown at American tanks and Humvees. The tanks have become the symbol of occupation, of the hatred and the rage you feel against America, for what it has done to you and your land. You throw and throw rocks at these mighty iron beasts, knowing that you can do them no harm, that your rocks don't even dent the iron. Yet you throw until your arm is dead, for such is the bitterness and the rage inside your tiny body, wishing your rocks were bombs, wishing the American scourge could finally be expelled from Mesopotamia.
The damage done to Iraq and its people has been horrendous; the vicious cycle of violence is unending; chaos and anarchy fill the streets; civil war has erupted; the peace and tranquility you once knew is but a distant memory; your school has not been open for years; your country is imploding, its seams coming unglued; cancer and disease fill the hospitals; having electricity and water are distant dreams; sewer and garbage service are non-existent; simply walking to the grocery store down the street is risking your life; more than 3,000 of your fellow citizens are dying each month, the equivalent of a 9/11 each and every month. Yes, you think, I cannot wait to grow up and join the resistance, finally having a chance to fight and defeat an army, and a nation, that has brought nothing but misery to my once beautiful and peaceful country. "I am a child today," you think to yourself, "but tomorrow I will be an adult. I will be mujahadeen."
You Call Me "Terrorist," I Call You Coward
For fighting against America, even though the war is being waged in Iraq, in a legitimate war against an illegal and immoral occupation, you will be labeled as a terrorist. Every Arab and Muslim these days, it seems, is seen as nothing more than a terrorist, a dreaded boogey man sent from hell to scare the ever-frightened American populace. Yet it is your land, whether in Iraq or Lebanon, Palestine or Iran, that is being terrorized either by threats of war or by an actual blitzkrieg of state sponsored terrorism. You cannot understand why, when your nation is being destroyed from the air and from the ground by the latest American weapons of war and destruction and death, it is your people, and not America herself, that are branded as terrorists. Your land has been filled with radioactive pollution from America's dirty bomb, depleted uranium munitions, causing entire clusters of cancer, leukemia, disease and birth deformities, yet you are the terrorist. There was not one act of terrorism before the illegal invasion and occupation of your land, yet when you rise to resist, you are the terrorist.
In Lebanon, your county has been sent back in time twenty years, its infrastructure decimated, its beaches made toxic with petroleum, entire neighborhoods flattened, cluster bombs littered throughout cities, villages and fields, killing long after the Israeli state terror machine has left, yet your resistance fighters are the so-called terrorists. One thousand three-hundred of your fellow Lebanese are dead, many more still buried under rubble, one-third of them children like you, yet your fathers and brothers and grandfathers are the terrorists? Somehow, you cannot understand the logic behind the propaganda, nor the blind trust and belief the American people place on such lies and distortions.
For the last six years it seems that America has declared a Crusade against the Arab and Muslim world, invading two nations and giving Israel the green light to destroy two more, using American made weapons and technology. Yet her appetite does not seem to be quenched. On the horizon you can see Syria and Iran in the American crosshairs, two nations whose reputation is being marketed to strike fear into the most coward-laced population on Earth, the American people. You cannot help but wonder why such cowardice exists in the land of the free and the home of the brave. You fail to see the logic behind 300 million people willingly giving up their freedoms and rights in exchange for protection and security from a boogeyman that is more a figment of Bush's imagination than a threat to the sovereignty of the most powerful nation on Earth. Have they been manipulated so thoroughly, brainwashed so profoundly, that they fear an enemy that has been concocted from the minds of the real terrorists, namely the Bush cabal or corporatists and neoconartists?
America has not experienced one one-millionth the amount of terrorism that has afflicted your land, you realize, yet it fears one million times more. It was subjected to one monstrous act of state terror, something that happens to your country on a daily basis, yet it is America that now runs to hide and scapegoat at the first sign, real or concocted, of imminent danger? Did the demolition of the World Trade Center have such a deep effect on the psyche of the population, enough to transform a once brave and great citizenry into one filled with cowardice and fear? It sure looks that way, you say to yourself.
Even as a child you realize that Arabs and Muslims have been selected to become the latest incarnation of America's enemy, the boogeyman needed to advance the interests of imperial hegemony, the perfect excuse to launch wars for geopolitical expediency and resource control. You see Arab and Muslim men and women slowly becoming the object of hate throughout the western world, much like the Jews in Nazi Germany, slowly becoming the scapegoats needed to pursue the interests of the powerful. To those Arabs and Muslims living in England or America, you wonder if soon they will be forced to wear a small yet noticeable red or green Crescent Moon on their sleeve. You wonder if soon they will be so marginalized, so hated by the ignorant masses, that they will not be allowed to fly or travel or stay at a hotel. You wonder if the day is coming when, after one more attack, they will be deported back to the Middle East or worse, sent to detention centers, their neighborhoods turned to ghettos, their rights and freedoms taken and destroyed.
This madness cannot continue, you think to yourself. You are but a child, yet have seen so much suffering already. You live in indigence, while your masters live in gluttonous luxury. You see desperation all around you, poverty, disease, frustration and deep resentment growing on a daily basis, your neighborhoods becoming the epicenters of growing anger, both at America and at its puppets. You have no future in the Middle East, no destiny worth pursuing. Few if any jobs await you once you become an adult. Your education by the state is designed to make you an ignorant primate, obedient, complacent and acquiescent to the dictates of the state. Your family has been devastated by the bombs, missiles and munitions dropped down by state sponsored terrorism. You see no future and no hope, only desperation, frustration and resentment.
The western world calls you terrorist, evildoer and boogeyman, a dark-skinned enemy of freedom and democracy, a wicked criminal lurking in every closet, underneath every bed, waiting to inflict fear and terror upon the populace. You have become a convenient patsy, a walking advertisement of fear, an alien walking in unwelcome land, a cave dweller with the capacity to implode the monoliths of capitalism's might. Your appearance and color strike fear on the street, in a mall, on a bus and inside an airplane, your ethnicity and religion condemning you to profiling, harassment, stares and guilt by association. You are guilty until proven innocent, an evildoer terrorist who must be deported or imprisoned, to be tortured and set to rot in Guantanamo.
The ignorant hate and despise you while the educated simply avoid you like the plague. You are no longer welcome in America or England, you have become the new "nigger," the new leper, an unwanted human being made evil and malevolent by the public relations and marketing machines of the Zionists and the Americans, becoming, in the span of half a decade, the terrorist engineered to devastate the psyche of your average American and British citizen, sending them crying at night in fright, begging that their rights and freedoms be taken away in exchange for security and protection from their masters and their government.
In the end, you wonder where all this is headed, if this vicious cycle of hate and violence can sustain itself. You wonder how long you will be called terrorist and how many more Middle East nations will be invaded and destroyed. You wonder how long it will be until America finds a new evildoer, a new enemy to exploit and devastate. You hope that day comes soon, for you fear what is to happen to your cousins living in Michigan, or your friends residing in London, if this madness continues and its unstoppable momentum can no longer be stopped.
The lunacy that is the so-called "war on terror" has taken us into a bizarre and alternate world, one that is as dangerous to the human race as any time in our brief history. We are on the verge of disaster, of immersing ourselves into the self-fulfilling prophesy of our most archaic myths. If we do not put a stop to this madness, then surely it will put a stop to us. What we do in the next few years might well determine our future as a civilization, and it might very well decide what future historians will write about humanity at the dawn of the 21st century. Have we learned nothing from the errors and mistakes of our descendants? Have we yet to grasp the kind of future we are invariably leading ourselves into?
We must let go of the primitive tendencies of our human nature before their demons once more take possession of our minds. We must understand our animal selves, as well as control the emotions and passions and instincts we naturally possess. It is time to move forward into enlightenment, not backwards into dark ages. It is time for a new human renaissance, not another human catastrophe. Let humankind turn against the wickedness of our leaders and the evils of our ways, transforming ourselves into caretakers both of ourselves and the planet, not destroyers of all that is innocent and beautiful. The cowardice now prevalent must be made extinct, to be replaced by the bravery that once permeated through our pores. We must conquer fear and hatred, we must quench our desire for vengeance. We must conquer our appetite for war and violence, turning instead to peace and understanding. Only then can we move on. Only then will humanity be saved. Only then can we honestly call ourselves human and not primates.
Let us give all children, regardless of creed, color or religion, a chance to live a life in peace and enlightenment, free of war, hatred, fear, ignorance and vengeance. The Middle East, as well as the planet, awaits our call to action.
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Editorial: Israel's Racist "Jihad" Against the Arab & Muslim People
Aug 20, 2006
Genevieve Cora Fraser
As the world has witnessed in Lebanon and Palestine, Hizbullah and Hamas have a long way to go to rival the ferocity and utter ruthlessness of the Israeli military. Their goals are in diametrical opposition. Despite propaganda and resolutions to the contrary, Hizbullah and Hamas are resistance organizations, freedom fighters, determined to defend and liberate their people. Israel's military function is the alleged security of the Jewish state, but the achievement of that goal is highly questionable. Its hidden agenda or role, viewed historically, is the oppression and subjugation of the Arab-Muslim people so that Western Powers can rape their land and rob it of its riches - chief of which is oil.
Though oil seeps had been seen in the Middle East for thousands of years, the history of the modern oil industry dates back to the 19th century when oil wells in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, Poland and elsewhere provided cure-all medicines, lubricants and illuminants. Oil increased in value toward the end on the century as the external combustion engine (steam) was replaced by the internal combustion engine. Soon science and industry joined to investigate its properties for use in manufacturing, transportation, and the fledgling electric industry.
The first underground pipeline in the United States was laid in 1865. By the 1870s, oil wars had begun in earnest between the American Rockefellers, Europe's Rothschilds and others. Not long afterwards, the Rothschilds undercut Rockefellers' Standard Oil Company through their agent Marcus Samuel who organized oil tankers, secured canal access, and built local storage capacity throughout the Far East. By 1908, oil was struck in Persia and the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was incorporated the following year.
Writing for National Geographic Magazine, December 1938, in an article entitled, "Change Comes to Bible Lands," Fredrick Simpick recalled, "Iran's main fields lie southeast of the Zagros Mountains, with the main pipeline running down the Karum Valley. When I first saw this then-fever-cursed Persian coast in 1909, pioneer American 'well shooters' from Texas, sweating in awful heat, were dragging pipe-laden barges up the Karum River to these new fields." By 1917, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company owned the majority interest.
Perhaps not so coincidentally, in 1917 British Foreign Minister Balfour promised the Zionist Jews a homeland in Palestine. However, the "Declaration" was not presented to a sovereign power. As historian Robert John explains, the letter was sent "to an international financier of the banking house of Rothschild who had been made a peer of the realm." The letter was posted from the Foreign Office, November 2nd, 1917.
"Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you on behalf of His Majesty's Government the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations, which has been submitted to and approved by the Cabinet:"
"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
"I should be grateful if you would bring this Declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation."
"Yours sincerely,
Arthur James Balfour"
In the aftermath of WW I, the League of Nations entrusted Palestine and Iraq to Britain, and Lebanon and Syria to France, as Class "A" Mandates, which meant they were to gain self-rule. By 1928, the colonial Zionist effort in Palestine began in earnest, but not without Arab opposition. Indeed, the creation in Egypt of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 appears to have been in counterpoint to the influx and attitudes of the Jewish colonial Zionist enterprise.
By 1934, the first oil pipeline connecting Iraq with Tripoli, Lebanon was laid; by 1935, a second line to Haifa, Palestine was opened. Throughout the 1930s, oil exploration continued in the desert, and later offshore, in what is now the United Arab Emirates (UAE). By 1938, oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia which is when the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco) was founded.
The 1938 National Geographic contains photos of the 618-mile oil pipe line "laid from Iraq to the Mediterranean" as well as photos from Haifa, Palestine. One photo is captioned, "Pumping up an oil cargo from Haifa's flexible undersea hose," another reads, "Propellers churning, a ship tows out the Haifa end of the Iraq pipe line to make a 'filling station' for tankers." Palestine had become a crucial port for the oil industry. It was also strategically placed, an ideal spot to establish a Western-oriented country in the Middle East.
Though strategically Israel is a Western ally, its democracy is a façade, a pretense. Tear back the mask and you find a country not "of the people, for the people, by the people," but governed by a matrix of Basic Laws meticulously constructed to ensure a caste system overlaid by virulent racism. Despite the best efforts of humanistic Israeli Jews (and Jews throughout the world) who strongly believe in the shared dignity of all people, as a colonial Jewish state, Israel is imploding from within, a nation of implants - of strangers, at war with its indigenous citizens and itself as it demands ever-increasing racial, ethnic and religious purity. Today, the synergy of this mixture spills out into the streets and fires the virulence of its military aggressions.
Ynetnews.com recently ran a series of articles on Sephardic Jews banned from living in or even entering Ashkenazi (Caucasian) Jewish neighborhoods. One Ynet headline news summary reported, "Reception committee at ultra-Orthodox town decides to ban additional families of Middle Eastern descent from entering some of its streets, buildings in order to 'maintain community's high spiritual level'..."
Another Ynetnews article featured the following heading, "Orthodox riot; unhappy with neighbors / Efrat Weiss. Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox block road in town of Beit Shemesh, hurl stones at police officers in protest of new residents who are 'not religious enough'; five protestors arrested..."
Recently, a study presented during a Van Leer Jerusalem Institute conference asserted that Ashkenazim consider their culture superior to that of the Sephardim which has resulted in the establishment of a new Ashkenaz movement in Israel. "Additional studies on the matter indicate that people of Ashkenaz origin tend to refer to themselves as 'Ashkenazim,' while Sephardim usually define themselves as 'Israelis,'" according to Prof. Yehuda Shenhav of the Van Leer Institute.
In an article on Arab Jews a.k.a. the Mizrahim (the eastern ones), Adam Hanieh states, "The official ideology of Israel, Zionism, has always portrayed itself as a liberation movement for all Jews. But although Zionism claims to offer a home for all Jews, that home has never been offered equally."
"The question of Arab Jews strikes at the heart of the Zionist contradiction -- an attempt to build an anti-Arab, exclusively Jewish state on Arab lands."
"From the early days of the Zionist project, large numbers of Jews from neighboring Arab countries were brought to Palestine. Ostensibly they were 'returning home', but in reality they came as cheap labour for their European counterparts (Ashkenazi Jews)," Hanieh claims.
The racism inherent in the Israeli caste system has resulted in inferior education and job opportunities, poverty and tension within Jewish society. According to Hanieh, "Today Mizrahim constitute around 50% of the Israeli population. Palestinian Arabs make up another 20%, so the total non-European population is about 70%. This rises to 90% with the inclusion of Palestinians from the occupied territories, making clear the colonial nature of Israel."
Adding to the tension are the attitudes held by Jewish adherents of the Talmud and its reviling of the Goy, the non-Jew. Of all the groups Israelis should feel gratitude toward the Christian Zionist supporters of Israel should top the list. But that is not always the case. "Ultra-Orthodox Jews attack Christian tourists in Jerusalem," ran the June 28th headline in an article by Jonathan Lis, a correspondent for Haaretz. Apparently, 100 residents of the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea She'arim in Jerusalem became enraged at the sight of 50 pro-Israel Christian tourists in their neighborhood. Their offence? They arrived "wearing orange T-shirts with the words 'Love your neighbor as yourself' printed across them."
In Professor Israel Shahak's book, "Jewish History, Jewish Religion, The Weight of Three Thousand Years," he questions the Utopian vision and reality of the Jewish state. He points out that the creation of the modern state system freed more enlightened Jews to break from the confines of their ghettos and fully participate as citizens in the countries in which they lived. He holds that Zionism was a reaction to that freedom and offered a chance for rabbis to reassert their control over the Jewish community.
In Chapter 5, "The Laws Against Non-Jews", Shahak explains that the Halakhah, the "legal system of classical Judaism - as practiced by virtually all Jews from the 9th century to the end of the l8th and as maintained to this very day in the form of Orthodox Judaism - is based primarily on the Babylonian Talmud."
However, problems arose among Christians and Muslims offended by the text that resulted in anti-Semitic reactions. "A few of the most offensive passages were bodily removed from all editions printed in Europe after the mid-16th century. In all other passages, the expressions 'Gentile', 'non-Jew', 'stranger' (goy, eino yehudi, , nokhri) - which appear in all early manuscripts and printings as well as in all editions published in Islamic countries - were replaced by terms such as 'idolator', 'heathen' or even 'Canaanite' or 'Samaritan', terms which could be explained away but which a Jewish reader could recognize as euphemisms for the old expressions."
"During certain periods the Tsarist Russian censorship became stricter and, seeing the above mentioned euphemisms for what they were, forbade them too. Thereupon the rabbinical authorities substituted the terms 'Arab' or 'Muslim' (in Hebrew, Yishma'eli - which means both) or occasionally 'Egyptian', correctly calculating that the Tsarist authorities would not object to this kind of abuse." However, once securely ensconced in Israel, the rabbis reestablished the most offending passages.
It is from the Russian translation, where the word Goy was substituted with the word Arab, from which many of the most extreme elements within the Jewish community derive justification for merciless attacks upon the Palestinians - such as those experienced in Hebron by the illegal settlers. During the last election, the Russian, Avigdor Liberman, the head of 'The National Unit', came in third behind Olmert and Peretz. He advocates the total "ethnic cleansing" of Arab Israeli citizens from Israel.
"Although the state's criminal laws make no distinction between Jew and Gentile, such distinction is certainly made by Orthodox rabbis, who in guiding their flock follow the Halakhah. Of special importance is the advice they give to religious soldiers," Shahak states.
"Since even the minimal interdiction against murdering a Gentile outright applies only to 'Gentiles with whom we [the Jews] are not at war', various rabbinical commentators in the past drew the logical conclusion that in wartime all Gentiles belonging to a hostile population may, or even should be killed. Since 1973 this doctrine is being publicly propagated for the guidance of religious Israeli soldiers. The first such official exhortation was included in a booklet published by the Central Region Command of the Israeli Army, whose area includes the West Bank. In this booklet the Command's Chief Chaplain writes:
"When our forces come across civilians during a war or in hot pursuit or in a raid, so long as there is no certainty that those civilians are incapable of harming our forces, then according to the Halakhah they may and even should be killed... Under no circumstances should an Arab be trusted, even if he makes an impression of being civilized ... In war, when our forces storm the enemy, they are allowed and even enjoined by the Halakhah to kill even good civilians, that is, civilians who are ostensibly good."
According to Shahak, "An even greater evil influence arises from special laws against the ancient Canaanites and other nations who lived in Palestine before its conquest by Joshua, as well as against the Amalekites. All those nations must be utterly exterminated, and the Talmud and talmudic literature reiterate the genocidal biblical exhortations with even greater vehemence. Influential rabbis, who have a considerable following among Israeli army officers, identify the Palestinians (or even all Arabs) with those ancient nations, so that commands like 'thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth' acquire a topical meaning."
Following the Palestinian election in January, if the Israeli leadership had been willing to consider reconciliation, it might have signaled the beginning of a true two state solution. After all, Hamas maintained a truce with Israel for 1 ½ years despite Israel's non-stop attacks by land, sea and the air. Hamas also let it be known that they would be willing to extend the truce for 50 or 100 additional years. Instead of using this as an opening, Israel accused Palestine of being an "Axis of Evil" and declared war on the Palestinian Authority, and thus on the Palestinian population.
The charade, of course, was aided and abetted by President Bush and the US Congress through sponsorship of anti-Palestinian legislation that is basically a policy of genocide regarding the so-called Palestinian terrorists - which as we have learned involves every Palestinian Arab man, woman and child. The excuse was that the Palestinians voted for terrorism when they democratically elected Hamas. For far too long, imprisonment behind the racist Apartheid Wall, curfews and blockades have served to create starvation and marginal health care, most funding has been stopped, and infrastructure bombed and bulldozed into oblivion. Hundreds of Palestinians have died and thousands injured since Hamas was elected in January, and most of the elected leadership has been jailed.
And in Lebanon, with over 1300 civilians known to be killed, 10s of thousands wounded, and over a million who fled for their lives, Israel's debilitating air strikes against privately owned factories throughout Lebanon dealt a devastating blow to an economy paralyzed by weeks of hits on residential areas and crucial infrastructure, according to the Daily Star of Beirut. The production facilities of the largest dairy farm were destroyed as well as a pharmaceutical plant, and the fishing industry may be obliterated for decades due to the catastrophic oil spill from Israel's targeted bombing. How long it will take to restore the country is anyone's guess. Israel also bombed apartment buildings, schools, churches, hospitals, orphanages and gas stations - anything and everything in its gun sights - including Lebanese military barracks and outposts, Red Cross convoys and civilians attempting to escape the onslaught.
The past president of the Lebanese Association of Industrialists, Jacques Sarraf remarked, "Israel is the enemy and they are doing everything they can to destroy the country, economically, socially, politically."
The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour also criticized the thousands of dead and dying and injured in Lebanon and criticized Israeli shelling which was targeting killing innocent civilians. "International law demands accountability," she said in Geneva. "The scale of the killings in the region, and their predictability, could engage the personal criminal responsibility of those involved, particularly those in a position of command and control." It could, and should, but will it?
Even King Abdullah, who is close to the Bush administration, issued a statement: "If the option of peace fails as a result of Israeli arrogance, then the only option remaining will be war, and God alone knows what the region would witness in a conflict that would spare no one." Given Israeli aggression and the financial, military and legislative support from the United States, King Abdullah may be correct. If the current truce does not last, the only option might be open warfare throughout the Middle East.
In her brief stay in Beirut, before being whisked away to the international conference in Rome, US Secretary of State Rice stayed long enough to deliver Israel's conditions for a ceasefire. It was hard to tell if she was speaking on behalf of the United States or as an emissary of Israel. Or, is there a difference? In Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, and Afghanistan and with plans to take on Syria and Iran, it appears that Israel and the USA are pursuing a scorched earth policy towards Arabs and Islam just as Hitler once pursued the Jews.
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Editorial: A Little Poverty Never Hurt Anybody
Jason Miller
24/08/2006
Ruthless Exploiters, Inc.
"It is like paradise and hell. They throw our petitions in the dustbin. They have everything. We have nothing... If we protest, they send soldiers. They sign agreements with us and then ignore us. We have graduates going hungry, without jobs. And they bring people from Lagos to work here."
Eghare W.O. Ojhogar, chief of the Ugborodo community in Delta State (of Nigeria)
In describing the situation in Nigeria, Eghare presents us with a microcosm of a modern Inferno, Purgatorio, e Paradiso (about which there is little divine or comic). In the timeless struggle between the "haves and "have nots", alarming numbers of "useless eaters" ("have nots") are sliding from Purgatorio into the abyss of abject poverty's Inferno.
And what heinous transgression did they commit that necessitated their banishment into the Inferno? They were born, of course. Most of those experiencing the misery of indigence had the misfortune to enter this world bearing a losing lottery ticket.
From their birth, the psyches of the poor and homeless in the "developed" nations and those of the impoverished in the "developing" nations are battered with the hopelessness and despair of their harsh realities. (Realities carefully created and perpetuated in a variety of ways by their "betters").
After spending their formative years pitted against nearly overwhelming economic and social forces, the message many of them internalize probably reads something like this:
Sorry, washout. You are the wrong color, ethnicity, caste, social class, or nationality. Surviving to age 40 will be no small task for you. And if you manage to do so, your chances of significantly bettering your situation are quite slim. After all, the lottery winners invest a great deal in maintaining structural barriers to hold you down. But the good news is that you can add meaning to your miserable existence by working for slave wages( or simply withering and dying) to ensure that the tiny percentage of humanity enjoying economic Paradiso continues to do so and that the shrinking number of fortunates in Purgatorio experience a degree of comfort and security.
To gain some perspective on the extent of human suffering, avarice, and depravity associated with the gross imbalance in wealth and power, weigh these facts:
1. More than half of the 6.5 billion human souls populating Earth subsist on less than $2 per day. 790 million of the deeply impoverished suffer from chronic malnutrition (while 65% of US Americans are overweight).
2. 20% of the human race does not have access to clean water and 31% of the world's population has no electricity.
3. Combining the gross domestic products of the 48 poorest nations (representing 25% of global population) yields a figure that is less than the wealth of the three richest people in the world.
4. "Developed nations" account for 80% of the world's consumption and 20% of the world's population.
5. The wealth gap between the richest and poorest countries went from 3 to 1 in 1820 to 72 to 1 in 1992.
6. Corporations account for over half of the 100 wealthiest entities in the world.
7. And most tragically:
"According to UNICEF, 30,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they "die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death."
That is about 210,000 children each week, or just under 11 million children under five years of age, each year."
(Thanks to Global Issues.org for the above information)
Earth's ruling oligarchs and plutocrats have created and perpetuated a socioeconomic dynamic in which the destitute have little or no access to education, basic healthcare, decent employment, or even basic necessities. From the United States to sub-Saharan Africa to Southeast Asia, those isolated in despairing communities with crumbling or non-existent infrastructures find themselves mired in impoverished breeding grounds for crime, high birth rates, substance abuse, and AIDS.
Perhaps an apt message for those impoverished children arriving in this world with three strikes against them would be:
"Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate", which is most commonly translated as "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."
How humane and politically correct those monopolizing Earth's bounty have become. Monarchy has essentially been relegated to the dustbin of history. Empire building through brute force is becoming an increasingly rare event. Certainly the ruling elite maintain potent militaries to exercise their right to "defend themselves" (as they are doing in Iraq and Lebanon). But more often then not, the masters of the human race have learned to wield their economic power like a heavy cudgel, capable of battering their foes into submission with a few swift strokes.
New age dawning?
As humanity basks in the nurturing rays of a long-awaited sunrise marking the dawn of a glorious new paradigm, a determined privileged class is determined to make utopia a reality for themselves. Ushering in a veritable paradise of free trade, "robust economies", "ownership societies", "freedom and liberty", and unprecedented profits generated by massive companies unfettered by frivolous government regulation, predatory human beings now issue their edicts from corporate skyscrapers rather than moated castles.
Wage slaves and sweat shop laborers have supplanted serfs and chattel slaves. Five major corporations comprise 90% of the mass media in the United States. What are their specialties? Shaping public opinion to maintain the illusion that one of the world's most rapacious and bellicose nations is a "benevolent superpower" and enticing those who fall prey to their charms to experience a virtually insatiable desire to acquire more material possessions. A brain-washed complacent citizenry perpetually ready to go on a buying binge is a wet dream for the ruling elite.
For many, the survival of their families depends upon the meager pay they receive from corporate behemoths like Wal-Mart. More fortunate wage slaves earn enough to cover the cost of necessities and to attain the goods the corporate media push like Ecstasy. Shopping....what a rush!
Between the US Americans who have high discretionary income and the easy credit issued to those who don't, demand for consumer goods is nearly infinite. With grossly unfair laws (protecting consumers, the environment, and workers) squeezing their profits, those ingenious devils amongst the ruling elite concluded they would locate in "developing" countries where they could truly rape, pillage and plunder. Hence the worsening plight of those beholden to their corporate masters both in the United States and abroad.
Where is the wealth?
And just how heavily are the world's assets concentrated into the hands of the elite? While the United States is by no means home to the entire world's de facto aristocracy, it is the "leader of the obscenely rich world" and by default is the "leader of the (ostensibly) free world".
For example, Professor G. William Domhoff of the University of California at Santa Cruz wrote in 2001:
"In terms of types of financial wealth, the top 1 percent of households have 44.1% of all privately held stock, 58.0% of financial securities, and 57.3% of business equity. The top 10% have 85% to 90% of stock, bonds, trust funds, and business equity, and over 75% of non-home real estate. Since financial wealth is what counts as far as the control of income-producing assets, we can say that just 10% of the people own the United States of America."
And thanks to the Bush administration, that 10% is maintaining a firm grasp on what they own.
Pernicious and Enduring Lies
The predator class pacifies its subservient underclass with the myth that in the United States and the satellite "free market economies" it has established (at gun-point or through the subversive activities of the CIA), everyone can become a successful entrepreneur by starting their own business. Yet like the lie that all impoverished individuals except widows, orphans, and the infirm are responsible for their own circumstances, this malicious fairy tale ignores several realities. Like the fiction about the impoverished, it assumes that all people are on a level playing field. However, that notion is far removed from reality. Some people have a higher quality education than others. Individuals receiving a high degree of support from friends and family are much more likely to succeed than those who have little or no support. While some starting a business have financial resources behind them, others have virtually nothing but their drive and ideas. Market forces, weather patterns, competition, health, and many other variables can serve to make or break a "budding capitalist". And no two people are alike or face the same conditions.
Approximately 150 million of those young and healthy enough to work in the United States earn a wage or salary. (Versus a relatively paltry figure of 20 million who are self-employed). 85% of small businesses fail within 5 years. Corporate leviathans like Wal-Mart and Microsoft have defied anti-trust laws to crush myriad competitors, including many small entrepreneurs. Horatio Alger success stories are none too plentiful in the "land of opportunity". And the grim reality is that the Goliath corporate giants usually prevail against the David small businesses.
In 2003, the average worker in the United States was netting $517.00 per week. How much were CEO's taking home at that time? A mere $155,000. 52 times per year. That is a staggering 301 to 1 differential. In 1982 the ratio of CEO to average worker pay was "a mere" 42 to 1. From 1990 to 2003 US corporate profits rose 128%.
To further appreciate the obscene avarice of the world's plutocracy, consider that the average garment worker in Bangladesh earned 13 cents per hour in 2004. The "10% of the people who own the United States" and their counter-parts in nations around the globe are doing very well thanks to the blood, sweat, and tears of the remaining 6 billion or so human beings on the planet.
Incorporating their Avarice
Corporations are the Holy Grail for the rich and powerful. They provide moneyed individuals investment vehicles which afford them extremely limited personal liability, financially and criminally. By the late 19th Century in the United States, corporations had acquired many of the legal rights of a human being. Despite their roots in British colonialism and the deep apprehensions of founders like Thomas Jefferson, corporations have come to dominate the United States and much of the world culturally, politically, and economically.
Jefferson's expression of concern to George Logan in 1816 was well-founded:
"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government in a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
Not only was the aristocracy of moneyed corporations born. Its power has grown to such monstrous proportions that it has virtually crushed the life from a still relatively nascent social experiment based on democratic ideals and Constitutional law.
According to the Center for Public Integrity, the pharmaceutical industry alone has spent $675 million lobbying the government to shape public policy over the last seven years. The insurance industry spent even more if one includes campaign donations. Through their corporate proxies, the moneyed elite invest a great deal in the United States' political system. They expect and receive a great deal in return.
"Defending" the predator class is an expensive proposition
Spending at a clip of $600 billion per year (including Iraqi Occupation costs), the United States accounts for 50% of the world's military spending. As George Bush (the current public face of the world's plutocracy) so sagely reminded us, "Free nations are peaceful nations." To manufacture the many instruments of peace which prove how free we are, the United States relies on 737 defense contractors, sometimes known as the military-industrial complex. Of those 737 contractors, a mere five have received government contracts totaling $284 billion over the last six years. Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics do quite well at the public trough. Halliburton has also fared nicely since former CEO Dick Cheney took office and helped lie the United States into the Iraqi Occupation. Facilitating killing is their business, and business is good.
Sedating the masses with consumerism, spin, fear-mongering and historical revisions; lobbying heavily; donating huge sums to political campaigns; and maintaining the military industrial complex are powerful means of securing the seats of power in DC and Tel Aviv. However, the predator class has yet another weapon at its disposal: the revolving door between government and major corporations. Men like Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney are but two stalwarts of the privileged class who have traversed back and forth from roles of great influence in major corporations to positions of power within the government. But they are not pioneers. Theirs is a path blazed by many before them and almost certain to be followed by many after them.
A glimpse of the ugly reality of pathological avarice in action...
To move beyond an abstract analysis of the machinations of the oppression and exploitation of most of the human race by a select and privileged few, consider one of many specific examples. For years, British and US oil interests have enjoyed the complicity of the criminal ruling elite in Nigeria in plundering an incredibly valuable natural resource. In return a majority of the indigenous people have received land too polluted to farm, brutal attacks by government forces, and extreme poverty.
According to an article written for Amnesty International:
"It's 10 years since the Nigerian Government executed the well-known Ogoni writer and human rights campaigner Ken Saro-Wiwa. But little has changed for the people of the Niger Delta, reports Seth Jordan....
...Oil was discovered in the Ogoni region in the late 1950s by the Royal Dutch/Shell Group....by the 1990s an estimated US $30 billion worth of oil had already been extracted, and oil revenues accounted for over 98 per cent of Nigeria's foreign exchange earnings; the 550,000 local farmers and fishermen who inhabited the coastal land had received little except a ravaged environment. Once fertile farmland had been destroyed by uncontrolled pollution, and virtually all fish and wildlife had vanished. Only a handful of local people were employed by the oil companies or benefited economically in any way....
"On 4 February 2005, soldiers from Nigeria's Joint Task Force fired on protesters from the Ugborodo community at the Escravos oil terminal run by Chevron Nigeria. One man was shot and later died from his injuries. Thirty other demonstrators were injured by blows from rifle butts and other weapons. Neither the government nor the oil company provided adequate medical care or helped to transport the injured."
Nigeria provides a potent example of the blatant abuses of the impoverished masses by the privileged few. But sadly, it is but one of many such cases.
While the rapacious individuals who wield the power in this world have stacked the deck heavily in their favor, there are glimmers of hope. The United States and Israel are both failing in their wars of aggression in the Middle East. A wave of democratic socialism is beginning to sweep South America. A populist leader may still win the presidency in Mexico. Joe Lieberman was ejected. And checks and balances were at least temporarily restored in the United States when a federal judge ordered George Bush to obey the Constitution.
A collective populist movement is slowly evolving. It is only a matter of time before humanity's oppressed put aside their religious, racial, and nationalist differences to unite against their common enemy. When six billion people act in unison against a few million, there will indeed be a new world order.
Jason Miller is a wage slave of the American Empire who has freed himself intellectually and spiritually. He writes prolifically and his essays have appeared widely on the Internet. He welcomes constructive correspondence at willpowerful@hotmail.com or via his blog, Thomas Paine's Corner, at http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/
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Editorial: Drown these prisoners in the Dead Sea - Israeli Minister
22. August 2006
Sabbah's Blog
"It would be better to drown these prisoners in the Dead Sea if possible, since that's the lowest point in the world." - Avigdor Lieberman, Israeli Transport Minister (1)
Might Israel release up to 600 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the Israeli soldier captured near Gaza on June 25? Negotiations are underway.
As this story develops, the Institute for Middle East Understanding (www.imeu.net) gives a briefing on Palestinian prisoners. Check out their FAQ:
FAQ on Palestinian prisoners
IMEU, Aug 22, 2006
1. How many Palestinian prisoners are there?
As of August 8, 2006, there are 9,273 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons or detention camps. (2) Of these prisoners, 351 are children under the age of 18, (3) 75 are women and 42 are over the age of 50. Of the total number of prisoners, 433 Palestinians, who were imprisoned prior to the signing of the Oslo Accords, remain in prison despite the Accords' call for their release. (4) The prisoners include members of the elected Palestinian Legislative Council.
2. Haven't Palestinian prisoners been convicted of serious offenses against Israel?
In fact, of the 9,273 prisoners currently held by Israel, only an estimated 1,800 have actually been put on trial and convicted of any offense at all. According to Amnesty International, these trials often fall short of international standards for fair trials. (5)
Israel currently holds an estimated 800 Palestinians detained in prison camps who have not been charged with any crime under what is called "administrative detention." Administrative detention violates international law. (6) Administrative detention orders may last for up to six months, with Palestinians held without charge or trial during this period. (7) Israel routinely renews the detention orders and may renew the orders without limitation, thereby holding Palestinians without charge or trial indefinitely. (8) During this period, detainees may be denied legal counsel. While detainees may appeal their detention, neither they nor their attorneys are allowed access to the State's evidence, or know the purpose of the detention - thereby rendering the appeals procedure virtually useless.
3. Don't most Palestinian prisoners have "blood on their hands"?
No. The vast majority of Palestinian prisoners are political prisoners who have been arbitrarily imprisoned or detained for no legitimate security reason, but for political expression, peaceful resistance or simply because they are Palestinian. According to B'Tselem:
"Security is interpreted in an extremely broad manner such that non-violent speech and political activity are considered dangerous...[This] is a blatant contradiction of the right to freedom of speech and freedom of opinion guaranteed under international law. If these same standards were applied inside Israel, half of the Likud party would be in administrative detention." (9)
Furthermore, of those Palestinians currently being held, the overwhelming majority have not been put on trial.
Many Palestinians are arrested arbitrarily. For example, from February to March 2002, approximately 8,500 Palestinians were arrested arbitrarily. In many cities, all Palestinian males from the ages of 15 to 45 were rounded up and detained or imprisoned. Palestinians were blindfolded, handcuffed tightly with plastic handcuffs and forced to squat, sit or kneel for prolonged periods of time. Mass arrests and detention of this type have been condemned by Amnesty International as a breach of human rights.
4. How are Palestinian children treated in Israeli prisons?
The issue of child detainees and prisoners is perhaps the most striking example of Israel's policy of arbitrary imprisonment. Approximately 2,000 Palestinian children were arrested and detained from September 2000 to the end of June 2003. (10) Children as young as 13 are held in Israeli prisons, and are housed with the adult prisoner population. Children aged 13 and 14 constitute approximately ten percent of all child detainees. Almost all child detainees have reported some form of torture or mistreatment, whether physical (beatings or placed in painful positions) or psychological (abuse, threats or intimidation). (11) Children are routinely held in detention centers under inhumane conditions. (12) For example, in some centers up to eleven children have been packed into cells as small as five square meters. (13)
5. How are Palestinian women treated in Israeli prisons?
Most Palestinian women political prisoners were previously housed with the general Israeli prison population in Neve Terze prison where drug addicts, prostitutes, and other hardened prisoners were held. After hunger strikes, most were transferred to Telmond prison. Some, however, including several administrative detainees, remain incarcerated at Neve Terze.
A few Palestinian women are raising very young children in prison; two, Mervat Taha and Manal Ghanem gave birth while under detention. For most others, contact visits with children and other family members are permitted twice every six months. However, as a condition for the visits, women are required to submit to full body searches in the nude. This is a condition most have rejected.
Prison guards have stormed Palestinian women prisoners' cells, and searched and confiscated their personal effects without reason, beating the women prisoners in the process. Denial of medical services has been used to punish those who protest the conditions of their incarceration.
6. Does Israel subject Palestinian prisoners to torture, and other forms of cruel and degrading treatment?
Yes. Palestinian prisoners are routinely tortured in Israeli jails. A 1999 Israel High Court decision outlawing some forms of physical mistreatment of Palestinian prisoners has not ended Israel's physical and psychological abuse of Palestinian detainees. According to Amnesty International:
"Among the thousands of Palestinians arrested after 27 February 2002, some hundreds were transferred to full-scale interrogation by the GSS [Israel Security Agency], in centers...Amnesty International has received reports that some of the detainees interrogated by the GSS were subjected to prolonged sleep deprivation, shabeh (prolonged standing or sitting in a painful position), beatings and being violently shaken." (14)
The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel and B'Tselem report that methods of torture include the following: slapping, kicking, threats, verbal abuse and humiliation, bending the body in extremely painful positions, intentional tightening of the handcuffs, stepping on manacles, application of pressure to different parts of the body, choking and other forms of violence and humiliation (pulling out hair, spitting etc.), exposure to extreme heat and cold, and continuous exposure to artificial light. (15)
Palestinians are held in detention centers and prisons that do not meet the minimum international standards and are routinely denied visitation rights. (16) Amnesty International reports that:
"According to consistent reports received by Amnesty International, detainees' conditions in Ofer and Ansar III/Ketziot are poor and may amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment...In both camps, detainees sleep in tents; in Ansar III/Ketziot nights are particularly cold. Conditions in Ofer are said to be overcrowded, with detainees sleeping 25 to 30 to a tent. In both camps detainees initially slept on pieces of rough wood...Detainees were said to be given frozen chicken schnitzels which they had to defrost in the sun; a tub of yoghurt, one or two cucumbers and two pieces of fruit between 10 prisoners." (17)
7. Why is the release of Palestinian prisoners so important?
No issue illustrates Israel's denial of freedom to the Palestinians more starkly than that of political prisoners. The Palestinians have been subjected to the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Approximately 20 percent of the Palestinian population in the Occupied Palestinian Territories has, at one point, been arbitrarily detained or imprisoned by Israel. (18)
Israel's imprisonment and detention of Palestinians is a manifestation of its failure to abide by international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention: administrative detentions and imprisonment inside Israel are both illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention. (19) Israel's failure to release Palestinian political prisoners and its continued arbitrary arrest of Palestinian civilians leads to an unfortunate conclusion: that Israel views itself as above the law and the Palestinians beneath it.
Footnotes:
(1) Avigdor Lieberman as Israel's Transport Minister offered to bus Palestinian political prisoners to the Dead Sea to be drowned. Israel Radio, July 7, 2003.
(2) Source: PA Ministry of Prisoner Affairs, 8 August 2006.
(3) The most famous of these child prisoners is Suad Ghazal, who at the age of 15 was sentenced to 6½ years' imprisonment. When she was first arrested, she spent 17 days in solitary confinement and has been tortured in prison. She is now 18 years old.
In 1999, Israel re-instated Israeli Military Order No. 132 which allows for the arrest of Palestinian children aged 12 to 14. The Palestinian Prisoner's Club has noted that 50% of those arrested and detained by Israel since September 2000 are children under the age of 18. See: Defence for Children International/Palestine Section www.dci-pal.org
(4) Under the Oslo Accords, Israel was obligated to release the vast majority of Palestinian prisoners arrested prior to the signing of the Oslo Accords. (Interim Agreement, Annex VII). Israel failed to do so. The Sharm el-Shaeikh Agreement of September 1999 provided for the establishment a joint committee charged with recommending the release of certain prisoners. Despite the fact that the committee recommended the release of these 433 prisoners, Israel failed to do so.
(5) Amnesty International, Israel and the Occupied Territories (January to December 2002). See: web.amnesty.org/web/web.nsf/print/isr-summary-eng.
(6) The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Israel is a signatory, provides that: "Everyone has the right to liberty and security of the person. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention. No one shall be deprived of his liberty except on such grounds and in accordance with such procedure as are established by law." (Article 9(1)).
"Anyone who is arrested shall be informed, at the time of arrest of the reasons for his arrest and shall be promptly informed of any charges against him." (Article 9(2)).
(7) Administrative detentions are currently carried out on the basis of Military Order No. 1229, of 1988. This Order empowers military commanders in the West Bank to detain an individual for up to six months if they have "reasonable grounds to presume that the security of the area or public security require the detention." Commanders can extend detentions for additional periods of up to six months. The Order does not define a maximum cumulative period of administrative detention, and consequently, the detention can be extended indefinitely. The terms "security of the area" and "public security" are also not defined. As a result, their interpretation is left to the military commanders. Given that these are military orders and not judicial orders, they are executed without obtaining the approval of a judge.
(8) Khalid Jaradat was held in administrative detention for a period of 12 years, with only a one week release between administrative detention orders. Israeli security services confirmed that his detention was for nonviolent political expression. See: www.btselem.org
(9) See: www.btselem.org/english/publications/summaries/prisoners_of_peace.asp
(10) Defence for Children International/Palestine Section, Press Release, Palestinian Child Arrest Figures Top 2,000 in 2nd Intifada - Torture Experienced by Most, 26 June 2003.
(11) Defence for Children International/Palestine Section: Palestinian Children in the Judicial System, www.dci-pal.org/statistics/indstats/legaljune2003.html
(12) Ibid.
(13) Defence for Children International/Palestine Section, Press Release, Israeli Government Fails to Release Child Detainees - 330 Still in Custody, 7 June 2003.
(14) Amnesty International, Israel and the Occupied Territories: Mass detention in cruel, inhuman and degrading conditions, 14 (May 2002). On 9 September 1999, the Israeli High Court ruled that the Israel Security Agency (formerly known as GSS) could no longer use four methods of torture (violent shaking, tying prisoners in contorted positions to a small child's chair, covering the prisoner's head with a sack and sleep deprivation). This ruling was widely reported as an end to Israel's practice of torture. In reality, the ambit of the ruling was very narrow: it only applies to the Israel Security Agency. The vast majority of torture is carried out by Israeli soldiers, police and military police in detention centers (not prisons) where the practices to continue to be carried out. Defence for Children International/Palestine Section, A Generation Denied 28 (2001).
(15) See: www.stoptorture.org.il/eng/background.asp?menu=3&submenu=2 and www.btselem.org
(16) Defence for Children International/Palestine Section, Annual Report 21 (2001).
(17) Amnesty International, Ibid 14.
(18) Defence for Children International/Palestine Section, A Generation Denied 163 (2001).
(19) The Fourth Geneva Convention provides that:
"Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive." (Article 49(1)).
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Phony Terror = Fear
Nine terror suspects become first held in UK for more than 14 days
by Prashant Rao
AFP
Thu Aug 24, 2006
LONDON - Nine people became the first terror suspects to be held in British jails without being charged for longer than 14 days after a court granted police more time to quiz them as the investigation into a foiled alleged plot to blow up US-bound passenger jets continued.
Police were granted warrants to detain eight terror suspects until August 30, and one until Thursday, a police spokeswoman told AFP. Two others were released without charge Wednesday.
"Officers from the Metropolitan Police Service Anti-terrorist Branch were this evening (Wednesday) granted warrants of further detention for nine people arrested during the anti-terrorist operation that took place overnight on August 9-10, 2006," a police statement read.
Under British anti-terror laws, police can detain terrorism suspects for up to 28 days without charging them with an offence, subject to regular court approval. Previous legislation only allowed police to hold terror suspects for 14 days without charge.
A total of 25 people have been arrested since police carried out pre-dawn raids in London and around Britain on August 10 in connection with an alleged terror plot to blow up US-bound passenger jets flying from London's Heathrow airport.
Eleven have since been charged, and Wednesday's news brought the total number of suspects released without charge to five.
"In all operations some people may be released without charge while others may remain in custody for further investigation," a police spokesman said.
"This is not unusual and is to be expected in large and complex criminal enquiries where a number of arrests have taken place."
Police have executed 70 total searches since the investigation began, a spokeswoman for London's Metropolitan Police told AFP on Thursday.
The 11 accused -- including a young mother and a minor -- appeared in a magistrates court in London 12 days after police raids in and around the British capital.
Eight facing the most serious charges of conspiracy to murder and preparing acts of terrorism were told to return to court on September 4 to appear before judge Anne Rafferty at the Old Bailey criminal court in central London -- the traditional venue for Britain's biggest criminal trials.
The three others are to return to the magistrates' court next Tuesday.
Of the three, two were charged with withholding information about an impending terrorist attack.
The third, a 17-year-old youth who cannot be named because he is a minor, was accused of possessing a book about bomb-making, suicide notes and wills, and a map of
Afghanistan with information "likely to be useful" to someone planning an attack.
The eight facing the most serious charges were men mainly from east London: Hussain, 25; Umar Islam, 28; Arafat Waheed Khan, 25; Ahmed Abdullah Ali, 25; Ibrahim Savant, 25; Waheed Zaman, 22; Assaid Ali Sarwar, 26; and Adam Khatib, 19.
They were followed by Cossar Ali, 23, the only woman accused and the mother of an eight-month-old son, and Mehran Hussain, 23.
"The investigation is far from complete. The scale is immense. Enquiries will span the globe," said Peter Clarke, chief anti-terrorist officer at London's Metropolitan Police, on Monday as the charges were announced.
Seven other people, including two Britons, are being held in Pakistan, where the authorities have suggested a possible link with Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network, which carried out the September 11 attacks in the United States.
Security at major airports was dramatically increased in the days after the August 10 raids, with a ban imposed on hand baggage and on carry-on beverages. The plot allegedly involved liquid explosives disguised as innocent-looking drinks being smuggled onto US airliners at British airports.
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UPDATE: Dutch Gov't says Northwest Incident Not Terror-Related
By TOBY STERLING
AP
Aug 24, 2006
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - The incident in which a Northwest Airlines flight bound for India returned to Amsterdam shortly after takeoff was not terrorism-related, the Dutch state broadcaster said Thursday, citing the justice minister.
Wednesday's flight was escorted back to Schiphol Airport by Dutch fighter jets after the crew of the DC-10 became suspicious of some of the passengers, and 12 people aboard were arrested.
But NOS news quoted Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner as saying there were no signs of a terrorist threat aboard the flight.
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Moussaoui Tipster on Diverted Northwest flight
By GREG GORDON
McClatchy Newspapers
August 23, 2006
WASHINGTON - A Northwest Airlines plane flying from Amsterdam to India was escorted back to the airport by Dutch F-16 fighter jets Wednesday, and police arrested 12 passengers whose behavior had aroused the crew's suspicion.
Coincidentally, among the 149 passengers aboard Northwest Flight NO0042 was the tipster who first alerted the FBI to al Qaida operative Zacarias Moussaoui's odd behavior at a Minneapolis area flight school five years ago.
Tim Nelson, who was seated in the forward business-class section, said by phone from Amsterdam that he watched the plane dump fuel as it circled back toward the airport, while several federal air marshals appeared in the front of the cabin, hanging their badges around their necks to keep order.
"It was tense," Nelson said, but he said the marshals never flashed weapons. He praised the marshals and flight crew for doing "an outstanding job."
Nelson said it remained unclear whether the flight crew was responding to a serious terrorist incident or "it was just a misunderstanding, where you had unsophisticated people flying."
U.S. government officials, who requested anonymity, said crew members and air marshals observed the passengers in the rear of the wide-bodied DC-10 trying to use cell phones and passing them around during and shortly after takeoff from Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. Cell phone use is barred on both U.S. and international flights. Some of the passengers also were trying to change seats, they said.
The Dutch Defense Ministry said that while the plane was over German airspace just after takeoff, the pilot radioed for permission to return to Schiphol and asked for an escort of jet fighters, the Associated Press reported. It said two F-16s scrambled from a northern military airfield, and routine security measures were swiftly put in place.
Nelson and a fellow flight-school program manager have been hailed as heroes for their phone calls that led to Moussaoui's Aug. 16, 2001, arrest and brought the FBI tantalizingly close to uncovering the Sept. 11 terror plot.
Moussaoui pleaded guilty to six conspiracy counts in 2005 and, after a jury narrowly spared him the death penalty last spring, is serving a life sentence without the possibility of release from a "supermax" prison in Colorado.
Dutch police spokesman Rob Staenacker told the AP that he couldn't disclose the nationalities of those arrested Wednesday or the nature of the suspicions against them. Nelson said he watched Dutch police come aboard in threes and escort a dozen men, 10 of them appearing to be of Pakistani or Middle Eastern descent, from the plane one by one in a remote parking area at the airport.
"Some they handcuffed before they took them out," he said. "One guy was a white guy, with a tie-dyed shirt, a beard and dreadlocks. He looked like a hippie. There was an older man who appeared to be of Indian descent."
A few of the others had beards, and some were dressed in shalwar kameez - traditional long shirts and baggy pants, Nelson said.
The incident was the latest of several terror alerts and flight diversions in the two weeks since British police shut down an alleged Islamic plot to smuggle liquid explosives aboard aircraft and detonate them, possibly with cell phones.
Nelson said he was with a flight crew for a Northwest subsidiary, Classic Aviation, en route to Bombay, India, to ferry a plane with a mechanical problem back to an Amsterdam repair facility.
About 15 minutes into the flight, he said, members of the cabin crew hurried past him and stood in the front of the cabin, pointing to the rear.
Nelson said the lead flight attendant then made an announcement over the plane's broadcast system advising everyone to remain in his or her seats.
"They needed to get a head count. People were moving around in the back, and they needed to get back in their proper seats," Nelson said.
Then the flight attendant made a second announcement, saying that something was going on and that air marshals were aboard.
Nelson said several marshals stood near him at the front of the cabin, but he couldn't see what was going on behind him. Nelson said he and his fellow crewmembers advised flight attendants that they were available to help if needed, but that was unnecessary because everyone remained calm.
Comment: Coincidence? We think not.
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Unknown Palestinian group claims abduction of Fox journalists
www.chinaview.cn 2006-08-23 21:41:07
GAZA, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- An unknown Palestinian group on Wednesday claimed responsibility for kidnapping two Fox journalists on Aug. 14, threatening the United States to release Muslim prisoners held in U.S. jails within 72 hours, the Doha-based Al-Jazeera satellite TV reported.
On Aug. 14, Fox correspondent Steve Centanni and cameraman Olaf Wiig were snatched by unknown gunmen near the Palestinian security services headquarter in Gaza City when a truck intercepted them and forced them out of their vehicle.
The Fox TV team's Palestinian driver and two other journalists were set free.
"We can confirm that two of our colleagues at Fox News have been kidnapped in the Gaza Strip," Fox said in a statement in the wake of the abduction, adding that negotiations were ongoing for their release.
Comment: Geez, an unknown Palestinian group. Hmmm. Who could that be?! And it happens at the time of the cease-fire in Lebanon!
So, which "Palestinian" group is it?
Still need a hint? Six letters. Starts with "M". Has a well-earned "SS" in the middle....
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Asian students' shock at ejection from jet by passenger mutiny
The Daily Mail
23rd August 2006
Two Asian students have revealed their shock and despair after being thrown off a plane because other passengers feared they were suicide bombers.
Manchester Umist students Sohail Ashraf and Khurram Zeb, both 22, said they sympathised with nervous travellers, but urged people not to be paranoid about Muslims.
"We might be Asian, but we're two ordinary lads who wanted a bit of fun," Mr Ashraf told the Daily Mirror.
"Just because we're Muslim does not mean we are suicide bombers."
The pair were marched off the jet at gunpoint after fellow passengers alerted officials on the flight back from Malaga, Spain.
Holidaymakers on board flight ZB 613 from Malaga to Manchester became alarmed at the men's behaviour, and demanded that air staff remove them from the plane in the incident last week.
Cabin crew informed Spanish authorities of the passengers' fears and the men were taken off the Monarch Airlines flight and quizzed by police. The plane had been due to take off at around 3am last Wednesday but was delayed by around three hours.
Some passengers reportedly stormed off the Airbus 320 aircraft and refused to fly unless the pair were removed.
The pair were quizzed by officers for several hours, but then put up in a hotel and allowed to fly back to the UK later that day.
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Bush Revamps Message on Terror Fight
By TOM RAUM
Associated Press Writer
Thursday August 24, 2006
WASHINGTON (AP) - In the thick of an election campaign, President Bush has revived and retooled his argument that the U.S. must fight terrorists overseas or face them here. Despite the unpopularity of the Iraq war, some GOP candidates are borrowing Bush's line.
"We leave before the mission is done, the terrorists will follow us here,'' Bush warned at a news conference this week.
Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., locked in a tight Philadelphia-area re-election race, went a step further. "We either fight them there, or we fight them in the supermarkets and streets here,'' he said Wednesday in an interview with CNN.
Bush is not on the ballot this midterm election year. But control of the GOP-led Congress is. So the elections could determine the fate of what's left of Bush's second-term agenda.
The fight-them-there theme has been part of Bush's national security stump speech since 2003. But the "follow us here'' part is a relatively new twist.
Noting polls that show growing Iraq war opposition, Bush and other Republicans have been stressing links between Iraq and the broader war against terrorism - a connection Democrats generally dismiss.
They've also been trumpeting their record of urging aggressive action against terrorists.
"What you're seeing here is a restatement of what the administration, and I think most Republicans, consider to be a truth, which is that Iraq is right now the principal battleground in the war on terror,'' said GOP consultant Rich Galen.
The foiling by British authorities of an alleged terrorist plot to blow up U.S.-bound planes gave new impetus to the terrorism issue for Republicans - even as it underscored that potential terror strikes against the United States could come from anywhere.
An AP-Ipsos poll released Wednesday found that 60 percent of Americans believe that in the long run there will be more terrorism in the United States because of the war in Iraq.
That's up substantially from an AP-Ipsos poll taken in December 2003, after the capture of Saddam Hussein, when the figure was 40 percent.
In the new poll, 40 percent of Republicans said they believe there will be more terrorism in the U.S. because of the war. That compares with 74 percent of Democrats. The poll of 1,001 adults, taken Aug. 7-9, had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Also, a CBS-New York Times poll on Wednesday said just 44 percent of Americans now consider the Iraq conflict part of the broader war on terror - as the administration contends - down 10 points from June. More than half now say it is not.
"That's exactly why the president is refocusing on this, to remind people that that's an incorrect assessment. They are tied together,'' said Galen.
Stephen Cimbala, a professor at Penn State University who studies the interaction between war and U.S. politics, said Bush and Republican leaders clearly have decided that emphasizing their leadership in fighting terrorism is the best way to maintain congressional GOP majorities.
"And the more issues they can commingle with the war on terror, the better for them,'' Cimbala said.
Republicans hope that by cranking up their rhetoric on fighting terrorism they can offset the growing opposition to the Iraq war and blunt Democratic calls for troop withdrawals.
"That's their strategy and message: We're going to make you safer at home if we fight the terrorists there,'' said James Thurber, a political scientist at American University. "The language may have changed, but the theme has not.''
Is Bush right? Will staying in Iraq keep the U.S. from having to fight terrorists at home?
"It's partly true and partly not true,'' said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East Program with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
He said al-Qaida and other terror groups who once found refuge in lawless places like Afghanistan would probably fill any vacuum in Iraq created by departing U.S. troops, setting up training camps and lines of communication.
"But what is also true is that sometimes in fighting a war on terror, you create the conditions under which more people decide to be terrorists,'' Alterman said. "there's a lot on both sides of the ledger. Part of it depends on how Iraq turns out and part of it depends on the conduct of U.S. policy.''
More and more Republicans, even war supporters like Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., are voicing unhappiness with the administration's efforts to sell the war to Americans.
McCain, a potential 2008 presidential candidate, said Tuesday the administration had misled Americans into believing the conflict would be "some kind of day at the beach.'' McCain was in Ohio campaigning for Republican Sen. Mike DeWine, who is in a tough re-election fight in which the war is a key issue.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino on Wednesday disputed McCain's characterization, saying the president "has been consistent in saying how tough and difficult it's going to be'' to stabilize Iraq.
"But he also said it would be a mistake if we left, and that the terrorists would follow us here,'' Perino said, reprising Bush's line.
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Second German bombing plot suspect arrested in Lebanon
by Juergen Oeder
AFP
August 24, 2006
KARLSRUHE, Germany - The second of two Lebanese suspects in a failed plot to bomb German passenger trains has handed himself in to police in Lebanon, the office of Germany's federal prosecutor said.
Jihad Hamad, a clean-cut looking 20-year-old whose picture has been splashed in German media, handed himself over in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli.
The prosecutor's office said it was arranging to have him extradited to Germany where it believed he and an accomplice tried to blow up two regional trains on July 31 with homemade bombs.
The first suspect, a 21-year-old Lebanese student identified only as Youssef Mohammed E.H., was seized early Saturday thanks to a tip-off from Lebanese military intelligence.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier welcomed the "international cooperation" that led to the arrest of the pair.
Youssef Mohammed E.H. was arrested at the main train station in the northern German city of Kiel, where he had been studying.
He was carrying a packed bag and was apparently in the process of fleeing the country.
Authorities last Friday said they believed Germany narrowly escaped a terrorist attack when the two bombs planted on trains heading for the western cities of Hamm, near Dortmund, and Koblenz, failed to detonate.
The devices were packed into trolley suitcases that were put on the trains when they stopped in Cologne, where security cameras captured images of the alleged bombers.
According to media reports, the first suspect called his family in Lebanon in a panic after seeing the grainy images on German television, allowing Lebanese spies to pick up the call.
Youssef Mohammed E.H. appeared before an investigating judge on Sunday and was told he would face charges of attempted murder, belonging to a terrorist organisation and attempting to cause an explosion.
According to the prosecutor's office, both suspects fled to Lebanon after the failed bomb attacks.
The first returned to Germany, while it is not clear if Jihad Hamad, who lived in Cologne, had come back to the country in the meantime.
The German government said the plotters intended to kill several people in a copy of the fatal train bombings in Madrid and London and had almost certainly acted with the help of a terrorist group.
The plot has put the country on edge, reminding Germans that three of the hijackers in the September 11 attacks, including ringleader Mohammed Atta, lived as students in Hamburg for years without arousing suspicion.
Germany has been trying to clamp down on extremists in the wake of the 2001 attacks, notably implementing a law that makes belonging to a foreign terrorist group a crime with a maximum jail sentence of 10 years.
Media reports have said Youssef Mohammed E.H.'s brother was killed in the Israeli offensive on Lebanon and the bombing plot may have been motivated by anger at the siege.
"He had relatives in Lebanon. His brother was killed there in an Israeli air raid a month ago. Youssef couldn't bear it. Maybe he wanted to take his revenge" on the West, an unnamed acquaintance told Bild newspaper.
But prosecutors have declined to comment about a potential link with the war in Lebanon.
Neighbours have described Youssef as a likeable man and a deeply religious Sunni Muslim who prayed five times a day in a basement room of the dormitory where he lived.
He was attending a preparatory programme for foreign students. Classmates have alternately described him as "friendly" and "radical".
The head of the Federal Crime Office, Joerg Ziercke, has told reporters that the police had garnered "a wealth of information" from Youssef Mohammed E.H. about his accomplice.
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No, that's not a penis pump, Mom. Really
AP
Wed Aug 23, 2006
CHICAGO - Cook County prosecutors say a 29-year-old man traveling with his mother desperately didn't want her to know he'd packed a sexual aid for their trip to Turkey. So he told security it was a bomb, officials said.
Madin Azad Amin was stopped by officials on Aug. 16 after guards found an object in his baggage that resembled a grenade, prosecutors said.
When officers asked him to identify it, Amin said it was a bomb, said Cook County Assistant State's Attorney Lorraine Scaduto.
He later told officials he'd lied about the item because his mother was nearby and he didn't want her to hear that it was part of a penis pump, Scaduto said.
He's been charged with felony disorderly conduct, said Andrew Conklin, a spokesman with the Cook County state's attorney's office.
Amin faces up to three years in prison if convicted.
Comment: Just take a minute to reflect on the absolute absurdity of this story...
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Stop Justice Dept.'s attack on reporters
By MARK CORALLO
NY Daily News
22 August 06
Federal law provides no special protection for reporters with confidential sources. In other words, if the government needs information from those reporters to carry out a prosecution, the government can - in theory - go after them.
Yet for more than 40 years, the Justice Department has wisely recognized in its own guidelines that it should use the force of law to compel reporters to give up their sources only when the need is pressing - and then, only after all other investigative avenues have been exhausted.
All that is at risk in the Justice Department these days. In the past few months, the department allowed the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles to subpoena two San Francisco Chronicle reporters who broke the baseball steroids scandal to get them to reveal the source of the leak of Barry Bonds' and Jason Giambi's grand jury testimony. The journalists, whose courageous reporting forced baseball to deal with the steroid problem after ignoring it for a decade, now face jail if they refuse to give up their sources. (In the interest of full disclosure, I filed an affidavit in support of the reporters.)
And in the Eastern District of Virginia, the Justice Department is using antiquated espionage statutes to prosecute two lobbyists for the pro-Israel organization AIPAC for receiving classified information. This is significant because it provides a chilling prospect for the many members of the media who receive classified information (most often unknowingly) on a daily basis.
Will federal prosecutors use this case as the precedent to go after reporters for getting leaks? It's not wild speculation. In public statements, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has hinted that this may be an avenue of attack in future cases.
From these and other recent examples, it's clear there has been a shift in policy - a dramatic shift for the worse.
This has nothing to do with partisan politics. Federal prosecutors have always been an aggressive bunch when it comes to pursuing journalists. But in the past, in the overwhelming majority of cases, both Republican and Democrat attorneys general have told the prosecutors that "can"just didn't translate to "should." In short, the Justice Department has exercised intelligent discretion.
The current Justice leadership either doesn't have the backbone to say "no" when prosecutors want to subpoena reporters or it agrees with their judgments. In either event, the results are dangerous.
The press is the last line of defense in a free society. If government feels that it can compel reporters to give up confidential sources in non-life-threatening matters, then reporters will be less likely to pursue stories involving government corruption and other abuses. And there are moments when the press is the only place a real whistleblower can go to expose corruption.
Because of the courageous reporting in the BALCO steroids case, my 8-year-old baseball loving son knows the difference between Jeter and the cheaters. Putting the men who broke the story in jail will not serve the interests of justice. It will only open the door to more hostile and abusive government power.
Corallo was chief spokesman for the U.S. Justice Department from 2002 to 2005.
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Fear = Acceptance of War, Suffering, Death
Eight people killed in early morning raid in Afghanistan
Last Updated Thu, 24 Aug 2006 06:34:44 EDT
CBC News
Officials in an eastern Afghanistan village said that eight people killed in raid by U.S. and Afghan forces early Thursday were not al-Qaeda operatives.
The U.S. military said in a statement that seven of eight people killed in a compound in Asmar village, Kunar province were linked to al-Qaeda. The eighth was a child.
Kunar is a volatile region bordering Pakistan.
Afghan police denied the claim, saying the victims were local families who had gathered to resolve a dispute with the help of village elders.
More than 1,000 people, mostly militants, have died in the last three months in Afghanistan in the worst spate of violence the country has seen since late 2001 when U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban regime.
The U.S. military said it launched the raid after people inside the compound opened fire on U.S. and Afghan forces.
"Afghan and coalition forces came under direct fire when approaching the compound and defended themselves with return fire," the U.S. statement said.
"All of the men killed were engaging Afghan and coalition forces with hostile fire."
Soldiers also seized multiple weapons, ammunition and grenades, the U.S. statement said.
The raid comes in the wake of a suicide bomb attack on Tuesday that killed a Canadian soldier and wounded three others. Cpl. David Braun died when a suicide bomber plowed his vehicle into a Canadian military convoy.
Braun is the 27th Canadian soldier to be killed in Afghanistan since Canada first sent troops there in early 2002. His body was being flown on Thursday back to Canada. The plane carrying his remains is expected to arrive before the weekend.
Two hours after that attack, an Afghan boy was shot and killed after the motorcycle on which he was a passenger crossed the security perimeter of the suicide bombing site. Canadian soldiers warned the driver, a teenager, to stop. He failed to do so, and a Canadian soldier fired a shot that passed through the teenager, injuring him, and killed the boy.
Canadian soldiers braced for a backlash after the shooting, but the incident did not spark riots. The city of Kandahar remained calm after the event.
Canada has about 2,200 soldiers in Afghanistan.
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Amnesty International accuses Israel of war crimes in Lebanon
Last Updated Wed, 23 Aug 2006 11:33:19 EDT
CBC News
Amnesty International has accused Israel of war crimes in Lebanon, including indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks and the intentional destruction of civilian infrastructure.
"Israel's assertion that the attacks on the infrastructure were lawful is manifestly wrong. ... The evidence strongly suggests that the extensive destruction of power and water plants, as well as the transport infrastructure vital for food and other humanitarian relief, was deliberate and an integral part of a military strategy," said Amnesty's executive deputy secretary-general, Kate Gilmore.
The London-based human rights organization issued a report Wednesday saying both Israel and its Lebanon-based foe, the militant group Hezbollah, have repeatedly committed grave violations of international humanitarian law over many years of conflict.
As in the past, the Israeli government rejected Amnesty's charges.
The report focuses on Israel's latest air and ground campaign in Lebanon, a bid to crush Hezbollah and halt its practice of firing rockets into Israel.
"The widespread destruction of apartments, houses, electricity and water services, roads, bridges, factories and ports, in addition to several statements by Israeli officials, suggests a policy of punishing both the Lebanese government and the civilian population in an effort to get them to turn against Hezbollah," the report said.
"Israeli attacks did not diminish, nor did their pattern appear to change, even when it became clear that the victims of the bombardment were predominantly civilians, which was the case from the first days of the conflict."
In her statement, Gilmore dismissed the idea that Israel targeted Hezbollah positions and support facilities and that other damage to infrastructure was a result of the group using civilians as human shields.
"The pattern, scope and scale of the attacks makes Israel's claim that this was 'collateral damage' simply not credible," she said.
Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Mark Regev said his country acted legally.
"Israel's actions in Lebanon were in accordance with recognized norms of behaviour during conflicts and with relevant international law," he said. "Unlike Hezbollah, we did not deliberately target the Lebanese civilian population."
Regev said that Lebanese infrastructure was "targeted only when that infrastructure was being exploited by the Hezbollah machine, and this is in accordance with the rules of war."
Israel began attacking targets in southern Lebanon after Hezbollah guerrillas operating there killed three Israeli soldiers and captured two in a cross-border raid July 12. The fighting, which included a rain of Hezbollah rockets on Israel, continued until a United Nations-brokered ceasefire on Aug. 14.
The UN children's fund, UNICEF, estimates that some 1,183 people died in Lebanon, mostly civilians and about a third of them children.
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U.S. general: Iran directly involved in Iraqi insurgency
www.chinaview.cn 2006-08-24 04:31:37
WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- Iran has a direct involvement in arming, training, equipping and funding Iraqi extremist groups, a U.S. general claimed Wednesday.
"Iraq is a sovereign government, and Iran should stop its actions to destabilize Iraq, " Brigadier General Michael Barbero, deputy director of regional operations of the U.S. Joint Staff, told reporters at a Pentagon briefing.
On Syria's role in Iraq, he said, "we know that there has been crossings of the Syrian border of insurgents. I'm not sure if I can go much further than that."
Washington has long been accusing Iran and Syria of "destabilizing Iraq."
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U.S., allies to discuss possibility of sanctions on Iran
www.chinaview.cn 2006-08-23 23:19:16
WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- The United States and its allies were considering whether to push for sanctions on Iran within the UN Security Council after the Islamic republic refused to freeze its uranium enrichment program, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
Iran delivered its response on Tuesday to a package of incentives, offered in June by Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States and Germany. Iran called for more talks to settle the nuclear issue, but refused to halt uranium enrichment, a key demand by the Security Council.
U.S. and European officials said in private that Iran's reply had fallen short of the requirements set out in the Security Council resolution.
However, the Bush administration held to its official line that the United States was still evaluating Iran's reply to the package, and that the administration needed to confer with its European partners on the issue, the report said.
John Bolton, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, said on Tuesday that Washington would study Iran's response carefully.
However, "we are also prepared, if it does not meet the terms set (by the six major powers), to proceed in the Security Council with economic sanctions," Bolton said.
"I think we will be prepared to submit the elements of a resolution in the council very quickly," Bolton added.
The UN Security Council has demanded that Iran stop its uranium enrichment by August 31, or it would face possible sanctions.
The United States has accused Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program. Iran has repeatedly said its nuclear program was aimed at generating power to meet its surging domestic demand.
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U.S. says Iran's response falls short of UN conditions
www.chinaview.cn 2006-08-24 03:42:55
WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- More than 24 hours after Iran gave its response to the incentives package put forward by the six countries, the United States said on Wednesday that Iran's response fell short of the conditions of a UN Security Council resolution.
"The response however, falls short of the conditions set by the Security Council, which require the full and verifiable suspension of all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities," State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos said in a statement.
"We acknowledge that Iran considers its response as a serious offer, and we will review it," the statement said.
The United States is consulting closely with other members of the Security Council over what the next steps should be, the statement added.
Earlier Wednesday, the White House said that it is carefully reviewing Iran's response.
"We're giving it careful consideration and a careful review, as it deserves," White House deputy spokeswoman Dana Perino told the media.
"The Security Council made clear what its position was, and we're going to parse through and look at their response before responding fully," Perino said.
Perino said on Tuesday that the Bush administration had received a copy of the Iranian response but she did not believe Bush had read it.
"I'm not going to parse the Iranian government's document today here on the airplane. That is a job best left to the diplomats," she said on Tuesday, adding that Bush has made very clear in Monday's press conference that he thought Iran's nuclear program "would be a mistake and dangerous for the region and the whole world."
John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said on Tuesday that the United States would study Iran's response carefully.
Moreover, "We are also prepared, if it does not meet the terms set (by the six countries), to proceed in the Security Council with economic sanctions," Bolton said.
"I think we will be prepared to submit elements of a resolution in the council very quickly," Bolton added.
Iran's top nuclear negotiator ALi Larijani delivered Teheran's written response on the incentives package on Tuesday to the representatives of the five permanent Security Council members -- the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France, but refused to suspend uranium enrichment, a key demand by the United States and the West.
Washington has accused Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of civilian nuclear programs. Iran has said that its nuclear programs are for peaceful purposes only.
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'Significant gaps' in American intelligence on Iran
Julian Borger in Washington
Thursday August 24, 2006
The Guardian
A congressional report yesterday warned that the US was facing "significant gaps" in its intelligence on Iran that could be as serious as the shortcomings in its prewar knowledge about Iraq, leaving Washington ill-prepared to assess Tehran's military capabilities.
The warning came as the Bush administration struggled to hold together an international coalition to force Iran to give up its nuclear programme. On Tuesday, Iran rejected a UN security council ultimatum to give up uranium enrichment by the end of this month, responding instead with a 21-page proposal for "serious talks". US diplomats said yesterday they were consulting their European allies on how to treat the proposal, in the face of Russian and Chinese reluctance to impose strong sanctions.
"We acknowledge that Iran considers its response as a serious offer, and we will review it," state department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos said in a statement. "The response, however, falls short of the conditions set by the security council, which require the full and verifiable suspension of all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities. We are consulting closely, including with other members of the security council, on next steps."
A new report by the staff of the House of Representatives intelligence committee suggested that the administration was ill-equipped to drive a hard bargain. It found "significant gaps in our knowledge and understanding of the various areas of concern about Iran" and said "policymakers will need high-quality intelligence to assess Iranian intentions to prepare for any new round of negotiations".
Iran, by contrast, is widely considered to be in a strong negotiating position. Analysis published yesterday by the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House said there was "little doubt that Iran has been the chief beneficiary of the war on terror in the Middle East".
The report said Iran had gained from the defeat of two of its most immediate regional rivals, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
"The US-driven agenda for confronting Iran is severely compromised by the confident ease with which Iran sits in its region," it said. "Iran views Iraq as its own backyard and has now superseded the US as the most influential power there."
The month-long war between Hizbullah and Israel has strengthened Iran's regional influence further, because the Arab world perceived the US as uncritically backing Israel. Hizbullah, backed by Iran, saw its status soar in Arab public opinion for its ability to survive Israeli attacks.
UN diplomats said any concerted response to Iran's offer of talks would only come after a report on its nuclear programme by the International Atomic Energy Agency at the end of this month.
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Promoting peace is for wimps - real governments sell weapons
George Monbiot
Thursday August 24, 2006
The Guardian
It's described by a senior official at the Ministry of Defence as "a dead duck ... expensive and obsolete". The editor of World Defence Systems calls it "10 years out of date". A former defence minister remarked that it is "essentially flawed and out of date". So how on earth did BAE Systems manage to sell 72 Eurofighters to Saudi Arabia on Friday?
One answer is that it had some eminent salesmen.
On July 2 2005, Tony Blair secretly landed in Riyadh to persuade the Saudi princes that this flying scrapheap was the must-have accessory for every fashionable young despot. Three weeks later the defence secretary John Reid turned up to deploy his subtle charms. Somehow the deal survived, and last week his successor, Des Browne, signed the agreement. All of which raises a second question. Why are government ministers, even Blair himself, prepared to reduce themselves to hawkers on behalf of arms merchants?
Readers of this column will know that British governments are not averse to helping big business, even when this conflicts with their stated policies. But the support they offer the defence industry goes far beyond the assistance they provide to anyone else.
Take the Defence Export Services Organisation (DESO), for example. This is a government agency founded 40 years ago to smooth out foreign deals for British arms companies. From its inception, this smoothing involved baksheesh. It was established as a channel for "financial aids and incentives" to corrupt officials in foreign governments.
In 2003, after bribery of this kind became illegal in the UK, the Guardian found an internal DESO document explaining its guidelines for arms sales. "In certain parts of the world," it said, "it has become commonplace for special commissions to be required. This is a matter for DESO, to whom all requests for special commission should be referred. If DESO confirm that such payments can be made, contracts staff may need to provide the means for payment." A "special commission" is civil service code for a bribe. The document suggests, in other words, that the British government is overseeing the payment of bribes to foreign officials.
BAE's previous deals with Saudi Arabia are surrounded by allegations of corruption. It is alleged to have run a £60m "slush fund" to oil the Al Yamamah contracts brokered by Margaret Thatcher. The fund is said to have been used to provide cash, cars, yachts, hotel rooms and prostitutes to Saudi officials. One of the alleged beneficiaries was Prince Turki bin Nasser, the Saudi minister for arms procurement. The Serious Fraud Office was bounced by the Guardian's revelations into opening an investigation. But among the conditions the Saudi government laid down for the new deal is that the investigation is dropped. Let's see what happens.
With this exception, the big arms companies appear to have been granted immunity from inquiry or prosecution. Letters from the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence, Sir Kevin Tebbit, show that he prevented the ministry's fraud squad from investigating the allegations against BAE; that he failed to tell his minister about the investigation by the Serious Fraud Office; and that he tipped off the chairman of BAE about the contents of a confidential letter the SFO had sent him. When the US government told him that BAE had allegedly engaged in corrupt practice in the Czech Republic, Sir Kevin failed to inform the police.
For 14 years, the government has suppressed a report by the National Audit Office into the Al Yamamah deals. Earlier this summer the auditor general refused even to hand it over to the SFO. A parliamentary committee on arms exports published a report this month that expresses its frustration over the government's reluctance to assist its inquiries. It also shows that Mark Thomas, the stand-up comedian, has done more to expose illegal arms deals than the Ministry of Defence, the Export Control Organisation and HM Revenue and Customs put together, simply by searching the internet and the trade press and attending the arms fairs the British government hosts.
In response, the government has investigated not the companies, but the comedian. A confidential email from a civil servant suggested that the trade minister, Richard Caborn, was seeking to gather "background/dirt on him in order to rubbish him". Caborn says that he was misrepresented.
The only arms dealers to have been prosecuted since 2000 are five very small fish. All of them escaped with a small fine or a suspended sentence, including a man who made repeated attempts to export military parts to Iran. Compare this to the treatment of those who upset the arms industry. Nine anti-war campaigners in Derry who occupied the offices of the arms company Raytheon have just been charged with aggravated burglary and unlawful assembly. If convicted, they could be imprisoned for years.
Every government policy designed to protect our national interests or promote world peace is torn up at the arms companies' request. They are not supposed to sell to dodgy regimes or countries in the midst of conflict. So let them first export their arms to the Channel Islands, from which they can be resold. Weapons may not be exported to any country unless it shows "respect for human rights". So get the Foreign Office to note "a small but significant improvement" in the Saudi government's performance and use that as your excuse.
Should we be surprised that, as the Times revealed on Monday, Israeli soldiers have found night-vision equipment made by a British company in Hizbullah bunkers? Should we be surprised that despite a government commitment to sell Israel "no weapons, equipment or components which could be deployed aggressively in the occupied territories", British companies have been supplying parts for its Apache helicopters and F-16 bombers? The government seems to see the escalating dangers in the Middle East as nothing but an opportunity for business.
Perhaps most damning is this. Blair claims that Britain's security comes first. Yet one of the means by which his government managed to secure this deal was to speed it up. How? The Sunday Times reports that "the first 24 planes for the Saudis will be those at present allotted to the Royal Air Force, with the RAF postponing its deliveries until later in the production run". In other words, the Saudis' perceived need for fighter planes takes precedence over our own.
So why does Her Majesty's Government behave like a subsidiary of BAE? A report by the Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) shows that 39% of all the senior public servants who go to work for the private sector are employees of the Ministry of Defence moving into arms firms. In return, scores of arms dealers are seconded to the ministry. The man who runs DESO, for example, previously worked for BAE, selling arms in the Middle East.
CAAT lists the government committees stuffed with arms executives, the donations, the lobbyists, the Labour peers taking the corporate shilling, and I am sure all this plays an important role. But it seems to me that something else is at work. There appears to be a sense among some at the core of government that peace, human rights and democracy are for wimps, while the serious business, for real players, is war and the means by which it is enacted.
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Explosion in Chechen Capital Kills 4
Thursday August 24, 2006 12:31 PM
MOSCOW (AP) - Interfax reports an explosion in Chechnya's capital Grozny has killed four people.
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Target = Middle East
Still lying about real Iraq deaths
5/14/2006 7:11:00 PM GMT
In the on-going vicious occupation of Iraq, the American and British are seemingly meticulous about reporting their own casualties - as opposed to Iraqi casualties, whom they refuse to count, despite obliged under international law to do so.
As of 13th May 2006, the U.S. military states its casualties as 2,436 deaths of US soldiers and 17,648 injured. These very precise figures are updated daily. The problem with these statistics is that they are misleading and wrong and deliberately so. To arrive at these figures, the following deaths and casualties are excluded:
- Soldiers killed or injured in any other way other than a direct bullet or bomb. In other words, if a pilot or driver crashes because he had to evade a missile or bomb, it would not be counted as a death.
- The dying and critically wounded are listed as en route to military hospitals outside of the country and not reported on the daily postings. This means a soldier who was shot and/or wounded but died on a flight to a U.S. military hospital would not be counted.
- Anyone who dies in hospital or a U.S. military base.
- Anyone who suffers from severe mental illnesses as a direct result of the war. This category includes those who are medically diagnosed as depressed and/or suicidal.
- Anyone who is seemingly not seriously hurt at the time of a bombing or battle but who has long term physical or mental problems as a result. The most common example of this are soldiers who survive a road side bomb but who suffer long term brain damage.
- Soldiers in the U.S. Army who are not U.S. citizens. These are commonly citizens of poor South and Central American countries who are persuaded to fight in the hope of U.S. citizenship after years of risking their lives.
The Pentagon has followed this deliberately deceitful policy from the time of the invasion. It is now admitted that in the six month period from the pre-planned date of the invasion of Iraq on 20th March 2003 till September 2003, the true scale of American casualties in Iraq was far higher than officially stated.
During those six months, more than 6,000 American servicemen were evacuated for medical reasons, including more than 1,500 American soldiers who have been wounded, many seriously. The figures shocked many Americans, who believed that casualties in the early period of the invasion of Iraq were relatively light. Even when these figures came to light, it did not persuade the Pentagon or the Bush administration to be any more honest about what followed.
On June 29 2005, the Veterans Administration (an official U.S. body) admitted to the U.S. Congress that there were over 103,000 U.S. military casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The estimated costs of looking after the injured and disabled was estimated at $2.6 billion more than originally budgeted. The official figures at the time were showing 13,000 casualties - meaning that the true figure was many multiples higher.
The U.S. Defence Department admitted in November 2004 that there have been over 15,000 troops evacuated from Iraq for medical reasons that have never been counted in official statistics. Only 20% of those ever evacuated for medical reasons are ever returned to active service.
Amongst the 15,000 evacuated and never counted as official casualties were those with serious spinal injuries, bone fractures, heart problems and mental illness.
The most serious exclusion, however, was and is traumatic brain injury, or TBI. Because of the body armour worn by U.S. troops, many soldiers survive a road side bomb but with the brain damage caused by the bombs often undetected. The explosions often cause brain damage similar to "shaken-baby syndrome," according to neurologists at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. The injury is often hard to detect immediately after being hurt. Many soldiers may look fully recovered, but their brain functions are damaged and often deteriorate over time. An explosion can cause the brain to move violently inside the skull and the shock wave from the blast can also damage brain tissues. To try to identify cases of TBI, doctors at Walter Reed screened every arriving service member wounded in an explosion, along with those hurt in Iraq or Afghanistan in a vehicle accident or fall, or by a gunshot wound to the face, neck or head.
They found TBI in about 60% of the cases. Till January 2005, 437 cases of TBI were diagnosed among wounded soldiers at the Army hospital.
Slightly more than half had permanent brain damage. Similar TBI screening began in August at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., near Washington. It showed 83% - or 97 wounded Marines and sailors - with temporary or permanent brain damage. TBI may come to characterize this war, much the way illnesses from Agent Orange typified the Vietnam War according to doctors. The numbers involved make it a serious long term problem for the U.S. as the financial and social cost are yet to be fully calculated.
The Pentagon refusal to be honest and open about the human cost on U.S. servicemen and women has led several members of Bush's own Republican Party who are members of the U.S. Congress to write to Bush on 7th December 2005. In the letter they state that there have been "50,000 cases of mental trauma. Moreover, 101,000 of the 431,000 troops who have returned home from service in Iraq and Afghanistan and who have separated from the military have sought help. This figure shows the Pentagon's official Iraq casualty count of 2,082 U.S. troops killed, and 15,477 wounded as of today, to be inaccurate by several multiples".
Terrified of losing public support for what is already a highly unpopular war, President Bush personally ordered that no pictures be taken of the coffined and flag-draped dead under any circumstances. The justification of this was to protect the bereaved relatives but is obviously designed to keep the huge number of arriving bodies secret.
Yesterday, a senior Pentagon official confirmed on the condition of anonymity that the actual death toll of U.S. service personnel as of 1st May 2006 in Iraq is in excess of 12,000. The real number of casualties - i.e. those unable to return to active service - is in excess of 150,000. He also confirmed that all reports from the U.S. military in Iraq confirmed that Iraqi resistance to the occupation growing better organized and more deadly by the day.
Whatever the Americans do, it seems that the British army have an irresistible urge to follow - which includes hiding casualties figures. In January 2006, the British Defence Minister claimed that there were only 230 British wounded since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. That figure was too low for anyone to take seriously and within 2 months of constant pressure, the more accurate figure of 6,700 British servicemen and women needing hospital treatments was given by the British Ministry of Defence.
The UK government was forced to admit that 4,000 British soldiers were seriously injured enough to be flown back to the UK for medical treatment in the previous three years. It is worth bearing in mind that the total British contingent is 8,000. With an admitted 4,000 casualties, the figure of 109 military deaths seems incredibly low and could only be reached if the Bush method of calculating casualties is used.
However hard the Americans and British try to hide the true human cost of the invasion to the world, of both Iraqi and their own; the true figures will emerge one day.
With the large majority of the U.S. public already having lost faith in their Commander in Chief, it remains to be seen if the invasion of Iraq will be viewed as another Vietnam or whether future American invasions will be dubbed 'another Iraq' due to the huge financial and human losses that were inflicted.
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Syria Warns Against Deployment of Troops
By HUSSEIN DAKROUB
BEIRUT, Lebanon Aug 23, 2006 (AP)
Israel's foreign minister said Wednesday the situation in Lebanon was "explosive" while Syria's president says the deployment of international troops along the Syria-Lebanon border would be a "hostile" act.
The escalating rhetoric came as the 10-day cease-fire was shaken by the deaths of three Lebanese soldiers killed defusing a missile and an Israeli killed by a land mine in south Lebanon.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora urged the U.S. to help end Israel's sea and air blockade, saying his country was making "every effort" to secure its borders.
"Time is working against those who would like to see this resolution applied," Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said after talks her French counterpart, Phillipe Douste-Blazy. "We are now in the most sensitive and explosive position."
"We therefore need extremely quick action from the international community," she said.
Syrian President Bashar Assad was quoted as saying he would consider such a deployment along the Lebanon-Syria border a "hostile" move toward his country.
"First, this means creating a hostile condition between Syria and Lebanon," Assad told Dubai Television, according to excerpts released by the TV station ahead of the broadcast. "Second, it is a hostile move toward Syria and naturally it will create problems."
Assad did not elaborate on that point in the excerpts. But Finland's foreign minister, after meeting with his Syrian counterpart, said Damascus threatened to close the frontier with Lebanon if U.N. peacekeepers were deployed there.
"They will close their borders for all traffic in case U.N. troops will be deployed along the Lebanon-Syria border," Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja said after meeting Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem in Helsinki. Finland holds the rotating presidency of the European Union.
"This closing of the border would certainly have negative consequences for the people living in the region," Tuomioja told reporters after his meeting with Moallem.
An Aug. 11 U.N. resolution outlined a cease-fire agreement that called for a 15,000-member force of international peacekeepers and another 15,000 Lebanese army troops to deploy to southern Lebanon, as Israeli troops withdraw.
But efforts to raise the force were moving slowly with the European Union nations expected to lead it reluctant to commit troops without safeguards to ensure they do not get sucked into the conflict.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel would not lift its air and sea blockade until international peacekeepers were deployed at the Beirut international airport and along the Lebanese border with Syria. Hezbollah's vast arsenal of rockets and other weapons is believed to originate in Iran and reach the guerrillas across the Syrian border.
"The United States can support us in putting real pressure on Israel to lift the siege," the Western-backed Saniora said Wednesday. His government has called the blockade a violation of the U.N.-brokered cease-fire, and has asked the international community to intervene.
Olmert's tough stance on the blockade appeared to be an attempt to pressure the international community to speed the dispatch of a vanguard of the 15,000-strong force of international peacekeepers called for by the cease-fire agreement.
Sporadic violence has marked the U.N.-brokered cease-fire that took hold Aug. 14 and ended 34 days of ferocious fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. But the truce has held thus far.
The cease-fire was tested Wednesday when the Israeli army fired artillery into a disputed border region in response to what it said was an attack from inside Lebanon.
Lebanese security and military officials said there had been no fire by either Hezbollah or the Lebanese army in the region. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk with reporters.
Israel claimed there was a three-hour exchange of fire in the disputed Israeli-occupied Chebaa Farms area, where the borders of Lebanon, Syria and Israel meet.
Lebanese security officials said Israeli military fired artillery into the village of Chebaa, which is controlled by Lebanon. The officials said the artillery fire landed near Lebanese army positions but no one was hurt.
Lebanese troops entered the village of Chebaa last week for the first time in four decades as part of an eventual deployment of 15,000 troops in southern Lebanon under the cease-fire deal.
Lebanon has demanded that Israel hand over maps of the mine emplacements in the region. Hezbollah guerrillas also have laid mines in the south before and during the recent fighting to stop the Israeli army's ground push.
Three Lebanese soldiers were killed Wednesday near the village of Tibnine while they dismantled an unexploded missile in southern Lebanon, Lebanese security officials said.
Earlier in the day, an Israeli soldier was killed and three others were wounded by a land mine Israel planted in southern Lebanon, Israeli officials said. The soldier was the second casualty since the truce.
The Israeli military said it could not confirm the incident.
Hundreds of Israeli troops have remained on the positions in southern Lebanon they occupied during the war as they wait for a U.N. peacekeeping force to move in and guarantee a buffer zone between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas.
Diplomats said EU talks in Belgium on Wednesday were unlikely to produce a breakthrough, though there were expectations that nations may come forward with at least tentative offers of more troops ahead of a meeting scheduled Friday with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Saniora also said Wednesday his government would accept a $230 million aid package offered by President Bush, despite widespread criticism in Lebanon of U.S. support for Israel.
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France wants clear mandate for expanded Lebanon force
PARIS, Aug 23, 2006 (AFP)
France and Israel said Wednesday it was "vital" for an expanded UN force to deploy in Lebanon to bolster the shaky ceasefire there between Israel and Hezbollah.
French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said in a joint news conference in Paris with his Israeli counterpart Tzipi Livni that they had both agreed that reinforcements to the UN Interim Force in Lebanon had to be sent "with a clear and clearly defined mandate".
He said both also wanted "a full and complete application of UN resolution 1701 by all the parties, including Hezbollah."
That resolution, passed August 11, gives the mandate for a UN force of up to 15,000 international troops to assist the
Lebanese army in taking control of southern Lebanon from Hezbollah.
Livni, speaking in Hebrew, said Israel halted its offensive on Lebanon on the basis of the resolution and on the international community's willingness to act to stop Hezbollah missile attacks.
"The international community's forces must be there to help the Lebanese government and army to regain control of its territory," she said.
She added that Israel and the Lebanese population paid "an extremely heavy price" for the non-application of an earlier UN resolution which had demanded the disarmament of Hezbollah and other Lebanese militia.
"The final goal is that of a Lebanon that is free and free of militias," she said, adding that "all extremists' eyes are focused on the region now" to see what will be the outcome of the conflict.
Livni also thanked Douste-Blazy for calling for the release of Israeli soldiers in the hands of Hezbollah and Hamas, and said: "I hope that after these months of violence we can turn towards a brighter future for all the region."
Douste-Blazy, who made four trips to Lebanon during and after the recent Israel-Hezbollah conflict, said before meeting Livni that he would ask her to lift Israel's blockade on Lebanese ports and airports.
"If Lebanon is to reconstruct, if it is going to recover economically, this blockade must be lifted," he told France 2 television.
Israel imposed a total embargo on Lebanon shortly after the start of its offensive against Hezbollah on July 12, and has maintained it even after a UN-brokered ceasefire went into effect on August 14.
Douste-Blazy also said he would ask that the UN Interim Force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, enforce an embargo on the transport of arms across Lebanon's border -- implicitly including the border with Syria, considered a Hezbollah sponsor and arms provider.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said that he would consider the presence of an international military force on the border between Syria and Lebanon as a "hostile" act.
Later Wednesday, Livni was to meet French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.
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Israeli Soldiers Move Into Gaza Town
Thursday August 24, 2006 12:31 PM
By IBRAHIM BARZAK
Associated Press Writer
JERUSALEM (AP) - Israeli forces crossed into the Gaza Strip early Thursday in a raid that captured a local Hamas militant leader and left his brother dead near a Gaza border town, Palestinians witnesses and officials said.
As the forces - backed by tanks and helicopter gunships - moved into the area of Abasan and took up positions on rooftops, militants began firing at them, sparking gunbattles that wounded two militants, Palestinian officials said.
Hamas officials identified the captured man as Younis Abu Daka, a local Hamas leader and a lecturer at Islamic University in Gaza City. His brother, Yousef, was killed in the fighting, the militant group said.
The army confirmed that a senior Hamas operative was arrested, and at least one militant was killed. It did not identify the men.
The violence came as Israel continued its offensive in the Gaza Strip, which it began June 28, three days after Hamas-linked militants tunneled into Israel, attacked an Israeli army post and captured a soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit.
Israel said it would maintain its offensive until Shalit was released and militants ceased firing rockets into Israel.
The army has routinely carried out nighttime raids into Gaza since the offensive began.
Israel has killed more than 200 Palestinians - most of them militants - since the offensive began two months ago. Palestinian officials fear that Israel, after battling Hezbollah guerrillas to a stalemate in Lebanon, now turn its attention back on Gaza.
Late Wednesday, an Israeli tank fired a shell at two men who approached Gaza's border fence with Israel near Abasan, according to Palestinian officials and the army.
An Islamic Jihad militant's body and a wounded group member were found near the area, Islamic Jihad and ambulance crews said.
Ambulance crews found one wounded person, an Islamic Jihad militant, in the area and were searching for others.
The army said soldiers identified two suspicious men crawling toward the border post, fired a tank shell at them.
Also Wednesday, a top Palestinian militant leader in the West Bank was shot in the head and seriously wounded, militants and hospital officials said.
Hospital officials said Hossam Jaradat, the West Bank leader of Islamic Jihad's militant wing, was shot by Israeli soldiers in the Jenin refugee camp. But Islamic Jihad said they were not sure Israel was behind the shooting.
The Israeli army said it had no information on the report.
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Gaza swelters through summer without power
By Gideon Levy
8/23/06
Haaretz.com
It's hot, very hot, in the Gaza Strip. But over the last two months, ever since Israel bombed the new power station in the center of the Strip, the heat has become unbearable. The bombing has disrupted the supply of electricity to some 1.5 million residents; food in refrigerators goes bad, the patients in the hospitals groan, industry and work are paralyzed, traffic is gridlocked and there is a severe water shortage.
On the night of June 28, the Israel Air Force bombed the power station as part of Operation Summer Rains, destroying its six transformers. The assault was approved by the security cabinet, and was intended to pressure the Palestinians into releasing Gilad Shalit, the captured soldier.
The modern power station, financed by Enron in partnership with a Palestinian company, was completely paralyzed, and the Gaza Strip lost some 60 percent of its supply of electricity. Gaza buys the remaining 40 percent from the Israel Electricity Corporation.
On Sunday this week, the burned out and destroyed transformers were still lying near the power station's fence. Two were made by Israeli company Elco Industries, and four by the German ABB. The station, located between Gaza and Dir al Balah, was inaugurated at the end of 2001. It was to provide power not only to Gaza but to the West Bank too, after being linked in the future to the Israeli network.
Israel knew exactly what it was bombing, says station manager Dr. Drar Abu-Sisi. It's impossible to operate the station without the transformers. Replacing them would take at least a year - either by ordering new transformers or by hooking up to the Egyptian power network.
With a capacity of 140 megawatts, the power station was the most advanced in the Arab world. Israel could have paralyzed the station by simply stopping its fuel supply, without putting it out of action for months.
"Had they told us on the phone to cut the power off, we'd have done so right away," says Abu-Sisi, who is convinced that the bombing was politically motivated.
"It was a foolish attack, which only sows more and more hatred for Israel," he says.
Each transformer costs around $2 million, but the main damage is indirect - the loss of income to the power station, grave damage to all its systems that could rust, and the huge blow to the Gaza Strip's miserable economy.
The Israel Defense Forces Spokesman's Office told Haaretz yesterday that "the bombing was intended to disrupt the activity of the terror networks directly and indirectly associated with Gilad Shalit's kidnapping."
Meanwhile, the station's 160 workers are out of work and Gaza has electrical power for only a few hours a day. Those who can afford it buy generators, and everyone goes up on the rooftops at night to escape the burdensome heat inside.
Comment: Note this:
"It was a foolish attack, which only sows more and more hatred for Israel"
You think the Israeli government does not know this? Why does the Israeli government want to increase hatred towards Israel and therefore the Jews?
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Pressure piled on Hamas amid political, financial crisis
www.chinaview.cn 2006-08-24 05:56:24
GAZA, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- Pressures have been piled on the ruling Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) as calls for forming a coalition government mounted and a grave financial crisis deteriorated amid an Israeli offensive against the Gaza Strip.
Hundreds of unpaid Palestinian governmental employees demonstrated in sit-in protests in front of their ministries in West Bank city of Ramallah on Wednesday.
The employees demanded the Hamas-led government to pay their salaries. Otherwise, they called on the government to resign "if it was unable to carry out its obligations."
The Palestinian government was unable to pay salaries for the 165,000 public employees since it took office in late March due to an aid cutoff by key donors.
Meanwhile, rift between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haneya over forming a coalition government has widened.
On Aug. 17, Abbas and Haneya agreed on forming a coalition government, however, Haneya outlined three preconditions to form the coalition on the next day, which includes the release of jailed Hamas ministers and lawmakers by Israel, ending international boycott against the Hamas government and nominating a prime minister from Hamas.
The Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hayat quoted unidentified Palestinian sources as saying on Wednesday that Abbas was very angry and rejected the three conditions put forward by Haneya. Other well-informed sources said on Tuesday that Abbas favored the formation of a technocrat government instead of a coalition one to replace the current Hamas-led cabinet.
Analysts believe that there are three tasks for Abbas and Haneya at the time being and if they failed to reach an agreement on the three tasks, the ongoing crisis in the Palestinian territories will never be resolved.
"The first task is to end up with forming a national unity government, the second one is to find a solution to the kidnapped Israeli soldier and the third is to reach a ceasefire with Israel," said Adnan Abu Salem, a Palestinian scholar who teaches political science in Gaza.
He underscored that everyone "should work in parallel until each task achieves its positive results, then if these three issues are settled, I do believe that Hamas would escape from the ongoing pressure and suffering of the Palestinian people would end."
On the financial front, as the fiscal situation was getting worse, Palestinian employees, including teachers and other civil servants as well as unemployed workers were getting angry. "We regret to vote for Hamas in the election," a Palestinian employee complained, adding, "Hamas ran in the election under the slogan 'change and reform', but we have seen neither change nor reform."
Salim al-Khawaja asked, "Where are the huge amounts of cash that many Hamas leaders have recently smuggled into the Gaza Strip through Rafah border crossing?"
Hamas, who overwhelmingly won the January election, rejected to meet three demands to recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept previous peace deals between Israel and the Palestinians.
Key donors including the United States and the European Union have cut off direct aid since Hamas single handedly form the cabinet in late March.
Earlier, Israel has already halted monthly transfer of tax money it collects on behalf of the Palestinian government while vowing no contact with the Palestinian government led by Hamas, a group which calls for Israel's destruct.
The pressures on Hamas movement have mounted since one of its armed wing, along with two other Palestinian factions, nabbed an Israeli soldier in an armed attack on June 25, which sparked Israel's comprehensive offensive against the Gaza Strip.
As part of the offensive to free the hostage and halt rocket attack, Israel has arrested eight ministers and more than two dozens lawmakers in the Hamas-led cabinet including the parliament speaker Aziz Dweik, vowing to continue targeting Hamas until militants free the soldier.
Haneya said, "Cutting financial aids to the government, and detaining speaker of the parliament, the Hamas lawmakers and the ministers would never break our determination and would never force us to surrender."
A Palestinian analyst in Gaza Ahmed Oudeh said, "This kind of financial pressure has affected neither the Hamas leaders nor the Hamas-led government's officials, but unfortunately, it hurt the Palestinian people and deepened their suffering."
He continued that "Hamas can't challenge the whole world and the highest interests of the Palestinian people. It should sooner or later recognize the peace initiatives and international legitimacy."
"There is the Arab peace initiative that Hamas should recognize, and there is also the document of national accordance issued by leaders of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails that Hamas should completely adopt," said Oudeh.
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Liberal MP resigns post after comments about Hezbollah
Last Updated Wed, 23 Aug 2006 21:11:58 EDT
CBC News
Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj has resigned as foreign affairs critic following his controversial remark that Canada should negotiate with Hezbollah, a group Canada considers a terrorist organization.
Bill Graham, the Liberals' interim leader, told reporters that Wrzesnewskyj tendered his resignation. Graham said that under the circumstances, he felt it was appropriate to accept it.
During a tour of the Middle East with NDP and Bloc colleagues, the Toronto MP was quoted as saying that Hezbollah should be taken off Canada's list of terrorist organizations.
He later denied making those remarks, insisting that he considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization.
But he said he was concerned Ottawa's list of terrorist groups doesn't differentiate between the militant and political wings of the party.
He said Canada's legislation should be amended to allow contact with the political arms of banned organizations.
All 10 leadership hopefuls condemned the remarks. Scott Brison and Carolyn Bennett said Wrzesnewskyj should no longer retain his post as a foreign affairs spokesman.
Comment: But, hey, there's no Israel lobby in Canada.
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Hizbollah's reconstruction of Lebanon is winning the loyalty of disaffected Shia
By Robert Fisk
08/24/06 "The Independent"
Hizbollah has trumped both the UN army and the Lebanese government by pouring hundreds of millions of dollars - most of it almost certainly from Iran - into the wreckage of southern Lebanon and Beirut's destroyed southern suburbs. Its massive new reconstruction effort - free of charge to all those Lebanese whose homes were destroyed or damaged in Israel's ferocious five-week assault on the country - has won the loyalty of even the most disaffected members of the Shia community in Lebanon.
Hizbollah has made it clear that it has no intention of disarming under the UN Security Council's 1701 ceasefire resolution and yesterday afternoon, Major-General Alain Pellegrini, the commander of the UN Interim Force in southern Lebanon - which the Americans and British are relying upon to seize the guerrilla army's weapons - personally confirmed to me at his headquarters in Naqoura that "the Israelis can't ask us to disarm Hizbollah". Describing the ceasefire as "very fragile" and "very dangerous", he stated that disarming Hizbollah "is not written in the mandate".
But for now - and in the total absence of the 8,000-strong foreign military force that is intended to join Unifil with a supposedly "robust" mandate - Hizbollah has already won the war for "hearts and minds". Most householders in the south have received - or are receiving - a minimum initial compensation payment of $12,000 (£6,300), either for new furniture or to cover their family's rent while Hizbollah construction gangs rebuild their homes. The money is being paid in cash - almost all in crisp new $100 bills - to up to 15,000 families across Lebanon whose property was blitzed by the Israelis, a bill of $180m which is going to rise far higher when reconstruction and other compensation is paid.
In the 20sqkm of Beirut's southern suburbs which have been destroyed or badly damaged in 35 days of Israeli bombing, 500,000 residents - most of them Shia - lost their homes. But money is being poured in. For example, one Shia owning four floors of an apartment block, Hussein Selim, has already received $42,000 in cash for his possessions and lost furniture. And Hizbollah has pledged to rebuild the entire municipal area from its own - or perhaps Iran's - funds.
A frightening side to this long-term promise for believers in the UN ceasefire is that Hizbollah has encouraged its Shia population to rent homes in Khalde, south of Beirut, since it intends to delay its entire city construction project for a year - because of its conviction that the ceasefire will break down and that another Israeli-Hizbollah war will only wreck newly built homes.
Across the devastation of southern Lebanon, Hizbollah has now visited hundreds of thousands of Shia families for details of their losses. In some cases, Lebanese government officials - largely distrusted by the local population - have also made notes of compensation costs but all the authorities have done so far is to start the repair of water pipes and power lines. I found bulldozers working for Hizbollah's "Jihad al-Bena" company, clearing rubble from streets and tearing down half-destroyed houses. "We are doing this for nothing at the moment, but we know we will get paid because we trust Sheikh Hassan," a construction team leader told me. Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader, has promised to indemnify all survivors.
Driving more than 100 miles across the south of the country yesterday, the sheer enormity of Hizbollah's task - and of the Lebanese government's failure - becomes evident. Looking across thegreen countryside of southern Lebanon, the villages appear undamaged as they bask in thesun. But the closer you get, the more you notice vast grey fields of rubble that were once homes. Some villages - Bint Jbeil, for example, and Zibqin - have been half-destroyed.
In Zibqin itself, I found one especially poignant ruin: the bombed remains of a mosque well over 1,000 years old which the Lebanese believe contains the body of Zein Ali Yaqin, son of the Prophet Yacoub - Jacob in the Jewish faith - and grandson of the Prophet Ibrahim, or Abraham. Two of Abraham's sons - Yacoub and Ismail (Ishmael) - define the split between Islam and Judaism, the former believing God told Abraham to sacrifice Ismail and the latter contending it was Yacoub/Jacob who was to be sacrificed. Zein Ali Yaqin is thus of precious Jewish lineage - yet the casket containing his mortal remains actually moved on the floor of the shrine as Israeli bombs fell outside.
The explosives have blasted down an old façade and tumbled hundreds of rocks from the original outside wall of the green-domed mosque on the slope below, cracking open the interior walls and cascading wreckage on to the floor beside the cloth-covered tomb. "The Israelis did all this to their own man," Hussein Barakat said as he hobbled down the road below. "Everyone here knows the origin of our little shrine, but look at it now." Mr Barakat is 69 and was the only villager to remain in Zibqin when the rest of the villagers fled the Israeli bombardment. He has a wound on one finger and has been left half deaf from the sound of explosions.
Bodies of civilians and Hizbollah fighters were still being unearthed from the wreckage of southern Lebanon this week; four brothers, all members of Hizbollah it turned out, died together under Israeli fire in the eastern town of Khiam. Some civilian families searched in vain through the rubble for relatives. In Siddiqin, just east of Qana, I found one shopkeeper who had spent hours trying to discover the ruins of his two shops which had been turned to dust by aerial bombs. But he, too, believed that "Sheikh Hassan" would rebuild his home. A few miles away, I found a 65-year-old woman clambering like a cat over the pancaked roof of her home, looking for her family gold in clefts between the packed concrete.
It is Hizbollah's army of workers which has been told to rebuild these villages. The guerrilla army's political and economic organisation will hire the tens of thousands of men to reconstruct a virtual city within Beirut and turn south Lebanon's wasteland back into the farming and tobacco-growing villages that existed two months ago.
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America Out Of Control
Tired staff says 'no' to Bush third term
AFP
Wed Aug 23, 2006
WASHINGTON - A Hurricane Katrina survivor called for a third term for US President George W. Bush, but ran into another obstacle besides the two-term constitutional maximum: the White House staff.
"Believe me, I think the staff thinks that two are plenty," Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino quipped hours after Rockey Vaccarella had apparently surprised Bush during a joint appearance by endorsing him for an impossible third term.
Asked why Bush aides believed that two four-year stints in the White House were enough, Perino said: "Because I'm tired."
Earlier, with Bush at his side after a closed-door meeting on reconstruction efforts after last year's deadly hurricane, Vaccarella gushed about the temporary trailers sent by Washington to house those the storm left homeless.
"They gave roofs over people's head. People had the chance to have baths, air condition(ing). We have TV, we have toiletry, we have things that are necessities that we can live upon," said Vaccarella.
"And I just don't want the government and President Bush to forget about us. And I just wish the president could have another term in Washington," Vaccarella said.
"Wait a minute!" the president retorted, laughing.
"You know, I wish you had another four years, man. If we had this president for another four years, I think we'd be great. But we're going to move on," Vaccarella continued.
Under the 22nd amendment to the US Constitution, no person can be elected US president more than twice, and no one who has held the office or acted as president for more than two years -- like a vice president taking over for a deceased president -- can be elected more than once.
Comment: Hint hint...
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SWAT teams may step up role on U.S.-Mexico border
By Tim Gaynor
Reuters
Wed Aug 23, 2006
TUCSON, Arizona - Elite U.S. Border Patrol units armed with assault rifles and stun grenades may be set to play a more prominent role as authorities gain greater control over the porous border with Mexico, border police say.
Little known outside law enforcement circles, the Bortac tactical teams have been deployed to remote reaches of the border to hunt drug and human traffickers using out-of-the way routes since the 1980s.
The Bortac members wear full battle-dress uniforms and carry state-of-the-art night vision and thermal optics. They are armed with weapons including M4 assault rifles and "flash-bang" stun grenades developed for the special forces.
The teams first came to widespread attention in April 2000 after they were used in a headline-grabbing raid to snatch Cuban youngster Elian Gonzalez from relatives in Miami and return him to his father in Cuba.
In a bid to gain control over the Mexico border, President George W. Bush ordered 6,000 National Guard troops to help the Border Patrol guard the international line in May. Since then, apprehensions have fallen by more than 40 percent.
The special response team members on active duty in the deserts south of Tucson, Arizona, believe they may play a larger role interdicting determined smugglers forced to cross through ever-more remote areas as authorities choke off easily crossed routes.
"They are going to have go to those isolated areas," one team leader, who asked not to identified for reasons of operational security, told Reuters during a patrol just yards from Arizona's border with the Mexican state of Sonora.
"Specialty teams like ours are going to have to be deployed there ... to work that traffic."
UNITS SET FOR MORE ACTION
The Border Patrol will not say how many agents are in the units. Some are members of Bortac, the patrol's federal special response team, while others belong to teams drawn from sectors across the 2,000-mile (3,200-km) southwest border.
Aside from their policing role, the teams also have been deployed to quell riots and to help following natural disasters, including Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans last year.
The volunteer units are often brought in by helicopter or make miles-long hikes to deploy in remote desert wilderness areas and along jagged mountain ridgelines that are beyond the reach of Border Patrol agents in sports utility vehicles and on dirt bikes.
Whereas Border Patrol agents will typically track intruders, following their trails until they catch up with them, the special teams stake out known routes and stage "soft" ambushes for often heavily armed smugglers.
"We will go in hard, often with a flash-bang grenade to maintain the element of surprise," one unit member said as he sat in pitch darkness training a night vision scope on a cactus-studded trail leading up from Mexico.
"Even if they have weapons, it can turn a lethal situation into a non-lethal situation," he said.
Team members say they encounter increasingly well-organized gangs in Mexico, who mount counter-surveillance operations using their own night vision optics to spot their pursuers.
With the high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse poised to step up tempo in coming months, the special team members say they are confident in their abilities to meet the challenge.
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Black students ordered to give up seats to white children
By Vickie Welborn
Shreveport Times
August 24, 2006
COUSHATTA, LA -- Nine black children attending Red River Elementary School were directed last week to the back of the school bus by a white driver who designated the front seats for white children.
The situation has outraged relatives of the black children who have filed a complaint with school officials.
Superintendent Kay Easley will meet with the family members in her office this morning.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People also is considering filing a formal charge with the U.S. Department of Justice. NAACP District Vice President James Panell, of Shreveport, said he would apprise Justice attorneys of the situation this week. He's considering asking for an investigation into the bus incident and other aspects of the school system's operations, including pupil-teacher ratio as it relates to the numbers of white and black children, along with a breakdown of the numbers of black and white teachers employed.
"If the smoke is there, then there's probably fire somewhere else," Panell said in a phone interview from New Orleans. "At this point, it is extremely alarming. We fought that battle 50 years ago, and we won. Why is this happening again?"
Easley would not comment much on the allegations Wednesday, saying it is a personnel issue. She acknowledged that she has investigated the claim. And she confirmed that the bus driver did not run her route Wednesday, nor would she today.
Asked if the driver would work for the rest of the year, Easley said, "I'm not going to answer the questions. "» You're getting all that you're going to get from me. I'm sorry."
Red River Elementary School Principal Jamie Lawrence tried to rectify the seating situation when it was brought to her attention. But it was ultimately handled at the Central Office, Patricia Sessoms said.
Sessoms aunt, Iva Richmond, is the mother of two of the children, ages 14 and 15, and foster parent to three others, ages 5, 6 and 10. Janice Williams, who is the mother of the other four children, is Richmond's neighbor. All nine children catch the bus at a stop on Ashland Road.
Sessoms will join Richmond and Williams in their meeting with Easley today. Sessoms said they would ask for bus driver Delores Davis' immediate termination. Davis, who originates her bus route in Martin, has called Richmond to apologize, Sessoms said. A message left on Davis' answering machine late Wednesday afternoon was not immediately returned.
After Richmond and Williams filed complaints with the School Board, Transportation Supervisor Jerry Carlisle asked Davis to make seat assignments for her passengers, Sessoms said.
"But she still assigned the black children to the back of the bus," she added.
And the nine children had to share only two seats, meaning the older children had to hold the younger ones in their laps.
A new solution reached Monday by School Board officials has a black bus driver driving across town to pick up the nine black children.
"I think the whole school system needs to be reviewed in Red River Parish," Sessoms said.
Sessoms, who has two children at Red River Elementary, said she has no problems with her bus driver. "I have a wonderful bus driver," she added. Sessoms' request to have her young children sit near the front because of their ages was granted.
School Board member Gene Longino said Wednesday evening that he had not heard about the situation involving the nine children.
"I don't know anything about that. "» Until something formally comes to the School Board members through the superintendent, we don't know the details," Longino said.
School Board President Ricky Cannon was at work Wednesday evening and unavailable for comment. Board member J.B. McElwee also was not at home. Calls to the homes of Cleve Miller, Kassandria Wells White, Karen Womack and Jessie Webber were not answered.
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1 in 10 teenage girls self-harm: study
Reuters
Wed Aug 23, 2006
LONDON - One in 10 teenage girls deliberately harm themselves each year and the problem is far more widespread than previously thought, according to a study on Wednesday.
In a survey of more than 6,000 school pupils aged 15 and 16, researchers found that girls are four times more likely to have engaged in self-harm than boys.
Eleven percent of girls and 3 percent of boys reported that they had harmed themselves within the last year.
Previous estimates for the amount self-harm in the country were based on the 25,000 "presentations" at hospitals in England and Wales each year that are the result of deliberate self-poisoning or self-injury amongst teenagers.
However, the research, by academics from the universities of Bath and Oxford, has found that only 13 percent of self-harming incidents reported by the pupils had resulted in a hospital visit.
Although poisoning is the most common form of self-harm reported in hospitals, the study revealed that cutting was the more prevalent form of self-harm (64.5 percent), followed by overdosing (31 per cent).
"The study shows that deliberate self-harm is common amongst teenagers in England, especially in girls who are four times more likely to self-harm than boys," said Dr Karen Rodham from the Department of Psychology at the University of Bath.
"Until now, most studies of deliberate self-harm in adolescents in the UK have been based on the cases that reach hospital.
"We have found that the true extent of self-harm in England is significantly wider than that."
Professor Keith Hawton from the Center for Suicide Research at the University of Oxford, who directed the project, said the study would help devise ways of addressing the problem and identifying those at most risk.
"In many cases, self-harming behavior represents a transient period of distress, but for others it is an important indicator of mental health problems and a risk of suicide," he said in a statement.
COMMON MOTIVES
The study showed the most frequent motive expressed by both males and females was as a means of coping with distress.
For both sexes there was an increase in deliberate self-harm with increased consumption of cigarettes or alcohol, and all categories of drug use.
Self-harm was more common in pupils who had been bullied and was strongly associated with physical and sexual abuse in both sexes.
The majority of those who said they harmed themselves said it was an impulsive act rather than something they had thought about for a long time.
The vast majority of pupils said their friends were the people they felt that they could talk to about things that bothered them and those who had harmed themselves most often turned to friends.
"This responsibility places a great burden on adolescents to support their peers, yet most adolescents have not in any way been coached in how best to do this," said Hawton.
"Attention to this aspect of support for adolescents should be an essential part of mental health education in schools, and it is great to see the development of the wellness programs currently being trialled in some schools.
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Bush Says Katrina Recovery Takes Time
Thursday August 24, 2006 12:01 PM
By JENNIFER LOVEN
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush cautioned against placing too much importance on the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's Gulf Coast strike, saying a long, sustained rebuilding effort is still needed.
"It's a time to remember that people suffered and it's a time to recommit ourselves to helping them,'' Bush said Wednesday. "But I also want people to remember that a one-year anniversary is just that, because it's going to require a long time to help these people rebuild.''
A day earlier, the Bush administration's Gulf Coast coordinator, Don Powell, said $44 billion has been spent to get the still-battered region back on its feet. A far larger sum - more than $110 billion - has been designated for the massive rebuilding project. Of that money, approximately $17 billion will help rebuild an estimated 204,000 homes in Louisiana and Mississippi.
Bush spoke on the South Lawn of the White House after meeting in the Oval Office with a New Orleans-area man who lost his home in the storm. Rockey Vaccarella, 41, of Meraux in St. Bernard Parish, has been traveling the Gulf Coast region to mark the Katrina anniversary.
Nearly a year after the hurricane, criticism lingered.
In a report entitled "Broken Promises,'' House and Senate Democratic leaders described what they called "the failed response'' of the administration since the hurricane hit.
Released Wednesday by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and her Senate counterpart, Harry Reid, D-Nev., the report asserted that "thousands of families are still waiting'' for FEMA trailers and that a significant proportion of money that FEMA has spent there "has been waste, fraud and abuse.''
"The Republican Congress didn't enact needed housing money for homeowners in Louisiana until June, 10 months after Katrina - and the money has still failed to reach these homeowners,'' it said.
For his part, Bush promised to continue working to make sure the federal government's efforts in the rebuilding effort are efficient.
"I told Rockey the first obligation of the federal government is to write a check big enough to help the people down there,'' Bush said. "And I told him that to the extent that there's still bureaucratic hurdles, and the need for the federal government to help eradicate those hurdles, we want to do that.''
Vaccarella said he wanted to thank Bush for the federally provided trailers that have provided temporary housing to many in the region who lost homes, but also to keep the pressure on.
"I wanted to remind the president that the job's not done and he knows that,'' Vaccarell said. "I just don't want the government and President Bush to forget about us.''
The president was designating Tuesday, the Katrina anniversary, as a National Day of Remembrance to honor those who lost lives and property and those who helped rescue victims, said spokeswoman Dana Perino.
Bush is spending two days in the Gulf region next week to mark the anniversary. He will be in Mississippi on Monday, to have lunch with community leaders, walk through a neighborhood, and deliver a speech on the rebuilding effort, before traveling to New Orleans, where he was scheduled to have dinner with state and local official and spend the night. On Tuesday, Bush is attending a service of prayer and remembrance, conducting a roundtable discussion on an effort headed by first lady Laura Bush to restock Gulf Coast libraries. He also will give a speech and visit with local residents, Perino said.
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Back Door Draft?
Julian Borger in Washington
Thursday August 24, 2006
The Guardian
US marine corps calls up reserves as army feels the pressure of fighting on two fronts
- Not enough volunteers to meet military need
- Critics say announcement is a 'back-door draft'
The US marine corps has been forced to call up its reserves for compulsory service in Iraq and Afghanistan because it has not been able to find enough volunteers - a reflection of the strain the two wars are putting on America's armed forces.
The marines' involuntary call-up, seen as a "back-door draft" by Pentagon critics, is the first since the start of the Iraq war, and will begin in a few months when a first batch of up to 2,500 reservists will be summoned back to active service for a year or more. The army has already sent 2,200 reservists back to the front, of which only about 350 went voluntarily.
The marine corps announcement is in contrast to predictions by US commanders a few months ago that American force levels in Iraq could be reduced from about 130,000 to 100,000 by the end of the year. Those plans were shelved as sectarian violence worsened.
A mobile brigade due to return to base in Alaska last month after a year in Iraq had its tour extended by four months and was sent to Baghdad, to help Iraqi government forces slow the slide towards civil war. There are now 138,000 American troops in Iraq, of which 22,000 are marines - mostly in Anbar province.
"All that happy talk about getting down to 100,000 by the end of this year, that's not on the cards for this year," said John Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.org, a military thinktank in Washington.
"Instead, they might bump up the numbers even further ... They are going to do whatever it takes to keep a lid on this damn thing in Baghdad, because if there's anywhere it's going to fly off the handle it's in Baghdad. And if ethnic cleansing takes on a life of its own, people in this town are going to say it's time to leave."
The marine corps will be drawing on its 59,000-strong "individual ready reserve" - recent veterans who have returned to civilian life but who still have up to four years remaining of the military obligation they signed up to when they enlisted. The compulsory mobilisation of the reserve is normally ordered only in case of national emergency, but this year there were not enough reservist volunteers to fill the gaps in marine ranks.
Guy Stratton, who is in charge of the marine's mobilisation programme, said that the most urgent need was for engineers, intelligence officers, military police and communication specialists.
"Since this is going to be a long war, we thought it was judicious and prudent at this time to be able to use a relatively small portion of those marines to help us augment our units," Colonel Stratton said.
Typically marines sign up for eight years, spending four in active service. If they then return to civilian life in the individual ready reserve, the marine corps has the right to call them back to active duty for the remaining four years.
Gary Anderson, a retired marine colonel and now a Pentagon adviser on Iraq, said the call-up reflected the strain the Iraq war was putting on the force. "We're in Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, and we still have commitments in the Far East. I think if Iraq was the only game in town, it would be different," he said.
"Quite frankly some of these guys have gone to Iraq two or three times, and they feel they've done their bit ... It's going to put a strain on them. Both people and equipment are getting worn out. There's an old saying - long wars ruin armies, and I think that's an accurate statement."
Jack Reed, a Democratic senator on the armed services committee, said the marines and army were "stretched perilously thin and the equipment is seriously degraded".
But Mr Pike dismissed claims that the armed services were not ready as exaggerations based on peace-time standards. Instead, he said, resources were being focused on immediate combat needs.
"In wartime, if a wheel's not squeaking, it's not going to get greased," he said, adding: "The current troop level in Iraq can be sustained indefinitely ... If the army asked for bigger numbers, Congress would approve it, and the president would sign off on it, as long as the war seems to be winnable."
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UPDATE: US experts blame ReNu contact-lens solution for infections
AFP
Wed Aug 23, 2006
WASHINGTON - US disease experts singled out a contact-lens solution made by Bausch and Lomb as being responsible for more than 100 serious eye infections.
But the experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ruled out faults in Bausch and Lomb's manufacturing process for injecting the fungal condition, Fusarium keratitis, into the solutions.
In April, the company yanked its best-selling ReNu with MoistureLoc solution from sale worldwide after numerous contact-lens wearers were infected with the condition, a painful inflammation of the cornea that can lead to blindness.
As of June 30, the CDC researchers had identified 164 confirmed cases of Fusarium keratitis infection across the United States. Of the total, 55 patients needed corneal transplants.
Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the experts said victims were about 20 times more likely than control patients to have used ReNu with MoistureLoc.
"The findings from this investigation indicate that this outbreak of Fusarium keratitis was associated with use of ReNu with MoistureLoc contact-lens solution," they wrote in the journal's August 23-30 edition.
"Contact-lens users should not use ReNu with MoistureLoc."
Bausch and Lomb has been hit with a number of US lawsuits from aggrieved users of its MoistureLoc solution, which made worldwide sales of about 100 million dollars last year.
After inspecting a Bausch and Lomb plant in South Carolina, the US Food and Drug Administration said in May that it could not determine a link to the spate of serious eye infections.
The company has insisted that the solution, as supplied from the factory, was as "safe and effective as anything else on the market".
The CDC experts' report left open the possibility that the solution had become contaminated in users' homes, but said poor hygiene was not a likely cause of the infections.
"Our findings, together with the results of environmental testing, suggest that exposure to Fusarium was likely the result of extrinsic contamination of contact-lens solution bottles or lens cases occurring outside of the manufacturing or storage processes, perhaps in patients' homes," they said.
"However, suboptimal contact lens hygiene practices appear unlikely as the major explanation for the outbreak."
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Burning Wetlands Unleash Sequestered Mercury In Wake Of Climate Change
Michigan State University
August 23, 2006
Climate change appears to be contributing to the waking of a dangerous sleeping giant in the most northern wetlands of North America - mercury.
Released into the atmosphere most prodigiously with the launching of the industrial age, the toxic element falls back onto Earth, and accumulates particularly in North American wetlands. A Michigan State University researcher working closely with the U.S. Geological Survey finds wildfires, growing more frequent and intense, are unleashing this sequestered mercury at levels up to 15 times greater than originally calculated.
The report, "Wildfires threaten mercury stocks in northern soils," appears this week in the online edition of Geophysical Research Letters.
"This study makes the point that while peat lands are typically viewed as very wet and stagnant places, they do burn in continental regions, especially late in the season when water tables are depressed," said Merritt Turetsky, assistant professor of plant biology and fisheries and wildlife at MSU. "When peat lands burn, they can release a huge amount of mercury that overwhelms regional atmospheric emissions. Our study is new in that it looks to the soil record to tell us what happens when peat soil burns, soil that has been like a sponge for mercury for a long time."
Normal atmospheric conditions naturally carry the mercury emitted from burning fossil fuel and other industry northward, where it eventually settles on land or water surfaces. The cold, wet soils of the boreal forest region in Alaska and northern Canada have been efficient resting places for mercury.
"When we walk across the surface of a peat land, we are standing on many thousands of years of peat accumulation," Turetsky said. "This type of wetland is actually doing us a service. Peat lands have been storing mercury from the atmosphere since well before and during the Industrial Revolution, locking it in peat where it's not causing any biological harm, away from the food web."
In addition to industrial activity, climate change also appears to be disrupting mercury's cycle. Increasingly, northern wetlands are drying out. Forest fires are burning more frequently, more intensely, and later in the season, which Turetsky believes will make peat lands more vulnerable to fire. In May, Turetsky co-wrote another Geophysical Research Letters paper that documented recent changes in North American fires and suggested that more frequent summer droughts and severe fire weather have increased burn areas.
"We are suggesting that environmental mercury is just like a thermometer. Levels will rise in the atmosphere with climate change, but due to increasing fire activity in the north and not solely due to warming," said Jennifer Harden, soil scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey and co-author of the study.
In this month's paper, Turetsky, with co-authors Harden and James Crock of the U.S. Geological Survey; Hans Friedli and Lawrence Radke of the National Center for Atmospheric Research; and Mike Flannigan and Nicholas Payne of the Canadian Forest Service, measured the amount of mercury stored in soils and vegetation of forests and peat lands, then used historical burn areas and emission models to estimate how much of that mercury is released to the atmosphere at a regional scale during fires.
The group has spent more than five years studying prescribed burns in addition to natural fires to measure the influence of burning on terrestrial mercury storage. They also have sampled smoke plumes to measure atmospheric mercury levels as fires blaze.
Their findings indicated that drier conditions in northern regions will cause soil to relinquish its hold on hundreds of years of mercury accumulation, sending that mercury back into the air at levels considerably higher than previously realized.
"We're talking about mercury that has been relatively harmless, trapped in peat for hundreds of years, rapidly being spewed back into the air," Turetsky said. "Some of it will fall back onto soils. Some will fall into lakes and streams where it could become toxic in food chains.
"Our findings show us that climate change is complex and will contribute to the pollution of food chains that are very far away from us, in remote regions of the north."
The research was funded by the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Center of Atmospheric Research (supported by the National Science Foundation), and the Electric Power Research Institute. Turetsky's May paper in Geophysical Research Letters was funded by NASA. Turetsky's work also is supported by the MSU Michigan Agricultural Research Station.
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Much of Northwest US Under Fire Warnings
AP
Aug 23, 2006
DAYTON, Wash. - Red flag warnings were posted for wide areas of the Northwest on Wednesday, indicating extreme fire danger as crews battled spreading wildfires.
Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire declared a statewide wildfire emergency, citing the major fires already burning and the potential for more blazes as weather forecasters predicted thunderstorms, high wind and low humidity.
"It's very rugged terrain," Gregoire said after a helicopter tour of the state's largest fire, which had burned across 200 square miles. "The firefighters go in and put up a line, and the fire will jump a mile over the line. ... We're just hoping now the weather cooperates."
The declaration allows state agencies to spend money and resources to help local jurisdictions fight wildfires.
Meanwhile, a group of wind-driven fires near Dayton in southeast Washington doubled in size in about 24 hours to nearly 40 square miles.
Thirty-five residents evacuated from a nursing home were allowed to return because the smoke had cleared, and some residents of 200 evacuated homes also came back, said Ray Steiger, information officer at the fire complex.
But residents of dozens of homes near the Coppei River south of Waitsburg, some on pricey 5-acre lots, and some people living along the Tucannon River were warned to be ready to evacuate.
Red flag warnings or fire weather watches also were posted for parts of Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Utah, the National Fire Information Center said.
An evacuation order was issued Wednesday for 25 to 30 homes in a subdivision east of Billings, Mont., as a nearby wildfire grew to at least 3,300 acres, said Mary Apple, fire information officer with the Billings Dispatch Center. The blaze destroyed two homes, a barn and several outbuildings Tuesday.
The fire, fueled by timber and grass, was reported Tuesday morning; the cause was not yet known.
In California, a fire that had burned 480 acres, or about three- quarters of a square mile, forced the closure of trails to the summit of El Capitan, one of the best-known granite monuments that tower over the Yosemite Valley.
The fire, which started Monday, was believed to have been accidentally set by humans. It was about 30 percent contained Wednesday.
North of Reno, Nev., a vehicle struck a wall during a police training exercise Wednesday and sparked a 50-acre brush file that destroyed several vehicles and sheds.
In Nevada's Elko County, a week's worth of fires had blackened more than 360 square miles. The largest active fire burned nearly 36 square miles, including three cabins, a trailer and an outbuilding.
In Utah, a firefighter who was killed battling a blaze in the Fishlake National Forest was taken to the cemetery on a fire truck Wednesday.
More than 1,000 people, including Gov. Jon Huntsman, came to the funeral for Spencer Koyle, 33, who died Aug. 17. He was scouting a fire when it suddenly trapped him, authorities said.
"There were a lot of tears," said Susan Marzec, a U.S. Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman.
The fire continued to burn Wednesday about 15 miles north of the funeral in Holden. It covered nearly 8,000 acres, or 12 1/2 square miles, and was 15 percent contained.
So far this year, wildfires have blackened 6.8 million acres, or 10,600 square miles, compared to 6.7 million acres at this same time last year, the center said.
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World Taking Notice - Mother Nature Too
Chavez plans to more than triple oil to China
by Verna Yu
AFP
August 24, 2006
BEIJING - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was to meet his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao after vowing a huge increase in oil exports to China that would scale back dependence on the US market.
Chavez, one of the world's most vocal critics of US President George W. Bush's administration, repeated his intention to make China one of Venezuela's biggest markets and lessen his nation's economic reliance on Washington.
"We will convert ourselves into one of the large oil exporters to the Chinese giant," Chavez told Venezuelan state television during his high-profile six-day visit with Chinese officials here.
"On the whole, production will increase in such a way that we will manage to export half a million crude barrels (a day to China) in the five next years," Chavez said.
Venezuela, the fifth biggest exporter of oil in the world, currently delivers 150,000 barrels per day to China, compared with 1.5 million barrels it exports to the United States.
Chavez said agreements would be signed with state-owned China National Petroleum Corp and China Petroleum and Chemical Corp (Sinopec) on Thursday to jointly exploit his country's oil-rich Orinoco region.
He said he was excited about building a strategic alliance with China and said the two nations were expected to sign nine agreements on Thursday when he meets with Hu.
"We are building the future. I am very heartened -- it is our fourth visit to China. Each visit is a step forward ... that is to say, a true alliance," he said.
Among the contracts expected to be signed are a deal to build 18 tankers to carry Venezuelan crude to China, and 12 drilling rigs to help Venezuela boost its production capacity.
Chavez's statements backed up his country's offer earlier this month to export between 500,000 and one million barrels of oil a day to China if it reached a goal of producing 5.8 million barrels of crude by 2012.
Chavez said that during the first day of his trip to China on Wednesday he had met with company officials from the telecommunications, oil tanker and building construction industries.
While Chavez looks to China as an alternative market to the United States, observers have said the arrangement is beneficial to Beijing because it wants to diversify its imports away from the volatile Middle East.
However some Chinese analysts have questioned whether the deal would be worth it, due to the higher costs associated with Venezuelan oil.
Aside from the extra expense of the long distance for shipping, Venezuelan crude is heavier than most of the Middle Eastern varieties, making it more costly to refine.
Venezuela meanwhile appears willing to accept a three-dollar discount per barrel of oil it exports to China caused by longer shipping times and increased insurance payments, according to analysts.
"It's a slightly higher cost on both sides but I also believe it's in the long-term interest of both countries to develop their relationship," said Mark Daniell, a Singapore-based oil analyst with consultancy Cuscaden Group.
As well as looking to broker energy deals, Chavez took time out on Wednesday to hail China's economic model as an alternative to the US capitalist approach.
Chavez praised China for being able, in less than half a century, to leave behind a "practically feudal" society and turn itself into one of the world's largest economies.
"It's an example for western leaders and governments that claim capitalism is the only alternative," he said.
"We've been manipulated to believe that the first man on the moon was the most important event of the 20th century.
"But no, much more important things happened, and one of the greatest events of the 20th century was the Chinese revolution."
Chavez was due to meet with Hu around 5:00 pm (0900 GMT) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
After his six-day China trip, Chavez will travel to Malaysia and Angola.
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China opens internet addicts' shelter
Jonathan Watts in Beijing
Thursday August 24, 2006
The Guardian
Shanghai has opened mainland China's first shelter for internet addicts to help them bridge the gap between virtual worlds and dysfunctional family homes.
The inauguration of the centre highlights growing government concerns about the explosive growth of the web in China, where one in eight young net users are reportedly addicted.
According to local media, the Shanghai Sunshine Community Youth Affairs Centre, which opened yesterday, offers one-night stays to youths who would otherwise spend all their time in internet cafes rather than going home.
It can provide free accommodation and counselling for up to four minors at a time. Visitors can read books, play table tennis, tinkle on the piano or use computers.
The aim of the halfway house is not to prevent young people going online but to provide an alternative to gloomy cafes and an opportunity for visitors to discuss the reasons why they spend so much time in a virtual world.
"None of the teenagers are forced to come here," Wang Hui, the chief social worker at the house told the Shanghai Daily. "We wander around in internet bars at night and bring them to the halfway house if the teen agrees." The paper said the first three boys at the house were all from one-parent families.
The shelter is the latest attempt by the authorities to come to grips with the social problems associated with excessive internet use. According to a survey by the China Youth Association for Network Development, 13% of young people with access to the web are online for more than 38 hours a week - an international health professionals' agreed definition for so-called internet addiction disorder.
A separate study by the Chinese Academy of Sciences blamed internet addiction for 80% of the cases in which students failed to graduate.
Online obsessions, particularly among players of role-playing games, have also been blamed for sleep disorders, depression, ill health and several deaths.
Considering China's online population is forecast to pass 160 million this year, the scale of the problem may be overstated. But the authorities have responded with an increasing sense of urgency.
Last year, China's first clinic offering treatment for internet addiction opened at a Beijing military hospital. The China youth league - a body of the Communist party - launched a nationwide "For the sake of the future" campaign against internet addiction. The problems were also publicised through a recent TV drama series, The Story of Shan Dianmao.
But the main focus, linked to a censorship campaign, has been a tightening of controls on internet cafes, which Xinhua, the state news agency, described as "hotbeds of juvenile crime and depravity". But the business is so lucrative that new regulations often go unenforced.
Psychologists question whether the Shanghai shelter will have any more success in tackling virtual escapism.
"I don't think this centre will help at all. It simply highlights a trend among parents to send children to doctors or counsellors whenever they encounter problems instead of talking it through together," said Song Hao, director of adolescent psychology at Beijing Giant School.
"The main reason for internet dependence is a lack of love and care inside a family. Parents and teachers only judge children by their test scores."
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Australia boosts troops due to growing instability
By James Grubel
Reuters
Thu Aug 24, 2006
CANBERRA - Australia announced a A$10 billion ($7.6 billion) plan to increase the size of its army on Thursday so it could respond more quickly to emergencies caused by growing instability in small Asia-Pacific nations.
Prime Minister John Howard said the army would seek an extra 2,600 troops, on top of the 1,500 extra forces announced earlier in the year, to provide two more battalions.
He said the rapid deterioration of law and order in the Solomon Islands and East Timor this year, and the potential for instability in the Pacific nations of Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Vanuatu, prompted the military build up.
"It is overwhelmingly in our interests to stop states failing," Howard told reporters.
"I have very much in mind the experiences in East Timor, in the Solomons, the worry I continue to have about Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu," he said.
Australia currently has about 51,000 full-time soldiers, sailors and air force personnel.
The two new battalions will strengthen Australia's army to the highest number of active battalions since 1973, when Australia withdrew from the Vietnam War, Howard said.
The military buildup comes as Australia's stretched military maintains deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan, East Timor and the Solomon Islands, with more than 4,200 military personnel on duty overseas.
Australia sent about 3,000 peacekeepers to East Timor in June to head an international force to restore order following violence in the capital Dili, although the deployment is now being scaled back.
It also has about 1,400 forces in and around Iraq, and about 500 in Afghanistan. A detachment of 150 more troops began leaving this week to bolster the Afghan deployment.
Australia led an international force into the Solomon Islands in 2003 when the nation was on the brink of collapse and was facing increased ethnic violence.
Australia sent another 400 troops and more police to the capital, Honiara, in April this year after a fresh outbreak of violence and riots following national elections.
Howard said while Australia did not see any increased military threats to the country, regional instability would become worse over the next two decades and would require Australia's military to be able to respond.
"I believe in the next 10 to 20 years, Australia will face a number of situations the equivalent of, or potentially more challenging, than the Solomon Islands or East Timor," he said.
Howard did not say how the military would find the extra recruits, with the defense forces already struggling to fill recruitment targets and with defense surveys showing 30 percent of servicemen and women were looking at quitting.
A report by security analysts the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) said Australia had spent A$500 million over five years to build up the defense forces, but overall troop numbers had continued to fall.
It said in the past two years defense staffing levels remained 1,000 below target, while the number of people leaving the forces continued to increase to a high of almost 13 percent for the army and just over 12 percent for the navy.
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Royal and Sarkozy neck-and-neck in race: poll
PARIS, Aug 23, 2006 (AFP)
France's leading contenders for next year's presidential elections, Socialist politician Segolene Royal and Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, are in a statistical dead heat according to a poll released Wednesday.
The survey, by the IPSOS polling institute, shows Sarkozy has 51 percent of voting intentions in a run-off election against Royal, who garnered 49 percent.
Although no margin of error was given for the survey, three percentage points is typical, meaning any difference between the two is too close to call and they are statistically neck-and-neck.
The IPSOS survey contrasted with a poll by the rival IFOP institute published on the weekend which gave Royal a
clear lead over Sarkozy, 55 to 42 percent.
The French elections are due to be held in two rounds starting next April. The first is open to all qualified hopefuls, while the second will be a run-off between the two leading candidates.
All the polls currently agree that those two candidates are likely to be Royal and Sarkozy, though both have to first win nominations from their respective parties in the coming months.
The IPSOS poll found that Royal had the backing of 63 percent of voters, while Sarkozy had 57 percent.
But Sarkozy enjoyed a nucleus of 24 percent of voters who declared themselves "certain" to vote for him, while Royal's core was only 17 percent.
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France to ban smoking in public areas: report
PARIS, Aug 23, 2006 (AFP)
France is preparing to ban smoking in bars, restaurants and other public areas starting next year, the newspaper Le Figaro reported Wednesday.
The measure, which could be applied nationally from January 1, 2007, would bring France into step with Britain, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Sweden.
Those EU countries have all imposed or are preparing to impose prohibitions on smoking in enclosed public spaces.
"That's going to happen" for France, too, the country's health minister, Xavier Bertrand, told Le Figaro.
The newspaper said the government was planning a decree announcing the new law, but would make exceptions for bars that sell cigarettes, casinos and
nightclubs.
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin's office stressed, though, that "nothing is yet definitively decided," the daily reported.
But it said "the timetable is known," pointing to a parliamentary report on the issue due to be submitted next month.
"The government will announce its plan in the following month (October). The decree's application could take effect from January 1, 2007," the newspaper said.
The UMIH association representing the hospitality industry reacted to the report by saying it wanted any smoking ban to be introduced "in a realistic way" and asked that "restaurants which have invested in non-smoking areas to be free to offer their clients a choice."
News of the possible smoking ban came after a study published Saturday by Britain's scientific review the Lancet which said that smoking triples the risk of heart attacks and all sorts of smoking -- including passive smoking -- was bad for the heart.
France has long shed its stereotypical image of a country overrun with smokey bars and cafes, though tobacco addiction is still a big problem despite successive government price rises that have made packets of cigarettes among the most expensive in Europe.
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11,000 people flee homes as hot toxic mud engulfs villages and farmland
John Aglionby in Porong
Thursday August 24, 2006
The Guardian
Four villages and 19 factories have been submerged in a 240-hectare (600-acre) sea of mud in East Java that is growing up to 50,000 cubic metres a day in a major environmental disaster triggered during an oil exploration venture.
A few rooftops are still visible, along with hastily constructed dykes which could not hold back the flow of toxic mud that began on May 29 around an oil exploration drilling rig.
Eleven miles of dykes are being built by 1,500 soldiers and labourers around the clock to contain the growing catastrophe, in which 11,000 people have lost their homes or been forced to evacuate.
The company, which is facing daily protests from residents, now accepts its drilling may have caused the world's largest disaster of its kind.
A 100 metre-high column of thick white smoke is visible several miles from Porong district, 22 miles south of Indonesia's second largest city, Surabaya, in East Java, and the smell of rotten eggs pervades the hazy tropical air. The mud is up to seven metres deep, and every few seconds the earth jolts and another dollop of hot sediment belches out. Occasionally the mud exits more dramatically, shooting up several metres into the air with a loud "whooosh". The gas stings people's eyes and it is impossible to breathe without taking in the fumes, even with a mask.
The drilling company is PT Lapindo Brantas, which is controlled by the family of Indonesia's powerful senior welfare minister, Aburizal Bakrie. Its senior vice-president in charge of the clean-up, Imam Agustino, admits he has no idea when the mudflow will be stopped, let alone when the affected land will be useable again.
"We don't know if the source of the mud really comes from the well bore or somewhere else," he told the Guardian. "The best-case scenario [for stopping the mudflow] is now mid-November, but I have to admit it might never be stopped."
Porong's "mud volcano" is coming from liquid sediment up to 2,750 metres (9,000ft) deep that was formed 5m years ago, the Jakarta Post reported. The first two attempts to block the flow - by plugging the borehole, which extends two miles underground, and pumping concrete into its bottom - had to be abandoned when the mud continued to rise.
The current plan is to drill into the mud reservoir from three directions and fill it with concrete. "The problems are that we don't know how big the reservoir is and there's never been anything like this on this scale so we don't have any precedent to help us," Mr Imam said.
Preparations are already under way for the worst-case scenario. "We want the well to be stopped but if we can't do that we have to be ready," Indonesia's environment minister, Rachmat Witoelar, told the Guardian as he inspected a potential site for the water from the mud to be dumped at sea. "We would siphon off the water, treat it and then pump it through pipes 16 kilometres [10 miles] to the sea. The mud will then be treated further before being removed."
Despite Mr Imam claiming it was too early to blame Lapindo, Mr Witoelar had no doubts. "Lapindo has to pay for its mistake and restore the environment," he said. Nine people, mainly from Lapindo and the drilling sub-contractor, are being investigated by police, and trials could start within weeks. The drilling rig that was being used when the mud started flowing will be introduced as evidence.
Unless the mudflow is stopped soon, other problems are expected to exacerbate the crisis. As Lapindo runs out of places to build ponds to store the mud, the sediment threatens to cover the main railway line just three metres away. The main motorway to the region on another side of the sea of mud has already been raised 2.5 metres and is being raised another two metres. Other villages are in danger of being submerged and experts estimate that the land has been sinking by up to three centimetres a month since May.
The rainy season, forecast to start in October, may also worsen the situation. "Who knows what will happen when it starts raining," said Andiko Harmiyul, the deputy leader of the mud management team. "All I can say is that we will build the dykes as high and big as necessary."
For the 11,000 people made homeless, Lapindo is paying rent for alternative accommodation for two years plus moving costs, 300,000 rupiah (£17.50) a person a month for food, arranging alternative schooling and negotiating to buy the destroyed houses. Thousands of people have received free medical treatment. Farmers are receiving compensation of two years' income in advance and factories are being relocated.
But many feel the company is being untransparent, unfair and uncaring.
"We've all stopped work but we've been given no money to make up for what we've lost," said Siti Mualimil, a food seller who, along with 8,000 other people, has been camping for two months in a market that had been built but not yet used. "The farmers are doing much better than us."
Car mechanic Dodi Sumartono said: "I reckon I'm earning about 50% less than I was before the mudflow started. We now go to people to fix their cars rather than them coming to us but it's not the same."
Mr Imam said the company did not know what to do to help those affected. "We're an oil and gas company so we're not equipped to handle them," he said. "That's why we leave it to the local government who has the skilled people."
But the consequence is that many residents believe Lapindo is shirking its responsibilities. "Why don't they come and deal with us," Ms Siti said. "Are they afraid?"
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Tropical wave heads for Caribbean, eclipsing Debby
Reuters
Thu Aug 24, 2006
NEW YORK - A strong tropical wave approaching the Windward Islands could strengthen into a tropical depression or tropical storm Thursday, eclipsing Tropical Storm Debby, which was spinning in the Atlantic Ocean, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
NHC said in a tropical weather outlook the wave was well-organized and heavy squalls were beginning to spread over the islands. The Windward Islands include Martinique, Saint Lucia, Barbados, Saint Vincent, The Grenadines, Grenada, and Trinidad and Tobago.
"Conditions appear to be favorable for a tropical depression or a tropical storm to form later today," NHC said early Thursday.
The center scheduled an Air Force Reserve reconnaissance aircraft to investigate the system in the afternoon.
All of the major weather models showed the wave entering the Caribbean Sea over the next day or so.
Four models put the storm in the waters south of Cuba near Jamaica within five days. Another model had the storm crossing the Dominican Republic before approaching the Bahamas over the next five days or so.
If the wave gets into the Gulf of Mexico, it could disrupt the U.S. oil and natural gas producing and refining facilities, damaged last year by hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Meanwhile all of the weather models, including the NHC model, projected Debby would not hit land as it continued to move northwest for a couple more days before turning northeast toward Europe later this week.
The NHC expects Debby to strengthen into the season's first hurricane in about three days. If Debby becomes a hurricane, the center projected it would be a weak Category 1 hurricane. Category 1 hurricanes have wind speeds of 74 to 95 mph.
Debby, with winds near 45 mph, was located about 845 miles west-northwest of the Cape Verde Islands.
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Renewed Volcanic Activity At The Phlegrean Fields Tracked By Envisat
ESA
Aug 22, 2006
Paris, France - Satellite images acquired by ESA's Envisat satellite have revealed the volcanic region of the Phlegrean Fields, located in southern Italy near the city of Naples, has entered a new uplift phase.
Using Differential SAR Interferometry (DInSAR), scientists at the Institute for the Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment (IREA) of the Italian National Research Council (CNR) mapped the changes in the caldera - a ring-shaped region which includes several volcanoes - and discovered the area has uplifted about 2.8 centimetres from 2005 to 2006.
DInSAR, a sophisticated version of 'spot the difference', involves mathematically combining different satellite radar images, acquired from as near as possible to the same point in space at different times, to create digital elevation models and reveal otherwise undetectable changes occurring between image acquisitions.
With a diameter of 13 kilometres, the Phlegrean Fields caldera had its last eruption back in 1538 but has exhibited signs of unrest (bradyseismic activity) in recent years. Its underlying magma system remains active, leading to rapid periods of ground uplift followed by longer-term subsidence. The most recent uplift event occurred between March and August 2000.
The satellite images used to detect the newest uplift phase of the Phlegrean Fields, known in Italy as Campi Flegrei, were acquired from January 2005 to April 2006 and show an area of maximum deformation localised in the centre of the town of Pozzuoli, which lies near the caldera's centre, with the deformation extending westward to the area surrounding Monte Nuovo. By using the data, scientists were also able to determine the uplift trend started in June 2005.
Ground deformation is recorded as part of the phenomena which precedes a volcanic eruption, but such deformation, especially in the preliminary phase, can be very subtle. Therefore, surveying techniques, such as DInSAR, that allow for large scale deformation mapping with sub-centimetre accuracy are particularly relevant.
Geodetical monitoring of the Phlegrean Fields, located 25 kilometres west of Vesuvius, has historically been carried out by the Vesuvius Observatory - the world's oldest volcano observatory - through terrestrial networks. Since 2002, the Observatory has included satellite-derived data in its Surveillance Reports, an innovation following a project with ESA called MINERVA (Monitoring by Interferometric SAR of Environmental Risk in Volcanic Areas).
Geodetic ground networks can provide very high accuracy deformation information, but only within the network layout, so any change in deformation beyond the area covered is lost.
Among the terrestrial methods, levelling, which obtains the vertical component of ground motion, is the oldest. Levelling is based on height measurements carried out on single points called benchmarks, which together constitute the levelling network. The number of benchmarks has been continuously increasing during the last three decades. As a result, the levelling data set of the area is quite large and allows for the retrieval of the geodetic information starting from the end of the 1960s to present.
An extraordinary levelling campaign took place between June and July 2006 in order to verify the uplift trend with about 30 benchmarks being measured for a total path length of some 15 kilometres. The collected data were added to those already available and led to the deformation time series shown in the image to the right that reports the vertical movement in the maximum deformation area from March 1999 to June 2006.
Still, levelling is costly in money and time. Obtaining measurements across a network is a lengthy process - the Phlegrean Fields network has more than 300 benchmarks - as is the consequent data processing. Typically levelling is only carried out once or twice a year.
The poor temporal sampling of terrestrial network data is greatly improved by using DInSAR techniques, considering the revisiting time of satellite sensors with respect to the possible repetition time of field measurements.
The analysis conducted on these satellite observations, together with that obtained by using traditional geodetic measurements, has been transmitted to the Italian Civil Protection as a part of the duty of the Vesuvius Observatory.
To boost the use of Earth Observation data at volcanic observatories ESA has initiated an Invitation to Tender (ITT) to monitor volcanoes worldwide within the framework of the Agency's Data User Element programme. The Globvolcano project will define, implement and validate information services to support volcanological observatories in their daily work by integration of EO data. Services will be related to the different responsibility areas of the users with emphasis on observation and early warning.
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Humanity - Destination Stone Age
Astronaut Lets New Spaceship Name Slip
By MIKE SCHNEIDER
AP
August 22, 2006
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - The name of the new vehicle that NASA hopes will take astronauts back to the moon was supposed to be hush-hush until next week.
But apparently U.S. astronaut Jeff Williams, floating 220 miles above Earth at the international space station, didn't get the memo.
Williams, through no fault of his own, let it slip Tuesday that the new vehicle's name is Orion.
"We've been calling it the crew exploration vehicle for several years, but today it has a name -- Orion," Williams said, taping a message in advance for the space agency that was transmitted accidentally over space-to-ground radio.
NASA planned to reveal the new name Aug. 31, when the space agency also announces which contractor will build the vehicle. Competing for the award are Lockheed Martin and a team made up of Northrop Grumman and Boeing.
The crew exploration vehicle will replace the space shuttle program after it ends in 2010. Earlier this summer, NASA announced the names of the rockets that will propel the crew exploration vehicle and a cargo vehicle, respectively Ares I and Ares V.
"One of the things we get into at NASA is we run around and call things by technical names and acronyms," project manager Skip Hatfield told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "This allows us to have an identity that we can use."
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Errant comet or meteor could ruin our plans
By Darin Z. Krogh
August 24, 2006
If you are tired of thinking about global warming, terrorist attacks or contracting a deadly new virus, maybe you could get out of your rut by mulling over the possibility that some large celestial body may be on a collision course with our planet.
Last month, the asteroid 2004 XP14 passed some 268,873 miles (432,000 kilometers) from Earth. That distance is slightly greater than that between the Earth and the moon.
Astronomers called it "a close shave in the vastness of outer space."
If a collision had occurred, the memory of the Fourth of July fireworks would be dimmed. Pig Out in the Park would have to be canceled for a couple thousand years.
Scientists say that a fatal cosmic concussion probably will come from a giant chunk of rock like 2004 XP14 - one of the many that jump from the asteroid belt under the evil influence of Jupiter - or a comet returning to our solar system. That comet would show up as a stationary but growing dot of light in the night sky.
It would appear stationary because it would be coming straight at us.
Although total planetary destruction is still total planetary destruction, death by comet might be preferable to death by meteor.
The first advantage of a comet impact is that astronomers would be able to give us more time to prepare for extinction. You would not have time to read a thick novel, go on a diet, work a 12-step program or even play an extended game of Monopoly, but you would have time for a frank no-holds-barred talk with your in-laws or to unload some bottled-up grievances to your boss.
A comet also would provide several days of spectacular visual effects with its fluffy ice and vapors streaming behind.
On the other hand, a typical giant meteor would provide nothing to look at until it flamed up for a few scant seconds prior to the explosion that would wipe us all out.
Another reason that we earthlings might prefer oblivion by comet is that the meteor strike has been done before.
Scientists say that dust from a meteor hit filled the air back in 65 million B.C. Most life on Earth was wiped out.
Scientists know this because buried in the Earth at the 65 million year depth is a layer of iridium, a nonbiodegradable element that is relatively rare on Earth but a common component of meteors.
Dinosaur fossils are found below that iridium layer while mammal bones are found above. If we take another big hit, our only comfort is that a life form higher than humans may evolve above our own bones.
Then, like the dinosaurs, we'll be gone but not forgotten forever; after a few million years our successors (the new life forms) will dig up our bones and display them standing naked in their museums with a sign that says, "They didn't know what hit them."
There probably will be scary movies made about us, and they are sure to make disparaging remarks about our tiny brains.
If you want to be "in-the-know" before the Earth is obliterated, go to the Spokane Astronomical Society's Web site, spokaneastronomical.org. The group has lots of free information, and it holds "star parties" where members provide powerful telescopes, free to the public, so you might get a look at the celestial threats that currently are heading our way.
Just don't tell me about it.
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Scientists create stem cells without destroying embryos
www.chinaview.cn 2006-08-24 09:31:15
BEIJING, Aug. 24 (Xinhuanet) -- U.S. scientists have developed a technique for creating human embryonic stem cells without destroying embryos, a method that appears to get round a basic ethical objection to stem cell research.
"There is no rational reason left to oppose this research," said Dr. Robert Lanza, vice president of U.S. biotech group Advanced Cell Technology and leader of a team that reported the new technique in an article published online on Thursday by the Nature.
Researchers from Advanced Cell Technology have generated stem cell cultures by plucking individual cells from newly fertilized embryos, which are not harmed.
The new technique would be performed on an embryo when it is two days old, after the fertilized egg has divided into eight cells, known as blastomeres.
In fertility clinics, one of these blastomeres can be removed for diagnostic tests, such as for Down's syndrome, and the embryo, now with seven cells, can be implanted in the mother if no defect is found.
Up to now, stem cells have been derived from slightly older embryos. Harvesting these cells destroys the embryo.
Last year, Lanza reported that embryonic stem cell cultures could be derived from the blastomeres of mice. He now says the same can be done with human blastomeres.
Hardline critics of embryo research, however, are unlikely to accept the manipulation even of a single embryonic cell, which they say could theoretically become a human being.
U.S. President George W. Bush last month vetoed a bill that would have required the federal government to fund experiments with newly created human embryonic stem cells.
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Neanderthals interbred with other hominids 100,000 years ago
Washington, Aug 23
Washington, Aug 23 : A recent study by a researcher from the University of Southern California has revealed that individuals of European descent could be up to five percent Neanderthal, while West Africans could be related to an archaic human population.
Professor Vincent Plagnol in the University's Department of Molecular and Computational Biology has said that a study of genes of people from Yoruba and individuals living in Utah with ancestry from Northern and Western Europe revealed the existence of archaic DNA in the genes.
This countered the view that modern humans left Africa and replaced all other existing hominid populations, he said.
"Instead of a population that left Africa 100,000 years ago and replaced all other archaic human groups, we propose that this population interacted with another population that had been in Europe for much longer, maybe 400,000 years," Discovery News quoted Prof. Plagnol, co-author of the study as saying.
For their study, Prof. Plagnol and his colleague Prof. Jeffrey Wall analyzed patterns of ancestral linkage in 135 modern individuals.
Using statistics and computer modelling, they focused on linkage disequilibriums, or sections within genes that did not make sense if only modern human matings were considered.
According to the paper, which was published in PLoS Genetics, missing genetic links only fit if some other hominid population was introduced into the model.
"We considered the data from modern human DNA and fitted a model to explain what we see. We found that a simple model cannot explain the data if we do not add an 'ancestral population.' If this population did not cross with modern humans - or almost did not - the effect is too small to explain the data. We find that a rate of five percent is what is needed to explain what we see," said Prof. Plagnol.
They said that portions of the European genome, such as those associated with nuclear DNA might still harbour the Neanderthal imprint.
Prof. Plagnol said different parts of the genome hade different ancestry, so an individual could have a fraction of a certain chromosome that was inherited from a Neanderthal, but then possess "very typical homo sapiens mtDNA".
Alan Templeton, professor of Evolutionary and Population Programs at the University of Michigan, who also conducted DNA studies and came to similar conclusion said, that "humans who were in Africa and humans who were in Eurasia were regularly interchanging genes".
"There was interbreeding and when humans came out of Africa 100,000 years ago they did not replace these other human populations in Eurasia," he said.
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Austrian Woman, Kidnapped as Child in 1998, Flees Cellar Prison
By Jonathan Tirone
Aug. 24 (Bloomberg)
An Austrian girl, abducted in 1998 when she was 10 years old, has been reunited with her parents after fleeing a basement prison, Vienna police said today.
"A young girl disappeared eight years ago,'' Police General Nicholas Koch said at a press conference. "What we have now is a grown woman.''
Natascha Kampusch, now 18, broke free yesterday afternoon. Her kidnapper, identified only as Wolfgang P., died last night after he was hit by a train, Koch said. Police are investigating whether he killed himself and are searching his house.
Kampusch disappeared on the morning of March 2, 1998 as she was on her way to school, prompting Austria's largest-ever manhunt. Police interviewed more than 1,000 owners of white mini-vans, the kind of car Kampusch was seen entering the day she went missing.
Kampusch was held captive in Strasshof, about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from Vienna. She was confined to the windowless basement of a house in a residential neighborhood, police said.
Kampusch escaped yesterday after finding a door unlocked, police said. With Wolfgang P. still in the house, she ran to a neighboring garden and told the occupant who she was.
Wolfgang P. was one of the people interviewed in April 1998 because of the make of his car. He told police that he used it to transport construction material and he wasn't investigated further, Vienna police spokesman Erich Zwettler said.
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Pluto loses status as a planet
Thursday, 24 August 2006, 13:34 GMT 14:34 UK
Astronomers meeting in the Czech capital have voted to strip Pluto of its status as a planet.
About 2,500 experts were in Prague for the International Astronomical Union's (IAU) general assembly.
The scientists rejected a proposal that would have retained Pluto as a planet and brought three other objects into the cosmic club.
Pluto has been considered a planet since its discovery in 1930 by the American Clyde Tombaugh.
The ninth planet will now effectively be airbrushed out of school and university textbooks.
"The eight planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune," said the IAU resolution, which was passed following a week of stormy debate.
The initial proposal put before the IAU to raise the number of planets in the Solar System to 12 - adding the asteroid Ceres, Pluto's "moon" Charon and the distant object known as 2003 UB313 - met with opposition.
Robin Catchpole, of the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, UK, told the BBC News website: "My own personal opinion was to leave things as they were; I met Clyde Tombaugh and thought how nice it was to shake hands with someone who had discovered a planet.
"But since the IAU brought out the proposal for new planets I had been against it - it was going to be very confusing. The best of the alternatives was to leave the major planets as they are and then demote Pluto. So I think this is a far superior situation."
Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society in California, US, commented: "The classification doesn't matter. Pluto - and all Solar System objects - are mysterious and exciting new worlds that need to be explored and better understood."
Dwarf planet
Amid dramatic scenes which saw astronomers waving yellow ballot papers in the air, the IAU meeting voted in criteria that define the exact nature of a "planet".
They agreed that to qualify, a celestial body must be in orbit around a star while not itself being a star. It also must be large enough in mass "for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a... nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit."
Pluto was automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune's.
It will now join a new category of "dwarf planets".
Pluto's status has been contested for many years as it is further away and considerably smaller than the eight other "traditional" planets in our Solar System.
Its orbit around the Sun is also highly inclined to the plane of those big planets.
In addition, since the early 1990s, astronomers have found several objects of comparable size to Pluto in an outer region of the Solar System called the Kuiper Belt.
Some astronomers have long argued that Pluto belongs with this population of small, icy worlds.
Allowances were once made for Pluto on account of its size. At just 2,360km (1,467 miles) across, Pluto is smaller even than some moons in the Solar System. But until recently, it was still the biggest known object in the Kuiper Belt.
That changed with the discovery of 2003 UB313 by Professor Mike Brown and colleagues at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). After being measured with the Hubble Space Telescope, it was shown to be some 3,000km (1,864 miles) in diameter, making it larger than Pluto.
Named after the god of the underworld in Roman mythology, Pluto orbits the Sun at an average distance of 5.9 billion kilometres (3.7 billion miles) taking 247.9 Earth years to complete a single circuit of the Sun.
An unmanned US spacecraft, New Horizons, is due to fly by Pluto and the Kuiper Belt in 2015.
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