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Editorial: Israel itching to finish the job
By Linda S. Heard
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Aug 24, 2006, 00:27
Unable to achieve its goals in Lebanon, the Israeli government has been left with egg on its face. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his neophyte minister of defense, Amir Peretz, are fighting for their political lives. Israeli newspapers demand their resignations as well as that of the bungling Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, who early in the conflict chose to bomb women and children instead of risking boots on the ground.
Just about the only person in the world who is publicly patting these losers on the back is the American president, George W. Bush -- kudos to him for managing to keep a straight face. What he's saying behind closed doors, though, isn't hard to guess. Indeed, some Israelis have asked whether their country's usefulness to the White House might now be severely eroded.
There is a split within the top army echelon over the way the conflict was waged. Conscripts and reservists are complaining about poor training, a lack of weapons and having to drink from the troughs of farm animals or the canteens of fallen Hezbollah fighters.
They say nobody told them Hezbollah possessed an arsenal of sophisticated weaponry. They say their commanders told them they would be fighting "primitives" and they had no idea they would be facing a highly disciplined force. They say they followed orders and drove their tanks through valleys where like sitting ducks they were ambushed from the mountain fastness by armor-penetrating missiles.
Ordinary Israelis who from the outset believed this war was their noblest are now having doubts. The left is embarrassed at the high civilian death toll wrought by their bombers; the right is angry their army didn't use every means at its disposal to wreak more death and destruction. The hawks are outraged that their government signed up to the terms of UN Resolution 1701, which cut short the ground war.
Some complain the war was conducted at the behest of the Bush administration so as to tame Hezbollah as a prelude to a US pre-emptive strike on Iran; others say it was done to seal the warrior status of Olmert and Peretz, who unlike their predecessors aren't career military men. A few maintain it was engineered to test out new strategies and "Made in the USA" weapons.
Worse than mere disappointment over their military's lackluster performance for the first time in decades, Israelis are aware of a serious existential threat.
As long as their war machine was perceived as unbeatable the Israeli state was cloaked in an aura of impenetrable power. But this is no longer the case. It's only logical that their enemies will have been emboldened by Israel's defeat, they say, in which case the Israeli state is no longer as secure as it once was.
So deep are the scars of doubt and insecurity in Israel's collective psyche, that it is difficult to imagine the government will easily reconcile itself to the status quo. Whereas observers can view the conflict's outcome dispassionately and feel some optimism that the cessation of hostilities will endure, this isn't the case for Israel's residents for whom winning means life over death.
Whereas Israelis, although hesitant to crawl back into their bunkers, largely see the job as unfinished, Hezbollah is basking in adulation from various spectrums of Lebanese society. This support has been reinforced since its social wing quickly mobilized to hand out wads of cash to those whose homes were damaged or destroyed without regard for the recipients' religious beliefs.
Since according to the world and its wife Hezbollah has come out on top, it's hardly in its best interests to break the truce. It has much to gain politically from keeping a low military profile and helping to rebuild the southern suburbs of Beirut as well as the villages and towns of south Lebanon that were razed to the ground.
As things stand, Hezbollah has political and military leverage both within and without. In this case, any continuation of the fight would not only constitute a gamble but would also try the tenacity of the group's following which has already lost so many lives and treasure.
The Israeli government, however, is desperate to save face and to re-establish what Israel calls its deterrent value. This desperation was seen two days before the cease-fire when thousands of troops were dispatched across the border without a clear objective.
It was seen when Israeli commandos broke into a deserted hospital and triumphantly returned home with one Hassan Dib Hezbollah, a vegetable seller.
And it was in evidence last week when Israeli transport planes offloaded jeeps and commandos camouflaged as Lebanese Army personnel near the Hezbollah stronghold of Baalbek, thus violating the cease-fire and incurring the ire of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
It's apparent that Israel has no intention of leaving well alone. A senior IDF officer told the New York Times last weekend that Israel is committed to hunting down and killing Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader.
Amir Peretz says Israel must prepare for the next round with Lebanon. And we shouldn't forget that Lebanon is still under siege with Israeli warships ominously poised off its coastline and spy drones regularly crisscrossing its skies.
The Lebanese government, on the other hand, is keen to play by the rules. It has sent the Lebanese Army to the south where it is in the process of setting up posts for the first time since 1975, and it welcomes a beefed up UNIFIL.
On Sunday, the Lebanese defense minister warned all groups not to risk violation the cease-fire or else be considered "traitors." He also promised that the Lebanese Army would man the borders to prevent the import of non-sanctioned weapons.
Superficially this statement appears to be a warning to Hezbollah but, in reality, it was meant for the consumption of Israel and the international community. Lebanon wants to give the message: "We are determined to stick to the truce and, therefore, any infringement will be Israel's."
In reality, Hezbollah has agreed to host the Lebanese Army. Many of its number are Shiites from the south, whose family members are Hezbollah fighters. In any event, the army isn't equipped to take on Hezbollah even if it were so disposed.
Israel is now in a cleft stick. Hezbollah isn't giving them an excuse to renew hostilities.
The Lebanese government is sticking to the letter of the Security Council resolution, and the UN is monitoring Israel's every move.
The question now is will Israel strike again before the arrival of a projected 15,000 armed internationals and risk international censure? Or will it decide to bite the bullet and give diplomacy a chance? The next few weeks will tell.
Original
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War of Error
'I can't go to Iraq. I can't kill those children' - Suicide soldier's dying words to his mother
By Cahal Milmo
The Independent
Published: 25 August 2006
While his peers from St Augustine's Catholic school were this month contemplating university careers or first jobs, Jason Chelsea was preoccupied with a different future: his first tour of duty in Iraq.
The 19-year-old infantryman, from Wigan, Greater Manchester, was tormented by concern about what awaited him when the King's Lancaster Regiment reached Iraq, where 115 British soldiers have been killed since 2003.
He had even told his parents that he had been warned by his commanders that he could be ordered to fire on child suicide bombers.
It was a fear that he never confronted. Within 48 hours of confessing his concerns to his family, Pte Chelsea was dead after taking an overdose of painkillers and slashing his wrists.
On his death bed, he told his mother, Kerry: "I can't go out there and shoot at young children. I just can't go to Iraq. I don't care what side they are on. I can't do it."
Today, mourners including comrades from his unit will attend Pte Chelsea's funeral, wearing the colours of his two favourite football teams, Chelsea and Wigan. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is to begin an investigation into his death, including allegations that the teenager was bullied. In a suicide note, the young soldier had said that he was "just a waste".
His parents said yesterday that their son's ordeal had convinced them of the need for an urgent review of the pre-deployment training given to British soldiers bound for Iraq.
Tony Chelsea, 58, a factory production supervisor, said: "My son was made very, very lonely by what was happening to him. He was very sad inside and he bottled up what was causing it. It was only after the overdose that he told us about his fears over what might happen in Iraq.
"In training, they were made to wrestle with dummies. Jason said they were also told they might have to fight kids and that they might have to shoot them because they were carrying suicide bombs. He said the policy [where there was a suspected suicide bomber] was to shoot first and ask questions later."
His mother added: "Jason said that during the training for Iraq he had been told that children as young as two carry bombs and the time may come when he would have to shoot one to save himself and his friends. I think they need to think again about the training they give to young soldiers before Iraq."
It is understood guidelines on training for British troops heading for Iraq offer no warning on child suicide bombers. But defence sources confirmed that the details of the advice given to soldiers are decided by each regiment. There have been no known cases of suicide attacks in Iraq committed by young children.
The death of Pte Chelsea, who had served in Germany and Cyprus, will renew concern about the psychological pressures faced by British troops as they deal with deployment to Iraq. Four days before the infantryman attempted to take his life, the MoD released figures showing that 1,541 soldiers who served in Iraq are suffering from psychiatric illness. Last year, 727 cases were recorded, amounting to nearly 10 per cent of the British deployment. Special units have now been set up in the country to help soldiers deal with combat stress. While services were also available in Britain to Pte Chelsea to discuss his concerns within the Army, it seems he felt unable to disclose them.
He had joined the Army at 16 after a visit to his school, St Augustine's, telling his family the Army was to be his life. He was at home on leave when his fears came to a head this month.
After watching a football match on the night of 10 August, he calmly wrote the suicide note, telling his father it was a letter to a relative, took 60 painkillers then slashed his wrists. As he lay bleeding, the soldier dialled 999, telling the operator: "I have done something stupid."
In normal circumstances, Pte Chelsea, who suffered from dyslexia, may have recovered from his injuries. But when doctors began tests to assess the damage caused to his liver by the drugs, it was found that the organ had been irreparably damaged by alcohol. His family were told his liver was similar to that of someone who had been an alcoholic for 20 years and he would not survive a transplant. He died on 14 August at St James's Hospital in Leeds after his family gave consent for his other organs to be used for transplants.
His father said he believed t he reasons behind his son's drinking had provoked a previous suicide attempt in 2004, when he cut his wrists in his barracks. After this incident, Pte Chelsea was treated by an Army psychiatrist which the family said had restored his confidence.
Mr Chelsea said: "My son started drinking 18 months ago. He destroyed his liver in less than a year and a half. I believe that is because he was being bullied again. He did not want to make anything of it. He was in the Army, he knew he had to be tough. But it only takes a few words. He said he would hear comments aimed at him because of his dyslexia. He was told he would get his colleagues killed because he was stupid.
"I support the British Army and what it does. But I would like to stand before my son's unit with a picture of him in uniform and ask those who made these comments to him time after time to think about the effect they had."
The young soldier's despair was displayed in the note he wrote to his parents before his overdose. He said: "Really sorry, mum and dad. I'm just no good for you. I have got to finish it. I am just a waste."
The MoD said it was "greatly saddened" by the death but the details of his treatment remained the subject of an inquiry. A spokesman said: "We send our heartfelt sympathies to the family of Pte Chelsea. It is our intention to convene a board of inquiry which will examine the circumstances around his death."
Five other suicides since Iraq invasion
* JULY 2004
Pte Gary Boswell, 20, of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, hanged himselfnear his home in Milford Haven. He was on leave from Iraq
* 31 OCTOBER 2004
Staff Sgt Denise Rose, 34, who served in the Special Investigation Branch of the Royal Military Police, was found dead from a gunshot wound at a British Army base in Basra
* 26 DECEMBER 2004
Sgt Paul Connolly, 33, of the 21st Engineer Regiment of the Royal Engineers was found dead from a gunshot wound at Shaibah Logistic Base, south-west of Basra
* 15 OCTOBER 2005
Capt Ken Masters, 40, of the Special Investigation Branch of the Royal Military Police, hanged himself in his office in Basra, just five days before the end of a tour
* 22 MARCH 2006
Cpl Mark Cridge, 25, of 7 Signal Regiment, shot himself at Camp Bastion in the Helmand province of Afghanistan.
Comment: "His parents said yesterday that their son's ordeal had convinced them of the need for an urgent review of the pre-deployment training given to British soldiers bound for Iraq."
Because this is the only problem, the pre-deployment training, not the fictional reasons for the British troops to be in Iraq in the first place!
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Troops kill seven 'Al-Qaeda' militants, child in Afghanistan
AFP
Thu Aug 24, 2006
KABUL - Troops in Afghanistan killed seven suspected Al-Qaeda operatives in a gunbattle in which a child was also shot dead, the coalition said, amid claims the dead were all civilians.
The shootout erupted in mountainous eastern Kunar province, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the border with Pakistan, when US-led coalition and Afghan troops went to the area to capture a "known Al-Qaeda facilitator".
"Our forces arrived in the area and were immediately fired on. We returned fire, killing seven Al-Qaeda fighters," spokesman Colonel Thomas Collins told AFP.
A child aged between 10 and 12 years old was also killed and a woman wounded, he said. "We are trying to determine who they were and what they were doing there."
The woman was taken to a coalition medical facility for treatment. Four men were also arrested, a coalition statement said.
Coalition warplanes were called to the battle as the departing troops came under attack, a coalition spokeswoman told AFP. They fired warning shots which did not cause casualties, Lieutenant Tamara Lawrence told AFP.
Reports from the district said the seven dead men were civilians who had gathered to settle a dispute between two families, deputy provincial police chief Abdul Sabor Allah-Yar said.
"We're not sure if they were Al-Qaeda or Taliban," he said.
"According to our reports from the district chief and district authorities, the men were civilian elders who had gathered for a shura (tribal council) to settle a dispute," Allah-Yar said.
A government delegation was sent to investigate.
Lawrence said the coalition had operated on "very reliable, very credible intelligence".
"We understand the sensitivities to civilian casualties and that is why we take precautions and make sure our intelligence is correct before we operate," she said.
The coalition, which has unintentionally killed dozens of civilians in its operations in Afghanistan, has conducted several raids in the past weeks on suspected Al-Qaeda members in the east of the country.
Last week Pakistani officials said they had informed US-led coalition forces that a Middle Eastern Al-Qaeda kingpin linked to an alleged plot to blow up airliners flying from Britain to the United States was based in Kunar.
Escalating violence in Afghanistan has been blamed on remnants of the Taliban, which was ousted in 2001, and their allies from Al-Qaeda, the network of Osama bin Laden who found shelter with the hardline Afghan regime.
The child was the third to be killed in insurgency-linked violence -- and the second by Western soldiers -- in three days.
Canadian troops shot and killed a 10-year-old boy who was on a motorbike that broke through a security cordon around the site of a suicide attack in the southern city of Kandahar on Tuesday, a spokeswoman said.
The driver of the motorbike was still in hospital, Lieutenant Sue Stefko told AFP.
The troops had opened fire fearing a "follow-on" attack after the blast, which killed a Canadian soldier and another Afghan child.
The Canadian troops are serving with NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) which includes 21,000 troops from 37 countries.
Dutch Defence Minister Cees van der Knaap was in Afghanistan Thursday for a visit to meet Dutch troops and officials, including President Hamid Karzai.
ISAF forces were meanwhile conducting operations in militant strongholds in Helmand and Kandahar provinces but could not release details, a spokesman said.
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Who is the Fascist Here?
by Charles M. Evans
www.opednews.com
August 25, 2006
Recent public references to "Islamic fascists," a term used by George W. Bush and repeated often in the print media, suggest that the President and many writers have an inaccurate or at least incomplete understanding of fascism. This is not to suggest that there are no Islamic fascists, rather to point out that the people on whom Bush wishes to hang the term do not fit the description. Perhaps that does not trouble Bush nor some of the op-ed authors who understand that the use of the word "fascist" is effective propaganda.
Even if people are not sure what a fascist is, most know that it is not a positive term, and for many in this administration and those who support them this is sufficient justification to use it. Calling one's opponents unpleasant names is known in philosophy as an ad hominem argument, and it is recognized as a logical fallacy. Sound logic requires us to understand that bad people and bad ideas are not synonymous, and in the same way, good people do not always have sound ideas. But, bad logic often makes for good propaganda.
Politicians, as George Orwell pointed out to us, are particularly adept at draining meaning from language and refilling words with emotional rather than cognitive content. Careful writers of all political persuasions, perhaps especially conservatives, protest the debasement of language by our leaders and public figures. The process has become so ubiquitous that many, if not most, people do not notice that the words they hear or read mean something other than what the dictionary informs us. Therefore, President Bush can call members of Islamic terrorist organizations fascists, and neither he nor most of his listeners recognize any irony in his name-calling. Fortunately, President Bush's misuse of language in referring to Islamic fascists has not escaped attention by some in the popular press. See Georgie Ann Geyer's August 16, 2006 column,
"With Twist of Words Bush Gets It Wrong Again." It is a service to the reading public for journalists such as Ms. Geyer to call attention to the debasement of political terms by leaders who should, but who may not, know better.
Perhaps more than most political terms, the word fascist lends itself to imprecise use. This is because -- unlike most modern ideologies such as communism, socialism, or laissez faire capitalism which have a recognizable set of intellectual constructs that define their core beliefs and to some extent direct or predict their economic or political behaviors - fascism at its core substitutes emotional beliefs for intellectual principles. Whereas communism or capitalism have universally applicable principles, such as public ownership of the means of production or a reliance upon the power of private property within a free market economy as the means to a well ordered polity, fascism takes a form that varies according nature and history of the national culture in which it arises. In the 20th Century, nations with widely differing cultures and political structures have been subject to fascist governments. Germany, Italy, Spain, Argentina, Portugal, Croatia and a few other nations have each had a version of fascist government, but the commonalities that make them fascist are not immediately apparent in a survey of their cultural, economic, or institutional structures under fascist regimes. Reading books by German fascists (Hitler, Rosenberg) or by Italian fascists (Mussolini, Gentile), or reading the speeches of Franco, Salazar, or Peron will not immediately provide one with an understanding of fascism as an ideology, or even suggest that there are enough common elements among these national movements to categorize them together on any basis at all.
A number of scholars have addressed the problems of defining fascism as a political theory and have achieved some success, albeit at a rather abstract level. For instance, Umberto Eco, the prolific Italian jack-of-all-trades intellectual, identified 14 points that mark fascism in a 1995 article entitled, "Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt" (New York Review of Books, 22 June 1995). Additionally, in 2002, political scientist Laurence Britt outlined the essentials of fascism in "14 Points of Fascism," for the Project for the Old American Century (http://www.oldamericancentury.org/14pts.htm). Despite the coincidence of finding 14 points of commonality that define fascism, the two articles do not completely catalog the same traits. Nevertheless, taken together they bring a great deal of coherence to the study of fascism as a political movement, if not a coherent ideology.
Eco, writing before the advent of the Bush Administration, may be considered without reference to the Republican administration of George W. Bush, but it still provides a very interesting yardstick against which to measure Islamic militancy as well as recent American activities and policies. Eco's fourteen points may be briefly paraphrased in summary as follows:
1) A cult of tradition marks fascist governments. National history is selectively presented to emphasize traits that support the myth of a nation's superiority or special status in history.
2) Fascist governments reject modernism and rationality, although they embrace the instrumentality of technology. Fascist regimes are marked by irrationality, anti-intellectualism, and emotion.
3) Fascist governments value action for action's sake. Another manifestation of irrationality and emotion over reason, fascist behavior often favors unilateral action (often violent) over diplomacy or consensus.
4) Dissent or disagreement is usually interpreted by fascist governments as treason. The government exploits fear of difference
5) A fear of diversity or difference within the nation is created and exploited by fascist regimes.
6) Fascist governments usually draw on social frustration of groups or classes of citizens that feel themselves to be politically humiliated or threatened by internal social groups above or below their class, or by external forces.
7) Hyper- nationalism marks the fascist state. Often this is reinforced by government propaganda which makes the populace feel beleaguered or the intended victims of international plots.
8) Fascist governments often appear humiliated by the wealth, force, power or prestige of their enemies.
9) Fascists present a world view that individual and national life is a permanent struggle, and that war is the only acceptable means of asserting, establishing, and preserving the superiority of the fascist state.
10) Fascism relies on a form of elitism, which is a hallmark of reactionary societies, that hold the weak in contempt.
11) Fascist regimes celebrate the Hero. Everyone is trained to be a hero, and to lead a heroic life, the culmination of which is a heroic death. Heroic death becomes something of a cult, tied to militarism, nationalism, struggle, and an irrational will to power.
12) The will-to-power which is a hallmark of fascism leads to an exaggerated masculinity or machismo which is marked by a disdain for women, intolerance and condemnation of non-standard sexual habits. Homosexuality, chastity, abortion, promiscuity, sex outside of heterosexual marriage, and so on are suppressed as crimes against the state or as crimes against nature.
13) Fascist governments usually are marked by a selective, quantitative populism. "The people" is conceived as a monolithic entity expressing the common will which is embodied by policies adopted by the elite, or more usually, The Leader.
14) Orwellian Newspeak marks fascist rhetoric. The perversion and misdirection of language is used as a means of social control and a necessary tool of national propaganda.
Islamic extremists, when compared to Eco's list of fascist characteristics, fail the test although there are some that strike fairly close to certain militant Islamic groups. However, hyper-nationalism is a sine qua non for fascism, but is not a characteristic of militant Islam. Perhaps the nearest one can come to finding an Islamic nationalism is the phenomenon of the "Umma," which was the notion of religious unity supported by the caliphate prior to the fall of the Ottoman empire and the secularization of Turkey. The Umma is not a synonym for pan-Arabism, the doctrine that underlay the attempted union of Egypt, Syria, and some other ethnic Arab tribes or quasi-political entities back in the days of Gamel Nasser. Rather, the Umma was more like the philosophical universality of the medieval Roman Catholic Church, from which European nation-states emerged based upon shared language, history, culture, and geography.
If there is such a thing as Islamic nationalism, it would appear to be in approximately the same inchoate state as were the small Germanic principalities of the Holy Roman Empire prior to Bismarck, or the scramble of Italian states prior to the Garibaldi union. Nationalism is an important concept primarily to secularists, currently a small minority in the Middle East. Nationalism in the Islamic states of the Middle East, if present at all, is a very tenuous concept which was unknown before the artificial national boundaries that the former colonial powers imposed following each of the two global wars of the 20th Century. There may be some in the region for whom nationalism in its fully developed form is a deeply felt, psychologically binding force (Iran is a case in point as it has inherited the ancient Persian national identity). However, it seems demonstrable that tribalism (Bedouin, Saudi, Berber, etc.) or denominationalism (Sunni, Shi'a, Wahabi) create a more deeply unifying psychological identity for most of the sub-elites of the region. Perhaps the most telling demonstrations of this assertion is the reversion in Afghanistan to tribal domination following the arranged election of a western surrogate, and the civil war currently rending Iraq into regional fragments dominated by Sunnis, Shi'as or Kurds.
It must be emphasized, however, that external threats or attacks upon these fragile artificial nations can create and intensify a sense of nationalism where historically it has been very weak. The Russian wars in Afghanistan, Chechnya, et al, or the unilateral attacks by Israel or the USA against Muslim countries illustrate this point. The issue here is not simply a reaction against western aggression; rather it is the emotional effect upon the populace of a national war. Nationalism in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories have all been stimulated by war, even by wars waged between predominately Muslim countries. So, to the extent that nationalism is growing in places such as those mentioned here, the potential for fascist nationalism is growing as well. One day, perhaps relatively soon, there will be a sufficiently strong nationalism in some countries of the Middle East to support a true fascism. And, if it happens, it will partly be the result of western preemptive aggression. The irony of this is striking, and is apparently unappreciated by those who continue to advocate a Middle East policy of military intimidation backed by a stated policy of preemptive war. Those who are accusing Muslim extremists of Islamic Fascism are to some extent engaging in a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Humiliation of the Arab peoples and a perceived disrespect by the west for their religion certainly is a lingering source of resentment toward the European colonial powers and the USA. And, the notion of the heroic martyr is part of the mind-set of the Islamic fanatics. Indeed, the vision of martyrdom appears to be the inspiration of young Islamic fundamentalists to sacrifice themselves for the destruction of those they consider enemies of their religion. These characteristics by themselves, of course, are insufficient as markers of fascism. The two hallmarks of fascism, in its 20th Century manifestations are nationalism and corporatism, which both appear in virtually every fascist governmental structure in Europe, Latin America, and Japan (for those who classify pre-war Japan as fascist). An examination of every government that has ever considered itself fascist discloses a deep inter-penetration between government and corporate interests. Corporatism, for Mussolini, was a synonym for fascism. The political history of Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, and virtually every other fascist regime discloses a close identity between the interests of the state and the corporate interests which financed and supported it.
For those whose sensibilities permit a simpler conception of fascism than either the Eco or the Britt models provide, probably Benito Mussolini himself best defined the distilled essence of fascism. Trained as a journalist, he could be direct and explicit when the occasion required. In the Encyclopedia Italiano, Mussolini wrote that, "Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." Certainly the same attitude was displayed in Germany under National Socialism; Hitler's financial and political machine was dependent upon the close support of German corporations and business interests. The same was true of Spain, Portugal, and Argentina. If the merger of corporate and governmental power is the primary mark of fascism, then the Bush Republican administration certainly meets the measure. Bush and Republican deregulation of markets, approval of corporate mergers in that come close to creating monopolies in certain industries (banking, communications, oil, pharmaceuticals), massive cuts in corporate taxes, abolition of estate taxes, hugely profitable no-bid contracts for favored companies (Haliburton, Bechtel in Iraq and New Orleans), huge increases in contracts for defense contractors (Boeing, General Electric), along with a plethora of other examples that might be listed, fulfill Mussolini's definition of fascism.
In light of the above, for radical Islam not only is the lack of strong national identification a disqualifier for a fascist label, the lack of political integration with corporate or business interests is even more fatal. The Islam which is in jihad against Bush and America does not have the economic interests of Western nations, nor has it developed the pervasive corporate infrastructure that marks western economies. The notion of corporatism has not yet come to the Middle East, at least in its westernized form. There is no understanding in any of the Muslim regional nations of corporations as "artificial persons" which is central to the functioning of a capitalist economy. It is true that corporations do business in most of the oil rich states, but the governments themselves retain an independence from the corporate entities. For most Middle Eastern governments, the distinction between a multi-national corporation and a foreign government is irrelevant. The elites of these Middle Eastern mineral-rich nations do not concern themselves with the problems of labor, of capital distribution, or domestic regulation required in a functioning capitalist economy. The reason is simple. There are no (or very few) domestic corporations; the issues created by domestic corporations do not present themselves. These governments simply contract with foreign oil extracting companies, pocket the profits, and do not concern themselves further because there is no (or very little) political penetration into the governmental structure by the corporate organizations with which they do business. Therefore, at this stage in their economic development, most of the Middle Eastern countries are incapable of corporatism, which as Mussolini says, is at the heart of fascism.
A caveat: this observation does not hold for Islamic countries of east Asia such as Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and some other Muslim countries of the far east. Their embrace of capitalism is so thorough as to admit all of the corrupting domestic influences of corporatism, and thus they are fully liable to the development of a national fascist movement.
Using Eco's definition outlined in the fourteen characteristics of fascism, it might be more than the evidence will bear to brand the Republican Administration of George W. Bush as fascist. Without question, however, the Bush Republican administration bears more markers, and more significant ones, than the Islamic extremists. In an insightful essay entitled "The Rise of Pseudo Fascism", (http://www.dneiwert.blogsot.com, February 25, 2005) David Neiwert carefully and convincingly identifies those few elements which are yet lacking to make the Bush Administration fully fascist. He makes clear, however, that it is perhaps only a matter of time and degree before the final markers can be affixed to this administration. Essentially, he says, America is not yet in the hands of a fascist government because, at least thus far, the executive is not a dictator. Given the extravagant claims being made for the nearly unlimited constitutional power of the President as Commander in Chief, this may be only a temporary deficiency. Because most, but not all, of the hallmarks of fascism are evident in Bush's leadership since 9/11/01, Neiwert chooses to characterize the present cast of our government as Pseudo Fascist: not quite the real thing, but close enough to see dramatic parallels fraught with dangerous potential. So far, Bush has not adopted the title of "Leader," although there is much talk of Leadership as the defining quality of the President. For now, Bush seems content to be known more modestly as "the Decider." It is impossible to fit the Islamic terrorists even into the Pseudo Fascist category as Neiwert defines it, although that is a closer descriptor than the one used for them by George W. Bush.
Of the two fourteen point lists, Britt's catalogue must be considered polemical. In his view, there is nothing "pseudo" about the fascism of the Republican administration of George W. Bush. Each of the fourteen points he lists is annotated in the original article with illustrations of how the Bush Administration has behaved to merit the designation of fascist. Supplying instances of Bush Administration actions that certify their tendency toward fascist behavior may suggest that the fourteen points were selected because they fit Bush's observed behavior and attitudes. Nevertheless, in its own terms, Britt's argument should be examined carefully by any who doubt the fascist implications of some of the Administration's actions. Briefly, Brett characterizes fascist regimes as
1) Projecting a powerful and continuing nationalism: Fascism is marked by a tendency to make constant use of patriotic symbols, slogans, mottoes, symbols and songs. Flags are seen everywhere and flag symbols appear on clothing and in public displays.
2) Disdain for human rights: Emphasis on fear of enemies and the need for security leaves people convinced that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of 'need'. The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations without benefit of due process.
3) Identification of enemies or scapegoats as a unifying cause: The people are whipped into a patriotic fervor over the need to eliminate a common threat or foe such as racial, religious, or ethnic minorities or adherents of some threatening political ideology, such as communists, socialists, liberals, etc.
4) Supremacy of the military: Regardless of important domestic problems, fascist governments give the military a disproportionate share of national resources, and the domestic agenda is relegated to a secondary position. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
5) Rampant Sexism: fascist governments tend to exaggerate masculinity. Traditional gender roles are made more rigid, opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia.
6) Mass media is subject to government control: fear is used as a motivational tool by the government, but in some cases, the media are controlled indirectly by governmental regulation or through media spokespersons who are sympathetic to the government. Censorship, especially in wartime, is common.
7) Obsession with National Security: Fear is used by government to justify government secrecy and obscure governmental actions that might be of questionable legality or constitutionality.
8) Religion and government are intertwined: Governments of fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology are common from government leaders, even when the major tenents of the religion are directly opposed to government policies.
9) Corporate power is protected: The industrial and business leadership of a fascist nation are often the ones who put government leaders into powers, creating a mutually beneficial government/business relationship with the power elite.
10) Organized labor is suppressed: Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, and is often in opposition to corporate domination, labor unions are eliminated, co-opted, or severely repressed.
11) Disdain for intellectuals and the arts: Fascist governments tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, academia and intellectual professions. It is not unusual for professors, journalists, and other intellectuals to be censored or arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked and government often refuses to fund the arts, or reserve government funding to ideologically approved works. Science, when not in agreement with the government's projected myth, is disregarded and belittled.
12) Obsession with crime and punishment: The police are usually given almost limitless power to enforce criminal laws. People are often willing to overlook police abuses and to agree to limit civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with extensive powers, sometimes with special protections from judicial jurisdiction.
13) Rampant cronyism and corruption: Fascist nations are almost always governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use government power to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon for national resources and treasures to be appropriated or stolen by government leaders.
14) Fraudulent elections: Sometimes elections in fascist countries are a complete sham. Often elections are manipulated by smear campaigns involving patent untruths (or even assassinations) of potentially threatening opposition candidates. Legislation is used to control the numbers of voters, or political boundaries are manipulated to the advantage of the ruling party. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to shape or control elections.
Recognizing that Britt was writing with the Bush presidency in mind, it is worth pointing out that radical Islam fails to fall within his definition of fascism, although other national governments of the 20th and 21st centuries qualify. Without resorting to the illustrations provided by Britt in his essay, it is possible for any reasonably well informed observer of the contemporary political scene in America to recall a number of governmental actions fitting under Britt's list which unquestionably fall within the recent history of the Bush administration. The exercise of listing examples of fascist behavior is a good parlor game for objective students of politics as well as partisan critics of Bush and his Republican administration.
The use of pejorative terms to demonize political opponents is too well established as an effective propaganda tool to expect that the President will cease to use it. However, the Islamic extremists he wishes to vilify do not technically merit the appellation of fascist. It is important to use words carefully and accurately if we are to retain the possibility of political discourse. The President and his enablers among journalists and commentators should be called to account for demonstrably inaccurate and inappropriate characterizations. This is particularly true in cases where the pejorative term is demonstrably more applicable to Bush than to the Islamic terrorists, reprehensible as they unquestionably are.
Ph.D. University of Oklahoma 1971. Retired, emeritus status since 2004. Senior administrative positions in academic affairs at State University of New York, University of Evansville, Oklahoma State University, Eastern Illinois University. Held faculty rank and taught political science at SUNY Plattsburgh, University of Evansville, Oklahoma State University, and Eastern Illinois Universitiy. Academic specialization, political theory, public law, American political institutioins.
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Alienation can be a humane response to globalisation; Home-grown terrorism has been bred from social dislocation as well as the destruction of alternative ideologies of hope
Jeremy Seabrook
Friday August 25, 2006
The Guardian
Does Ruth Kelly's call for a "new and honest" and "mature" debate at the launch of the Commission on Integration and Cohesion suggest that discussion hitherto has been stale and disingenuous, or even infantile?
Perhaps so. Attempts to understand why young people may grow up in this country so profoundly estranged from its values that they become home-grown terrorists have been prohibited by politicians - faithfully echoed by the media - under the pretext that to do so would represent justification for acts of terrible violence. In this way, those committed to the war on terror immediately disarm themselves of the most useful instrument to tackle the phenomenon.
The British government vehemently repudiates the suggestion that its foreign policy in Iraq and Afghanistan, its slothful devotion to the fate of the Palestinians and its urgent inactivity in the Israel/ Hizbullah conflict have contributed towards the making of fanatics. The motivating factor of choice in the official view is that some suggestible young Muslims have fallen under the sway of powerful preachers of hate, brainwashed and promised a lurid caricature of paradise as a reward for the cult of death.
Part of the problem with home-grown alienation, of course, is that globalisation has a profound impact on local lives, not just economically but socially, culturally and spiritually. Kelly recognised this when she acknowledged that "global tensions are reflected on the streets of local communities". National borders are increasingly fragile defences against the influence of events that seep through barriers erected to contain them.
That many actual and potential terrorists are not from the most deprived backgrounds, but have often received a good education and have promising prospects, has puzzled observers. This reckons without the widespread psychic disturbance that always accompanies social dislocation, particularly mass migration, which brings contradictory belief systems into stark and sudden proximity - a shock exacerbated for people who, detached from majority status in their place of origin, become a stigmatised minority at their destination. The resulting cultural mix is bound to be volatile and unpredictable, as suggested by the approval of extremists by the 13% of Muslims in Britain who thought the July 7 bombings justified. It should also be remembered, however, that the self-immolation of others is sometimes not unappealing to those who would not dream of imitating them.
The home-growing of alienated people is a complex process to which a significant contributor is poverty and discrimination - the very exclusion that the government has proclaimed its desire to remedy. For too many young Muslims integration means the emergence into a subculture of gangs, crime, drugs and alcohol. If Islam offers redemption from this ugly version of social absorption, we should rejoice that some young men escape the embrace of the prison system. Those who speak glowingly of "our way of life" rarely have any great insight into how poor and marginalised people actually live.
Many people - Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and those of no religion - have expressed repugnance at the distortions of human purposes both in the excesses of globalism and in the reactions against it. But since all secular alternatives have been annulled - thanks, in large measure, to the triumph of the west over communism, and its encouragement of Islamist fighters in Afghanistan and elsewhere - it is inevitable that people should now seek divine succour in their otherwise hopeless predicament.
You don't have to be young or Muslim to be alienated by a society that spreads its rewards with promiscuous and random detachment from anything recognisable as worth or merit. The intemperance of that society is mirrored in its impact on the Earth. Alienation from a way of living that requires using up the Earth's treasures with increasing speed might be considered a rational, humane response. But alienation can become a force for creative change and renewal.
What kind of anger and despair makes some people believe that only ideologies of transcendence can alleviate the wrongs and evils of this life? It is not only the tragic delusion of today's "radicals" that they are moved by ideologies of otherworldly emancipation, it is also a consequence of the destruction of alternative ideologies of social hope.
In the light of this, it becomes slightly more explicable why many opponents of these developments can think only of surpassing the brutality inherent in the dominant global ideology. Who needs even more cruel acts of violence than those wrought by unsustainable developmentalism? If today's "radicals" were indeed animated by spiritual motives, they would be seeking not to add to death and dispossession but to redeem creation from the ruinous fate written into the profane pursuit of endless economic expansion in a limited world.
Unfortunately, the powerful are unlikely to engage with such complex questions. The demand that Muslims police themselves, that "moderates" restrain "extremists", that "true" representatives and "real" community leaders present themselves to authority, suggests not a strategy for integration but reversion to anachronistic imperial attitudes.
- Jeremy Seabrook is the author of The No Nonsense Guide to World Poverty
Comment: Interesting article, as there was never enough hard evidence presented to prove that young British Muslims are indeed terrorists, but there is enough hard evidence that clearly shows that the British government is itself a terrorist organization.
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Dutch to free passengers arrested on flight to India
By Nicola Leske
Reuters
Thu Aug 24, 2006
AMSTERDAM - Dutch authorities will release all 12 passengers arrested on a U.S. Northwest Airlines plane bound for India on Wednesday after concluding they were not planning an attack, officials said on Thursday.
"From the statements of suspects and witnesses, no evidence could be brought forward that these men were about to commit an act of violence. Therefore the decision has been made to release the men tonight," prosecution spokesman Ed Hartjes said.
Hartjes told a news conference the crew had raised the alarm after the men handed each other mobile phones and laptops during the flight and refused to follow their instructions.
Investigators examined the men's mobile phones in case they had been manipulated to cause an explosion and searched for explosives on the plane, but found none, Hartjes said.
"Since 9/11 and the terror threats in Great Britain both cabin crew and police authorities are very alert to possible attacks. Threats are taken very seriously," he said.
Security has been increased at airports worldwide in the past two weeks after British police said they had foiled a plot to blow up planes over the Atlantic using liquid explosives.
Mumbai has been on high alert since commuter train bombings on July 11 that killed 186 people.
Two Dutch fighter planes escorted Northwest Airlines flight 42 back to Amsterdam's Schiphol airport on Wednesday after the pilot reported passengers behaving suspiciously.
Passengers on the plane said air marshals intervened after the men began fidgeting with mobile phones and plastic bags.
"I thought that the men were celebrating a stag party," Simon Balakrishwan, a 43-year-old passenger from India, told the NRC Handelsblad daily.
"After the plane took off a mobile phone rang and the men started cheering," he said. "They kept exchanging plastic bags and looking in them and laughing. Irritating passengers."
Indian junior foreign minister Anand Sharma told reporters all 12 were born in Mumbai.
An Indian Foreign Ministry official said all were of Indian origin, although some apparently held other passports. Dutch authorities granted consular access to the Indian nationals.
The Northwest flight departed for Mumbai, India's financial hub, on Thursday morning after the rest of the passengers spent the night in hotels.
The return of the Northwest plane to Amsterdam did not lead to heightened security and did not affect other flights at Schiphol, Europe's third largest cargo airport and fourth biggest passenger hub, an airport spokeswoman said.
Comment: So, the moral of the story is don't "fidget" with plastic bags or mobile phones on an airplane, and don't irritate other passengers. In other words, don't act like a normal human being, because you could be suspected of terrorist acts.
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Netherlands apologises after 12 Indians held in air security scare
ABC News Online
August 25, 2006
The Netherlands apologised to India over the detention of 12 Indians following a mid-air security scare involving a plane flying from Amsterdam to Mumbai, according to an Indian minister.
The Dutch ambassador Eric Niehe delivered the apology after being summoned by India's foreign ministry in New Delhi, junior foreign minister Anand Sharma told reporters in New Delhi.
"Their ambassador has apologised. Our ministry had summoned him," he said.
The Indian nationals were suspected of attempting an act of violence during the US Northwest Airlines flight bound for the Indian western city of Mumbai, but were cleared of suspicion on Thursday by the Dutch authorities and released.
The Dutch embassy in New Delhi could not be contacted for comment.
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Aer Lingus flight evacuated in Ireland
By ROBERT BARR
Associated Press
August 25, 2006
LONDON - An Aer Lingus flight from New York with 239 passengers aboard was evacuated in Ireland Friday following a threat against the aircraft, airport authorities said.
Aer Lingus Flight 112 was evacuated during a scheduled stop at 2:50 a.m. EDT at Shannon airport in western Ireland, said airport spokesman Eugene Pratt. The plane was en route to Dublin.
The threat "came to a police station in Dublin, and referred to some explosives aboard that specific flight," Pratt said. No trace of explosives was found in the initial search.
Pratt said security officials decided to remove all baggage from the flight to be screened again.
The Dublin-bound passengers were all being accommodated on another flight, Pratt said.
"It wasn't an emergency landing. It wasn't a red alert. The flight was coming here anyway," Pratt said. The aircraft was parked at a remote stand as a precaution, he said.
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12th person charged in connection with British terror plot: police
by Prashant Rao
AFP
Fri Aug 25, 2006
LONDON - A 12th person was charged in connection with the thwarted alleged terror plot to blow up US-bound passenger jets two weeks ago, police said.
Umair Hussain, 24, was one of 25 people arrested since police staged pre-dawn raids on August 10 in connection with the plot. Five have since been released without charge.
Police were granted warrants by a court to quiz the remaining eight until next Wednesday. Under British anti-terror laws, suspects can be detained for up to 28 days without being charged, subject to regular court approval.
Hussain was charged under anti-terror legislation for failing to disclose information about his brother, Nabeel Hussain, who is believed to be one of the eight still in custody.
Umair Hussain will appear at City of Westminster Magistrates Court on Friday.
"Officers from the Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Branch have this evening charged a man under the Terrorism Act 2000 following the anti-terrorist operation overnight on 9/10 August 2006," a police spokesman said.
Hussain "had information which he knew or believed might be of material assistance in preventing the commission of another person, namely Nabeel Hussain, of an act of terrorism and failed to disclose it as soon as reasonably practicable."
Of the 11 others facing charges, eight are facing the most serious charges of conspiracy to murder and preparing acts of terrorism, and were told to return to court on September 4 to appear before 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 on 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.
Meanwhile, Britain's charity watchdog said Thursday it has frozen the bank accounts of the aid group Crescent Relief, which raised funds for earthquake relief in Pakistan, as part of a probe into whether money was diverted to the alleged terror plot.
"The inquiry will focus on whether or not the charity's funds, or funds raised on its behalf, were used unlawfully. It will also consider the financial policies and practices of the charity," the commission said in a statement, adding that the charity would have to obtain its permission to use any funds.
The Times newspaper said Saturday that Crescent Relief, which mobilized for the October 8 earthquake in Pakistan, was founded in 2000 by Abdul Rauf, the father of Rashid Rauf, who is being held in Pakistan over the plot.
Rashid Rauf is one of two Britons being held along with five others in Pakistan in connection with the terror plot.
Pakistan's foreign ministry has said that Rashid Rauf was unconnected with any charities involved with the earthquake, while denying a separate report that a Pakistani charity had diverted quake relief to the plot.
The commission could not say how long the inquiry would take, but promised a full report of its findings.
Phone calls to Crescent Relief went unanswered Thursday.
London's Metropolitan Police, which is leading the probe into the alleged airliner conspiracy, declined to comment on the statement.
On Friday a poll published in The Daily Telegraph showed that more than half of all Britons think Islam poses a threat to the West, up from a third five years ago.
Some 53 percent of the 1,757 people surveyed by YouGov said Islam, as separate from fundamentalist Islamic groups, posed a threat to Western liberal democracy, compared to 32 percent in a similar YouGov survey following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States.
The proportion of respondents who believe that "a large proportion of British Muslims feel no sense of loyalty to this country and are prepared to condone or even carry out acts of terrorism" rose to 18 percent, from 10 percent in the wake of the July 7, 2005 attacks on London's transport network.
Of those surveyed, 16 percent said they agreed with the statement that "practically all British Muslims are peaceful, law-abiding citizens who deplore terrorist attacks as much as any one else", down from 23 percent last July.
Some 65 percent said Britain's security services should focus their intelligence-gathering and anti-terrorism efforts on Muslims, up from 60 percent a year ago.
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Row as judges back Blair in key terror case; Human rights groups called naive for objecting to deportation of Algerian
Alan Travis, home affairs editor
Friday August 25, 2006
The Guardian
Special immigration judges yesterday delivered a major, and rare, legal victory for Tony Blair's anti-terror campaign when they cleared the way for foreign terror suspects to be sent back to Algeria despite fears that they could be tortured.
Human rights groups, including Amnesty International, last night condemned as "an affront to justice" the decision involving an Algerian who has already been acquitted in an Old Bailey trial of involvement in the so-called "ricin poison plot". In a highly unusual move three of the jurors involved in that trial issued a statement last night saying they were shocked by such an "unfair and unjust sequence of events".
But Lord Carlile, the independent watchdog on the anti-terror laws, accused Amnesty of being "thoroughly naive". He argued that acquittal in a criminal trial did not mean it was in the national interest for that person to remain in Britain.
The ruling by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, chaired by Mr Justice Ouseley, means that the "no torture, no ill-treatment" assurances given by the Algerian government to Mr Blair in December have unexpectedly passed their first major legal test.
It clears the way for the removal of a further 15 Algerian terror suspects - the bulk of them among those originally detained in Belmarsh prison in the wake of 9/11 - and follows Mr Blair's warning 12 months ago that he was prepared to change the law if the judges put legal obstacles in the way of such deportations.
Mr Justice Ouseley said the SIAC was convinced that the changing political situation in Algeria and the high-profile nature of the case meant it was inconceivable that assurances given to Mr Blair would prove to be unreliable or given in bad faith.
"The level of allegations of torture has declined significantly recently and that is not to be seen as a temporary or happenstance state of affairs. That decline reflects the changing and stabilising political situation in Algeria," said the judges.
The home secretary, John Reid, welcomed the ruling saying it had confirmed that the man, who can only be identified as Y, was a danger to national security and could be deported.
"The court also recognised that Algeria has changed - so as to allow us to deport this individual without jeopardising his human rights thanks to the Algerian Charter on Peace and National Reconciliation and the assurances we have received from the Algerian government," said Mr Reid. An amnesty means that a death sentence and two life sentences passed on Y for terrorist activity will now be extinguished on his return.
The decision is a major step forward for the government's attempts to deport foreign terror suspects back to countries where they fear there is a risk of torture or ill-treatment.
More than a year of intensive diplomatic activity have only produced three "memorandums of understanding" - formal legal documents - with Jordan, Libya and Lebanon. An agreement with Algeria has proved impossible to secure.
The Algerians were reluctant to formally admit that torture had been practised in the past and the British government has had to fall back on assurances given in December 2005 based on an unpublished exchange of letters between prime ministers.
Y's solicitor, Gareth Peirce, said that she was profoundly disturbed by yesterday's ruling. "A year ago Tony Blair said the rules of the game had changed and they would deport refugees to countries that they knew used torture, but they would not do it unless we have a memorandum of understanding and an independent monitoring group," she said.
"Now one year later, there is no memorandum of understanding and no monitoring group in place. The government are saying they are not necessary and today the court has endorsed that."
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Airport ban on carrying liquids is permanent, warn security chiefs
By Barrie Clement, Transport Editor
The Independent
Published: 25 August 2006
The 200 million passengers who pass through British airports each year will face high levels of security "permanently", senior government officials say.
Passengers will be ban-ned from taking liquids bought outside the security screening zone on an "enduring basis", security experts at the Department for Transport (DfT) said.
The officials indicated that any relaxation of the rules would depend on the development of technology able to detect all potentially explosive liquids, the perceived level of threat and the experience gained from operating the procedures.
At present, the equipment was only partly successful. "It is a big step to go from a concept that works in the lab to one that works in a complex airport environment," the experts said.
The threat of liquid explosives would remain. It was not possible to "uninvent" a threat. Passengers were also warned that the rules restricting them to one laptop-size piece of hand luggage was likely to remain because it was far easier and more efficient to screen smaller bags.
In a briefing at the DfT, officials compared an X-ray picture of a large bag with that of a smaller one. Under the present security regime, the larger bag, which contained difficult-to-see hand cream, after-shave and shower gel, would have been rejected and a time-consuming hand search would have been made. The officials said separate screening would continue for electronic equipment to simplify scrutiny of hand luggage.
Passengers are becoming increasingly impatient about the level of security and the varying ways it is applied. The department's ban on liquids in hand luggage, will remain except for those bought in departure lounges.
Despite concerns about airport contract staff, officials say employees are vetted and screened, and some are body-searched before their shifts. The officials expressed confidence in screening methods used on all goods on sale inside the security zone.
One senior civil servant differed with a colleague, saying measures banning liquids were "not necessarily permanent" because the methods of detection would evolve. At present, passengers will be able to take on board only baby food and prescribed medicines.
The DfT said the recent threat from liquid explosives formed a "step change" in the threats faced by airline passengers. Terrorists were becoming increasingly "innovative and ingenious" in concealing and disguising the components of bombs.
But terrorists first attempted to use liquid explosive to blow up aircraft in the so-called "Bojinka" plot 11 years ago in Manila.
One technology expert at the DfT said: "We are not trying to prevent people taking Coca-Cola on board, but some potentially dangerous liquids are very difficult to distinguish from ordinary liquids. It remains a challenge. Screening bottles individually is not practical."
Officials told journalists: "There is a continuing level of severe risk. The threat is real, deadly and enduring." There was a balance to be struck, they said, between the convenience of passengers, the continuing development of the industry and the safety of both passengers and of employees.
Although a tougher regime would remain, adjustments to security would be made in due course without compromising safety.
Representatives of European Union countries and the US would be trying to develop "effective, realistic and achievable" common standards.
A 12th person has been charged over the alleged airliner bomb plot. Umair Hussain was charged under the Terrorism Act 2000 with failing to disclose information about his brother Nabeel Hussain. On Tuesday, a total of 11 people were remanded in custody over the alleged plot at City of Westminster magistrates' court. Umair Hussain will appear at the same court today.
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Killer Whales Settle Disputes Like Humans
Jeanna Bryner
LiveScience.com
Thu Aug 24, 2006
Whether it's a blowout argument or a dinner-table disagreement, a spat with your lover can be trying. Humans have of course devised ways of making up, including tight hugs and the customary apology flowers.
Killer whales have their own tricks for mending relations, a new study finds. Rather than a bouquet, however, they might opt for an intimate swim.
Studies have shown that chimpanzees kiss and hug after a dispute, and other primates such as bonobos resort to sexual activity to resolve conflicts. Until now, reconciliatory behavior had not been shown in any marine mammal.
For the past five years, Michael Noonan, a psychologist and specialist in animal behavior at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, has been studying the captive killer whales at the theme park Marineland of Canada in Niagara Falls, Ontario. To learn more about orca social behavior, Noonan videotaped a group of captive killer whales for a total of 2,800 hours.
"Nearly all social animals occasionally squabble," Noonan said.
He noted 21 disagreements, many of which involved complicated interactions between several whales. Most notably, the video revealed eight unambiguous quarrels between one pair-a mother and a father. The disputes entailed aggressive chasing, Noonan said.
Orcas, the largest members of the dolphin family, can reach swimming speeds at sea of 30 miles per hour (50 kilometers per hour) for short stints.
After the mother chased the father for several minutes, each zipped away to separate aquatic quarters to cool off for about 10 minutes. Then, the mates smoothed over their clash with side-by-side swimming, called echelon swimming [image].
"In eight out of eight instances, the animals engaged in a pro-social, affiliative behavior shortly after the period of tension," Noonan told LiveScience. "The pro-social behavior was echelon swimming."
Animal behavior scientists have known that orcas take part in echelon swimming as a form of routine social bonding. "That these two [killer whales] did it so consistently after periods of tension is the new discovery," Noonan said.
The research was presented at the Animal Behavior Society conference earlier this month in Salt Lake City.
"It shows yet another way in which cetaceans have converged with primates, Noonan said. Other similarities: large brains, long lives and social complexity.
But Noonan is still trying to elucidate some secrets held by these black-and-white mammals. For instance, what triggered the domestic squabbles? "We are working on that," he said.
Comment: The study also showed that like some humans, killer whales have other methods for settling disputes. For example, a certain breed of killer whale resolves conflicts by implicating its opponents in the development of weaponry to annihilate innocent bystanders, and then invades its enemy's territory against intermarine law and slaughters everything in its path.
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Middle East Mayhem
Israel may 'go it alone' against Iran
Herb Keinon
THE JERUSALEM POST
Aug. 24, 2006
Israel is carefully watching the world's reaction to Iran's continued refusal to suspend uranium enrichment, with some high-level officials arguing it is now clear that when it comes to stopping Iran, Israel "may have to go it alone," The Jerusalem Post has learned.
One senior source said on Tuesday that Iran "flipped the world the bird" by not responding positively to the Western incentive plan to stop uranium enrichment. He expressed frustration that the Russians and Chinese were already saying that Iran's offer of a "new formula" and willingness to enter "serious negotiations" was an opening to keep on talking.
"The Iranians know the world will do nothing," he said. "This is similar to the world's attempts to appease Hitler in the 1930s - they are trying to feed the beast."
He said there was a need to understand that "when push comes to shove," Israel would have to be prepared to "slow down" the Iranian nuclear threat by itself.
Having said this, he did not rule out the possibility of US military action, but said that if this were to take place, it would probably not occur until the spring or summer of 2008, a few months before President George W. Bush leaves the international stage. The US presidential elections, which Bush cannot contest because of term limits, are in November 2008.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, in a meeting in Paris with French Foreign Minister Phillippe Douste-Blazy Wednesday, said Iran "poses a global threat" and needed to be dealt with by the whole international community.
"The first thing they need to do is stop the enrichment of uranium," Livni said. "Everyday that passes brings the Iranians closer to building a nuclear bomb. The world can't afford a nuclear Iran." She said the Iranian reply to the Western incentives was just an attempt to "gain time."
Government officials said Israel's role at this time is to warn the world of the dangers of an Iranian nuclear potential. Some government officials are sending the message to their counterparts abroad that the firm implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 on Lebanon will send a strong message to Iran - which is testing the world's resolve - that it is serious about implementing Security Council resolutions.
Meanwhile, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reported Wednesday that the Iranian news service Al-Borz, which it said is known to have access to sources in the Iranian government, predicted that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would announce what the news service called Iran's "nuclear birth" on the first anniversary of his government later this month.
In addition, an article Tuesday on the Teheran Times Web site, considered to be affiliated with the Foreign Ministry, implied that Iran's nuclear technology had already reached the point of no return. "If the West is seeking to impede Iran's nuclear industry, it should realize that Iran has passed this stage," the report read.
Diplomats from Europe, the US, Russia and China were poring over details of Iran's counterproposal to the Western nuclear incentives package Wednesday. Initial comments from Russia and China made clear Washington is likely to face difficulty getting at least those nations to agree to any tough sanctions against Iran.
In Paris, however, Douste-Blazy made clear that his government was sticking by the UN demand for Iran to halt enrichment by the end of this month as a precondition to further talks. Israeli officials said France has consistently advocated a firm position with Iran regarding the nuclear issue.
"I want to point out again that France is available to negotiate, and to recall that, as we have always said... a return to the negotiating table is linked to the suspension of uranium enrichment," Douste-Blazy said.
However, Russia's Foreign Ministry said it would continue to seek a political, negotiated solution to the dispute with Iran. China appealed for dialogue, urging "constructive measures" by Iran but also urging other parties to "remain calm and patient, show flexibility, stick to the orientation of peaceful resolution and create favorable conditions for resuming talks as soon as possible."
In London, a British Foreign Office spokesman predicted "some hard discussions" when the Security Council takes up the Iran issue in the coming weeks.
Iran said Tuesday it was ready for "serious negotiations" on its nuclear program and cast the counterproposal as a new formula to resolve the crisis with the West. But a semiofficial news agency said the government was unwilling to abandon uranium enrichment.
The world powers, the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany, have given Iran until August 31 to accept the incentives package.
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Israeli warplanes strike on Gaza
www.chinaview.cn 2006-08-25 14:49:14
GAZA, Aug. 25 (Xinhua) -- At least ten Palestinians were injured at predawn on Friday when Israeli warplanes destroyed by missiles two Palestinian owned homes in northern Gaza Strip and in Gaza City, witnesses and local residents said.
Eyewitnesses said that three Palestinian civilians were injured after an Israeli warplane fired two missiles at a house that includes a metal workshop in Gaza City, adding that the house was completely destroyed.
One of the missiles did not explode, said the residents, adding that explosives experts as well as ambulances and firefighters arrived at the scene and evacuated the three civilians to a Gaza hospital.
Shortly before the house was targeted, Israeli F16 warplanes targeted another house in Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza Strip, said local residents, adding that the house which consists of four flours was completely destroyed.
Palestinian medics said that seven Palestinians were injured in the airstrike on the house that belongs to a Palestinian militant, member of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Fatah movement's armed wing.
Palestinian security sources reported that the Israeli army notified the owners of the two houses on telephone that they should evacuate their homes because the Israeli warplanes would destroy them.
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Beyond bearable
Erica Silverman
Al Ahram Weekly
Aug 25, 2006
Scores of buses overflowing with passengers, so tightly packed that bodies are pressed against glass windows, approached the gates of Rafah Terminal along the Gaza-Egypt border Saturday in a desperate bid to exit the Gaza Strip. Luggage and people piled high on top and on trailers dragging behind, some precariously balancing themselves even on metal hitches in between.
Mohamed, 17, clung to the side of one bus by his arms, trying to make his way into Egypt for medical care. One mother grasped the side of a trailer with one arm and her crying little girl with the other as suitcases were rapidly hurled on top of them.
Buses pushed on -- some carrying as many as 200 people, tires flattened from the weight -- towards lines of preventative security forces trying to control the chaos. Over 7,000 passengers swarmed the terminal frantically trying to escape, but only 2,396 passengers departed and 341 returned, according to EU monitors stationed there. Students, medical patients, and foreign visa holders were permitted to leave. An estimated 30,000 are still waiting to depart, and as of Tuesday the border remained sealed.
"They deal with us like animals," cried 37- year-old Riad Syiam, an electrical engineer trying to reach Abu Dhabi with his wife and three children. Like hundreds of families they came to Gaza to visit relatives and were trapped inside when Israel sealed the border after an Israeli soldier was captured by Hamas 25 June. Rafah (Gaza's only passenger crossing) has been closed by Israel for seven weeks, ostensibly to prevent the soldier from being smuggled outside the Strip as well as to cut off large amounts of cash Hamas leaders have been bringing across the border.
Palestinian officials and EU monitors are working to convince Israel to resume normal operation of the terminal, although according to Salim Abu Saifa, Palestinian Authority (PA) director of border security in Gaza and a chief negotiator with the Israeli side, there is no agreement in sight. Abu Saifa predicts erratic openings until the release of the Israeli soldier.
Shin Bet Chief Yuval Diskin told ministers at the weekly Israeli cabinet meeting Sunday that the Philadelphi Route along the Egyptian border is porous, allowing several tonnes of explosives and weapons to enter Gaza. "Recently, $1.5 million has been smuggled in through Rafah by the Hamas Agriculture Ministry," said Diskin. The intelligence chief charges that Egyptian supervision of the crossing is ineffective, calling for a review of the agreements signed with Egypt last year.
The Palestinian side securely operated the terminal for eight months, says Abu Saifa, asserting, "the crossing is used [by Israel] for collective punishment and other political gains." President Mahmoud Abbas's office controls the crossings, not the Hamas-led government, in a vain effort to keep them open. On 10 and 11 August, Rafah opened one-way, allowing 4,200 passengers to leave Gaza, according to the EU observer mission.
Meanwhile Karni -- Gaza's only commercial crossing -- has been sealed shut for four days, as of Monday, creating a shortage of basic commodities and food supplies across Gaza.
Fear and hostility amongst Gazans is brimming over into violent protests throughout Gaza City, as most Palestinians have not received a paycheque in nearly six months. PA employees stormed into banks Saturday morning demanding salaries and on Sunday angry mobs attacked the Legislative Council building. These outbursts come amid a recent string of auto thefts uncommon in the religiously conservative Strip. Palestinians are surviving under the intense pressure of a nearly nine-week-long Israeli incursion into Gaza to purportedly halt the launching of Qassam rockets into Israel and to recover the captured Israeli soldier.
On Saturday 170,000 PA employees received 1,500 shekels, half their monthly salary, from local banks. Funds were transferred directly from the Arab League and select Arab and non-Arab donor nations to the President's Office -- the fruits of Abbas's recent tour soliciting aid. Healthcare sector employees received their salaries directly from the EU, the first channel of the Temporary International Aid Mechanism that has reached Palestinians, presidential spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh told Al-Ahram Weekly.
When PA employees discovered the payment amounted to only half their usual salaries -- and even less for those with outstanding loans in their accounts -- enraged crowds attempted to seize Gaza banks as frightened employees went into hiding. "My wife is expecting and my daughter is sick, I can't make ends meet," said Ossam Akhouli standing outside the Arab Bank to withdraw his salary. Abbas's presidential force and police deployed to secure the banks, as heated protesters tried to enter.
"The problem is the bank, they owe us our salaries -- this bank is against the Hamas government," shouted 20-year-old Baha Al-Buttish outside Jordan Bank, a member of the presidential security forces. After waiting for two hours under a scorching sun Al-Buttish walked away empty-handed.
"People are under pressure, but they know for sure the Israeli occupation along with the international embargo are responsible for this," Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zhouri told the Weekly, asserting that Hamas's popularity has increased since 25 June.
Meanwhile, unknown Palestinian militants kidnapped two Fox News crew -- cameraman Olaf Wiig, 36, of New Zealand, and American reporter Steve Centanni, 60 -- 14 August in Gaza City. Four militants emerged from a Magnum Jeep, threw the driver of Wiig and Centanni on the ground and swiftly snatched the two journalists from their TV van, recounted witnesses. The journalists are being held by Mumtaz Doghmush, commander of the Salaheddin Brigades, the armed wing of the Popular Resistance Committees, as a bargaining chip to put pressure on the Israelis to stop shelling houses and halt incursions into the Strip, according to a senior Palestinian intelligence official speaking off record. Hamas knows the location of the journalists, the official said.
Wiig's wife, Anita McNaught, a freelance journalist, made emotional pleas for her husband's release in a televised appeal Friday. It is the first time Palestinian kidnappers have not identified themselves or their demands. Waves of kidnappings, commencing last summer, went largely unpunished under Fatah as the kidnappers' demands were promptly met, arguably encouraging further incidents. "It is a reprehensible act on the part of any faction, and it serves the Israeli occupation," said Abu Zhouri.
Hamas, elected into office on a campaign promise to restore law and order in Gaza, asserts the perpetrators will be punished. The Fatah bloc of the Palestinian Legislative Council affirmed the Palestinian people have suffered as a result of the kidnappings, which have even further discouraged foreign investment coupled with the inability of exports to leave the Strip.
Until now, Israel's offensive in Gaza has been overshadowed by its war on Lebanon, leaving Gaza's population in a media blind spot and even more vulnerable to Israeli terrorism. Israeli forces have destroyed three major bridges, along with roads, crops, and infrastructure crushed by rolling Israeli tanks. Gaza's main power station was destroyed 28 June, leaving households, businesses and hospitals across the Strip without electricity and water in the sweltering heat of summer while sanitation systems also collapsed.
Israeli forces have killed over 200 Palestinians, with over 1,000 injured, since 25 June.
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Minister's prison sentence extended for 7th time without charge
Palestine News Network
Aug 25, 2006
An Israeli military court extended Khalid Abu Arafa's prison sentence for another eight days yesterday.
This is the seventh time the court extended the Palestinian Minister of Jerusalem Affairs' sentence, while he has still not been charged with any crime.
Sources indicate that the judge continues to grant the delays to give Israeli intelligence more time to come up with a reason to hold the Palestinian official, or something to charge him with.
As has been well-documented by the Palestinian Prisoner Society, if a charge is levied, the Israeli military courts often use a vague charge regarding "security," while defense attorneys and the accused are not allowed to view the evidence, also for "security" reasons.
The continued detention of the Minister of Jerusalem Affairs, accordingly, was said to be in the light of fact that "intelligence did not succeed in bringing logical and persuasive material" to continue imprisoning Abu Arafa. However, the judge postponed charging or trying him the last time as they were expected "dramatic developments" with which to condemn Abu Arafa. But the new day came up as empty as the first.
Israeli forces arrested Abu Arafa in June and have put him before a military court judge in a Jerusalem military camp seven times since then.
What the Israeli military prosecution is going for is a charge beyond that the Minister of Jerusalem Affairs is a member of the Hamas party, which the Israelis coin a "terrorist organization."
After the Hamas party was democratically elected during the 25 January elections and then later assumed their Legislative Council seats and ministry positions, Israeli forces began arresting them.
On 29 June, Israeli forces arrested the Minister of Jerusalem Affairs and seven other ministers. In all Israeli forces also are imprisoning 31 Palestinian Legislative Council members, including the Speaker, Dr. Azzi Dweik, and the Deputy Prime Minister, Dr. Nasser Addin Al Sha'er.
Additionally Israeli forces arrested many members of local governments, including Qalqilia's Mayor and Deputy Mayor, during the past several months.
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Hamas sees progress in bid to free Gaza hostages
ABC News Online
The Hamas-led Palestinian government says progress is being made in efforts to secure the release of a Fox News correspondent and cameraman seized by gunmen in the Gaza Strip.
Interior Minister Saeed Seyam said contacts had been made with unidentified "Palestinian parties" that were seeking to free the two captives. He suggested the government had made indirect contact with their kidnappers.
"Things are going in a positive direction," Mr Seyam, of Hamas, said in a statement. He offered no details.
The statement was the first on efforts by the Hamas-led government to free Fox correspondent Steve Centanni and New Zealand cameraman Olaf Wiig.
Asked to elaborate, Interior Ministry spokesman Khaled Abu Hilal would only say there was "an important development and progress" in the case.
New Zealand-born Wiig, 36, and American Centanni, 60, were seized on August 14 as they were working on a story in central Gaza City. Theirs is the longest-lasting abduction in Gaza in more than a year.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas said freeing the captives was "a top priority".
"I have urged the brothers, the kidnappers, yesterday to release the two journalists unharmed," Mr Haniyeh said. Asked if he thought they would be released soon, he said: "I hope so."
On Wednesday, the previously unknown Holy Jihad Brigades claimed responsibility for the kidnapping and gave the United States 72 hours to free Muslim prisoners or else the captives would face unspecified consequences.
The deadline is set to expire around midday on Saturday GMT.
A videotape released on Wednesday showed the men, dressed in tracksuits, sitting on a blanket in front of a black background. They appeared fairly relaxed and in good health. Both said that they were fine and being treated well.
Several Palestinian militant groups are active in Gaza, including Islamic Jihad and Hamas, the group that runs the Palestinian government, have denied any involvement with the kidnapping and have said that the men should be freed.
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Galloway to host Beirut radio phone-in
Julia Day, radio correspondent
Friday August 25, 2006
MediaGuardian.co.uk
MP George Galloway is presenting his TalkSport phone-in show from Beirut this weekend, in what the station claims is the first such live broadcast from a war zone.
The controversial MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, who alarmed his constituents earlier this year with his Lycra-wearing antics on Celebrity Big Brother, is to broadcast his show live from Beirut tomorrow and Sunday.
Mr Galloway said: "I'm the first British political figure to visit the wreckage of Beirut and the south of Lebanon, seeing for myself the enormous toll taken by 33 days of aerial bombardment.
"I'll be reporting to TalkSport listeners on just what I've found here and inviting guests from across the spectrum in Lebanon who know what they're talking about."
Mr Galloway will be taking calls from UK listeners as usual during the shows, which will focus on the conflict in the Middle East, its causes and possible paths to peace.
When the Respect MP was unveiled, in March, as the latest addition to TalkSport's roster of loud-mouthed and opinionated presenters, he said he wanted to make his show the "most talked-about talkshow on radio".
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Chirac offer of 2,000 troops breaks impasse on Lebanon peacekeepers
Ewen MacAskill and Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
Friday August 25, 2006
The Guardian
The French president, Jacques Chirac, opened the way for the formation of a 15,000-strong United Nations peacekeeping force for Lebanon last night by promising France would contribute 2,000 troops.
Other European countries, which have been hesitant about offering soldiers, are likely to follow France's lead by making firm commitments at a meeting in Brussels today.
The French government was heavily involved in the UN negotiations that led to the ceasefire 12 days ago. But Mr Chirac was derided, especially in the US, when he announced last week that France would contribute only 200 troops to the international peacekeeping force.
There were conflicting views last night on whether Mr Chirac increased the force because of the criticism or had always intended to make a significant contribution. Whatever the reason, it has been a public relations disaster for France, whose reputation in the US has sunk back to the levels in 2003 in the run-up to the war in Iraq.
Mr Chirac insisted last night in a televised address he had been awaiting the necessary guarantees from the UN about the mandate and rules of engagement. He does not see the international force's role as disarmament of the Shia militia Hizbullah, as demanded by Israel. Although France fears confrontation with Hizbullah - 58 French troops died after intervention in Lebanon two decades ago - it is also worried about Israeli attacks.
At a European Union foreign ministers' meeting today, Italy will reiterate its offer of 3,000 troops and Spain could pledge about 1,000. Germany has offered troops mainly in support roles, and smaller countries, such as Finland, have promised contributions. It would be one of the biggest and fastest EU deployments.
Malaysia, Indonesia and Bangladesh have offered troops but Israel ruled out the presence of countries with which it has no diplomatic relations. A UK official said he hoped Israel's objections were only tactical, and argued that a precedent had been set by the existence of Unifil, a 2,000-strong UN force on the border which has contained troops from countries with which it has no diplomatic ties.
Mr Chirac said last night he hoped France would command the new force. Romano Prodi, the Italian prime minister, said yesterday that President George Bush told him he took a "positive" view of an Italian offer to lead the force. Among compromises under discussion, France, which has command of Unifil until February, could lead the new force on the ground while Italy could take command of the overall operation at UN headquarters in New York.
Soul-searching continued in Israel yesterday over conduct of the military campaign. Chief of staff Lieutenant General Dan Halutz acknowledged for the first time "shortcomings" in the war with Hizbullah and promised a full investigation. The comments, made in a letter from Gen Halutz to his troops, come at a time of mounting criticism within Israel about the conduct of the war.
Angry reservist soldiers and parents of troops killed in battle gathered in Jerusalem yesterday, some demanding the resignation of Gen Halutz as well as the prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and the defence minister, Amir Peretz.
Mr Olmert is expected to decide in the coming days whether to announce a potentially embarrassing state commission of inquiry. It would have power to call for the sacking of senior officers and politicians.
Soldiers and critics in the press have complained about shortages of food and water on the battlefield as well as poor intelligence about Hizbullah's capabilities. Most of all, they are angry that Israel failed to emerge from the 34-day conflict with a clear victory over Hizbullah. About 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers, were killed and the two soldiers whose capture triggered the war have still not been freed.
In his letter, released yesterday by the Israeli military, Gen Halutz admitted there had been problems: "Alongside the achievements, the fighting uncovered shortcomings in various areas - logistical, operational and command. We are committed to a thorough, honest, rapid and complete investigation of all the shortcomings and successes.
"Questions will be answered professionally, and everyone will be investigated - from me down to the last soldier."
The Israeli military continued its operations in Gaza yesterday, killing one Palestinian and capturing his brother, a senior member of the ruling Hamas movement.
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15,000 'excessive' for Lebanon force: Chirac
Last Updated Fri, 25 Aug 2006 09:44:32 EDT
CBC News
Belgium said Friday it would contribute close to 400 soldiers to an international peacekeeping force in Lebanon, as France said sending 15,000 troops to the region is "excessive."
"There will be an initial 302 Belgian peacekeepers, and that will rise to 394, so almost 400," Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt told a news conference in Brussels.
The Belgian contingent would include de-mining, medical and reconstruction units, he said.
Verhofstadt spoke ahead of an emergency meeting by European Union foreign affairs ministers and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan concerning the peacekeeping force, known as United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).
French President Jacques Chirac, who has offered 2,000 troops to the force, said 15,000 troops may not be needed to patrol the region.
"My feeling is that the figure that was put forward at the beginning of discussions - 15,000 for a reinforced UNIFIL - was a figure that was quite excessive," said Chirac.
A UN resolution ending the 34-day conflict between Israel and the Lebanese-based militant group Hezbollah called for an international force to be deployed in Lebanon.
Israel has said it will end its sea and air blockade of its northern neighbour when the international force joins a Lebanese army force of roughly the same size in patrolling southern Lebanon.
Annan confident in force
Annan said he believes European nations will answer the call for troop contributions.
"I am very confident that we will have a successful meeting this afternoon and that Europe will assume its responsibility and show its solidarity with the people of Lebanon," Annan said following a meeting with Verhofstadt.
He added that he doesn't expect to come out of Friday's meeting with the full contingent.
"Not today," Annan said, "but I will get the 15,000."
Other European countries expected to contribute troops are Spain, Poland and Finland. Germany has declined to send ground troops, but has offered to provide naval assistance.
The EU countries had been wary of offering troops until the force's mandate - including the right to defend itself if attacked - was clearly defined.
On Thursday, France offered 1,600 new troops, in addition to the 400 it had already pledged. Italy has offered roughly 3,000 troops.
Both nations have said they would be willing to command the force, with Italy proposing a joint command on Friday.
Fresh French troops on ground
As the political wrangling continued, about 170 French soldiers arrived in southern Lebanon, which was hit hard by four weeks of Israeli air strikes.
Roughly one million people fled their homes during the conflict. They're now returning to towns and villages without water or electricity.
French Rear Admiral Xavier Magne, who is in charge of getting the troops on the ground, says the soldiers have much-needed skills.
"They belong to engineering units and they have heavy equipment so they will be able to proceed to rebuild infrastructure, they will be able to neutralize unexploded ordinance," said Magne.
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Cluster bombs litter Lebanon, UN says
Last Updated Fri, 25 Aug 2006 07:42:42 EDT
CBC News
Unexploded cluster bomb litter homes, gardens and highways in south Lebanon, the United Nations said Friday, as the U.S. State Department investigated whether Israel's use of the American-made weapons violated secret agreements.
Dalya Farran, a spokeswoman for the UN Mine Action Co-ordination Center, said cluster bombs have been found in 285 locations in south Lebanon.
"Our teams are still doing surveys and adding new locations every day," Farran said. "We find about 30 new locations per day."
The U.S. State Department is investigating whether the use of three types of American cluster munitions - anti-personnel weapons that spray bomblets over a wide area - violated secret agreements that restrict when such arms can be employed, the New York Times reported Friday.
The newspaper quoted several current and former U.S. officials as saying they doubted the probe would lead to sanctions against Israel, but that it might be an effort by the Bush administration to ease Arab criticism of its military support for Israel.
The U.S. has also postponed a shipment of M-26 artillery rockets, another cluster weapon, to Israel, the newspaper said.
UN de-mining experts refused to comment on the U.S. investigation, but suggested Israel violated some aspects of international law.
"It's not illegal to use [cluster bombs] against soldiers or your enemy, but according to Geneva Conventions it's illegal to use them in civilian areas," Farran said. "But it's not up to us to decide if it's illegal - I'm just giving facts and letting others do analysis."
Israel said it was forced to hit civilian targets in Lebanon because Hezbollah fighters were using villages as a base for rocket-launchers aimed at Israel. Some 850 Lebanese and 157 Israelis died in the fighting.
Lebanon's south is also riddled with land mines that were laid by Israeli soldiers as they pulled out of the region in 2000 after an 18-year occupation. Hezbollah has also planted mines to ward off Israeli forces. Lebanon has long called for Israel to hand over maps of the minefields.
The UN Mine Action Co-ordination Center opened an office in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre in 2003 to deal with the land mine problem. Since the ceasefire, the office has redirected its efforts toward clearing unexploded Israeli bombs from the area.
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Israeli army chief admits to logistical errors in Lebanon
By Eric Silver in Jerusalem
The Independent
Published: 25 August 2006
Lt-Gen Dan Halutz, Israel's chief of staff, admitted for the first time publicly yesterday that there were failings in his country's four-week war against Hizbollah, which ended inconclusively on 14 August.
"The fighting uncovered shortcomings in various areas; logistical, operational and command," he wrote in a letter to his soldiers. "We are committed to a thorough, honest, rapid and complete investigation of all the shortcomings and successes." General Halutz, who is fighting for his professional life as the government comes under increasing pressure to appoint an impartial commission to find out what went wrong, did not exonerate himself. "We have to draw professional lessons, as we are faced with more challenges," he said. "This test concerns us all, from me down to the last soldier."
He acknowledged that Israel paid a heavy price in civilian and military deaths, but contended that his troops inflicted significant damage on Hizbollah, killing hundreds of fighters and seizing territory south of the Litani river. He congratulated his soldiers on striking a heavy blow to Hizbollah's capacity to launch long-range rockets, as well as destroying hundreds of operational and logistical facilities and dozens of launchers and command posts.
At the same time Yuval Diskin, director of the Shin Bet internal security service, admitted that the government had abandoned the northern towns and villages that came under attack from thousands of Katyusha rockets. He said: "The government system collapsed there completely. This is the truth. It should not be whitewashed. It should be investigated in depth."
Calling it "a fiasco", Mr Diskin added: "There were many failures, and the public sees and understands this. Someone has to give explanations and take responsibility." Ehud Olmert, the Prime Minister, toured some of the worst-affected areas of western Galilee yesterday, including a hospital in the border town of Nahariya that suffered a direct hit.
Like General Halutz, he is under siege. On the one hand he is still trying to convince a sceptical public that the war changed the political map of Lebanon, weakening Hizbollah and strengthening the central government and its army. On the other, he is promising to invest billions in rehabilitating the north.
"Next week," Mr Olmert said in Nahariya, "we will convene a special cabinet meeting in the north and discuss northern Israel. I estimate that in the course of more than one budget year, sums that could reach 10bn shekels [£1.2bn] could be collected."
Mr Olmert noted that foreign Jews had donated more than $300m (£160m) for developing the north. "More funds from existing budgets will also be invested," he pledged. "All this will be approved, not in one year, but within two weeks."
Disenchanted Israelis will judge him by his deeds. Dozens of reserve soldiers demonstrated in Jerusalem last night, urging the Prime Minister, the chief of staff, and Amir Peretz, Defence Minister, to resign.
"They had the guts to send people to battle," said First Sgt Baruch Eitam, "they must now have the guts to resign."
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More than 60 pct of Israelis want Olmert to quit: poll
By Adam Entous
Reuters
August 25, 2006
JERUSALEM - Sixty-three percent of Israelis want Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to resign in a sharp public rebuke over his handling of the war in Lebanon against Hizbollah, a newspaper poll showed on Friday.
Many Israelis view a U.N.-brokered ceasefire backed by Olmert as a failure for Israel because Hizbollah's leadership was left standing and the two Israeli soldiers, whose capture by Hizbollah on July 12 sparked the war, were still in captivity.
At least 1,110 people in Lebanon and 157 Israelis were killed in the conflict.
The Yedioth Aronoth poll showed for the first time a majority favoured Olmert stepping down. Several surveys suggested a big jump in support for the right-wing Likud party and its leader
Benjamin Netanyahu after the 34-day war.
A poll in the Maariv newspaper showed that only 14 percent of Israelis would vote for Olmert if new elections were held, while 26 percent would back Netanyahu, a former prime minister. The Yedioth poll said 45 percent would support Netanyahu.
Olmert, a career politician who lacks the combat credentials of many of his predecessors, has seen his public standing plummet for failing to crush Hizbollah, which rained some 4,000 rockets on northern Israel during the fighting.
"Olmert go home," read one sign at a protest by a few hundred army reservists and family members at the grave of former Prime Minister Golda Meir on Friday.
The protesters urged Olmert to follow the lead set by Meir, who was forced to resign after the 1973 Middle East war in which Egypt and
Syria scored initial successes that caused heavy Israeli casualties.
Yedioth, Israel's biggest circulation daily, called Friday's poll results a political "earthquake" for Olmert, whose centrist Kadima party crushed Netanyahu's Likud in general elections in March. A similar poll published a week ago showed 41 percent wanted Olmert to resign.
Twenty-two percent of Israelis in the poll deemed Netanyahu "most fit" to be prime minister, compared to 11 percent for Olmert.
Olmert also trailed ultranationalist Avigdor Lieberman with 18 percent and senior statesman Shimon Peres with 12 percent, according to Yedioth.
KADIMA TRAILING
Cameron Brown, an analyst at Israel's Herzliya Center, said Olmert's political troubles were compounded by a string of embarrassing government scandals, including an investigation into whether the Israeli president coerced a female employee to have sex with him.
"These politicians are under fire from several different directions at the same time and I think Olmert is clearly having a rough time. The question is will this force him to step down," Brown said.
The Maariv poll showed that if elections were held today, Olmert's Kadima party would win just 14 seats in parliament, compared with the 29 it won at the last polls. Likud would win 24, compared with 12.
The left-leaning Labour party would win just nine seats.
In addition to calling for Olmert's resignation, 74 percent of Israelis in the Yedioth poll said Defense Minister Amir Peretz, the left-leaning Labour party leader, should step down.
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Money Talks
Ford considers going private: report
By Jui Chakravorty
Reuters
Thu Aug 24, 2006
DETROIT - Ford Motor Co. is considering going private, USA Today newspaper reported on Thursday, citing a "source with direct knowledge of the discussions."
That would give the automaker time to restructure operations outside the glare of critics, the article on the paper's Web site said.
"The family is willing to look at anything," USA Today quoted the source as saying. Top executives have said they are looking at every option available to turn Ford around, including selling off brands such as Jaguar, entering into partnerships with other automakers, slashing its work force and closing more plants, the article said.
A Ford spokesman said: "That is speculation. And we don't comment on speculation."
Earlier in August, Ford said it hired mergers and acquisitions expert Kenneth Leet as an adviser to Chief Executive Bill Ford Jr. to explore strategic alternatives for the automaker. The Ford family owns about 5 percent of Ford's shares and controls about 40 percent of the voting power through a separate class of stock.
"I think that speculation exists because it's possible," Argus Research analyst Kevin Tynan said of the article. "And with where the market is right now, private equity could come in and snap Ford up pretty quickly. But would it do Ford any good? I don't think so."
The Dearborn, Michigan-based company, which has not gained U.S. market share since 1995, is under pressure to speed up cost-cutting efforts after a $254 million loss in the second quarter and worse-than-expected July U.S. sales.
Ford's U.S. vehicle sales have fallen almost 10 percent through July, a month in which Japanese rival Toyota Motor Corp. outsold Ford for the first time.
Battling shrinking U.S. market share and rising costs, Ford has said it will accelerate its turnaround plan, dubbed the "Way Forward," to respond to weakening U.S. demand for fuel-hungry trucks and SUVs amid high gasoline prices.
The automaker also last week said it would cut fourth-quarter production to its lowest level in 25 years.
Shares of Ford were up 13 cents, or 1.7 percent, at $7.89 in Thursday afternoon trade on the New York Stock Exchange.
NO BENEFITS IN GOING PRIVATE?
"It looks as if financially it would be something they could do," Margaret Patel, senior vice president at Pioneer Investments said of the USA Today article. "What they would accomplish by becoming a private company as it relates to cars I'm not really sure. Except for being out of the public eye, I don't know that there would be material benefits," Patel said.
Peter Morici, a professor of business studies at the University of Maryland, said going private would not solve Ford's fundamental problems.
"The labor cost and stale product issues would remain. Going private could actually hasten the demise of Ford if it removed market pressures to deal with these issues," he said.
Separately, some newspapers reported on Thursday that Bill Ford had called Carlos Ghosn, who heads both Renault SA and Nissan Motor Co. Ltd., to discuss a possible alliance.
The reports said Ford had recently called Ghosn to say that if ongoing alliance talks among Nissan, Renault and General Motors Corp. faltered, Ghosn should consider talking to Ford instead of GM.
Limited teams of GM, Renault and Nissan executives are currently studying the possible benefits of an alliance and are expected to report back to Ghosn and GM CEO Rick Wagoner by mid-October.
"Whether they go private, or change management, it won't do anything," Tynan said. "Ghosn could turn around Nissan because he could just go in and start throwing stuff to the curb. But here, you have to deal with the United Auto Workers union. You cannot just slash jobs and close plants."
Ford has acknowledged courting Ghosn for a senior post at the automaker, an offer that Ghosn declined.
One obstacle to a Nissan-Renault alliance with Ford could be the controlling stake that the Ford family has in Ford Motor, analysts said.
Ghosn has said that he would want to take a substantial stake in GM under a potential alliance. A similar deal with Ford would require the support of the founding family, which controls the board through ownership of a separate class of stock.
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Oil climbs toward $73 on U.S. Gulf storm worry
By Neil Chatterjee
Reuters
Thu Aug 24, 2006
SINGAPORE - Oil prices climbed toward $73 on Friday as another storm brewed in the Caribbean with the potential to reach the Gulf of Mexico next week, creating worries over U.S. production already trimmed by an outage in Alaska.
Support also came from Iran's nuclear dispute with the West that could lead to United Nations sanctions against the world's fourth largest oil exporter.
U.S. crude for October delivery was up 55 cents at $72.91 a barrel by 0237 GMT, after gaining 60 cents on Thursday. London Brent crude for October rose 32 cents to $73 a barrel.
A spinning band of squalls in the southeastern Caribbean was on the verge of becoming Tropical Storm Ernesto by Friday, expected to head northwest toward the Gulf of Mexico by the middle of next week, forecasters said.
"Traders have turned their focus from comfortable inventory levels in the U.S. to storm activity out in the Atlantic," said Tobin Gorey of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
Forecasters expected Tropical Storm Debby to strengthen and possibly become the season's first hurricane, but saw its path heading away from the U.S. Gulf Coast, where production was battered by hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year.
U.S. oil output fell 90,000 barrels per day (bpd) on Wednesday when BP cut its Prudhoe Bay production to 110,000 bpd after a technical fault that would last several days. The Alaskan field had previously been running at about half its normal capacity after pipeline corrosion. The reduced output helped push down U.S. crude oil stocks last week, though the drop was smaller-than-expected.
The two-day price rally shrugged off a near 2 percent slide mid-week after U.S. gasoline inventories unexpectedly rose 400,000 barrels to ease worries about stocks being run down by northern summer demand.
IRAN WORRY
Germany added European weight to U.S. displeasure with Iran's reply to proposals by world powers aimed at ending a nuclear standoff, saying on Thursday Tehran's insistence on enriching uranium hindered a negotiated solution.
Germany's stance was significant as it is seen as the Western power least keen to resort to sanctions. The U.N. Security Council has demanded Iran halt its nuclear work by a deadline of August 31 or it could face sanctions, which traders fear could lead Iran to disrupt oil supplies.
U.S. crude prices have risen 19 percent this year on fears over Iran's supplies and reduced Nigerian output, though prices have fallen back from a record-high of $78.40 in July after a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon.
At least 508,000 bpd or about a sixth of Nigeria's output capacity has been shut in due to militant attacks and pipeline leaks this year. Gunmen kidnapped an Italian oil worker in Nigeria on Thursday, the latest in a string of abductions.
"Events over the past few days in Nigeria suggest that the risk of further production losses is growing again," said Barclays Capital.
The head of one of the country's oil workers unions said this week that the unions may pull their members from the oil-producing Niger Delta on safety fears.
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NHS IT upgrade firm posts huge loss
Mark Tran
Friday August 25, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
iSoft, the software firm at the heart of a much-delayed NHS computer upgrade, today reported a £343.8m loss and suspended its commercial director.
Steve Graham, iSoft's commercial director, was suspended today after an initial review pending the outcome of a more formal investigation, amid the company's growing accounting problems.
The company yesterday confirmed a Guardian newspaper report that it was under investigation by the Financial Services Authority for possible breaches of accounting standards.
John Weston, the chairman and acting chief executive, said: "The second half of the financial year ended 30 April 2006 was a turbulent period for iSOFT and long-term shareholders will be feeling deeply disappointed by the events of recent months."
The Manchester firm has been bedevilled by problems in its ambitious £6.2bn project to upgrade computer systems for the NHS, one of the world's biggest projects of its kind.
Installation dates for an early wave of patient-administration computer systems at 21 acute hospital trusts - almost half using iSoft - software have already been subject to widespread delays, only a month after deadlines were published.
The NHS had initially planned to have more than 100 acute hospitals operating patient-administration systems and clinical systems by April this year.
iSoft announced its £343.8m before-tax loss in the year to April 30 after writing down the value of a major acquisition in 2004. A change in accounting policies also meant £174m of revenues booked since 2003 will now be put off for future years.
"As a result of work carried out by our auditors to review the adjustment to past revenues, possible accounting irregularities have come to light which have been the subject of an investigation by Deloitte & Touche LLP and Eversheds LLP," iSoft said.
The company was able to publish the results today - the deadline for their release - after banks extended current lending facilities into next year.
iSoft said: "The new arrangements with our banks will now provide us with the short-term platform from which to address the long-term future of the company."
The company's recent problems dated back to January, when it issued a statement warning of a sharp reduction in revenues and profits for the year ending in April because of delays to the NHS computer upgrade.
"The sheer scale of the project and its pioneering aspects have resulted in delays to the delivery schedule for a wide variety of reasons, some of which are beyond iSoft's control," the company said.
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New call for ban on junk food ads
Mark Oliver and agencies
Friday August 25, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
Health charities today renewed calls for a ban on the advertising of junk food to children as new government research predicted rising obesity in the next few years.
More than 12 million adults and 1 million children will be obese by 2010, according to a forecast published today by the Department of Heath.
The growing obesity crisis is expected to cause thousands more people to suffer related diseases like cancer, heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
Media regulator Ofcom is consulting on possibly restricting junk food adverts, including during programmes broadcast before 9pm and aimed at children.
However, the health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, indicated today that the government would not be pushing strongly for curbs on advertising. She argued about the importance of personal responsibility in the battle against obesity.
Ms Hewitt said lifestyle was important and spoke about the importance of exercise. Fast food firms such as McDonald's who oppose curbs on advertising have long made similar arguments.
Ms Hewitt said Ofcom and the government would have to assess how far advertising actually influenced the choices children made.
"We need to look certainly at the impact on broadcasting and whether that would actually damage children's television programming which, in itself, is extremely important. We need to balance those different things and then we'll make a decision," she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
However, several health charities and campaigners called for tougher action by the government on advertising. Richard Watts, from the campaign for a children's food bill, which is backed by 286 MPs and about 170 organisations including charities, attacked the government's line on advertising.
He said: "Progress on these fronts is so slow because the government seems determined not to upset the powerful food industry. The time has come to stop pussy-footing about and take the urgent action we need."
Maura Gillespie, head of policy and public affairs at the British Heart Foundation, also repeated their call for tighter restrictions on food advertising.
"We are demanding the government place restrictions on advertising junk food to children before the 9pm watershed - a policy that can only have a positive impact on young people's attitudes to foods high in fat, sugar and salt."
Today's figures show a total of 22% of girls and 19% of boys aged between two and 15 will be regarded as obese by 2010. A third of all men will be obese - rising from 4 million to 7 million in the next four years.
The report says around a third of adults and a fifth of all children will be obese, citing statistics from the health survey for England. In the past, major health problems such as cholera, typhoid and polio had to be tackled by government, Ms Hewitt said.
However, she added: "These days, our health depends at least as much on what each of us do for ourselves and our children as it does what the government and NHS does for us."
Asked why the government had taken a hard line on banning smoking but seemed reluctant to intervene on the same scale to tackle obesity, Ms Hewitt said there was a "critical difference".
"Having some crisps occasionally, having some chocolate because you enjoy it occasionally, is not going to do you any great health harm, whereas smoking a little bit is always going to do you health harm.
"There is also quite an important debate and a lot of mixed evidence about how far advertising of food actually does affect the choices children and their parents make."
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Govt defends Telstra sell-off
ABC News Online
The Federal Government is defending its decision to sell off some of its Telstra shares and put the remaining shares into the Future Fund, amid criticism from the Opposition.
The Government has announced it will sell $8 billion worth of its shares in October and November and the rest will be transferred into the Future Fund, to sell down over time.
The Opposition's finance spokesman Lindsay Tanner says the Government's decision to proceed with the sale is bad news.
"This is a politically driven fire sale and it's characteristic that it's been announced at 5:00pm on a Friday afternoon to minimise media coverage," he said.
Confident
But the Finance Minister Nick Minchin says he is confident the Government can provide good returns for taxpayers by selling off part of its majority stakeholding in Telstra.
Senator Minchin says shifting all of the shares into the Future Fund would have had an ongoing effect on the share price.
"We are doing our best to minimise the number of shares that will go in the Future Fund," he said.
"It's one of the reasons why, instead of putting the whole 51 per cent in the Future Fund, we are offering a portion of our holding to the public."
The Prime Minister John Howard says the next sale of Telstra shares will be beneficial for shareholders and potential buyers.
Mr Howard says the Government believes it can achieve an appropriate return for taxpayers.
"If we had not gone ahead with the sale now, the effect on the share price would have been quite significant," he said.
Telstra chairman Donald McGauchie has issued a statement saying the sale is in the best interests of the company's shareholders, customers and staff.
'Second-best'
Liberal backbencher Don Randall says the Government has made the wrong decision.
"I think we've had the second-best option," he said.
"I think it should have been all or nothing - we should have either totally got rid of our exposure to Telstra or we should have put the whole lot in the Future Fund.
"Now we're sort of half pregnant - we're exposed to Telstra and it's out-of-control board."
Mr Howard says the Government's shares would have been sold earlier at a higher price if opposition parties had not blocked the legislation.
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Anger as 2005 Bordeaux wine fetches record prices due to heat, demand
By Anna Willard
Reuters
Thu Aug 24, 2006
PARIS - French lovers of Bordeaux red wine are angry they cannot afford to drink the acclaimed 2005 vintage which is breaking price records before it has even been bottled.
A case of the top end wine is on sale at more than double the previous record even though it will not be delivered until 2008 at the earliest. Owners should then wait at least another 10 years before cracking it open.
"We think, and everybody that has tasted it agrees, that 2005 is an exceptional vintage," said Paul Pontallier, general director of Chateau Margaux, one of five producers to carry the distinguished first-growth label.
The influential American wine critic Robert Parker awarded Chateau Margaux 96-100 out of a maximum of 100 after a tasting in the spring.
Vintners Berry Brothers and Rudd in London is selling cases (12 bottles) of Chateau Margaux for 5,340 pounds ($9,430). That is an increase of 540 pounds from the end of June when the wine 'en primeur' (still in casks) first went on sale at the highest release price for Chateau Margaux.
The most expensive year before 2005 was in 2000 when the release price was 2,000 pounds a case. A case of 2004 Chateau Margaux en primeur went for 1,080 pounds.
TOO EXPENSIVE?
The chateaux, which set the initial prices for the wine before selling it on to their distributors, have been criticized for being greedy.
"It's too much for me, because what happens on vintages like that is that it becomes a vintage where the French consumer can no longer buy," said Yannick Branchereau, director of Lavinia France, a vintner in Paris.
"When you have a first class vintage that goes beyond 500 euros before tax, when you don't even have a bottle of wine yet, that is very expensive."
The market for top end Bordeaux is dominated by wealthy foreigners, some buying for investment purposes.
Pontallier and other producers defend their pricing policies which they say take account of market conditions, and in 2005 a drought which led to a smaller harvest.
"We had remarkable weather. It was very dry and hot," he said. "It was an exceptional year, there was enormous demand and there was a reduced supply."
Strong economic growth in many countries helped to support demand and vineyards are attracting new interest from rich businessmen in Asia and eastern Europe.
"We have two huge markets which are just starting to skim the surface for drinking the top wines -- China and Russia," said Simon Staples, sales director at Berry Brothers in London.
"We've got people walking into our shop saying they want to buy a cellar please, and it's 2.3 million pounds and they just want the best. They don't want the 20-30 euros bottle of wine. That's not what cooks their biscuit."
Time will tell whether the Bordeaux 2005 will turn out to be a good investment. If it proves to be a classic vintage once it has been bottled, it should continue to rise in value.
A case of Chateau Latour from 1982 now costs around 10,000 pounds a case and its value should continue to rise because of its rarity. Staples said his company just sold a case of Chateau Latour from 1961 for 36,000 pounds.
One threat to the 2005 prices could come from this year's crop, which is still on the vines and also looks promising.
If 2006 turned out to be another good one, it might undermine the stratospheric prices for 2005.
"The conditions we have seen up till now, and we're still a month away from the harvest, have been less exceptional than in 2005 but still correspond to a good vintage," said Pontallier.
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Businesses start to balk at possible French smoking ban
AFP
Aug 23, 2006
PARIS - French tobacconists and restaurant owners on Wednesday were reluctant to accept a planned ban on smoking in public areas, but recognised the need to avoid claims by workers over passive smoking.
France is preparing to ban smoking in bars, restaurants and other public areas starting next year, a newspaper reported earlier, citing the health minister Xavier Bertrand.
The ban, which could be applied nationally from January 1, 2007, would bring France into step with several other European countries that have agreed to ban smoking in enclosed public spaces.
"That's going to happen" for France, too, Bertrand was quoted as saying in the daily Le Figaro.
But some in the tobacco and bar industries speaking to AFP called for exemptions for certain types of bar and suggested compromise measures.
"The problem is no longer whether to ban or not to ban," Didier Chenet, president of the Synhorcat national hospitality sector union, told AFP.
Instead, he said, employers in the sector must avoid falling foul of a 2005 ruling obliging employers to protect their employees from second-hand smoke in their establishments.
The head of France's tobacco producers' federation René le Pape said that air-purifiers would be an "effective solution" for protecting workers in smoky bars.
The UMIH association representing the hospitality industry meanwhile said bars could install smoking rooms in which staff were not required to serve.
"It is up to the restaurant owner to decide if his establishment will be smoking or not, to advertise it and to adapt according to his customers," said UMIH head Andre Daguin.
The ban, which could be applied nationally from January 1, 2007, would bring France into step with Britain, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Sweden, which have all imposed or are preparing to impose bans on smoking in enclosed public spaces.
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 that "nothing is yet definitively decided," the daily reported, but said "the timetable is known", pointing to a parliamentary report on the issue due to be submitted next month.
News of the possible 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 image of a country of smoky 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.
Smoking kills 61,000 people a year in the country and another 5,000 die of second-hand smoke, according to the health minister.
French cigarette consumption unexpectedly rose this year after four years of decline.
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China, Venezuela ink 8 agreements to boost bilateral ties
www.chinaview.cn 2006-08-24 20:09:12
BEIJING, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- China and Venezuela on Thursday signed eight agreements on a range of issues, including two on expanding energy cooperation, pointing to stronger ties between the two countries.
In the two agreements, the China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) and the PDVSA, the state-owned Venezuelan energy company, agreed to jointly develop Venezuelan oil fields, according to China's Foreign Ministry.
Other agreements, involving trade, energy, infrastructure construction and tourism, were signed after Chinese President Hu Jintao held talks with visiting Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
"I'm very satisfied with the cooperation with China in the oil and petrochemical fields," Chavez told reporters after the ceremony, vowing to increase oil exports to China to 500,000 barrels per day in the near future.
During talks with Hu, Chavez said Venezuela would make concerted efforts with China to implement their proposals and strengthen cooperation in bilateral and multi-lateral areas so as to develop the bilateral strategic partnership.
Venezuela hoped to expand cooperation in energy, railway construction, telecommunications, agriculture, tourism, culture and education, and develop the bilateral high-level mixed committee into an important platform for enhancing cooperation, Chavez said.
As this year marks the fifth anniversary of the establishment of the Sino-Venezuelan strategic partnership, Hu also offered a four-point proposal.
The first was to strengthen high-level exchanges and expand strategic consensus.
The Chinese side would work with Venezuela to expand exchanges and cooperation between governments, legislatures and political parties and strengthen dialogue, consultation and coordination on major issues of common concern, Hu said.
The second was to deepen reciprocal cooperation and speed up common development.
The Chinese side will join Venezuela in improving the functions of the bilateral high-level mixed committee, implementing cooperative projects, and exploring cooperation in railway construction, shipbuilding, oil machinery manufacturing and high technology, Hu said.
He also pledged that China would encourages enterprises to invest in Venezuela and welcome Venezuelan businesses to China.
China would work with Venezuela to explore their potentials and expand cooperation for better economic and social benefits, Hu added.
The third point was to enhance cultural exchanges and mutual understanding with expanded cultural, education, science, technology, media, and tourism exchanges.
The fourth was to strengthen international cooperation, especially coordination in international and regional organizations such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organization and the Organization of American States, Hu said.
Hu said Sino-Venezuelan relations had grown comprehensively and deepened with frequent exchanges of high-level visits, increasing political trust, substantial progress in cooperation, and sound cooperation in international and regional affairs.
Hu expressed his appreciation for the Venezuelan government's adherence to the one-China policy and firm support for China on major issues such as Taiwan.
Chavez said the development of bilateral relations has entered a new stage as the two countries strengthened political mutual trust, economic and trade cooperation, cultural exchanges and people-to-people friendship.
He said the Venezuelan government would continue to abide by the one-China policy.
Chavez arrived in Beijing as Hu's guest on Tuesday night, starting a six-day state visit to China.
He will also visit the eastern province of Shandong.
Chavez previously visited China in October 1999, May 2001, and December 2004.
Editor: Yang Lei
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China to support opium replacement planting abroad
www.chinaview.cn
2006-08-25 09:34:53
BEIJING, Aug. 25 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese government plans to support opium replacement planting abroad to prevent illegal crops in the country's first bill on drug control.
The bill introduced in the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, or China's legislature, this week requires authorities to support and assist other countries in opium replacement planting.
China has already launched opium replacement planting schemes with Myanmar and Laos and other neighboring countries. Rubber, tea and other crops were grown as substitutes.
Last year, China trained 135 agricultural and medical staff for northern Myanmar and helped to increase planting areas by more than 5,000 mu (about 333 hectares) in the opium planting region.
The government also sponsored five-million-yuan (625,000 U.S. dollars) aid program for opium replacement with Myanmar in 2005.
With the help of China and the international community, Laos has realized its goal of banning opium production.
"Supporting other countries' opium replacement planting is conducive to eradicating narcotics in China and its international cooperation in drug control," said Zhang Xinfeng, Vice Minister of Public Security.
China was experiencing an increase in drug trafficking from the Golden Triangle, an area along the Mekong River delta, including Myanmar and Laos, and the Golden Crescent area in western Asia.
Almost all the heroin traded illegally in China came from the two regions, Zhang said, adding that drugs from the Golden Triangle were "pouring" in, posing a great threat to the country's drug control efforts.
The number of drug takers grew 35 percent in the five years since 2000 to 1.16 million in early 2005, according to police data. Police estimates indicate China has more than 700,000 heroin addicts, 69 percent of whom are under the age of 35.
The draft law stipulates that Chinese police should share information with other countries and international organizations and enhance collaboration in investigations.
The bill also requires Chinese authorities to share the seizures and the revenues from drug crimes with other countries and regions in operations outside its border.
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Mother Nature Goes Nuts
China says typhoons have left 15 million homeless
Last Updated Fri, 25 Aug 2006 10:13:48 EDT
CBC News
Officials in southeastern China are trying to resettle more than 15 million people left homeless after four devastating typhoons hit the coast, said the official Xinhua news agency.
In Fujian and neighbouring Zhejiang, two of the worst-hit provinces, the storms caused damage totalling more than $3.9 billion.
Provincial officials in Fujian say the central government has allocated only $8.3 million to repair damaged businesses, farms, communications networks and water conservation projects.
The most recent storm, Saomai, hit Fujian in mid-August, killing 441 people. It was the worst storm since record-keeping began in 1949, according to the government.
Each summer brings catastrophic weather to China, usually in the form of torrential rains and tropical storms. But this year, while coastal regions are rebuilding from floods and typhoons, many inland areas are enduring their worst drought in decades.
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Tropical depression number five forms in the eastern Caribbean
Josh Frank
Sun-Sentinel.com
August 24 2006
The fifth tropical depression of the 2006 hurricane season has formed in the eastern Caribbean Sea this afternoon, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Tropical Depression Five is located about 150 miles southwest of Martinique and is packing winds of 35 mph. The storm is moving toward the west at 22 mph.
The storm is expected to become Tropical Storm Ernesto over the next day or so, and to pose a threat to Jamaica over the weekend.
So far no watches and warnings associated with the storm have been issued, although it is expected that the southern Windward Islands could receive an additional two to four inches of rain as the depression moves away from the islands.
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1 man dies as tornadoes hit Minnesota
By BRIAN BAKST, Associated Press Writer
NICOLLET, Minn. - Deadly storms swept across the northern Plains, bringing tornadoes that ripped roofs off houses and hail that smashed car windshields. One man was killed when a tornado hit his home in Minnesota on Thursday, and in Wisconsin, lightning apparently killed a dozen cows and struck a woman as she left a supermarket.
Twisters, heavy rain and hail as big as grapefruit also struck the Dakotas, stripping trees of their leaves, and power was knocked out around the region.
In Nicollet County, Minn., a tornado ripped roofs, fronts or sides from farm homes along a 12-mile stretch of highway between Nicollet and St. Peter. Powerline poles lay along the road, and some treetops were sheared off.
Mary Rahm, 22, saw the tornado dip down twice from the clouds before it hit the ground. That's when she grabbed her newborn baby and ducked under a desk.
"My 5-week-old son just made it through his first tornado," Rahm said. "This is wicked."
A tornado in nearby Kasota killed a man who was trapped in his home, said Tom Doherty, chief sheriff's deputy in Le Sueur County.
Several residents were treated at hospitals for broken bones and other non-life-threatening injuries.
An earlier line of thunderstorms dropped hail as large as softballs in several communities, smashing the windshield of a New Prague fire truck. In Northfield, hail damage to 11 police squad cars forced officers to borrow vehicles from the sheriff's office.
At least a half-dozen tornadoes raked across central South Dakota, destroying farm homes and damaging power lines.
Jeff Miller said the storm looked like a blanket as he watched from his mother's home near Wolsey.
"I was worried about whether I was going to be here today," Miller said Friday, surveying the debris.
"That used to be a barn," he said.
Neighbor Bill Timm lost nine buildings, including two houses.
"They're not flattened, they're gone," said Kristi Brakke, Timm's sister.
North Dakota had heavy rain, funnel clouds, and grapefruit-sized hail.
"It didn't really hail all that much, but what it did hail was big," Stanton City Auditor Rick Honeyman said.
In Wisconsin, a 43-year-old woman was knocked to the ground while carrying an umbrella and groceries through a parking lot in Waukesha County.
"I don't remember hearing thunder or seeing lightning or anything," Kelly Owen told WISN-TV in Milwaukee. "It's the weirdest sensation."
Lightning also killed a dozen cows on a farm in Marshall, and strikes were suspected of starting fires at a seniors' apartment complex in Kenosha and a home in Cottage Grove home.
More rain was expected Friday in Michigan and the upper Mississippi Valley southwest to Kansas and Oklahoma.
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Ethiopian Flood Relief Hampered By Weather
by Abraham Fisseha
AFP
Aug 25, 2006
Addis Ababa - Heavy rain, swirling waters, mud, silt and marsh combined Wednesday to hamper frantic efforts to reach thousands of villagers marooned by deadly flash floods in southern Ethiopia, officials said.
The elements, along with the reluctance of pastoralist herders to leave their surviving cattle for higher ground, frustrated the delivery of the first overland relief supplies that reached the remote region on Tuesday, they said.
Delays in the distribution of food, water, medicine and shelter stoked fears the death toll would rise in the devastated area where at least 364 people were killed when the Omo River burst its banks on August 13, displacing some 10,000.
"Our teams are still struggling to reach the affected areas, but the marsh and silt created by the floods are preventing us," said Petros Gebre, the deputy police chief of the Southern Nations, Nationalities and People's state.
"And, aid distribution is becoming problematic as about 3,000 people who have declined to be relocated are unreachable by land," he told AFP by phone from Jinka, about 800 kilometers (500 miles) southwest of Addis Ababa.
"We are providing them with aid drops of aid from helicopters but it's not clear how long we can do this," Petros said, calling the situation a "logistical nightmare".
Despite assurances that the government would take care of their livestock while they are relocated to safer ground to facilitate relief distribution, the 3,000 herders are refusing to leave, he said.
"Even though we have promised that they can return to their cattle when the water levels decrease, they have refused to move," Petros said.
He added that the search teams were yet to recover an unknown number of bodies of drowned victims after villagers reported spotting them on the marshlands on the Omo River delta on Monday.
Floods caused by unusually heavy seasonal rains have battered huge portions of southern, eastern and northern Ethiopia since the beginning of the month, killing at least 626 nationwide and affecting 118,000 people, many of whom have been left homeless.
The Ethiopian News Agency reported Wednesday that 8,000 people had been displaced in Gode Zone, about 970 kilometers (600 miles) southeast of the capital, by floodwaters from the Wabi Shabelle River.
State TV agency said that thousands more were forced to flee to higher ground in the Gambella region when Baro River broke its bank, flooding farmlands.
"More than five villages in four districts in Gambella regional state were flooded when Baro River overflowed its banks displacing more than 7,000 people destroying their residential areas," the television added.
Concerns about the spread of water-borne diseases are also growing as rain continues to pound the Ethiopian highlands.
The downpours have pushed water levels at at least three critical dams to the breaking point, and authorities began controlled releases from one of the facilities, the Gilgel Gibe dam on the Omo River, on Monday.
Officials said local authorities planned to start releasing overflowing water from Koka dam on the Awash River that has flooded in the east, and the Tise Aby on the Blue Nile in the north.
Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation officials said water would be released from the dam starting 6:00 am (0300 GMT) on Thursday.
"Dykes they have built in the area are capable of holding the amount of water that will be released," the firm's spokesman Sendeku Araya told AFP.
"There is nothing to panic about as it is going to be monitored closely and every preparation has been made for any eventuality," he added.
The United Nations has made an urgent appeal for 5.82 million dollars (4.54 million euros) for the thousands who have been displaced as well as for the rehabilitation of infrastructure in the flood-hit eastern town of Dire Dawa, where 254 people were killed on August 6.
Forecasters have warned that six areas in the north, west and south of the country will likely face further flood threats from the rains that are expected to continue until the end of the wet season in September.
Ethiopia, home to some 70 million people, has faced heavy floods and droughts in recent years.
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Heavy rains around Phoenix trap drivers
AP
Thu Aug 24, 2006
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - Heavy rain caused flooding in the Phoenix area Thursday, turning normally dry riverbeds into raging rivers and trapping motorists.
Firefighters waded into the Indian Bend Wash to help two people out of two cars and walk them out of the swift knee-deep water.
The Scottsdale portion of the wash runs for eight miles and was built in the 1970s as a flood-control measure, said city spokesman Mike Phillips.
It's normally dry and contains parks, golf courses and lakes, but it runs with water during heavy storms. At those times it can look like a raging river.
"Today it's functioning as it was intended to do, and that is carry a heck of a lot of water out of the mountains," Phillips said.
Elsewhere, a woman driving through a flooded Phoenix intersection became trapped momentarily, but firefighters rescued her without incident, said Mike Sandulak, a division chief with the Phoenix Fire Department. Several other cars were stranded in the intersection but no one else needed to be rescued.
Emergency personnel in other jurisdictions also reported calls to pull people from stranded vehicles.
National Weather Service meteorologist Doug Green said between 1 1/2 inches and 2 inches of rain fell early Thursday in spots around the Phoenix metro area.
Elsewhere Thursday, severe thunderstorms moved through southern Minnesota, spawning tornadoes that damaged buildings, twisted trees off their trunks and downed power lines. No injuries were immediately reported.
Thunderstorms earlier in the day dropped softball-sized hail on several communities south of the Twin Cities. Hundreds of cars, trees and homes were damaged.
"Every car in the lot was damaged," said Doug Fitzgerald, sales manager at Dokmo Ford-Chrysler in Northfield. "It looks like a war zone."
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Hot Arctic 55 million years ago doesn't debunk science showing today's warming is man-made
By Wayne Madsen
08/24/2006 07:55:05 PM MDT
WASHINGTON - The global warming skeptics, ostrich-like in their approach to the greatest challenge to ever face humankind, may be entitled to their flimsy opinions, but they are not entitled to their own math.
Sudden climate changes in the past were primarily caused by the impact of meteors onto the Earth's surface.
One massive meteor that struck Antarctica 250 million years ago wiped out 90 percent of our planet's species from the resulting sudden and deadly climate change. Another meteor that struck the Earth 65 million years ago wiped out the dinosaurs from acidic rain, severe storms, and a sudden drop in temperature.
The fact that 15 million years later, the Arctic was tropical has nothing to do with the current fact that over the last 30 years, man-made carbon-dioxide emissions and forest destruction are warming our atmosphere and ocean surface temperatures to the point that our ice caps and glaciers are melting at a dangerously rapid rate.
While every legitimate and independent scientist recognizes that global warming is a fact, the skeptics and their friends in government and the media continue to offer "junk science" explanations for global warming.
Now they cite ice core samples taken from the North Pole that show that the polar regions were tropical 55 million years ago as evidence that current global warming is merely natural and cyclical. Some 30 years of carbon-dioxide emissions, rain forest destruction, and other man-made actions have nothing to do with millions of years of planetary change. That math just doesn't add up.
Such statements are irresponsible and akin to failing to warn the public about an impending hurricane or tornado.
There is no question that man-made greenhouse gases being pumped into our atmosphere are having disastrous consequences for all of Earthkind. The United States is the world's worst polluter, yet the Bush administration continues to ignore all the facts compiled by years of painstaking research by scientists in locations from Antarctica and the Himalayas to the Amazon and the Arctic tundra.
If quick action is not taken to reverse global warming and polar and glacial ice melt, hundreds of millions of people and countless species of animals and plants will be placed in jeopardy.
A projected 20 feet rise in sea levels from global warming will cause many low lying atolls and such nations as Bangladesh and the Netherlands to disappear under the sea.
Severe storms will destroy coastal regions. Rising sea levels will submerge coastal urban centers such as New Orleans; San Jose, Calif.; Venice, Italy; Baltimore; and parts of Manhattan. Fresh water aquifers will be penetrated by salty and brackish seawater, making them unfit for use.
Coral bleaching and the loss of wetlands will cause the extinction of important food sources, resulting in famine in many parts of the world. Methane released from melting permafrost and warming sea bottoms will add to already dangerous carbon-dioxide levels in our atmosphere and further increase rising temperatures. Methane is 25 percent more dangerous to the eco-system than carbon dioxide.
The sea-dwelling trilobites that perished in the meteor-caused Permian-Triassic mass extinction 250 million years ago and the Cretaceous dinosaurs that perished in a similar meteor-caused global extinction 65 million years ago were certainly not intellectually advanced to the point where they could save themselves.
Yet today's humans - acting together - can save themselves and their planet. Sadly, some Americans are putting their own selfish interests ahead of Mother Earth's. We need to ignore their cynicism and get to work on what promises to be a gargantuan, but noble task.
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Nookular News
Argentina Launches Multi-Billion-Dollar Nuclear Initiative
AFP
Aug 24, 2006
Buenos Aires - Argentina has announced a major nuclear initiative worth 3.5 billion dollars to finish its third nuclear power plant, start a fourth and resume production of enriched uranium. The main goal of the plan unveiled late Wednesday, which will be carried out in cooperation with Canada, is to meet the country's energy demands.
Though an oil producer and exporter, Argentina's reserves are running low and its demand is higher, while investment has lagged.
Argentina has had the Atucha I nuclear power plant since 1974, as well as the Embalse plant, which both generate power.
Construction on Atucha II started in 1981 but had to be stopped several times. The government says about 600 million dollars are needed to finish it.
Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) will be a partner in the plan, modernizing technology at the Embalse plant which operates with Canadian Candu technology.
In the longer run however the government also wants to build a fourth plant, according to a working document, as well as resume production of enriched uranium that was frozen in the 1980s.
Atucha I and Embalse generate 7-9 percent of the country's electricity, and that figure is expected to rise to 16 percent when Atucha II goes on line.
Argentina, the first Latin American country to get into the nuclear industry, now exports its technology. It recently sold a reactor to Australia and also exports to Algeria, South Korea, Belgium and Germany.
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Japan police arrest 5 over nuclear devices
Reuters
August 25, 2006
TOKYO - Tokyo police on Friday arrested executives from a Japanese company suspected of exporting devices that could be used in producing nuclear weapons, one of which was discovered in Libya.
Mitutoyo Corp., which makes precision-measuring equipment, is suspected of exporting to Malaysia without a license two devices that could be used in uranium enrichment, Kyodo news agency said.
Mitutoyo said its president was among the five executives arrested on Friday.
"I believe we have abided by laws and still believe we do, so it is regrettable that such a situation has occurred," a company official said.
Police have been investigating possible export routes from Japan after a Mitutoyo device was found at nuclear facilities in Libya inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency between December 2003 and March 2004, media reports have said this year.
Mitutoyo is also suspected of exporting similar equipment to
Iran in 1997, and police have raided an Iranian trading firm in Tokyo in relation to the case, Kyodo said, citing police sources.
The devices were ordered by Scomi Precision Engineering of Malaysia, Kyodo said.
Scomi Precision, formerly a unit of Malaysian oil services firm Scomi Group Bhd, a firm controlled by the son of Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, had been investigated by local police and cleared of any wrongdoing.
"The company has made a stand that it will not say anything," a Scomi Group spokeswoman told Reuters in Kuala Lumpur.
Mitutoyo, founded in 1934, has some 2,300 employees in Japan and 2,000 overseas.
The Japanese firm's Malaysian unit has not been investigated, said a company official at Mitutoyo (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd's head office outside Kuala Lumpur. He declined to be identified.
"No policeman came here. They only investigated Scomi. According to the police report, Scomi was an innocent party," the official said, adding that Malaysia did not require import licences for Mitutoyo's precision-measuring machines.
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Israel adds 2 nuclear-capable submarines
By RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI
Associated Press
August 24, 2006
JERUSALEM - With the purchase of two more German-made Dolphin submarines capable of carrying nuclear warheads, military experts say Israel is sending a clear message to Iran that it can strike back if attacked by nuclear weapons.
The purchases come at a time when Iran is refusing to bow to growing Western demands to halt its nuclear program, and after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map."
The new submarines, built at a cost of $1.3 billion with Germany footing one-third of the bill, have diesel-electric propulsion systems that allow them to remain submerged for longer periods of time than the three nuclear arms-capable submarines already in Israel's fleet, the Jerusalem Post reported.
The latest submarines not only would be able to carry out a first strike should Israel choose to do so, but they also would provide Israel with crucial second-strike capabilities, said Paul Beaver, a London-based independent defense analyst.
Israel is already believed to have that ability in the form of the Jericho-1 and Jericho-2 nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, which are buried so far underground they would survive a nuclear strike, he said.
"The Iranians would be very foolish if they attacked Israel," Beaver said.
German officials have said the contract for the new submarines was signed July 6, and the Jerusalem Post reported this week the subs will be operational shortly.
Israel, operating on a policy of nuclear ambiguity, has never confirmed or denied whether it has nuclear weapons. It is believed, however, to have the world's sixth-largest stockpile of atomic arms, including hundreds of warheads.
Iran so far has resisted calls by the U.N. Security Council to halt uranium enrichment, which can produce, among other things, the material for atomic bombs. The council set an Aug. 31 deadline that is accompanied by the threat of sanctions.
The dispute over Tehran's nuclear program revolves around Iran's insistence it wants to master the technology simply to generate electricity. Critics say Iran wants to make nuclear weapons.
The Dolphin submarine could be one of the best deterrents, Beaver said. The technology on the subs makes them undetectable and gives them defensive capabilities in the case of attack, he said.
"They are very well-built, very well-prepared, lots of interesting equipment, one of the best conventional submarines available," Beaver said. "We are talking about a third string of deterrence capabilities."
Michael Karpin, an expert on Israel's atomic weapons capabilities who published a book on the issue in the United States, said nuclear-armed submarines provide better second-strike capabilities than missiles launched from airplanes.
"Planes are vulnerable, unlike nuclear (armed) submarines that can operate for an almost unlimited amount of time without being struck," Karpin said. "Second-strike capabilities are a crucial element in any nuclear conflict."
In Germany, members of two opposition parties criticized the deal. Winfried Nachtwei, national security spokesman for the Greens, said the decision was wrong because Germany had obtained no guarantee the submarines would not be used to carry nuclear weapons.
"This red line should not be crossed," Nachtwei was quoted as saying by the newspaper Taz. "Otherwise it is a complete renunciation of Germany's policy of non-proliferation."
David Menashri, an Israeli expert on Iran, said Tehran is clearly determined to obtain nuclear weapons and "the purchase of additional Dolphin submarines by Israel is a small footnote in this context."
What also makes Tehran dangerous, Beaver said, is that it may not understand the consequences of carrying out a nuclear strike.
"They (Iran) have a belligerent leadership and that's why Israel is prudent in ensuring that it has that deterrent capability," Beaver said. "What they (the submarines) are is a very good insurance policy."
Comment: "The new submarines, built at a cost of $1.3 billion with Germany footing one-third of the bill..."
Gosh, everyone is arming Israel these days. It seems that while Merkel is badmouthing Iran, her government is arming Israel with nuclear-capable submarines. No wonder she is such good buddies with Bush.
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Iran soon to announce new nuclear achievements: spokesman
www.chinaview.cn 2006-08-25 19:17:19
TEHRAN, Aug. 25 (Xinhua) -- Iran has made fresh achievements in its peaceful nuclear activities and will soon announce them, government spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham said Friday.
According to the official IRNA news agency, Elham said Iran has also achieved progress in other areas of science and technology.
TEHRAN, Aug. 25 (Xinhua) -- Iran has made fresh achievements in its peaceful nuclear activities and will soon announce them, government spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham said Friday.
According to the official IRNA news agency, Elham said Iran has also achieved progress in other areas of science and technology.
The Iranian government spokesman made the remarks in a pre-sermon lecturer at this week's Friday prayer congregation in Tehran, but he did not elaborate on when Iran would make the announcement.
On Wednesday, the semi-official Mehr news agency said that Iran would soon announce an atomic breakthrough, which came just one day after Tehran made a response to a six-nation package aimed at resolving the Iranian nuclear issue.
"This great scientific achievement is the result of a long-term research project ... A top official will formally make the announcement," Mehr quoted an unidentified source as saying.
"The announcement will highlight Iran's mastery of different areas in nuclear science and will reinforce Iran's position as a nuclear country," the report said.
Iran is accused by the West of trying to produce nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear power program.
However, Iran, the world's fourth largest oil exporter, says it needs to enrich uranium as a peaceful, alternative energy source and has the right to do so under the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
Editor: Liu Dan
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Iran 'benefiting from war on terror'
PA
Independent
Published: 23 August 2006
Iran's influence in the Middle East has been bolstered by America's so-called war on terror, according to a new report.
The report, by researchers at think-tank the Royal Institute for International Studies in London - also known as Chatham House - says: "There is little doubt that Iran has been the chief beneficiary of the war on terror in the Middle East.
"The United States, with Coalition support, has eliminated two of Iran's regional rival governments - the Taliban in Afghanistan in November 2001 and Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq in April 2003 - but has failed to replace either with coherent and stable political structures."
The report, called Iran, Its Neighbours And Regional Crises, adds that the recent conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza and between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon have added to that instability.
One of the report's authors, Dr Ali Ansari, reader in modern history at the University of St Andrews, told Radio Four: "The United States needs to take a step back and reassess its entire policy towards Iran and work out, first of all, what does it want and how is it going to achieve it because at the moment everything is rather like putting a sticking plaster on a fairly raw wound and it is not really actually doing much at all."
The report, in its executive summary, says Iran has now superseded America as the most influential power in the Middle East.
"Iran is simply too important - for political, economic, cultural, religions and military reasons - to be treated lightly by any state in the Middle East or indeed Asia," it says.
It says the wars and instability in Afghanistan and Iraq have "further strengthened Iran", adding that: "The US-driven agenda for confronting Iran is severely compromised by the confident ease with which Iran sits in its region."
Concerning Iran's apparent attempts to develop nuclear weapons, the report says the country's importance in the region "helps explain why Iran feels able to resist western pressure".
"While the US and Europeans slowly grind the nuclear issue through the mills of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations Security Council, Iran continues to prevaricate, feeling confident of victory as conditions turn ever more in its favour," it says.
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Amerika
GOP candidate says 9/11 attacks were a hoax
By ALBERT McKEON, Telegraph Staff
Published: Thursday, Aug. 24, 2006
A Republican candidate for this area's congressional seat said Wednesday that the U.S. government was complicit in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
In an editorial board interview with The Telegraph on Wednesday, the candidate, Mary Maxwell, said the U.S. government had a role in killing nearly 3,000 people at the World Trade Center and Pentagon, so it could make Americans hate Arabs and allow the military to bomb Muslim nations such as Iraq.
Maxwell, 59, seeks the 2nd District congressional seat. The Concord resident opposes the incumbent, Charles Bass of Peterborough, and Berlin Mayor Bob Danderson in the Republican primary Sept. 12.
Maxwell would not specify if she holds the opinion that the government stood by while terrorists hijacked four domestic airliners and used them as weapons, or if it had a larger role by sanctioning and carrying out the attacks.
But she implicated the government by saying the Sept. 11 attacks were meant "to soften us up . . . to make us more willing to have more stringent laws here, which are totally against the Bill of Rights . . . to make us particularly focus on Arabs and Muslims . . . and those strange persons who spend all their time creating little bombs," giving Americans a reason "to hate them and fear them and, therefore, bomb them in Iraq for other reasons."
She said this strategy "would be normal" for governments, citing her belief that the British government - and not the Germany military - sank the Lusitania ocean liner in 1915. The deaths of Americans on the cruise liner helped galvanize U.S. support to enter World War I, and benefited England, she said.
In turn, the Sept. 11 attacks "made the ground fertile" for more stringent laws, such as the Patriot Act, and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, Maxwell said.
Near the end of the interview, Maxwell pounded her fist on the table and asked editors of The Telegraph why they weren't publishing more stories about the government's role in the terrorist attacks or proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Maxwell has no political experience. She lived abroad for the past quarter-century with her husband, George, a pediatrician, and only recently returned to the U.S., she said.
In the hour-long interview, Maxwell spoke at length about Constitutional law, U.S. law, nuclear weapons proliferation, and other domestic and foreign policy issues.
Maxwell said the U.S. should withdraw from Iraq. She also questioned whether Congress authorized the war and said its members can't explain that 2002 vote. (Congress authorized the use of force to defend this country's security and enforce United Nations resolutions on Iraq.)
"Legally, we shouldn't have gone to Iraq if Congress can't explain why," she said.
Maxwell described herself as a strict Constitutionalist, a candidate who wants to bring the country "back to basics." The Constitution grants more power to the legislative branch than the other two branches, but Congress has allowed the executive and judicial branches to diminish its influence, she said.
She also said the U.S. shouldn't immerse itself in the international community by signing trade and security pacts. These agreements have weakened national sovereignty, she said.
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Politicking over Israel: Jewish state
becomes fodder in congressional war
By David J. Silverman
August 15, 2006
WASHINGTON, Aug. 15 (JTA) - When is asking "is it good for Israel" not so good for Israel?
Democrats and Republicans, politicking hard ahead of midterm elections that could end Republican control of the U.S. Congress, are battling over which party was more supportive of Israel in its war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
"Republicans only offer support to Israel when they think that they'll get something for it," Democrats howled after the Republican-led Congress feted Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister who stood with Hezbollah in the recent conflict.
A ranking Democrat "is publicly supporting a terrorist organization," Republicans barked back after Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) dithered on whether Congress should support Israel in the war.
Jewish leaders have spent years carefully cultivating the bromide that support for Israel is the one bipartisan issue; some tried hard not to wince.
"I do not see the point of constantly testing members of Congress on their Israel bona fides," said Steve Rabinowitz, a former Clinton aide and Democratic strategist who was unhappy with both sides for making the war political fodder. "Just for partisan purposes to routinely, constantly test how far you can push members of Congress, I think it's totally alienating."
Others said the process was healthy.
"I think it's a good thing to have members of Congress outdo their colleagues by showing that their pro-Israel credentials are stronger than the next guy's," said William Daroff, vice president of public policy at United Jewish Communities and a former Republican activist.
"When Israel is in the existential battle for survival that it now finds itself in, having people argue whether they are the best friend of Israel or the bester friend of Israel really shows the parameters of where the vast majority of public officials are in America today," he said.
At stake is a community that votes in disproportionately high numbers, that breaks ties in swing states like Florida and Ohio, and that has historically favored Democrats in votes and in campaign contributions.
The opening salvo came in the days after the war started on July 12. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the minority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, refused to sponsor a resolution affirming the House's support for Israel in its war against Hezbollah.
Pelosi, who otherwise supported the resolution and instructed her caucus to vote for it, objected to the omission of language calling on both sides to safeguard civilian lives.
The wrangling went on behind closed doors, but Republicans sidestepped congressional niceties by leaking the dispute to Jewish reporters.
That infuriated Democrats, who noted that Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, had voiced similar concerns. They were ready the next week when Maliki came to town.
The Iraqi prime minister was to have represented President Bush's promise of a democratic Iraq emerging from the ashes of civil war - but Jewish lawmakers seized control of the coverage, lambasting Maliki's refusal to join other Arab leaders in condemning Hezbollah for launching the war.
"His comments condemning Israel were wrong but predictable, but his refusal to condemn Hezbollah is painful," said Sen. Charles Schumer, the Jewish Democrat from New York.
Republicans fired next, when Dingell, the longest serving member in the House, explained his vote - one of just eight - against the resolution supporting Israel.
"I don't take sides for or against Hezbollah or for or against Israel," he said in a TV interview. His next sentence in what was a confused interview was: "I condemn Hezbollah as does everybody else, for the violence."
The second sentence was left out in Republican releases. The National Republican Congressional Committee accused Dingell of "support for a known terrorist organization."
Often the digs, which increased in frequency as the war continued, come down to headcounts: Democrats made hay of the fact that Republicans made up 10 of 12 U.S. senators who failed to sign a letter to the European Union urging it to classify Hezbollah as a terrorist group.
Just because the guns have fallen silent, doesn't mean the shouting has stopped.
The Republican Jewish Coalition is launching an ad campaign this week linking Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman's loss in the Connecticut primary last week to what it says is receding Democratic support for Israel.
"Joe Lieberman was a voice of support for Israel," the ad says. "That voice has been silenced by the Democratic Party. America and Israel are worse off for it."
The National Jewish Democratic Council is urging newspapers not to take the ad, calling the RJC "beyond hypocritical" because of its earlier broadsides against Lieberman, who was the first Jew to make a viable presidential ticket in 2000.
Democrats had no choice but to respond, said Ira Forman, the NJDC executive director.
"When they play this hypocritical gotcha game, we're stupid unless we respond," he said. "If you're going to play that gotcha game, you live by the sword you die by the sword."
The attacks make political sense for Republicans. A recent Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, conducted between July 28 and Aug. 1, found a striking partisan gap in support for Israel: Democrats supported neutrality over alignment with the Jewish state, 54 percent to 39 percent, while Republicans supported alignment with the Jewish state over neutrality, 64 percent to 29 percent.
Forman attributed the results to the GOP's substantial evangelical base. "If you take evangelical Christians out of the equation, Democrats and Republicans look about the same on Israel," he said.
Republican Jews say the poll indicates the Democrats are no longer steadfast on Israel's security.
Noam Neusner, a former Jewish liaison for the current Bush administration, said that although the trend represents an opportunity for his party, it is disquieting for those who want support for Israel to remain bipartisan.
"What concerns me is that the Democratic Party's rank and file appears to be becoming hostile to Israel's security needs," Neusner said.
Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said that if anything, the bickering was a comfort to him. He had feared that the war would mean Israel would get sucked into the pre-election for-Bush/against-Bush polarization
"What we've seen is the reverse," Foxman said. "The Democrats who are opposed to the president on 99 percent of things are closing ranks on Israel."
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Army reviewing casualty reports
By SCOTT LINDLAW
Associated Press
August 24, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO - The Army has opened a review of casualty reports on American soldiers killed in Afghanistan,
Iraq and elsewhere since 2001, a response to complaints that it has not always given families accurate information.
The review covers hundreds of casualties in Operation Enduring Freedom, the campaign in Afghanistan, and Operation Iraqi Freedom, two senior military officials said. It also includes American soldiers killed in neighboring countries in support of the two operations.
In coming weeks, the Army will issue a directive formalizing the review, according to the military officials.
One spoke Thursday on condition of anonymity because officers at the highest levels of the Army are still making minor changes. The other described the initiative in memos obtained by The Associated Press.
Brig. Gen. Anthony A. Cucolo, who heads the Army's public affairs office, said the Army's move is not new but a continuing "rigorous and routine review of current casualty cases with outstanding issues."
The step follows high-profile mistakes in telling families the circumstances of soldiers' deaths.
The best-known is that of Cpl. Pat Tillman, the one-time NFL star from San Jose, Calif., who quit football to join the U.S. Army Rangers and was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan in April 2004.
Tillman's family was originally told he had been killed by enemy fire. Five weeks later, they learned he was shot dead by fellow Rangers after an ambush.
The military suspected it was a friendly fire death within hours, but failed to tell the Tillmans despite a regulation on the books directing it to do so, said the soldier's mother, Mary Tillman.
She called the move positive, but she said the Army must follow up and deliver any new information to surviving family members.
"People will be able to come to terms with the truth, but if you were lied to once, then you're always going to be distrustful," she said in a telephone interview.
Two months after Tillman died, Lt. Andre Tyson and Spc. Patrick McCaffrey, two California National Guardsmen, were killed by the Iraqi civil-defense soldiers they were training.
The Army initially told the families the two men were killed in a conventional ambush. It was two years before their survivors learned they were slain.
The Army is not reopening investigations into the deaths of all soldiers killed in action, but it is revisiting them to ensure family members were informed of the Army's most accurate and updated findings.
The review has been quietly under way for more than two months, but the directive has not yet been sent to units in the field.
It will order Army units down to the battalion level to dig up so-called 15-6 investigative reports routinely conducted after combat deaths. Battalions that have been or are in Iraq or Afghanistan are being directed to ship copies of the initial casualty reports to top Army officials.
The Army will compare the initial reports to the follow-up investigations, looking for discrepancies in conclusions, according to military officials.
If the Army finds such a discrepancy, it will reappoint a casualty notification team, prepare a new report for the surviving family members and revisit the family to make personal notifications, one official said.
Marine Corps spokesman Lt. Col. Scott Fazekas said he was not aware of any similar review by the Marines.
A soldier's death may result in multiple investigations for a number of reasons. Follow-up inquiries are often launched when a first layer of military investigators concludes they need to probe more deeply. For instance, sometimes a crime is suspected but investigators in the field do not have access to resources such as ballistics testing.
Follow-up inquiries are commonly conducted by the Army's Criminal Investigation Command, known as CID, and by the Combat Readiness Center.
One of the military officials said the review is approximately half complete.
The full scope of the effort was not clear Thursday. Officials who spoke said they did not know how many soldiers' deaths would be included, or the circumstances that would trigger review. But it will certainly include several hundred deaths, one official said. Another said the review will include all combat deaths in the two theaters.
That would mean the review would cover some 2,000 reports. Nearly 1,800 Army soldiers have died in Iraq since 2003. More than 230 have died in Afghanistan, according to an Associated Press tally.
Nadia McCaffrey, the mother of Patrick McCaffrey, welcomed the move but said she was cautious in her optimism because the Army has moved slowly to inform her in the past.
"So now again we have to see how long it takes for people to act on it," she said from her home in Tracy.
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Two killed in Vermont school shooting: police
Reuters
Thu Aug 24, 2006
BOSTON - A shooter opened fire at a Vermont elementary school on Thursday in an incident that left at least two people dead and three wounded, police said.
"The details are still coming out but the report so far is that we have two people who have died and three others injured," said Barbara Farr, director of the Vermont Emergency Management office. "Details are sketchy at this point."
Police in Essex, Vermont, where the shooting occurred, said one person had been taken into custody but they gave no other details. New England Cable News reported the shooter was a 20-year-old man. There was no indication by police if the shooter was among those killed or wounded.
Farr said the ages of the shooter and the injured were unclear. Classes at the school were scheduled to begin next Wednesday.
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Odds n Ends
Kidnapped at 10 and held for eight years - The girl in the cellar
Luke Harding in Berlin
Friday August 25, 2006
The Guardian
Eight years ago, on March 2 1998, 10-year-old Natascha Kampusch kissed goodbye to her mother Brigitte and set off from her home in Vienna to school. She never made it. Her disappearance sparked one of the biggest ever hunts in Austria. But despite teams of detectives following thousands of leads there was no trace of Natascha - a shy, attractive schoolgirl with light brown hair, who left home without her Gameboy and beloved cuddly mouse.
Until, that was, Wednesday lunchtime, when an elderly neighbour phoned police to say she had found a pale young woman in distress. She had a scarcely believable story - that she had just escaped from a man who had held her prisoner in his garage for more than eight years.
After a police patrol went to pick her up, the young woman told officers: "I am Natascha Kampusch." She said that her kidnapper - 44-year-old Wolfgang Priklopil - had just fled in his BMW. By the time the police caught up with him it was too late: Priklopil had killed himself by jumping in front of a Vienna train.
Yesterday detectives confirmed that the girl last seen carrying a rucksack and wearing a red ski jacket was Natascha, now aged 18. They had identified her by a scar and expected confirmation from DNA, they told a Vienna press conference.
The investigation into what had happened over the past eight years centres on Heine-Strasse 60 - a detached house in the grimy hamlet of Strasshof, 15 miles north of Vienna.
Trees and a heavy iron gate surround the yellow and brown painted house, which is next to a busy road.
It was here that Natascha, who told police she had to call her captor "master", was held in a homemade dungeon - and, police suspect, subjected to years of sexual abuse. The only way in to the cellar-like prison, Priklopil's sealed garage, was via a steel door.
Priklopil, a communications technician, had fitted a sophisticated alarm, with video cameras, to alert him should Natascha try to escape, police said. "He was a perfectionist. He was very careful. He did everything he could to make sure she couldn't get out," Armin Halm, spokesman for the Bundeskriminalamt, or federal criminal bureau, said.
Inside, the garage looked like a normal teenage bedroom. It was equipped with a bed, bookshelf, TV, and desk. Clothes were piled in a heap; nearby was a dictionary. There was even evidence that Priklopil helped Natascha with her studies. "She can read and write," Mr Halm said.
At weekends Priklopil's elderly mother dropped by to cook and clean for her unmarried son. He had only two friends, police said. Neither appears to have known anything about the girl hidden in his cellar. "We didn't suspect anything," said one elderly couple living down the road.
Police say it is unclear if Natascha had ever tried to escape before, or why her meticulous kidnapper suddenly grew careless. Last night it was reported he recently had allowed her occasional outings in the village in his company.
In the end, he was distracted by a phone call - thus enabling her to flee, investigator Erich Zwettler told Sky TV. "He found his victim had escaped, panicked, jumped in his car and drove away fast," Mr Zwettler said.
However, police also suggested Natascha might have become fond of Priklopil over her years of captivity.
Yesterday, there were embarrassing questions as to why investigators had failed to trace Natascha. Immediately after her abduction one eyewitness described how she had seen Natascha get into a white van.
Detectives tracked 1,000 white van owners in the area and interviewed Priklopil in April 1998, a month after Natascha disappeared. He told them he used the van for work. They believed him - and left without searching either the house or garage.
On Wednesday when they arrived at the house the van was still there. They also found Natascha's passport, which she had with her the day she vanished. Another neighbour, retired policeman Franz Hafergut, had also complained to the authorities because Priklopil used a .22 rifle to shoot pigeons. Police officers knocked on his door - but left.
Yesterday Natascha's father, Ludwig Koch, said he recognised his lost daughter immediately. In an interview with Austria's Kurier newspaper, he said she looked in bad shape physically and had wasted away. "She has very, very white skin and marks all over her entire body. I don't want to think about where they came from," he said. After being reunited on Wednesday they had both wept. "She told me: Papa, I love you. And her next question was, Papa, do you still have my toy car?'
"I told her I did, and we had never given it away. We still have all her dolls as well." Mr Koch said he did not know his daughter's kidnapper, adding: "I feel enormously joyful, but at the same time I feel like crying the whole time ... I just hope Natascha can lead a normal life. That she can get an education, find a job, and, who knows, perhaps even be happy. That's my great wish. I know now at last that the waiting has been worth it, and my life has a purpose."
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Blair returns to questions about his departure
Matthew Tempest, political correspondent
Friday August 25, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
Tony Blair was today back at his desk in Downing Street, with a schedule of policy speeches for next week and a diplomatic trip planned for the Middle East.
After a three-week holiday in the Caribbean, the prime minister's return heralds the start of the new political season, with the Labour party conference expected to be dominated by the question of whether Mr Blair will signal a departure date.
The PM may well also have to face questioning from the Metropolitan police over the "cash-for-honours" investigation.
Mr Blair's eldest son, Euan, has remained behind in Barbados, after being admitted to hospital with stomach pains, according to Downing Street.
Cherie Blair stayed back with her 22-year-old son at the Queen Elizabeth hospital, near Bridgetown, where Professor Andrew Zbar, a doctor at the hospital, said it was "a bit of a non-story".
Next week's speeches are thought to be on social exclusion and education, but the conference, which takes place in Manchester between September 24 and 28, is now the focus of attention for Labour.
With the PM and chancellor, Gordon Brown, as usual scheduled to give speeches on successive days, it will be all but impossible for one or both men not to give some clue as to when a handover date is likely.
Mr Brown himself has been on paternity leave during August, and remained mute over the alleged airline bomb plots, the situation in the Middle East and calls for a recall of parliament.
The summer has seen a long series of bad headlines for the PM, from the attacks on both him and the foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, sustained criticism of the role of John Prescott as deputy prime minister, ending with a Guardian opinion poll this week which put the Tories nine points ahead of Labour.
The ICM survey gave David Cameron's party 40 points, a key psychological breakthrough, and the strongest support for the party since 1992.
John Reid, the home secretary, was seen to have acted decisively and with purpose over the alleged terrorist plot, but is now on holiday himself.
Other items in Mr Blair's in-tray are the return of parliament on October 9, a new Queen's speech of legislation in the autumn, plus the deadline in Northern Ireland for the warring Democratic Unionist party and Sinn Féin to form an executive or face the collapse of devolved government.
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Police face inquiry over man shot dead after gang clash
By Thair Shaikh
The Independent
Published: 25 August 2006
The police response to the stabbing of a man who was later shot dead is to be investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).
The IPCC said it would look into how the Metropolitan Police handled the knife attack on Peter Woodhams in January.
Mr Woodhams, 22, from Canning Town, east London, was shot dead on Monday outside his house. He had confronted members of a gang several times because of their antisocial behaviour, according to his fiancée, Jane Bowden. Miss Bowden, 23, said the family phoned the police every day for five weeks after the stabbing but they failed to take a statement.
She said the gang had thrown stones at their house and car and shouted abuse since the knife attack.
The IPCC commissioner, David Petch, said: "There has been considerable public concern about this case and I therefore decided our investigators should look at the police's response to the stabbing incident."On Monday Mr Woodhams was shot in the chest, possibly by members of the same group, according to his family. Earlier in the day, he had argued with a group of youths outside a parade of shops. He drove back home, and complained to his fiancée of "trouble outside". He then went back out to the parade, apparently to speak to the group. Moments later he was shot.
Mr Woodhams, a television satellite engineer, managed to stagger back to his house but collapsed at the front gate. His fiancée, with their son, Sam, three, rushed to his aid but he died on his way to hospital.
Yesterday, Sir Ian Blair, the Met Commissioner, was asked to "report fully" to the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) on how his officers responded to the stabbing and Mr Woodhams' subsequent murder. The Metropolitan Police has also launched an internal inquiry into its investigation of the stabbing. The Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS) will examine whether mistakes were made.
A 14-year-old arrested over Mr Woodhams' murder, who had also been held in connection with the earlier stabbing, has been released on bail.
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China's Military Holds High Technology War Exercise
AFP
Aug 25, 2006
Beijing, China - China's military has conducted a first-ever war exercise involving joint forces at a northern training base to test its high-technology combat capabilities, state media said Thursday. More than 20,000 personnel participated in the exercise code-named "North Sword -- 0607(S)", which was organized by the People's Liberation Army's Beijing Area Command, the Xinhua news agency said.
It was the first joint exercise involving troops from a PLA area command, the Air Force, the Second Artillery and the Chinese People's Armed Police, Xinhua cited military sources as saying.
A thousand tanks, armored vehicles and troop carriers were involved in "fierce battles" on the site covering 1,000 square kilometers (400 square miles), Xinhua said.
Thirty-five experts from the National University of Defense were on hand to monitor and assess procedures, according to the department directing the exercise.
The "Red Army" division conducted a series of drills to test long-distance maneuverability under complicated conditions, while under assault from "Blue Army" troops, using "electromagnetic" equipment, Xinhua said.
The sources gave no dates or timescale for the drill, said Xinhua.
It did not explain the purpose of the exercise and who the potential enemy may be.
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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 Journal.
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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Spaced Out
Cows 'moo' with an accent, farmers believe
Reuters
Thu Aug 24, 2006
LONDON - Cows have regional accents, a group of British farmers claims, and phonetics experts say the idea is not as far-fetched as it sounds.
Lloyd Green, from southwest England, was one of a group of farmers who first noticed the phenomenon.
"I spend a lot of time with my Friesians and they definitely 'moo' with a Somerset drawl," he said, referring to the breed of dairy cow he owns.
"I've spoken to the other farmers in the West Country group and they have noticed a similar development in their own herds.
"I think it works the same as with dogs - the closer a farmer's bond is with his animals, the easier it is for them to pick up his accent."
Dom Lane, spokesman for a group called the West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers to which Green belongs, said it contacted John Wells, Professor of Phonetics at University College London, who said that a similar phenomenon had been found in birds.
"You find distinct chirping accents in the same species around the country. This could also be true of cows," Wells said on the group's Web site (www.farmhousecheesemakers.com).
According to Lane, accents among cows probably develop in a similar way as among humans, and resulted from spending time with farmers with differing accents.
"Apparently the biggest influence on accents is peer groups - on children in the playground, for example," he said. "Herds are quite tight-knit communities and don't tend to leave the area."
He added that more scientific research was needed to prove what was just an anecdotal theory at this stage.
Comment: Hot on the heels of this earth-shattering story is our very own roving reporter, Ignacious O'Reilly. He reports that Northern US cows say "Moo", while Texan cows pronounce it "Mehw". In France, the accent is a bit different: "Mu", which rhymes with the French "tu". We'll keep you posted as more information becomes available.
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Martian Misinformation
Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Production Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA
August 25, 2006: On Sunday, August 27th, Mars will be far from Earth, dim and unremarkable. In short, a total bore.
That's news? It is when a widely-read email claims just the opposite. Perhaps you've seen it:
"The Red Planet is about to be spectacular."
"Earth is catching up with Mars [for] the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history."
"On August 27th ... Mars will look as large as the full moon."
"NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS AGAIN."
This is called the "Mars Hoax" and, as the name suggests, it is false.
If Mars ever came close enough to Earth to rival the Moon, it would alter Earth's orbit and raise fantastic tides. Impossible: The orbits of Earth and Mars are too far apart. In fact, this month Mars is about as far from Earth as it can get: 385 million km, all the way on the other side of the Solar System.
The Hoax first appeared in 2003. On August 27th of that year, Mars really did come historically close to Earth: 56 million km. But even then the e-mail's claim that Mars would rival the Moon was grossly exaggerated. To the unaided eye, Mars looked like a bright red star, nothing more. In every August since 2003, the email has staged a revival.
If you want to see something truly astronomical on August 27th, wake up before dawn on Sunday and look east. Venus and Saturn are having a close encounter, as shown in the sky map, above. The two planets will be stationed less than half-a-degree apart in the rosy glow of the rising sun. Suggestion: Take your binoculars out with you. Venus is intense, but Saturn is easily lost in the brightening dawn. Binoculars help, and both planets can be seen at once through typical optics--very pretty.
Meanwhile, Mars is a bore. Spread the word.
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