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Editorial: Putting Words in Ahmadinejad's Mouth
Virginia Tilley
Counterpunch
28/08/2006
In this frightening mess in the Middle East, let's get one thing straight. Iran is not threatening Israel with destruction. Iran's president has not threatened any action against Israel. Over and over, we hear that Iran is clearly "committed to annihilating Israel" because the "mad" or "reckless" or "hard-line" President Ahmadinejad has repeatedly threatened to destroy Israel But every supposed quote, every supposed instance of his doing so, is wrong.
The most infamous quote, "Israel must be wiped off the map", is the most glaringly wrong. In his October 2005 speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad never used the word "map" or the term "wiped off". According to Farsi-language experts like Juan Cole and even right-wing services like MEMRI, what he actually said was "this regime that is occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time."
What did he mean? In this speech to an annual anti-Zionist conference, Mr. Ahmadinejad was being prophetic, not threatening. He was citing Imam Khomeini, who said this line in the 1980s (a period when Israel was actually selling arms to Iran, so apparently it was not viewed as so ghastly then). Mr. Ahmadinejad had just reminded his audience that the Shah's regime, the Soviet Union, and Saddam Hussein had all seemed enormously powerful and immovable, yet the first two had vanished almost beyond recall and the third now languished in prison. So, too, the "occupying regime" in Jerusalem would someday be gone. His message was, in essence, "This too shall pass."
But what about his other "threats" against Israel? The blathersphere made great hay from his supposed comment later in the same speech, "There is no doubt: the new wave of assaults in Palestine will erase the stigma in [the] countenance of the Islamic world." "Stigma" was interpreted as "Israel" and "wave of assaults" was ominous. But what he actually said was, "I have no doubt that the new movement taking place in our dear Palestine is a wave of morality which is spanning the entire Islamic world and which will soon remove this stain of disgrace from the Islamic world." "Wave of morality" is not "wave of assaults." The preceding sentence had made clear that the "stain of disgrace" was the Muslim world's failure to eliminate the "occupying regime".
For months, scholars like Cole and journalists like the London Guardian's Jonathan Steele have been pointing out these mistranslations while more and more appear: for example, Mr. Ahmadinejad's comments at the Organization of Islamic Countries meeting on August 3, 2006. Radio Free Europe reported that he said "that the 'main cure' for crisis in the Middle East is the elimination of Israel." "Elimination of Israel" implies physical destruction: bombs, strafing, terror, throwing Jews into the sea. Tony Blair denounced the translated statement as ""quite shocking". But Mr. Ahmadinejad never said this. According to al-Jazeera, what he actually said was "The real cure for the conflict is the elimination of the Zionist regime, but there should be an immediate ceasefire first."
Nefarious agendas are evident in consistently translating "eliminating the occupation regime" as "destruction of Israel". "Regime" refers to governance, not populations or cities. "Zionist regime" is the government of Israel and its system of laws, which have annexed Palestinian land and hold millions of Palestinians under military occupation. Many mainstream human rights activists believe that Israel's "regime" must indeed be transformed, although they disagree how. Some hope that Israel can be redeemed by a change of philosophy and government (regime) that would allow a two-state solution. Others believe that Jewish statehood itself is inherently unjust, as it embeds racist principles into state governance, and call for its transformation into a secular democracy (change of regime). None of these ideas about regime change signifies the expulsion of Jews into the sea or the ravaging of their towns and cities. All signify profound political change, necessary to creating a just peace.
Mr. Ahmadinejad made other statements at the Organization of Islamic Countries that clearly indicated his understanding that Israel must be treated within the framework of international law. For instance, he recognized the reality of present borders when he said that "any aggressor should go back to the Lebanese international border". He recognized the authority of Israel and the role of diplomacy in observing, "The circumstances should be prepared for the return of the refugees and displaced people, and prisoners should be exchanged." He also called for a boycott: "We also propose that the Islamic nations immediately cut all their overt and covert political and economic relations with the Zionist regime." A double bushel of major Jewish peace groups, US church groups, and hordes of human rights organizations have said the same things.
A final word is due about Mr. Ahmadinejad's "Holocaust denial". Holocaust denial is a very sensitive issue in the West, where it notoriously serves anti-Semitism. Elsewhere in the world, however, fogginess about the Holocaust traces more to a sheer lack of information. One might think there is plenty of information about the Holocaust worldwide, but this is a mistake. (Lest we be snooty, Americans show the same startling insularity from general knowledge when, for example, they live to late adulthood still not grasping that US forces killed at least two million Vietnamese and believing that anyone who says so is anti-American. Most French people have not yet accepted that their army slaughtered a million Arabs in Algeria.)
Skepticism about the Holocaust narrative has started to take hold in the Middle East not because people hate Jews but because that narrative is deployed to argue that Israel has a right to "defend itself" by attacking every country in its vicinity. Middle East publics are so used to western canards legitimizing colonial or imperial takeovers that some wonder if the six-million-dead argument is just another myth or exaggerated tale. It is dismal that Mr. Ahmadinejad seems to belong to this sector.
Still, Mr. Ahmadinejad did not say what the US Subcommittee on Intelligence Policy reported that he said: "They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred and place this above God, religions and the prophets." He actually said, "In the name of the Holocaust they have created a myth and regard it to be worthier than God, religion and the prophets." This language targets the myth of the Holocaust, not the Holocaust itself - i.e., "myth" as "mystique", or what has been done with the Holocaust. Other writers, including important Jewish theologians, have criticized the "cult" or "ghost" of the Holocaust without denying that it happened. In any case, Mr. Ahmadinejad's main message has been that, if the Holocaust happened as Europe says it did, then Europe, and not the Muslim world, is responsible for it.
Why is Mr. Ahmadinejad being so systematically misquoted and demonized? Need we ask? If the world believes that Iran is preparing to attack Israel, then the US or Israel can claim justification in attacking Iran first. On that agenda, the disinformation campaign about Mr. Ahmadinejad's statements has been bonded at the hip to a second set of lies: promoting Iran's (nonexistent) nuclear weapon programme.
The current fuss about Iran's nuclear enrichment program is playing out so identically to US canards about Iraq's WMD that we must wonder why it is not meeting only roaring international derision. With multiple agendas regarding Iran -- oil, US hegemony, Israel, neocon fantasies of a "new Middle East" -- the Bush administration has raised a great international scare about Iran's nuclear enrichment program. (See Ray Close, Why Bush Will Choose War Against Iran.) But, plowing through Iran's facilities and records, International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have found no evidence of a weapons program. The US intelligence community hasn't found anything, either.
All experts concur that, even if Iran has such a program, it is five to ten years away from having the enriched uranium necessary for an actual weapon, so pre-emptive military action now is hardly necessary. Even the recent report by the Republican-dominated Subcommittee on Intelligence Policy, which pointed out that the US government lacks the intelligence on Iran's weapons program necessary to thwart it, effectively confirms that the supposed "intelligence" is patchy and inadequate.
The Bush administration's casual neglect of North Korea's nuclear program indicates that nuclear weapons are not, in fact, the issue here. The neocons are intent on changing the regime in Iran and so have deployed their propagandists to promote the "nuclear weapons" scare just they promoted the Iraqi WMD scare. Republican rhetoric and right-wing news commentators have fallen into line, obediently repeating baseless assertions that Iran has a "nuclear weapons program," is threatening the world and especially Israel with its "nuclear weapons program," and must not be allowed to complete its "nuclear weapons program." Those who nervously point out that hard evidence is actually lacking about any Iranian "nuclear weapons program" are derided as naïve and spineless patsies.
Worse, the Bush administration has brought this snow-job to the UN, wrangling the Security Council into passing a resolution (SC 1696) demanding that Iran cease nuclear enrichment by August 31 and warning of sanctions if it doesn't. Combined with its abysmal performance regarding Israel's assault on Lebanon, the Security Council has crumbled into humiliating obsequious incompetence on this one.
Like all phantasms, the nuclear-weapons charge is hard to defeat because it cannot be entirely disproved. Maybe some Iranian scientists, in some remote underground facility, are working on nuclear weapons technology. Maybe feelers to North Korea have explored the possibilities of getting extra components. Maybe an alien spaceship once crashed in the Nevada desert. Normally, just because something can't be disproved does not make it true. But in the neocon world, possibilities are realities, and a craven press is there to click its heels and trumpet the scaremongering headlines. It doesn't take much, through endless repetition of the term "possible nuclear weapons program," for the word "possible" to drop quietly away.
Evidence is, in any case, a mere detail to the Bush administration, for which the desire for nuclear weapons is sufficient cause for a pre-emptive attack. In US debates prior to invading Iraq, people sometimes insisted that any real evidence of WMD was sorely lacking. The White House would then insist that, because Saddam Hussein "wanted" such weapons, he was likely to have them sometime in the future. Hence thought crimes, even imaginary thought crimes, are now punishable by military invasion.
Will the US really attack Iran? US generals are rightly alarmed that bombing Iran's nuclear facilities would unleash unprecedented attacks on US occupation forces in Iraq, as well as US bases in the Gulf. Iran could even block the Straits of Hormuz, which carries 40 percent of the world's oil. Spin-off terrorist militancy would skyrocket. The potential damage to international security and the world economy would be unfathomably dangerous. The Bush administration's necons seems capable of any insanity, so none of this may matter to them. But even the neocons must be taking pause since Israel failed to knock out Hizbullah using the same onslaught from the air planned for Iran.
But Israel can attack Iran, and this may be the plan. Teaming up, the two countries could compensate for each other's strategic limitations. The US has been contributing its superpower clout in the Security Council, setting the stage for sanctions, knowing Iran will not yield on its enrichment program. Having cultivated a (mistaken) international belief that Iran is threatening a direct attack on Israel, the Israeli government could then claim the right of self-defense in taking unilateral pre-emptive action to destroy the nuclear capacity of a state declared in breach of UN directives. Direct retaliation by Iran against Israel is impossible because Israel is a nuclear power (and Iran is not) and because the US security umbrella would protect Israel. Regional reaction against US targets might be curtailed by the (scant) confusion about indirect US complicity.
In that case, what we are seeing now is the US creating the international security context for Israel's unilateral strike and preparing to cover Israel's back in the aftermath.
Is this really the plan? Some evidence suggests that it is on the table. In recent years, Israel has purchased new "bunker-busting" missiles, a fleet of F-16 jets, and three latest-technology German Dolphin submarines (and ordered two more)- i.e., the appropriate weaponry for striking Iran's nuclear installations. In March 2005, the Times of London reported that Israel had constructed a mock-up of Iran's Natanz facility in the desert and was conducting practice bombing runs. In recent months, Israeli officials have openly stated that if the UN fails to take action, Israel will bomb Iran.
But Hizbullah, Iran's ally, still threatens Israel's flank. Hence attacking Hizbullah was more than a "demo" for attacking Iran, as Seymour Hersh reported; it was necessary to attacking Iran. Israel failed to crush Hizbullah, but the outcome may be better for Israel now that Security Council Resolution 1701 has made the entire international community responsible for disarming Hizbullah. If the US-sponsored 1701 effort succeeds, the attack on Iran is a go.
As Israel and the US try to make that deeply flawed plan work, we will doubtless continue to read in every forum that Iran's president - a hostile, irrational, Jew-hating, Holocaust-denying Islamo-fascist who has threatened to "wipe Israel off the map" -- is demonstrably irrational enough to commit national suicide by launching a (nonexistent) nuclear weapon against Israel's mighty nuclear arsenal. The message is being hammered home: against this media-created myth, Israel must truly "defend itself."
Virginia Tilley is a professor of political science,
a US citizen working in South Africa, and author of The
One-State Solution: A Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian
Deadlock (University of Michigan Press and Manchester University
Press, 2005). She can be reached at tilley@hws.edu.
Original
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Editorial: Israeli Apartheid: Striking parallels to So. Africa
Bruce Dixon
BlackCommentator.com
28/08/2006
Imagine, if you will, a modern apartheid state with first, second and eleventh class citizens, all required to carry identification specifying their ethnic origin. First class citizens are obliged to serve in the armed forces, kept on ready reserve status until in their forties, and accorded an impressive array of housing, medical, social security, educational and related benefits denied all others.
Second class citizens are exempted from military service and from a number of the benefits accorded citizens of the first class. They are issued identity documents and license plates that allow them to be profiled by police at a distance. Second class citizens may not own land in much of the country and marriages between them and first class citizens are not recognized by the state. Second class citizens are sometimes arrested without trial and police torture, while frowned upon and occasionally apologized for, commonly occurs.
Citizens of the eleventh class, really not citizens at all, have no rights citizens of the first class or their government are bound to respect. Their residence is forbidden in nearly nine-tenths of the country, all of which they used to own. The areas left to them are cut up into smaller and smaller portions weekly, by high walls, free fire zones and hundreds of checkpoints manned by the army of the first class citizens, so that none can travel a dozen miles in any direction to work, school, shopping, a job, a farm, a business or a hospital without several long waits, humiliating searches and often arbitrary denials of the right to pass or to return. Posh residential settlements for the first class citizens with protecting gun towers and military bases are built with government funds and foreign aid on what used to be the villages and farms and pastures of the eleventh class citizens. The settlers are allotted generous additional housing and other subsidies, allowed to carry weapons and use deadly force with impunity against the former inhabitants, and are connected with the rest of first class territory by a network of of first-class citizen only roads.
Citizens of the eleventh class are routinely arrested, tortured, and held indefinitely without trial. Political activism among them is equated to "terrorism" and the state discourages such activity by means including but not limited to the kidnapping of suspects and relatives of suspects, demolition of their family homes, and extralegal assassination, sometimes at the hands of a death squad, or at others times by lobbing missiles or five hundred pound bombs into sleeping apartment blocks or noonday traffic. Passports are not issued to these citizens, and those who take advantage of scarce opportunities to study or work abroad are denied re-entry.
The apartheid state in question is, of course, Israel. Its first class citizens are Israeli Jews, the majority of them of European or sometimes American origin. The second class citizens are Israeli Arabs, who enjoy significant but limited rights under the law including token representation in the Knesset. The eleventh class citizens are not citizens at all. They are Palestinians. One expects to be able to say that Palestinians live in Palestine and are governed by Palestinians, but the truth is something different. The areas in which Palestinians may inhabit have shrunk nearly every year since the Nakba, their name for the wave of mass deportations, murders, the dispossession, destruction and exile of whole Arab towns, cities and regions that attended the 1948 founding of the state of Israel. As the whole world, except for the US public knows, Palestinians have lived under military occupation, without land, without rights, without hope, for nearly sixty years now.
The difference between life inside and outside the US corporate media bubble is extraordinarily clear on this question. US authorities subsidize the state of Israel to the tune of at least six billion per year, and corporate media take great pains to protect US citizens from news of actual human and legal conditions their tax dollars pay for. The ugly and racist realities of Israeli society and life under Israeli occupation are rarely discussed anywhere most consumers of media might find them. It is nearly taboo in mainstream US print and broadcast media to apply the words racist or apartheid to the state of Israel or its policies, or to call its control at the point of a gun of millions of non-citizens what it is, namely the longest standing military occupation in the world today. In the US media, and on the lips of every administration since Harry Truman's Israel is "a democracy", whatever that word has come to mean.
Though news stories in the US talk about autonomous "Palestinian areas" allegedly controlled by Palestinian authorities, often referring to Gaza and the West Bank by name, actual maps displaying the geographic boundaries of the so-called Palestinian controlled areas are rarely seen by American viewers, let alone maps comparing the size of Palestinian areas year to year, or showing the steady encroachment upon Arab land and water resources year to year by Israeli settlements, military outposts, Israeli-only roads, free fire zones and Israel's wall. The massive and militarized apartheid wall, as the rest of the world calls it, is termed a "separation barrier" or a "separation fence" in the US media, an understandable precaution against hordes of terroristic former owners of the land who lurk just outside.
Still, when you Google the terms Israel + apartheid, you get 5.5 million hits. A lot of somebodies somewhere are making the connection without the help of CNN, ABC or Fox News.
The parallels with apartheid South Africa are many and striking. Like its earlier apartheid cousin, Israel menaces all its neighbors with an impressive array of nukes and the largest military establishment in the region. As Noam Chomsky observed back in 2004:
"Not discussed, in the US at least, is the threat from West Asia. Israel's nuclear capacities, supplemented with other WMD, are regarded as "dangerous in the extreme" by the former head of the US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), Gen. Lee Butler, not only because of the threat they pose but also because they stimulate proliferation in response. The Bush administration is now enhancing that threat. Israeli military analysts allege that its air and armored forces are larger and technologically more advanced than those of any NATO power (apart from the US), not because this small country is powerful in itself, but because it serves virtually as an offshore US military base and high tech center. The US is now sending Israel over 100 of its most advanced jet bombers, F16I's, advertised very clearly as capable of flying to Iran and back, and as an updated version of the F16s that Israel used to bomb Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981...."
The old South Africa bombed, strafed and invaded all its neighbors with some regularity, crippling their commerce and extracting horrific death tolls from refugee camps and other civilian targets. The last time Israel invaded and occupied Lebanon, it left 30,000 corpses.
White South Africans rightly fretted at the fact that they were a minority ruling over an unhappy majority, and concocted schemes to exile the country's black population to isolated rural reservations it called bantustans. Israeli pundits calmly discuss the demographic bomb, their name for the fact that second and eleventh class citizens, Israeli Arabs and Palestinians will soon outnumber them within the borders of their supposed "Jewish state" while Israeli politicians sit in Knesset and hold ministries in successive governments openly calling for mass deportations and ethnic cleansing.
White South Africans constructed for themselves a bogus scriptural narrative in which the God of Abraham promised them somebody else's land, and brought it into modern history with the embellishment that they were holding the line for the free world against godless communism and the black menace. How similar is Israel's line that European Jews are promised the land of Muslim and Christian Arabs, and that they now hold the line for the free world against radical Islam and those ungrateful brown people?
We at BC have to believe that if the American people knew the truth about what their tax dollars pay for in Israel and what is left of Palestine, there would be a deep and widespread revulsion, similar to that occasioned by US support for apartheid in South Africa. But there are important differences between that time and this one. Though unspeakably odious, racist South African was only marginally important to US interests. By contrast, the maintenance of Israel's apartheid regime, essentially a white hi-tech and military outpost in the middle of all those brown people sitting atop a large share of the world's proven oil reserves is absolutely central to US foreign policy for the foreseeable future. The US is Israel's banker, its arms depot, and its principal diplomatic sponsor. The US is far more complicit in the crimes of the Israeli state than it ever was in South Africa.
Racism and apartheid being what they are, and our historical experience in America being what it is, African Americans have a crucial role to play. African Americans have seldom supported US imperial adventures overseas as readily as whites. Our American experience inclines us to a skeptical appraisal of our government's means and motives at home and abroad. Even though we live as much within the media bubble as white America, where images of the broken and mangled families, the incinerated homes and bombed hospitals are hard to come by, our skepticism leads us to sympathize with those who live at the sharp end of US foreign policy far more often than do our white neighbors.
Our first duty is to tell the truth to each other. We must combat among ourselves the bogus historical narratives which permit indifference to US policy in the Middle East in general, and support of Israeli apartheid in particular. The churchgoers among us urgently, publicly and repeatedly must confront and debunk the nonsense which holds that "wars and rumors of wars" are something predestined to happen in the biblical holy land for what they are - bad scripture and fake history. We need to interrupt, correct and school everyone who talks to us about a "cycle of violence" in the Holy Land, as though some raggedy fool with a suicide belt, or a few hundred fighters with small arms are or ever have been equivalent to the devastation wrought by the established gulags, checkpoints, airborne firepower, economic strangulation, house demolitions and nuclear armed might of the Israeli state. The two sides do not have access to anything like equal means of inflicting violence, and so cannot be equally culpable or equally responsible for stopping that violence.
We need to catch up with the rest of the civilized world, and talk about what we can do to emphatically withdraw our support from the apartheid state of Israel and its immoral and illegal occupation regime. The Presbyterian church, for example, has in the past considered selective divestiture from Israel and from US companies who profit from the occupation, as have the Anglicans. Both might do so again. What can our churches, our unions, our local elected officials, our young people do? What will we do?
Apartheid in South Africa eventually bit the dust mostly because the inhabitants of that country, black, brown and white resisted it, putting their bodies and lives on the line. Their resistance was aided and abetted materially, financially, politically and spiritually by people of good will the world over. Someday the sun will rise on a post-apartheid Jerusalem, one that belongs to all the people who live there of whatever origin. This is bound to happen because Palestinians as well as substantial numbers of Israeli Jews do and will continue to resist the regime. They will do what they can. What will we do?
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Zionist Dream...
How It All Began: Truman and Israel
By HARRY CLARK
The Truman Administration's policy on Palestine challenges at its start the "strategic asset" view of the US-Israel relationship, and reinforces the "Israel lobby" view, as argued in the recent article by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. Truman's support for the creation of a Jewish state was due entirely to the US Jewish community, without whose influence Zionist achievements in Palestine would have been for nought. Long before any strategic argument was made, indeed, while a Jewish state was considered a strategic liability, long before Israel's fundamentalist Christian supporters of today were on the map, the nascent Israel lobby deployed its manifold resources with consummate skill and ruthlessness.
Rabbi Abba Silver, a Cleveland Zionist with Republican contacts, and Zionist official Emmanuel Neumann, initiated "Democratic and Republican competition for the Jewish vote." In 1944 they "wrung support from the conventions of both parties for the Taft-Wagner [Senate] resolution" supporting abrogation of the Palestine immigration limits in the 1939 British white paper, and the establishment of Palestine as a Jewish commonwealth. Ensuring the traditional loyalty of Jewish voters was a paramount concern of Democratic politicians, up to the president himself, in the New York mayoral election of 1945, the 1946 congressional elections, and the 1948 presidential election.
Gentile opinion was also courted in non-electoral ways, through the American Palestine Committee of notables, constituted in 1941 by Emmanuel Neumann of the American Zionist Emergency Committee. By 1946 it included "sixty-eight senators, two hundred congressmen and several state governors" with "seventy-five local chapters." It became "'the preeminent symbol of pro-Zionist sentiment among the non-Jewish American public.'" It was entirely a Zionist front.
Zionist control was discreet but tight. The Committee's correspondence was drafted in the AZEC headquarters and sent to [chairman New York Senator Robert] Wagner for his signature. Mail addressed to Wagner as head of the American Palestine Committee, even if it came from the White House or the State Department, was opened and kept in Zionist headquarters; Wagner received a copy. The AZEC placed ads in the press under the committee's name without bothering to consult or advise it in advance, until one of its members meekly requested advance notice.
Dewey Stone, a Zionist businessman, had financed Truman's vice-presidential campaign in 1944, and businessman Abraham Feinberg, with jewelry magnate Edmund Kauffman, led fundraising for the otherwise penniless 1948 presidential campaign. "If not for my friend Abe, I couldn't have made the [whistle-stop train] trip and I wouldn't have been elected," Truman stated. "Feinberg's activities began a process that made the Jews into 'the most conspicuous fundraisers and contributors to the Democratic Party.'"
Key White House advisors ensured the domination of Zionist viewpoints in the highest circles of the Truman Administration. Jewish aides David Niles, administrative assistant to Truman, and Max Lowenthal, special assistant on Palestine to Clark Clifford, himself "Truman's key advisor on Palestine at the White House," were especially crucial. Niles was one of two presidential aides retained from the Roosevelt Administration, the other being Samuel Rosenman. Niles was Truman's chief political liaison with the Jewish community. Lowenthal was the Harvard-trained former counsel to the Senate Interstate Commerce Committee on which Truman had served, who specialized in drafting Zionist memoranda. In 1952 Truman stated in a letter to Lowenthal, "I don't know who has done more for Israel than you have." Clifford, an ambitious Missouri lawyer, like so many non-Jewish Democrats saw the manifest political advantages of Zionism; Truman's 1948 victory launched Clifford's career as consummate Washington insider. The "White House through its busy and assorted 'aides' never wanted for advice on the Palestine question. All together the quantity of well-argued advice coming in through various unofficial channels was enormous and would provide an efficient counter to that coming from the president's official foreign policy-making body, the State Department."
This formidable apparatus was deployed at every twist and turn on the sinous path of events that culminated in Israel's creation. In 1945 the Zionist lobby linked concern for the Jewish displaced persons languishing in European camps to the Palestine question, and pressured Truman to endorse a Jewish Agency proposal for the British to admit 100,000 Jewish immigrants to Palestine. In April, 1946, a joint Anglo-American commission, with US Zionist members, duly endorsed the immigration proposal, among others, and talks about a comprehensive political settlement continued, resulting in the Morrison-Grady plan for a federal state with autonomy for Arab and Jewish provinces. Truman thought this then and later "the best of all solutions proposed for Palestine." The plan fell short of Zionist aspirations toward partition, and under intense pressure, with the fall elections looming, Truman reluctantly declined to endorse it.
The Jewish Agency Executive, the governing body of the Zionist settlement in Palestine, proposed partition in early August. On October 4, 1946, the eve of Yom Kippur, Truman delivered his famous statement noting the Morrison-Grady plan, and the Jewish Agency partition proposal, calling the latter a solution which "would command the support of public opinion in the United States." Despite Truman's further observations that "the gap between the proposals" could be bridged, and that the US government could support such a compromise, the statement was intepreted as support for partition and a Jewish state, as Niles predicted to the author, the Jewish Agency representative in Washington, whose original draft had been modified by the State Department.
The Yom Kippur statement marked a watershed in the political and diplomatic struggle for the Jewish state. The British saw in the statement a demonstration of Jewish political power and gave up their quest for an Anglo-American consensus on Palestine. [British Foreign Secretary] Bevin began issuing threats that the British would evacuate Palestine, and in February 1947 they did indeed refer the question with no recommendation to the United Nations.
The United Nations Special Commission on Palestine was formed after the British announcement. Truman, "undoubtedly embarrassed by accusationsthat he had exploited the Palestine question for domestic political gain" with his Yom Kippur statement, thereafter remained silent. Before the UNSCOP decision, Truman still retained hope for the 1946 Morrison-Grady plan. When on August 31, 1947, UNSCOP announced its majority decision recommending partition, the administration came under overwhelming pressure to endorse it.
The State Department, like the War Department and most of the government, and elite opinion generally, viewed good relations with the Arab states and people as the basis of US interests in the region's oil, in trade and investment, military basing rights, and excluding the rising bogey of Soviet influence. But the Zionist machine was at full throttle, Democratic politicians from Congress to the Cabinet protested vehemently to Truman about the political consequences, and a statement endorsing partition was made at the UN on October 11. Truman did fear that if partition became a US plan, it would require US military forces to implement. Neither the US nor the USSR, which endorsed partiton two days after the US, lobbied for votes among member states, and on Wednesday, November 26, the General Assembly approved the final draft partition resolution by one vote less than the required two-thirds majority. The partition forces postponed the final vote, and over the Thanksgiving holiday the president, his aides and US diplomats went to work. That Saturday, November 29, partition passed by 33 to 13, with ten abstentions. Truman took personal credit for changing several votes.
The Zionists had been waging war against the British to drive them out of Palestine, and after the UN partition vote, civil war broke out with the Palestinian Arabs, who rejected partition. In February the State Department prepared plans for a UN trusteeship, with White House knowledge and approval. On March 18, a UN commission to monitor events in Palestine, which had predicted further chaos and bloodshed after the British withdrawal on May 14, reported its failure to arrange any agreement between Jews and Arabs. The following day the US ambassador to the UN announced the trusteeship proposal, which brought a political firestorm down on Truman, and on March 25, at a press conference he explained that trusteeship was only a means of eventually implementing the UN resolution for partition. The Arabs rejected it, as did the Zionists.
Yet Truman's political fortunes continued to plummet; the Democratic Party revolted against his presidential candidacy. As Zionist forces achieved partition (and more) in battle, pressure built for recognition of the Jewish state, expected to be proclaimed on the final day of British withdrawal, May 14. The State Department was opposed; Secretary Marshall feared Jewish military successes would be temporary, that the Zionists would partition Palestine with King Abdullah of Transjordan without reaching a settlement with the Palestinian Arabs (which did happen), and that recognition would prejudice efforts to arrange a truce under UN auspices after May 14. Zionist pressure was ferocious; the White House "aides" were very busy; Clifford essentially commissioned the request for recognition from the Jewish Agency representative in Washington, which was duly delivered to the White House, and at 6:11 PM on May 14 Truman announced de facto recognition of the State of Israel, flummoxing the US delegation at the UN, and US allies. Marshall stated that, during a May 17 discussion, Truman "treated it somewhat as a joke as I had done but I think we both thought privately it was a hell of a mess," and felt that the US "had hit its all-time low before the U.N."
US diplomacy in the ensuing Arab-Israeli war was conducted along similar lines. For all his accommodation of Zionism, Truman received only 75% of the Jewish vote, compared to Roosevelt's typical 90%. Truman lost New York, Dewey's home state, where there was also a large vote for Wallace. Truman did narrowly win Ohio, Illinois and California, helped by Jewish voters. After describing this tour de force of domestic power politics, Michael Cohen, whose work is mainly quoted here, argues that Israel's military prowess changed the views of the British and US diplomatic and military establishments. "[T]he White House and State Department, if only ephemerally, came to a consensus on Israel's vital importance to the West as a 'strategic asset."' The qualification "ephemerally" acknowledges the Eisenhower presidency, during which Israel was largely not regarded as a strategic asset.
Cohen attributes Truman's susceptibility to Zionist influence to a "unique set of circumstances that converged to determine the fate of Palestine," including Jewish friends, White House advisors, key Jewish Democratic Party fundraisers, and Zionist military prowess, which "should not be expected ever to repeat themselves." The circumstances were not at all unique, but have been practically a recipe for quasi-sovereign Jewish influence on foreign policy in Democratic administrations. By institutionalization throughout the political culture, this influence extends to Republican administrations as well; Eisenhower was an exception. Such influence is not sinister or conspiratorial, but the overt working of US-style capitalist democracy, albeit on behalf of racism, war and genocide, and with a paralyzing effect, in this case, on the liberal circles which usually oppose such matters.
The chauvinism of US organized Jewry is a distinctive feature of US society and history, comparable in importance to classic US singularities like slavery, and the absence of a socialist left, and their crippling legacies. Jewish influence in the Democratic Party, and its impact on foreign policy, notably on the inability of Democrats to mount a critique of the Iraq war and Middle East policy, is comparable to the influence of the Dixiecrats, the segregationist Southern Democrats, on civil rights, labor law and other issues. The moral antipode to organized Jewish power is not an orthodoxy which misattributes Jewish influence to "strategic interest," but anti-Zionism. Left internationalism, in which Jews were prominent, and classical Reform Judaism, once the dominant Jewish creed, emphatically rejected Zionism as a reactionary ideology, rejected modern Jewish nationality, and affirmed the Jewish place as a minority in liberal or revolutionary society. Anti-Zionism need not mean, immediately, a secular democratic state in Palestine, but the moral and intellectual framework which rejects Zionist claims on Jewish identity and gentile conscience, and asserts liberal and revolutionary values against radical nationalism.
Harry Clark grew up in the Illinois congressional district represented for twenty-two years by Paul Findley, a centrist Republican. Findley's support for the Palestinians aroused the ire of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, which eventually drove him from office. Studying Zionism is an avocation.
A pdf of this article with footnotes can be found on Clark's website.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~hfc/mideast/trumanisrael.PDF
© 2006 by Harry Clark
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AIPAC urges U.S. to shut Iranian Web site
By Yossi Melman
Last update - 02:49 28/08/2006
www.haaretz.com
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is urging the United States government to disconnect an Iranian news site from American Internet servers, charging that the site has ties to terrorist organizations. The allegation is based on a report published by Haaretz last month.
According to the Haaretz report, the site, Baztab, published details about a month ago of what it termed "an interrogation" of the two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah on July 12. Baztab's report claimed that the soldiers had admitted that Israel planned a military attack on Hezbollah in September or October, and the kidnapping had foiled this plan.
Based on this report and other information published on the site, AIPAC concluded that Baztab, which is supported by an American server, has ties with a terrorist organization. It therefore asked the U.S. Treasury Department to order the site shut down.
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Chirac warns: fighting could easily spark again in Lebanon
PARIS, Aug 28, 2006 (AFP)
French President Jacques Chirac warned on Monday that fighting could resume in Lebanon without a lasting settlement, as he urged Iran to build the "conditions for trust" in its stand-off with the West.
In a wide-ranging foreign policy speech, Chirac urged all parties in the conflict to help secure a long-term settlement in Lebanon, two weeks into a fragile ceasefire between Israel and the Shiite militia Hezbollah.
"The choice is between a resumption of hostilities, creating a permanent rift between two neighbouring peoples, and the political option of a global and lasting settlement," he told an annual meeting of French ambassadors in Paris.
Chirac urged Israel to end its air and sea blockade of Lebanon, saying the measure - intended to cut Hezbollah's supply lines - was "seriously harming" the economy. He also called for the holding of an international conference to address the aid situation following 34 days of bloodshed.
Under UN resolution 1701, which ended the fighting, a robust international force is to deploy in south Lebanon.
European Union states have so far pledged nearly 7,000 troops, nearly half the envisaged total of 15,000.
France - which co-sponsored the text - is to command the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) until February, when Italy will take over, and is sending 2,000 soldiers to form one of its biggest contingents.
Chirac said the UN text provided "the framework for a lasting settlement based on Israel's security and Lebanon's sovereignty over its whole territory."
It "outlines a process which must lead to the disarmament of militias and the settlement of border questions, including that of the Shebaa Farms," a disputed territory controlled by Israel, Chirac said.
Israel captured the small, mountainous territory between Lebanon, Syria and Israel in the June 1967 Middle East war, but it is now claimed by Beirut with the backing of Damascus.
Chirac appealed directly to Syria - Hezbollah's key backer along with Iran - to help secure a lasting peace in the region.
He urged Damascus to "move beyond its isolationist logic", saying the Middle East "needs Syria to be active in the service of peace and regional stability."
Concerning the stand-off over Iran's nuclear programme - which Washington suspects is a cover for weapons development - Chirac also said Iran had a duty "to ease the concerns of others and work towards regional stability, as befits a major, responsible country."
"I exhort Tehran once more to take the necessary steps in order to create the conditions for trust," he said. "There is always room for dialogue."
"Iran will not find security by developing clandestine programmes, but by becoming fully part of the international community."
Iran is under pressure from the international community to suspend its programme of uranium enrichment, and the UN Security Council has given it until August 31 to comply or face the threat of sanctions.
Tehran on Sunday underscored its determination to produce nuclear fuel but said it still sought talks on Western concerns about its nuclear programme.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is due to travel from Lebanon to both Tehran and Damascus later this week, as part of a Middle East tour that will also take him to Israel and the Palestinian territories.
On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Chirac called for a rapid meeting of the Middle East quartet - EU, UN, United States and Russia - to relaunch the stalled peace process as a key to regional stability.
"To accept the status-quo is to risk an escalation of violence that would escape all control," Chirac told the ambassadors' conference, saying the "commitment of the international community" was "key" to the peace process.
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Spanish DM orders marines for Lebanon mission
www.chinaview.cn 2006-08-29 20:08:49
MADRID, Aug 29 (Xinhua) -- Spanish Defense Minister Jose Antonio Alonso on Tuesday ordered a Marine unit to prepare for a possible peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, the ministry said.
The number of personnel involved in the deployment is not yet clear, but Spain's Socialist government is reportedly considering sending 700-1,000 troops to the Middle East state.
The government is expected to approve the deployment at Friday's Cabinet meeting, however the mission also needs approval from parliament.
Until now at least 32 countries have promised troops or support for an international force in southern Lebanon to monitor a UN-brokered ceasefire.
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Turkey plans Lebanon force
Monday 28 August 2006, 21:24 Makka Time, 18:24 GMT
Turkey's cabinet has decided to send peacekeeping troops to Lebanon and will seek parliament's approval for the deployment.
Cemil Cicek, a government spokesman, said on Monday that parliament will convene to debate the deployment this week or next.
Cicek said: "In principle, we've decided to join the UN peacekeeping mission.
"The issue was debated in detail, considering our country's national interests. We will call on the parliament to meet in the shortest time."
Domestic opposition
The cabinet's decision comes amid mounting opposition in Turkey to a deployment.
Ahmet Necdet Sezer, Turkey's president, who holds a ceremonial post but wields considerable influence in the country, has come out strongly against the deployment.
On Friday Sezer said it was not Turkey's "responsibility to protect the interests of other countries".
Several legislators within the ruling Justice and Development Party have also spoken out against a possible deployment.
But the United States, the European Union and Israel have been pressing Turkey, the only Muslim member of Nato and a country with close ties to Israel and Arab countries, to send peacekeepers.
Turkey ruled Lebanon for about 400 years during the Ottoman Empire and many Turkish officials are keen for their country to have a say in an area that they regard as Turkey's back yard.
Italian troops
Italy has also given the final go-ahead to deploying 2,500 troops in southern Lebanon.
"If, as we expect, the contingent manages to leave tomorrow morning, it will be operational on September 1," Arturo Parisis, Italy's defence minister, said.
Bulgaria said it would probably send "around a hundred" soldiers to Lebanon, said Ivaylo Kalfin, the foreign minister, on Monday.
Romania said on Monday that it would not contribute any troops towards the force.
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Annan tours Lebanon destruction
Tuesday 29 August 2006, 12:29 Makka Time, 9:29 GMT
Kofi Annan is in southern Lebanon to view the devastation in a region where up to 13,000 extra UN peacekeepers are mandated to bolster a two-week-old truce between Israel and Hezbollah.
The UN secretary-general arrived on Tuesday in the southern town of Naqoura, where a 2,000 strong UN Interim Force (UNIFIL) contingent is based, and laid a wreath at a memorial in honour of UN soldiers killed during the 34-day conflict.
The UN secretary-general has urged both sides to respect the ceasefire, which he believes can only be upheld by full implementation of resolution 1701.
Middle East tour
Annan is due to leave for Israel on Tuesday before heading to Syria and Iran, which are believed to be the main backers of the Lebanese Shia Muslim resistance movement Hezbollah.
Annan has said he will ask Israel to immediately lift its sea and air blockade of Lebanon imposed nearly seven weeks ago.
He has also said that he will ask Syria to police its border with Lebanon to prevent arms supplies to Hezbollah, something that Israel has said is justification for Israeli air strikes that were carried out inside Lebanon days after the ceasefire began two weeks ago.
On Monday, Annan met Fuad Siniora, the Lebanese prime minister, and the ministers of defence and interior, along with Major-General Alain Pellegrini, the UNIFIL commander, to discuss steps the government has taken to tighten border security and what equipment and technical help it might need.
Keeping the peace
At his news conference in Beirut, Annan urged Hezbollah to release the two Israeli soldiers whose capture in a cross-border raid on July 12 sparked the conflict.
Hezbollah wants to swap the two soldiers for Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails through indirect negotiations.
Israel is also trying to secure the release of a third soldier captured by Palestinian fighters in the Gaza Strip.
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Israel should lift 'humiliating' Lebanon blockade: UN chief
AFP
August 29, 2006
NAQURA, Lebanon - UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said it was time for Israel to lift a "humiliating" blockade on Lebanon and for the Lebanese to better secure their borders.
"We need to deal with the lifting of the embargo -- sea, land and air -- which for the Lebanese is a humiliation, and infringement on their sovereignty," Annan said before ending his visit and flying to Israel Tuesday.
"And of course the (Lebanese) government needs measures to assure, ensure that the entrances (to) the country -- sea, land and air -- are secure," he said during a ceremony at the UN headquarters in the southern town of Naqura.
"I think the time has come for the siege to be lifted, the Lebanese have shown they are serious about the implementation of (UN Security Council Resolution) 1701 in all the deployments and efforts they have made."
Annan hailed the Lebanese government for having already "taken very serious steps" in deploying thousands of soldiers along the country's borders with Israel and
Syria.
"They are also in serious consultation with the German government, to give them expertise and equipment in order to protect their land border, the airports and the sea," he said.
Israel has maintained its blockade on Lebanon despite a ceasefire that took effect on August 14, ending a month-long offensive against the country.
Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert conditioned the lifting of the blockade on the deployment of international troops at the Beirut airport and on the border with Syria.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad warned that such a deployment would be viewed as a hostile act and threatened to close the border with Lebanon if it happened.
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Israeli PM under fire for 'fig-leaf' Lebanon war probe
by Marius Schattner
AFP
August 29, 2006
JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert came under heavy criticism for announcing the creation of a committee of inquiry to examine the failures of the Lebanon war rather than a powerful independent commission.
Acknowledging a wave of discontent for a war that failed to achieve its main objectives and which left 162 Israelis dead, the increasingly unpopular Olmert said Monday the committee of inquiry would be chaired by a former Mossad head.
"The committee will be charged with the task of examining the functioning of the government, its proceedings and decision making and anything else it sees fit to examine," he said in a televised speech Tuesday.
But he rejected the establishment of a state commission -- the most powerful type of inquiry in Israel -- which he said would "competely paralyse" the leadership when warfare was not yet fully over and
Iran posed a threat.
Politicians on both the left and right-wing united in a maelstrom of criticism that Olmert, whose approval ratings have sunk to an all-time low since taking office in May, had backed a toothless inquiry.
The nation's leadership, already reeling from scandal, has come under heavy fire over Israel's month-long war against Hezbollah, which failed to stop rocket attacks or free two soldiers captured by the Shiite guerrillas in July 12 cross-border raids that sparked the offensive.
Ami Ayalon, an MP with Olmert's main coalition partner, the centre-left Labour, branded the prime minister's decision a political mistake.
"I don't think this is what we need. They have no power to investigate people, no power to look at documents. It's a political mistake," he told Israeli radio.
"There is not the slightest chance of getting to the truth because it lacks power," added Danny Naveh, former cabinet minister and member of the opposition right-wing Likud party.
A group of army reservists, blasting military "indecisiveness", unclear war aims, confused orders, food, fuel and water shortages, and the slowness in launching a major ground assault, have spearheaded calls for a full investigative commission, along with several cabinet members.
But Olmert aides Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit and Interior Minister Ronni Bar-On defended the prime minister.
"If there were a state commission of inquiry, Ehud Olmert would actually come out clean," said Sheetrit, appointed temporary justice minister to replace Haim Ramon who was forced to resign amid allegations of sexual assault.
"His decision to go for an investigative committee and not a state commission stems from his concern that it would paralyse the establishment for several years, instead of dealing with the issues," he told army radio.
MPs in the parliamentary foreign affairs and defence committee complained that their chairman, Tzahi Hanegbi, a senior member of Olmert's Kadima party, prevented them from holding a vote in favour of a state commission.
Olmert's decision was greeted with scorn by several dozen reservists and protestors who have camped out in front of his Jerusalem office to demand a state inquiry, but have yet to galvanise the momentum that toppled the government after the 1973 Yom Kippur war.
"The public is not stupid and it will totally reject this conspiratorial attempt to create a smokescreen and not investigate the truth. This committee is only a fig leaf," wrote its chairman Eliad Shraga in the Maariv daily.
The country's best selling newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, condemned what it branded "the mother of all whitewashes" while the liberal Haaretz daily dismissed the committee as a "national farce".
Nonetheless the generally pro-governmental Maariv said it believed Olmert had made the right decision in not opting for the paralysing type of commission ordered after the 1973 war and the 1982 invasion of Lebanon.
"The committee whose establishment Olmert declared last night is the lesser evil. Its shortcomings are many, but they are dwarfed compared to the potential damage of the alternative -- a state commission of inquiry," it said.
"If the conclusion from the serious mistakes made during the war is that the prime minister and the defence minister must be ousted, the right address is the Knesset, or the polling booths, or the party institutions."
Israel's state comptroller has also launched an investigation into the Lebanon war. The defense ministry will also carry out an internal probe.
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Olmert ducks independent war inquiry
Monday 28 August 2006, 20:46 Makka Time, 17:46 GMT
The Israeli prime minister has announced an inquiry into the Lebanon war but not an independent investigation.
Ehud Olmert's choice avoids the risk of high-level resignations that might have arisen after an independent inquiry.
"The government, headed by myself, will appoint an investigative committee," Olmert said.
"The committee will be charged with examining the government's functioning in taking decisions and all that it sees as fit."
Olmert has been facing calls for a thorough, independent inquiry over the army's preparedness for the war it mounted against Lebanon, the government's conduct of the 34 days of fighting and, ultimately, the failure to defeat Hezbollah.
But he said that he did not wish to expose the army, heavily criticised for its performance, to an external inquiry. Instead, the military would carry out its own investigation, he said.
Olmert said that the decision to go to war had been his alone, and admitted to shortcomings in how the war had been pursued. Initially, Israeli officials had talked about the conflict lasting only days, not more than a month.
"I want to make one thing clear, the responsibility for the decision to go to war ... is entirely mine," he said.
"I know there are controversies about the degree of success that perhaps was due to early expectations."
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...Muslim Nightmare
Israeli army attacks in Nablus, Gaza
Tuesday 29 August 2006, 12:49 Makka Time, 9:49 GMT
Israeli forces have launched air and land attacks on Balata refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, killing two Palestinian fighters.
Five other Palestinians were injured in an Israeli air strike on Gaza City on Tuesday.
Israeli helicopters fired four missiles at the roof of a building in the refugee camp in Nablus where two fighters were positioned, Aljazeera's correspondent reported.
At the same time, ground forces shot at them.
Hani Hashash, 20, and Ibrahim Siba, 25, leading members of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in Nablus, were killed and two Israeli soldiers were slightly injured, he added.
The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades is an armed wing of the Fatah faction headed by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president.
Clashes also erupted in al-Quraan and al-Hashasheen neighbourhoods in the camp in the West Bank city.
The two men were on Israel's "most wanted" list, Aljazeera's correspondent said.
An Israeli military spokeswoman had no immediate comment.
Israel radio described the force raiding Balata as paramilitary police.
Gaza attack
In the al-Shijaiya area of eastern Gaza, an Israeli reconnaissance plane fired a missile at a group of Palestinian fighters, injuring five.
Two of the injured were in a critical condition, Aljazeera's correspondent in Gaza City said.
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IDF troops in Jenin kill 64-year-old man holding a flashlight
Haaretz
28/08/2006
Israel Defense Forces troops killed a 64-year-old man in Jenin on Sunday, it was released for publication Monday. Palestinian sources said Monday that Sabri Khalil worked as a night watchman at a local school. After he shined his flashlight on a passing car, soldiers patrolling the city shot him in the chest, killing him.
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IDF strikes in Gaza kill 5 Palestinians
Haaretz
28/08/2006
Four Palestinian militants were killed early Monday in an Israel Air Force strike on central Gaza, Palestinian doctors said.
Later on Monday, Israel Defense Forces troops shot dead a civilian in the southern Gaza Strip, medics reported.
The four militants, two members of a Hamas-led security force and two presidential guards, were standing on a street in the Shajaiyeh neighborhood of Gaza City when a missile hit them, witnesses said. The four were severely burned and killed, Palestinian doctors said.
Comment: Notice how Hamas security guards and Palestinian security guards are classified as "militants". The simple fact is that these were all, first and foremost, civilians! People living under a brutal Israeli oppression of their lands and families. If these men were "militants" then so is every other Palestinian and Arab in the Middle East, and so are we!
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British director Ken Loach backs Palestinian call for boycott
Haaretz
28/08/2006
"Palestinians are driven to call for this boycott after 40 years of the occupation of their land, destruction of their homes and the kidnapping and murder of their civilians," said Loach in a statement. "It is impossible to ignore the appeals of Palestinian comrades," he concluded, adding, "I would decline any invitation to the Haifa Film Festival or other such occasions."
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Four Palestinians, 6 Year Old Palestinian boy killed in Sunday strikes
Haaretz
29/08/2006
Palestinian child killed by IDF sniper bullet to the head
IAF air strikes in the Gaza Strip on Sunday killed three Palestinians and wounded two television cameramen, while a fourth Palestinian was killed and a 6-year-old boy critically wounded by Israeli sniper fire, Palestinian officials and residents said.
Also Sunday, IDF jeeps surrounded the house of Hamas parliament member Mahmoud Musleh in Ramallah, and soldiers entered and arrested him, Musleh's daughter and Palestinian security officials said. The army confirmed the arrest.
The first Gaza air strike, in the early hours, hit an armored car belonging to the Reuters news agency, moderately wounding five people, including the two cameramen, Palestinian witnesses and hospital officials said.
The IDF said that in the darkness, no press markings were seen on the vehicle. The army said the car was moving in a suspicious manner near troops inside a combat zone.
A Hamas militant was killed in another air raid, hospital officials said.
On Sunday afternoon, a 20-year-old Palestinian man was shot in the head by a sniper in the Shajaiyeh neighborhood of Gaza City, hospital officials said.
A 6-year-old boy was shot in the chest and critically wounded in the same area later Sunday outside his home, Palestinian medical officials said. The army was investigating the report.
The violence came as Israeli soldiers - backed by two dozen tanks, two bulldozers, helicopters and unmanned aerial drones - combed an area just inside the Gaza Strip in what the army said was a search for terror infrastructure, particularly tunnels.
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Israeli Army invades Jenin, fires at resident's houses
IMEMC
28/08/2006
An Israeli army force invaded the West Bank city of Jenin on Monday morning and opened fired at residents' houses. Soldiers took no prisoners but residents said that these invasions are taking place on daily basis and that most of the time, these attacks end by several reisdents taken prisoners or injured.
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Resident, child, killed in Beit Hanoun and Rafah
IMEMC & Agencies
Monday, 28 August 2006
Palestinian medical sources in Beit Hanoun, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, reported that one child died after an explosive left by the army detonated near him. Also, one resident died by Israeli military fire in Rafah, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip.
Dr. Moawiya Hassanen, head of the Emergency Unit at the Palestinian Ministry of Health, reported that Mohammad Khaled Al Za'aneen, 15, died after an explosive left by the army during a recent invasion went off near him. His brother Bilal, 13, was seriously injured.
In a separate incident, one youth from Rafah, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, was shot and killed by Israeli military fire Monday at noon.
A medical source at Abu Yousef Al Najjar Hospital told the Palestinian News Agency, WAFA, that resident Salama Thabit Abu Adwan, 21, was injured by a round of live ammunition that penetrated his back and was centered in his chest causing instant death.
Local sources reported that Adwan was injured after soldiers stationed around the Gaza International Airport, east of Rafah, opened fire at dozens of houses in Al Shouka area, damage to the houses was reported.
Moreover, one woman identified as Alia Abu Al Qomboz, was injured in Al Shujaeyya neighborhood, east of Gaza City after the army fired tank shells at the area, medical sources in Gaza reported.
Earlier on Monday, Four Palestinian security personnel were killed and several wounded in an Israeli air strike which targeted Al- Shujaeyya neighborhood of Gaza city on Monday morning.
The four were killed when an Israeli jet fighter fired a missile at a gathering for the special security force formed by the Ministry of Interior. The bodies of the casualties were severely mutilated.
The four were identified as, Mahmoud Jindiya 20, Mohammad Hasaneen 22, Khaled 'Ajala 22, and Mohammad Hilis 20 and all were members of the security forces as they were wearing the uniform of the force.
Comment: Notice the comment that:
"earlier on Monday, four Palestinian security personnel were killed and several wounded in an Israeli air strike which targeted Al- Shujaeyya neighborhood of Gaza city on Monday morning.
The four were killed when an Israeli jet fighter fired a missile at a gathering for the special security force formed by the Ministry of Interior. The bodies of the casualties were severely mutilated."
To Israel, and therefore to the world via the mainstream media, these men were "militants" aka "terrorists" and deserved to die.
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National Security State
Is this Bush's secret bunker?
Monday August 28, 2006
The Guardian
Mount Weather is a top-security underground installation an hour's drive from Washington DC. It has its own leaders, police, fire department - and laws. A cold war relic, it has been given a new lease of life since 9/11. And no one who's been inside has ever talked. Tom Vanderbilt reports
'Actually, you may want to just put those down a minute," Tim Brown is telling me, as I peer through binoculars at a cluster of buildings and antennae on a distant ridge. "The locals might get a bit nervous." A Ford F-150 cruises by, and the two men inside regard us casually as they pass.
We are sitting, hazards blinking, in Brown's BMW on a rural road in Virginia's Facquier County, a horsey enclave an hour west of Washington DC. The object of our attention is Mount Weather, officially the Emergency Operations Centre of the Federal Emergency Management Authority (Fema); and, less officially, a massive underground complex originally built to house governmental officials in the event of a full-scale nuclear exchange. Today, as the Bush administration wages its war on terror, Mount Weather is believed to house a "shadow government" made up of senior Washington officials on temporary assignment.
Following the collapse of the USSR, Mount Weather seemed like an expensive cold-war relic. Then came September 11. News reports noted that "top leaders of Congress were taken to the safety of a secure government facility 75 miles west of Washington"; another reported "a traffic jam of limos carrying Washington and government license plates." As the phrase "undisclosed location" entered the vernacular, Mount Weather, and a handful of similar installations, flickered back to life. Just two months ago, a disaster-simulation exercise called Forward Challenge '06 sent thousands of federal workers to Mount Weather and other sites.
Mount Weather is not hard to find. From the White House, we take Route 66 west until it meets Highway 50. Fifty miles later, we turn off on Route 601, a small two-lane rural feeder that snakes up a ridge. That road seems to be going nowhere until suddenly, at the crest, we come into a clearing, bounded by two lines of tall, shiny, razor-wired fencing, marked with faded signs that say: "US Property. No Trespassing." Behind sits a grouping of white aluminium sheds and a few cars.
We have arrived at the edge of the known republic. What lies beyond is obscured by Appalachian scrub and the inky black of government classification. No one has ever been allowed to tour the underground complex at Mount Weather and tell of what they saw. Occupying 500 acres of Blue Ridge real estate, it functions like a rump principality, with its own leaders, its own police and fire departments, and its own set of laws.
Mount Weather is more easily viewed from outer space than down the block. Earlier in the afternoon, I had been looking at grainy 1m-resolution aerial images of Mount Weather assembled by Brown, a national security researcher and aerial imagery expert. He pointed to small notches on the side of a hill (tunnel entrances), helipads, and a series of "military-style above-ground soft support housing". The mountain straddles the two entrances, he noted. "It's something like 200ft of shelter on top of you at the highest point."
Just driving round the perimeter of Mount Weather, you can see the traces of recent work. "See how they've obscured this," he says, pointing to the black sheeting threaded through a length of fence. "You used to be able to see the helipad through that fence." He gestures towards the new entrance. "Look at the truck barriers. When you turned, there'd be no time to build up speed. They got smart."
The changes to its exterior landscape - not to mention the gossip among local residents - are just one sign that that something very important has been going on at Mount Weather, a level of activity not seen here since the days when Eisenhower and his advisers trooped out here during drills. For some, this is a sign of prudent planning in a world where the security calculus has been for ever altered; for others, it is the symbol of an administration with a predilection towards exercising power in secret. As we pull away from Mount Weather, Brown says, "I wouldn't want to be driving a rental truck and have it break down in front of the gate."
Mount Weather first caught the American imagination on December 1 1974, when a Dulles-bound TransWorld Airlines 727, struggling through heavy rains and 50mph winds, crashed into the top of the mountain, less than a mile and a half from the site. The crash briefly severed the underground line linking to the Emergency Broadcast System, and teletype machines in news offices across the country began spitting out garbled transmissions.
The story might have died there. With Vietnam and Watergate in the air, however, the words "secret government facility" did not exactly induce a frisson of patriotic glee. The Progressive, in 1976, published an article, entitled The Mysterious Mountain, which said Mount Weather, a place little known even to Congress, was home not only to a replica mini-government, but to files on at least 100,000 Americans. In 1991, Time published the fullest exposé, describing (based on conversations with retired engineers) a sprawling underground complex bristling with mainframe computers, air circulation pumps, and a television/radio studio for post-nuclear presidential broadcasts.
What information has emerged about Mount Weather has always been rather sketchy. At some point in the 1950s, however, it seems that a drilling experiment into the mountain's rugged foundations of Precambrian basalt was turned into an exercise in underground city building, with the army corps hollowing out of the "hard and tight" rock a complex of tunnels and rooms with roofs reinforced by iron bolts.
The base formed part of a "federal relocation arc", an archipelago of hardened underground facilities, each linked by a dedicated communications system and equipped with amenities ranging from showers to wash off nuclear fallout to filtration systems capable of sucking air clean down to the micron level. The sites, staffed by "molies", were spartan steel-and-concrete expanses, subterranean seats of power: the president could repair to Mount Weather; Congress had its secret bunker under the Greenbrier Hotel in Virginia; the Federal Reserve had a bunker in Culpepper, Virginia; the Pentagon was given a rocky redoubt called Site R in the mountains of southwestern Pennsylvania; while the nation's air defences were run out of Norad's (North American Aerospace Defence Command) Cheyenne Mountain facility. "The nuclear age has dictated that these men carry out their responsibilities inside a solid granite mountain," wrote the defence command.
Mount Weather's secrecy was never absolute. In the 1957 novel Seven Days in May, the authors referred to a shadowy facility called Mount Thunder, all but revealing its location. Driving around those Blue Ridge byways today, a curious mixture of secrecy and openness still prevails. On Route 601, an Adopt-a-Highway sign is sponsored by employees of the Mount Weather Emergency Operations Centre. But pull off toward the entrance of that facility, and things get a bit strange. Looking for the home of a local resident, I hail an exiting Mount Weather employee. As we begin to chat, cars side by side, I suddenly hear a strange, siren-like sound and notice that a black SUV has loomed into my rear-view. The occupant, wearing sunglasses, hastily points me in the right direction.
This contradictory world of sunshine and shadow is at one with the parallel nature of the facility itself. On the one hand, it is, as Fema describes it, "a hub of emergency response activity providing Fema and other government agencies space for offices, training, conferencing, operations and storage". Less discussed is Mount Weather's obliquely assumed status as one of the key "undisclosed locations" of the Bush administration. "Look, there are two Mount Weathers - there's the Fema one and the Mount Weather one," says John Weisman, a writer of military and spy thrillers and a neighbour of the facility. "I wouldn't be at all surprised if [the vice-president, Dick] Cheney had been here before, and if [the secretary of defence, Donald] Rumsfeld had been here before, because they were part of some hugely sensitive stuff that was going on in the 1980s."
Weisman is referring to a series of classified programmes, described by the journalist James Mann in The Rise of the Vulcans, in which Cheney and Rumsfeld were said to be "leading figures". According to Mann, the resurgence of tensions with the Soviet Union during the Reagan administration lent new urgency to "continuity of government" programmes. With a secret executive order, and an "action officer" in the form of Oliver North, top officials pondered such constitutional quandaries as whether it would be necessary to reconstitute Congress following a nuclear attack (the answer was no).
On September 11 2001, Mann writes, the long-dormant plan was activated, and any number of top officials - possibly including Cheney himself - were shuttled to Mount Weather.
Residents on the mountain did not need to read the newspapers to discern that something was going on there. Joe Davitt, a retired civil servant who lives in a small A-frame house a mile or so away, told me that on September 11 2001 his wife was returning home from Florida. At the bottom of the hill, he says, she was stopped by state troopers, who asked for identification. At the facility itself, he says, "The Mount Weather guards were not only armed, they had their guns in firing position." John Staelin, a member of the Clarke County Board of Supervisors, says that on September 11, the county's 911 line received a call from an agitated local woman. "She said, 'I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, but the whole mountain opened up and Air Force One flew in and it closed right up. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.' So they said, 'Yes, ma'am.' "
Whatever else, Mount Weather makes for an interesting neighbour. "My God," says Davitt, as we sit on his back porch, "they put a plough up there at the first forecast of snow. They've always been good at keeping the road ploughed."
"We call our house ground zero," says Weisman. "This mountain has its interesting moments, between the helicopter flights and the people coming and going." Where for years "Mount Weather was nothing but a sleepy little byway", Weisman complains that the post-9/11 security adjustments have only served to draw attention to the facility. "It now says, 'Boy, am I important!' "
The local people are, by and large, perfectly happy to talk about Mount Weather. Sometimes, however, a veil of secrecy descends. When I asked about Mount Weather at the Daily Grind coffee shop in nearby Berryville, a woman smiled nervously and told me one woman she knew saw "missiles" being taken there. I was forwarded an email from a mountain resident (with the .mil domain that suggests a military background) that contained complaints about late-night helicopter flights, as well as recent episodes of nocturnal machine-gun fire and even a "massive explosion" that had shaken the house. My email seeking further comment received an immediate, terse response demanding that the sender not be associated with the story.
Inquiries to Fema yield little more light. "There's been a general upgrade of security at all federal installations around the country, and Mount Weather is one of them," says spokesman Don Jacks. "I answered your question in a very general way. We're not going to talk about Mount Weather, period. It's not that I can't, we just don't."
A request to talk to Reynolds Hoover, the director of Fema's Office of National Security Coordination, dies on the vine. And forget about James Looney, Fema chief at Mount Weather. "To talk to Mr Looney you would have to talk about Mount Weather," Jacks reminds me. "And we don't talk about Mount Weather."
One afternoon, I went to have lunch with Jim Wink at the Horseshoe Curve, a saloon tucked away near the hamlet of Pine Grove. It has been the unofficial canteen of Mount Weather for as long as anyone can remember. "I've seen Seabees [members of the US Navy Construction Battalions] come out of the tunnels at the end of the day and come down to the bar for a few beers," says Weisman. A Comanche pickup in the parking lot has a bumper sticker that says Terrorist Hunting Permit.
"I checked you out last night," Wink says by way of introduction. "So did Ray." He's talking about Ray Derby, a former Mount Weather employee whom I had visited the night before, who has suddenly appeared today. Wink, an Irish-blooded South Philadelphian with a tight smile and a steely, penetrating stare, does not seem like a man of whom you would like to run afoul. A retired counterterrorism expert with stints in the CIA, the Secret Service and any number of other agencies, he seems to have been in every place in the world at the most politically sensitive time. He was one of the last several hundred US personnel in Vietnam in April 1975, until he heard the song White Christmas - a coded message to get out of the country.
His office is filled with memorabilia culled from the more occluded arenas of US foreign policy; there is a plaque signed by the team tracking the Shining Path leader, Abimael Guzman, in Peru; a collection of Wink's identity cards from various intelligences agencies around the world (he's wearing sunglasses in most of them); and, among other souvenirs, a photograph of the slain drug lord Pablo Escobar. "There's your richest man in the world," he says, handing me a snapshot of a bloated, blank-eyed corpse. "He did not die a good death."
There's a Vets for North sticker on one wall, and, on another, one that says: "Even My Dog is Conservative."
Wink came to Mount Weather in the 1980s. "I needed a training facility and they offered a great deal up here."
When he came with the Secret Service one day to the Curve for a beer, he met his future wife, Tracee, whose grandfather had owned the bar. "Cheney and Rumsfeld, they've been here," he says, gesturing to the bar. "And Ollie. We all worked here together years ago. She can even tell you what they drank." His eyes shift toward his wife, behind the bar. "When I used to run exercises we'd bring 1,000 people," he says. "Most of the things we did, they didn't let 'em off the post." He talks vaguely of one training exercise. "We had to do the psychology of being locked up," he says. "We started with submarines."
There have been curious visitors to Mount Weather from the start, he says, including the Russians. "The State Department, in their infinite lack of wisdom, allowed the Russians to have a R&R center on the river here, right below Mount Weather." The Curve, which sits off an entrance to the Appalachian Trail, attracts wayward visitors. "One hiker came in and said he was hiking all the facilities. Said you could get closer that way. He was trying to find out a little too much."
Local people, Wink says, like to help Mount Weather maintain its low profile. "They won't talk about it," he says. "As a matter of fact," he says, fixing his eyes on me, "you might meet a local cop if you ask too many questions about it. Many of the men around here served in the second world war," he continues. "Consequently they don't discuss those things."
I had encountered a similar line of thinking the night before from Derby, a long-time federal emergency coordinator and civil defence officer who is now retired and living in nearby Winchester. "All the employees of Mount Weather have always been told, rightly so, that no matter what someone asks you, just don't say if it's true or not true. Just ignore the question. You'll get that if you ask," says Derby, a chain-smoker with neatly Brylcreemed hair who drinks what he calls "martoonis" out of a tumbler. His office, in the upstairs of his split-level suburban home, is filled with various presidential commendations, as well as a photograph of what looks like a emergency conference room.
"I designed that," he says, peering through a dense curl of cigarette smoke, "but I can't tell you where it is".
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Cheney Chooses Chief Propagator of False Iraq-9/11 Link To Be Official Biographer
Think progress
28/08/2006
Vice President Cheney — “the man running the country” — is now working on an official biography.
But don’t hold out any hope that the biography will offer any revealing insight into “Dick Cheney’s dark, secretive mind-set.” The author of the book, according to U.S. News, will be Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes:
We hear that the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes is hot on the case and plans to publish a bio titled, naturally enough, Cheney as early as next spring. “I’m not a historian,” Hayes fesses up.
No, Hayes is not a historian. What are his qualifications? He’s a journalist who has cultivated close ties within the White House and has become the go-to source for insiders seeking to peddle false claims on Iraq. Here are some highlights of Hayes’ record:
1. This January, Cheney was asked by then-Fox News radio host Tony Snow, “Were there links to — between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda?” Cheney answered, “Well, I think Steve Hayes has done an effective job in his article of laying out a lot of those connections.” Hayes wrote an article entitled “Dick Cheney Was Right” about the Vice President’s effort to connect Saddam to 9/11. But even President Bush said most recently that Iraq had “nothing” to do with 9/11.
2. In 2003, Hayes declared “case closed” in an article purporting to show the links between bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Cheney recommeneded it to the Rocky Mountain news as the premier source of information on the issue. (”[Y]ou ought to go look is an article that Stephen Hayes did in the Weekly Standard here a few weeks ago…That’s your best source of information.”) Hayes relied on a classified Defense Department memo produced by Douglas Feith. The Defense Department shot down Hayes’ article, stating the Feith memo was “not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, and it drew no conclusions.”
Each and every one of Hayes’ attempts to link Iraq to 9/11 have been thoroughly discredited, but he continues to push the argument. It’s quite fitting that Cheney chose him to be his official biographer.
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They know all about you
Monday August 28, 2006
The Guardian
Every time you use an internet search engine, your inquiry is stored in a huge database. Would you like such personal information to become public knowledge? Yet for thousands of AOL customers, that nightmare has just become a reality. Andrew Brown reports on an incident that has exposed how much we divulge to Google & co
In March this year, a man with a passion for Portuguese football, living in a city in Florida, was drinking heavily because his wife was having an affair. He typed his troubles into the search window of his computer. "My wife doesnt love animore," he told the machine. He searched for "Stop your divorce" and "I want revenge to my wife" before turning to self-examination with "alchool withdrawl", "alchool withdrawl sintoms" (at 10 in the morning) and "disfunctional erection". On April 1 he was looking for a local medium who could "predict my futur".
But what could a psychic guess about him compared with what the world now knows? This story is one of hundreds, perhaps tens of thousands, revealed this month when AOL published the details of 23m searches made by 650,000 of its customers during a three-month period earlier in the year. The searches were actually carried out by Google - from which AOL buys in its search functions.
The gigantic database detailing these customers' search inquiries was available on an AOL research site for just a few hours before the company realised that substituting numbers for users' names did not really protect their identities enough. The company apologised for its mistake - and removed the database from the internet. The researcher who published the material has been sacked, as has his manager, and last week AOL's chief technology officer, Maureen Govern, resigned. But those few hours online were enough for the raw data files to be copied all over the internet, and there are now four or five sites where anyone can search through them using specialised software.
What was published by AOL represents only a tiny fraction of the accumulated knowledge warehoused within Google's records - but it has given all of us, as users, a dramatic and unsettling glimpse of how much, and in what intimate detail, the big search engines know about us.
The number of searches Google carries out is a secret, but comScore, an independent firm, reckons that the search engine performed 2.7bn searches by American users alone in July this year. Yahoo, its main rival, conducted around 1.8bn American searches in the same month; Microsoft's MSN around 800m and AOL 366m.
All of this information is stored. Google identifies every computer that connects to it with an implant (known as a cookie) which will not expire until 2038. If you also use Gmail, Google knows your email address - and, of course, keeps all your email searchable. If you sign up to have Google ads on a website, then the company knows your bank account details and home address, as well as all your searches. If you have a blog on the free blogger service, Google owns that. The company also knows, of course, the routes you have looked up on Google maps. Yahoo operates a similar range of services.
All this knowledge has been handed over quite freely by us as users. It is the foundation of Google's fortune because it allows the company to target very precisely the advertising it sends in our direction. Other companies have equally ambitious plans: an application lodged on August 10 with the US Patent & Trademark Office showed that Amazon is hoping to patent ways of interrogating a database that would record not just what its 59 million customers have bought - which it already knows - or what they would like to buy (which, with their wish lists, they tell the world) but their income, sexual orientation, religion and ethnicity. The company, of course, already knows who we are and where we live.
Even though the search logs that AOL released were made anonymous, by assigning a number to each user, it is not difficult in many cases to discover somebody's name from their search queries. And it is easy to follow exactly what users were thinking as they sat at their computers, in the apparent privacy of their own homes, since the time and date of every search is given.
On April 4, for instance, user 14162375, the melancholy Portuguese-American in Florida, seems to have passed out on the keyboard at 6.20pm, when he asked, suddenly, "llllfkkgjnnvjjfokrb" then "vvvvbmkmjk" and "vvglhkitopppfoppr". An hour later he had recovered enough to search for variations on his wife's name - he thought she might have moved to New England. On the evening of April 16, matters came to a head. "My cheating wife," he typed; and then, five times, "I want to kill myself," and then "I want to make my wife suffer," followed quickly by "Kill my wifes mistress," "My wifes ass," "A cheating wife". Two days after that he was back looking for audio surveillance and bugging equipment and four weeks later he seemed to have cheered up and was looking for motorcycle insurance.
The story stops abruptly there, at the end of May, because that is when the three months' worth of released AOL search records came to an end.
One of the first researchers to demonstrate that we will tell anything, however intimate, to a computer, was Joseph Weizenbaum of MIT, who in 1966 wrote a programme called "Eliza" that parodied non-directional psychotherapy. If the user typed anything in, Eliza would appear to ask a question based on that cue. In no time at all, unhappy students were telling the computer all their troubles as if there were a real and sympathetic person behind the screen. Stories and jokes about this circulated for decades, but the men most successful at turning this concept into a fortune were the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergei Brin. As users, we think that the Google search engine is a way of supplying us with information about what's on the web. But the flow of information is two way. We ask Google things that we would hesitate to ask anyone living. The price for the answers is that Google remembers it all.
Take user 11110859 of New York City, who fell in love and then was sorry. She was up early on March 7 to buy hip-hop clothes from G-Unit; by March 26, however, there was more excitement in her life. Searches on "losing your virginity" were followed by three weeks of frantic worry about whether she was pregnant: stuff she might have hesitated to tell her best friend or her mother is all quite clear from the Google searches. But by the end of April the pregnancy scare was over and had been replaced by a broken heart. Even before she had stopped asking "Can you still be pregnant even though your period came?" she was asking "Why do people hurt others" and this was the theme of almost all her questions throughout May, culminating on the afternoon of the 19th, when she asked "How to love someone who mistreated you?"; "What does Jesus say about loving your enemies?" "What does God mean when he says bless those who spitefully use you?" Then she spent a couple of days trying to buy Betty Boop postage stamps, and the next thing we know, she was asking first for directions to the New York prison on Rikers Island, then "What items are we allowed to bring at Rikers Island" and finally for "uncoated playing cards".
User 11110859 was not the only person interested in the prison but she seems to have been the youngest and, in some senses, the most innocent. User 3745417 laid out her thoughts in detail just as graphic: on March 6 she made eight searches on child molestation and similar phrases. A week later she was trying to find a prisoner in Rikers Island - nine searches in one evening - a subject she returned to at 9.30am on March 25, when she made another eight searches. Between March 27 and March 29 she made 34 successive searches for M&M chocolates in the early evening, followed on the 30th, at 10pm, by four searches for "Kid Party Games". By 10.15pm she was searching for "Whitney Houston"; then, in the course of the next hour, 29 searches on "black porn for women" and similar subjects.
By the end of April, she was looking for a legal aid lawyer in New York City, a swimsuit, a credit card and a holiday in the Bahamas.
These stories, with all the revealing information they contain, cannot always easily be tied to a specific individual, but sometimes they can. The social security number, with which all Americans are issued, conforms to a recognisable pattern which is easy to search for in the data that AOL released. So, too, are telephone numbers. On the internet, you can buy anything from anywhere, but there are some things, such as pet care, which people mainly buy locally, so it is easy to spot where they live. People often search for their own names, which can then be cross- referenced with the telephone book.
At least one person in the AOL group, a blameless grandmother in Alabama, was identified by the New York Times within days of the AOL data release. And though it may be hard to identify complete strangers, it is very much easier to recognise in the AOL data details of someone you may already know. A church lady in the midwest, whose quest for Christian quilted wall hangings was interspersed with inquiries about vibrators and arousing frigid wives, is probably easy for anyone in her congregation to identify.
This is knowledge beyond the dreams of any secret police in history. Earlier this year Google fought a lawsuit to keep a week's worth of random search data out of the hands of the US government, but other search companies have handed over their data without complaint and nobody has yet discovered what deals have been struck between search engines and the Chinese government. China is generally thought of as attempting to censor the internet, which it does; search engines that do business in China must censor their own results if they are to succeed. But the real power for a totalitarian government is no longer just censorship. It is to allow its citizens to search for anything they want - and then remember it.
No western government, so far as we know, has gone that far. But if one ever does, it will know where the information is kept that will tell it almost everything about almost everyone. This morning, as I logged in to Googletalk, to chat with my sister, the programme silently upgraded itself. "Would you like to show friends what music you're playing now?" it asked.
From spying on the wife to motorcycle insurance
This edited list of searches by Florida AOL user 14162375 shows what intimate details are held by internet databases
March
marriage counseling 2006-03-19 17:50:31
spy on the wife 2006-03-19 17:52:47
spy on the wife 2006-03-19 17:52:47
spy on the wife 2006-03-19 17:52:47
spy on the wife 2006-03-19 17:52:47
spy on the wife 2006-03-19 17:58:58
spy recorders 2006-03-19 18:02:34
signs of cheating 2006-03-19 18:05:52
videos 2006-03-20 17:56:16
postal service stamps 2006-03-21 09:27:46
tracking cell phone numbers 2006-03-21 11:00:13
divorce 2006-03-23 14:10:27
divorce lawyers 2006-03-24 00:38:47
cheating wives 2006-03-24 06:07:00
cheating wives 2006-03-24 06:07:00
divorce lawyers 2006-03-24 13:10:32
saving a marriege 2006-03-24 13:42:04
saving a marriege 2006-03-24 15:02:24
saving a marriege 2006-03-24 15:02:24
saving a marriege 2006-03-24 15:20:13
fitness gyms 2006-03-24 16:32:50
womes wellness 2006-03-24 16:35:33
hypertension 2006-03-24 17:07:33
e-cards 2006-03-26 23:40:56
saving a marriage 2006-03-26 23:50:11
saving a marriage 2006-03-26 23:50:11
saving a marriage 2006-03-26 23:50:11
sexual techiques 2006-03-27 10:39:27
greenting cards 2006-03-27 12:45:53
standar times 2006-03-27 23:09:25
news papers 2006-03-27 23:09:56
stop your divorce 2006-03-27 23:49:06
stop your divorce 2006-03-27 23:53:30
stop your divorce 2006-03-28 00:06:53
alchool withdrawl 2006-03-28 10:43:51
alchool withdrawl sintoms 2006-03-28 10:45:38
disfunctional erection 2006-03-28 10:46:46
cheating therapy 2006-03-30 16:49:56
women's urine blood 2006-03-30 18:21:16
spy from a distance 2006-03-31 21:11:29
spy from a distance 2006-03-31 21:11:29
spy from a distance 2006-03-31 21:15:55
spy from a distance 2006-03-31 21:15:56
listentrough walls 2006-03-31 21:16:22
listen through walls 2006-03-31 21:16:25
car sound recorder 2006-03-31 21:20:07
car conversation spy 2006-03-31 21:20:24
April
spy on wife 2006-03-31 21:21:29
phico card readers 2006-04-01 22:03:08
bruchas 2006-04-01 22:04:17
phyco card readers 2006-04-01 22:06:43
phyco card readers 2006-04-01 22:07:10
predict my futur 2006-04-01 22:20:24
psychic 2006-04-02 10:14:07
i want my wyfe back 2006-04-02 23:14:28
i want revenge to my wife 2006-04-02 23:27:54
i want revenge to my wife 2006-04-02 23:27:54
get revenge from a wife cheater 2006-04-02 23:41:22
munchies 2006-04-03 11:54:59
lisbon jobs 2006-04-03 11:58:20
divorce and kids 2006-04-03 12:19:46
llllfkkgjnnvjjfokrb 2006-04-03 18:20:11
vvvvbmkmjk 2006-04-03 18:20:36
vvglhkitopppfoppr 2006-04-03 18:22:04
www.whitepages 2006-04-06 06:14:07
my wife wants to leave me 2006-04-07 16:35:03
how do i get my wife love me again 2006-04-08 17:10:55
need help getting my wife back 2006-04-08 19:27:2
i need my wife to get back to me 2006-04-08 19:29:11
i need my wife to get back to me 2006-04-08 19:29:11
my wife doesnt love animore 2006-04-08 19:30:58
i still live whith my wife can i get her bach 2006-04-08 19:32:15
i want revenge towards my wife 2006-04-08 19:32:59
i want revenge towards my wife 2006-04-08 19:32:59
i want revenge towards my wife 2006-04-08 19:32:59
i want revenge towards my wife 2006-04-08 19:36:58
making my wife suffer as i do 2006-04-09 13:19:54
get my wife back 2006-04-09 14:03:28
avoid breaking up 2006-04-09 14:04:11
avoid breaking up 2006-04-09 14:04:11
stop breaking up 2006-04-09 15:10:47
get even with my wife 2006-04-09 15:15:16
husband revenge 2006-04-09 15:23:37
husband revenge 2006-04-09 15:23:37
husband revenge 2006-04-09 15:23:37
how to harm my wifes lover 2006-04-10 13:11:28
infidelity 2006-04-10 14:32:02
whow to talk on the phone with youor wife 2006-04-10 14:43:07
catch your wife aving an affair 2006-04-10 14:44:32
baby monitors 2006-04-15 17:15:31
baby monitors 2006-04-15 17:15:31
my cheating wife 2006-04-16 16:48:06
my cheating wife 2006-04-16 16:48:06
my cheating wife 2006-04-16 16:48:06
i want to kill myself 2006-04-16 19:55:51
kill my wifes mistress 2006-04-16 20:26:49
my wifes ass 2006-04-16 20:38:37
cheating wives 2006-04-18 16:45:12
recording home survellence 2006-04-18 16:54:43
recording home surveillance 2006-04-18 16:54:53
audio roome surveillance 2006-04-18 16:55:40
audio roome surveillance 2006-04-18 16:55:43
sore muscules 2006-04-23 17:32:00
sore muscles 2006-04-23 17:32:06
sore muscles 2006-04-23 17:32:06
sore muscles 2006-04-23 17:32:06
alcoolism 2006-04-24 08:10:53
men acting like winners 2006-04-25 16:02:09
make the infidelity suffer 2006-04-25 16:03:20
the portuguese mafia 2006-04-25 16:24:04
May
motorcycle inurance 2006-05-29 18:31:19
motorcycle insurance 2006-05-29 18:31:29
private eye 2006-05-30 21:12:07
video surveillance 2006-05-30 21:20:18
video surveillance 2006-05-30 21:21:05
video surveillance 2006-05-30 21:21:24
white pages 2006-05-31 05:55:41
- AOL user search history data, released by AOL, August 2006.
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U.S. missile defense ship arrives in Japan
By Isabel Reynolds
Reuters
Tue Aug 29, 2006
YOKOSUKA, Japan - The USS Shiloh, the first missile defense-capable ship to be deployed in Japan, arrived in the port of Yokosuka on Tuesday, eight weeks after North Korea unnerved the region with a barrage of missile tests.
White-clad sailors lined the decks of the 10,000-tonne cruiser as it pulled slowly into the U.S. naval base 45 km (30 miles) southwest of Tokyo, to be greeted with a Japanese-style taiko drum performance by U.S. seamen.
The deployment of the Shiloh, boasting Standard Missile-3 interceptors for shooting down medium-range ballistic missiles, is a symbolic first step in a joint U.S.-Japanese program to try to shield Japan and the region from missile attack.
"The United States remains committed to the defense of Japan and peace and stability in the western Pacific," visiting
U.S. Navy Secretary Donald Winter said in a speech at the dockside welcome ceremony.
The two allies stressed the significance of the ship's arrival as an example of the United States' strong security alliance with Japan, although the chances of preventing a missile attack on the country with a single vessel are slim.
North Korea condemned U.S. missile defense plans.
"The scheme of the U.S. war-thirsty quarters to deploy dense MD (missile defense) networks in the U.S. mainland, Japan and the Pacific reveals their wild ambition to rule the world by strength," Pyongyang's KCNA news agency reported the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper as saying in a commentary on Tuesday.
"No country in the world threatens the U.S. with missiles," it added.
In July, Pyongyang test-fired a series of ballistic missiles, an incident that drew attention to Japan's lack of defense systems eight years after Tokyo was spooked by a previous North Korean ballistic missile test in 1998.
Many analysts, however, have cast doubt on whether missile defense systems can reliably shoot down incoming missiles, and they criticize the program for drawing funds away from other areas of defense spending.
Missile defense accounts for 140 billion yen ($1.2 billion) of Japan's 4.81 trillion yen ($41 billion) defense budget this year.
The defense agency plans to seek a record 219 billion yen for missile defense in the fiscal year from next April 1, Kyodo news agency reported, although such requests are usually whittled down in the budget process.
As a second line of defense, the U.S. military will begin to install Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) interceptors at its Kadena Air Base on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa in September and plans to make them partly operational by the end of the year.
The ship-to-air SM-3 interceptors are designed to shoot down ballistic missiles in mid-flight, when they fly outside the earth's atmosphere, while ground-based PAC-3 interceptors target missiles in their terminal phase, shortly before they reach their targets.
Japan, whose pacifist constitution restricts the activities of its armed forces, relies on the United States for much of its defense capability, playing host to about 50,000 military personnel.
But Tokyo plans to install its own missile defense hardware, including fitting its four Aegis radar system-equipped warships with SM-3s.
"This is just a beginning," Japanese Foreign Ministry official Chikao Kawai said at the Yokosuka ceremony. "We need more capability. We need to speed up the deployment of additional equipment."
Kyodo said the United States had offered to provide Japan with up to 80 more Patriot missiles, as Japan seeks to speed up its own deployment of ground-based interceptor missiles.
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Search continues for Pa. lawmaker's son
By MARYCLAIRE DALE
Associated Press
August 29, 2006
PHILADELPHIA - The adult son of a Pennsylvania lawmaker remained unaccounted-for Tuesday after he was allegedly abducted at gunpoint over the weekend and his mother and sister were shot and wounded in their home hours later.
State Rep. John Myers, a Philadelphia Democrat who has advocated gun control, issued a statement asking the public's help in locating his 26-year-old son, Shamari Taylor.
A woman companion told police she and Taylor were abducted as they were out walking late Saturday. She said she was later released, according to police.
Taylor's 56-year-old mother and his sister, 21, were shot at the family's West Philadelphia home by two intruders on Sunday, authorities said. The mother, shot in the head, remained hospitalized in critical condition. The sister was treated for a shoulder wound and released. Their names were not made public.
Other than issuing the brief statement, Myers has not commented about the incident.
"He's not ready to talk about it," said Philadelphia Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller, a close friend. "He's trying to get information. He has a lot of questions."
Police consider the crimes connected, based on descriptions of the assailants provided by the woman companion and the sister.
The companion said a group of seven to 10 men shoved them into a van at about 11 p.m., according to Police Lt. John Walker. She told police they were duct-taped and taken to an unknown location, possibly a warehouse.
The woman said she was released at about 5 a.m. Sunday, but did not contact police until about 5 p.m., Walker said.
Two hours later, two intruders - who might have had a key - entered the Taylor residence, Walker said. They shot the women and then rummaged through Taylor's bedroom, leaving with an undetermined amount of cash.
Myers last spoke with his son a few weeks ago, spokeswoman Thera Martin said. Nothing seemed amiss, she said.
Taylor is Myers' son from a previous relationship with Taylor's mother. Myers is not related to her 21-year-old daughter. He has been married to his wife, Joyce, for more than 20 years, his spokeswoman said.
Myers has pursued state laws that would limit people to one gun purchase per month and let Philadelphia pass local gun laws that are stricter than the state's.
Meanwhile, Myers' Republican opponent in the November election, Joseph L. Messa, is suspending his campaign indefinitely out of respect for the Myers family.
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Surprise! Charges dropped in child beauty-queen murder case
by Jeff Kass
Reuters
Tue Aug 29, 2006
BOULDER, United States - Prosecutors dropped charges against John Mark Karr, who triggered a media frenzy by confessing to killing six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, leaving the decade-old case cold once more.
Less than two weeks since Karr was arrested in Thailand and flown to the United States, District Attorney Mary Lacy said a DNA sample from Karr failed to match DNA traces at the crime scene and that witnesses put him elsewhere at the time of the murder.
"The DNA associated with the victim in this case does not match John Mark Karr," Lacy, Boulder's district attorney.
"The family of Mr. Karr cooperated by providing circumstantial evidence that Mr. Karr spent Christmas with his family in Atlanta, Georgia," at the time of the murder in 1996, Lacy said.
After a media circus covering Karr's extradition from Thailand, featuring Karr, 41, in Thai Airways business class reportedly drinking champagne, eating pate and king prawns next to a US Homeland Security agent, the case, remains unsolved.
Karr's attorney, Seth Temin, accused US authorities of acting without proof against his client.
"We are deeply distressed by the fact that they took this man and dragged him here from Bangkok, Thailand with no forensic evidence confirming the allegations against him, and no supporting factors leading to a presumption that he did anything wrong," Temin said.
The prosecutor came under similar criticism from legal commentators, including former prosecutors, who said Boulder authorities had botched the case and should have asked Thai police to conduct a DNA test.
The governor of Colorado, Bill Owens, joined in the criticism.
"I find it incredible that Boulder authorities wasted thousands of taxpayer dollars to bring Karr to Colorado given such a lack of evidence," the governor said in a statement quoted by local media.
Prosecutor "Mary Lacy should be held accountable for the most extravagant and expensive DNA test in Colorado history."
Ramsey's parents found their daughter's body in their wine cellar the day after Christmas in 1996 in a case that drew national media coverage.
Boulder Sheriff Joe Pelle said he will extradite Karr to Sonoma County, California, where he faces child pornography charges from 2001.
"He remains in our custody for the officials in California," Pelle said.
Thai police, who arrested Karr on August 16 on the outstanding child pornography charges, said Karr had confessed to killing Ramsey unintentionally. They said Karr told them he was "in love" with JonBenet, who wore makeup and glamorous outfits and struck precocious poses in her appearances at child beauty pageants.
US officials tracked Karr to Bangkok after studying four years' worth of his e-mails to University of Colorado journalism professor Michael Tracey.
"I am trapped in a world that does not understand," Karr said in one exchange. "I can understand people like Michael Jackson and feel sympathy when he suffers as he has."
While his arrest has revived huge interest in the murder -- in which, at one point, JonBenet's parents were investigated as possible suspects -- suspicions arose that Karr might not be the girl's killer.
Karr's ex-wife Lara Marie Knutson has said that on the day JonBenet's body was found, she was with Karr and their three sons in the southeastern US state of Alabama.
Her 11-year marriage to Karr ended in 2001, the year Sonoma County, California alleged Karr possessed child pornography.
And a Thai police officer further raised suspicions when he reportedly said Karr had mentioned that he had drugged and sexually assaulted the Ramsey girl before she died.
But the Ramsey's family lawyer noted that JonBenet's autopsy showed no signs of drugs and inconclusive evidence of sexual assault.
Asked last week by reporters if he had killed her, Karr said: "No, I did not. It was an accident." However, the girl's body was found beaten and strangled with a garrote.
Karr also reportedly told Thai police that he had "loved" the little girl.
Karr's motive for the confession remains fodder for speculation, along with the identity of the real murderer.
Comment: Were you distracted?
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One Big Powder Keg
'Iran is NO threat to Israel or any nation'
Truth Will Set You Free
27/08/2006
Of course, you'll never hear this quote on FOX news or MSNBC.
[Ahmadinejad] said the Islamic republic isn't a "threat" to any nation, including Israel, as he opened a heavy-water production plant that is part of the country's nuclear program.
Iran's nuclear ambitions are "at the service of peace and justice," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by the Iranian Students News Agency, at the opening of the Arak plant, which will produce heavy water used in nuclear reactors.
[Don't believe he said it? Find out for yourself. Contact the reporter on this story - Ladane Nasseri in Tehran (lnasseri@bloomberg.net). Presumably, he/she either heard it first hand or spoke with people who did.]
You will, however, keep hearing the oft-repeated distortion about 'wiping Israel off the map,' which some contend was merely a figurative suggestion for a political end to the apartheid Zionist state, and others insist was an outright lie - a manipulative English distortion of what Ahmadenijad said in Persian.The U.S. and some European countries suspect Iran of seeking to build a nuclear weapon. The Islamic republic, which has the world's second-largest crude oil reserves, says it only wants nuclear energy.
Iran doesn't recognize Israel and Ahmadinejad has called for the nation to be "wiped off the map" or relocated elsewhere.
See! There it is again.
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France to renew talks with Iran to end nuclear crisis
www.chinaview.cn 2006-08-29 19:57:05
PARIS, Aug 29 (Xinhua) -- French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said on Tuesday that France was ready to renew dialogue with Iran on its nuclear program but insisted on suspension of uranium enrichment.
"The Iranian authorities said they were open to the dialogue and ready to resume discussions," Douste-Blazy said two days ahead of the deadline for the ultimatum by the world's major powers which demands that Iran suspends uranium enrichment.
"Without abandoning the demand to suspend sensitive activities, France is also ready to renew dialogue," he told an annual meeting of French ambassadors.
"But it must be a clear, concrete and responsible dialogue," Douste-Blazy said. France hoped for an early dialogue to finally solve the Iranian nuclear problem.
"At the moment, Tehran's response to proposals from the international community is unsatisfactory," said the French minister. "It remains ambiguous and seems to continue to ignore the essential questions of uranium enrichment and reprocessing.
"This move is essential to re-establish the confidence for all the parties during the negotiations," he said.
Tension has escalated with Iran refusing to suspend uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities, as demanded by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council (Britain, China, France, Russia and United States) plus Germany. The U.N. Security Council has given Iran the ultimatum of suspending activities on August 31 or face the threat of sanctions.
According to the French foreign ministry, Douste-Blazy met on Tuesday with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier and they considered it was necessary to restart dialogue with Iran.
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Iran's president proposes TV debate with Bush
www.chinaview.cn 2006-08-29 20:42:39
TEHRAN, Aug. 29 (Xinhua) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday proposed having a live television debate with his U.S. counterpart George W. Bush on "world issues".
Ahmadinejad raised the proposal at a press conference two days before a U.N. Security Council deadline demanding Tehran suspend uranium enrichment.
He told the reporters that "I suggest holding a live TV debate with Mr. George W. Bush to talk about world affairs and the ways to solve those issues."
The Iranian president, meanwhile, complained about the U.S. and British role in the world affairs, saying "the U.S. and Britain are the source of many tensions."
"At the (UN) Security Council, where they have to protect security, they enjoy the veto right. If anybody confronts them, there is no place to take to complaints," said Ahmadinejad.
However, Ahmadinejad expressed that Tehran still expects a positive outcome of its response to a six-nation nuclear package.
But he warned that Iran will react in its proper ways if the UN Security Council imposes sanctions on it, saying "we have said everything in our response. I think the time to use the instrument of the Security Council has expired."
"I see it as unlikely that they want to use it (the Security Council). Using nuclear energy is Iran's right and we want to use it according to international law," said the president.
The Security Council adopted the resolution late July, urging Tehran to suspend by Aug. 31 all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development, or face prospect of sanctions.
Iran has rejected the resolution as having no legal basis.
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Saudi Arabia releases 9 Guantanamo returnees
Reuters
August 29, 2006
RIYADH - Saudi Arabia has released 9 former inmates of Guantanamo Bay where they were being held on suspicion of belonging to al Qaeda, an official said on Tuesday.
The United States this year sent 29 Saudis back home after negotiating a framework agreement with Saudi Arabia for the return of its citizens. Saudi officials had said they were reviewing whether they should face charges in their homeland.
"Nine of them have been released. They were investigated and we didn't find any wrongdoing in relation to local laws," said Interior Ministry spokesman Mansour al-Turki.
"There is no evidence (against them)," he said, adding that there is no agreement with Washington obliging Saudi Arabia to keep them incarcerated. He gave no more details.
About 95 of the 450 men still held at Guantanamo are Saudi citizens and the government has said it hopes to bring all of them back within a year.
Many of the men held at the prison in Cuba were captured in
Afghanistan in the U.S.-led war to oust the Taliban after al Qaeda carried out the September 11, 2001, attacks against U.S. cities.
Two Saudis are among 10 Guantanamo prisoners who have been charged with war crimes in a tribunal system which the
U.S. Supreme Court struck down in June.
Public anger over the treatment of the Saudi detainees has been high. Two Saudis were among the three prisoners who hanged themselves in June at the controversial prison, which lies outside the jurisdiction of international law.
Many Saudis suspect they died from maltreatment.
The authorities have organized a wedding for one of the returnees and have supported the education of their children.
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Taking control of the ghosts
Mark Oliver reports
Guardian Unlimited
Tuesday August 29, 2006
Mark Hill had been a lieutenant in the Iranian army. When he arrived in the UK in 1989 as an asylum seeker he loved the detention centre he was sent to. It was far better than the prisoner of war camp in Ramadi where he was imprisoned during the Iran-Iraq war.
While he was not physically tortured by his Iraqi captors, he says he spent weeks listening to the screams of others.
"At one point I was put in a tiny cupboard of a cell, where I could not lie down or stand up straight," says Hill, who anglicised his name in 2003. "I was in there for four, maybe five days. I was rescued from the camp in Iraq by the Kurds but then I had to fight with them for three years before I left the Middle East."
He spent years running and hiding from the Iranian army before arriving in the UK. His problems did not end when he arrived and he has been treated for psychiatric problems. He was sectioned after starting a fire at a hostel in London, an incident he now deeply regrets. He received a probationary jail sentence, attempted suicide, and spent six months receiving psychiatric treatment.
In recent years he has turned his life around; he has a young son and now works as the full-time carer of a screenwriter with multiple sclerosis. Their meeting inspired Hill to develop his own interest in writing.
Hill is also one of scores of torture survivors from all over the world who have taken part in the Write to Life project, a writing therapy group created by the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, a national centre based in Finsbury Park, north London. The scheme has been running for seven years. Last week some of the writers read from their own work for the first time at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
Through writing, many of the survivors are able to express personal experiences that may be too painful or traumatic to relate directly.
The screenwriter and novelist Sheila Hayman, who has coordinated Write to Life for more than two years as a volunteer, says: "The people in the group come in smiley and cheerful but that, in a way, is a coping device. They have all had the most horrendous experiences in their lives and in a sense have had living nightmares."
She says it is as if people in the group are living in a haunted house. "The ghosts only have power over you if you let them. So what we try and get them to do is to take control of the ghosts. If they have a nightmare we say write it down and then the ghosts are on the paper, not in their head and they can then start to turn them into a piece of work which they can shape.
"Of course the force of their experiences remains and that's what gives the writing its power."
On the inside cover of a pamphlet of some of the torture survivors' recent work are the words: "Uprooted and transplanted, lopped and scattered, these writers have come to Britain hoping for fertile soil in which to plant the seeds of a new life."
Mark Hill has written two novels in Farsi and a screenplay, which has been translated into English. One of his stories is about an American who is imprisoned in Iran and endures a nightmare that sounds similar to the real one he experienced.
When I meet Hill and some of the other people in the writing group at Hayman's home in north London, I ask him whether he is making a political point by writing the character as an American.
He smiles. "No I was thinking of the film. Hollywood. So the main character has to be an American."
Hill knows how difficult it is to get published or interest someone in his work; he is currently struggling to find someone who might translate his work into English, which is usually very expensive.
He and the other writers are excited by a new website, Lots of Big Ideas, which has been created to provide a platform for their work and that of other people with similar stories to tell.
Sophie Nicholls - a former Write to Life mentor - says she set up the site to try to give the torture survivors a voice, and as an antidote to negative coverage of asylum seekers in parts of the media. "It is very important that they feel witnessed and that we get these stories out to a wider audience," she says.
Lots of Big Ideas was partially inspired by Global Voices, the successful global citizens' journalism site. The new site uses a wiki interface and each of the writers can have their own page with links to their work. Ms Nicholls hopes that the site will also become a useful space for writing by people who have been displaced from places like China and Iran.
Some of the Write to Life group have had no education, while others have degrees and are accomplished writers, such as Hassan Bahri, a Syrian who was a political prisoner for more than eight years and now works as a translator. What they all have in common is a desire to move on from their past experiences. She says one woman from Somalia who is in the group wants to be a journalist; another wants to be a barrister. Hayman says some writers are very politically motivated and were kept going through their imprisonments by their "anger and fury" at injustices, which now feeds into their work.
She welcomes the creation of the website as a way of bringing their work to a wider audience and as a forum for getting across their messages about injustices. "There is a second, subtler, thing which I am not sure that they are yet aware of. Many of our clients have no home, they just have places that they are put by the authorities. Often they do not have any place where they can put down roots, they have no fixed address but they have a mobile phone. They have the most amazing ring tones and they have images on them, because in a way the phone is the only thing that is theirs and always theirs.
"For me, this website is an extension of that; an online version of a home where they can put their writing and say, 'here I am, come and find me'."
- You can read some of Mark Hill's work on his page on Lots of Big Ideas. To find out more about the site and Write to Life, listen to today's Guardian Unlimited newsdesk podcast. Hassan Bahri and Faraidon Mohammed Said, a writer from Iraqi Kurdistan, speak to Mark Oliver and read extracts from their work.
Comment: We wonder if voices from America and Britain's torture chambers will be invited to publish on these sites? Syria and Iran, two of the three members of the so-called "axis of evil" are named.
Hmmmm. Wonder who is financing this?
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At least 100 die as militia force Iraqi troops out of town
UK Independent
29 August 2006
At least 100 people were killed across Iraq yesterday in a day of intense gun battles and suicide bombings, contradicting US military claims that the security situation in the war-torn nation was improving.
A total of 34 bodies, including seven civilians and 25 Iraqi government soldiers, were brought into the central hospital in the town of Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad, after fighting between government forces and gunmen of the Mehdi Army, a Shia militia loyal to the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Fifty militiamen were also killed in the gunfight, according to the Iraqi defence ministry.
In a separate development, a suicide bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into the Interior Ministry in Baghdad during the midmorning rush hour, killing 16 people, including 13 policemen, and wounding up to 62.
On Sunday, a further 60 people were killed in attacks across the country from Kirkuk in the Kurdish-held north to Basra in the south.
The latest violence was a reminder of how easily Iraq could slip back into the type of endemic sectarian violence that characterised much of the first half of this year after the destruction in February of a Shia shrine in the town of Samarra.
More than 10,000 Iraqis - the vast majority in Baghdad - have been killed in the past four months alone, a figure that would send shockwaves through the international community were it in any other part of the world.
The US military admitted that there had been a spike in violence in Baghdad, but insisted that things were improving since US-led forces launched Operation Forward Together last month in an attempt to pacify the capital.
Maj-Gen William Caldwell, a US military spokesman, said violence in Baghdad had dropped by half since July, and that life was returning to normal in some areas of the capital.
The British Defence Secretary, Des Browne, echoed such sentiments during a visit to Iraq yesterday to meet key Iraqi politicians including the Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki.
"I recognise there are continuing challenges and I've seen some violence over this weekend which suggests there's much more work to be done," Mr Browne told a joint news conference with the Iraqi Defence Minister, Abdul Qader Jassim. "But as Prime Minister Maliki said in an interview this weekend, things are improving and the challenge is to maintain that improvement."
The intense fighting in Diwaniyah will be of particular concern to British forces stationed in the Shia-dominated south of Iraq. Reports suggested that militiamen had driven government forces out of the city and had set up checkpoints in the suburbs. If the Mehdi Army has pushed the government out of the Shia-dominated city it will be a major snub to Mr Maliki, who has promised to rid Iraq of militias.
Confronting Mr Sadr's Shia militias was never going to be an easy task. His movement holds 30 parliamentary seats and five cabinet posts, and his militiamen are well-armed and dedicated. The cleric is also undeniably popular among Iraq's Shia majority, particularly the poorer classes.
In 2004, Mr Sadr led an uprising against the American-led coalition which threatened to draw the post-Saddam government and US military into a bitter conflict with Iraq's Shia while simultaneously trying to subdue what was then an emerging Sunni insurgency. The fighting was only stopped when the head of Iraq's Shia community, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, ordered the Mehdi Army fighters to lay down their arms.
Comment: Let us reiterate that the allegedly "ethnic" violence in Iraq is the work of "death squads" sponsored by the US government. See this Signs of the Times article for the details.
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Pipeline explosion kills 34 in southern Iraq
Last Updated Tue, 29 Aug 2006 07:52:31 EDT
The Associated Press
A pipeline carrying oil byproducts exploded in a southern Iraqi city Tuesday, killing at least 34 people, police said.
Several people had been siphoning fuel from the pipeline when the explosion occurred near Diwaniyah, a town 130 kilometres south of Baghdad, Lieut. Raid Jabir said.
He said at least 34 people had been killed and dozens injured. The reason for the explosion was not immediately clear.
Police say the massive fire in the area is hampering rescue efforts, and that Iraqi and coalition forces have cordoned off the area.
The town was the scene of fierce clashes between the Iraqi army and Shia militia on Monday that left 40 people dead, but the situation on Tuesday was calm, the army said.
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Suicide blast hits Afghan NATO convoy
Reuters
Tue Aug 29, 2006
KABUL - At least one Afghan civilian was killed in a suicide bomb attack on a NATO convoy in the country's volatile south on Tuesday, the latest incident in the worst upsurge of violence since the Taliban were ousted five years ago.
Police said the car bomber attacked the convoy between Kandahar airport, a major foreign military base, and the city.
At least three civilians were wounded.
In Kabul, a roadside bomb exploded early on Tuesday as a French military patrol passed, but there were no casualties, police said.
The latest attacks came a day after a suicide bomber killed at least 17 civilians, including several children, in a crowded bazaar in the southern province of Helmand, neighboring Kandahar and Afghanistan's main drug growing area.
Since their overthrow in 2001, the Taliban and their Islamic allies have carried out scores of suicide attacks against Afghan and foreign forces, often killing many civilians as well.
Fighting across Afghanistan is now at its worst since 2001, mostly in the south and east bordering or near Pakistan, the Taliban's one-time backer accused by some Afghan leaders and intelligence officers of still supporting its former protege.
About 2,000 people, most of them militants, but also civilians, aid workers, Afghan forces and more than 90 foreign soldiers, have been killed this year.
The violence is a mix of opposition to Afghan authorities and foreign forces, the drugs trade, tribe wars and crime.
NATO said in a statement on Tuesday one of its soldiers had been killed in a gunbattle with suspected insurgents in Helmand on Sunday morning. It did not give the victim's nationality.
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British Military Supplies In Afghanistan Being Depleted
AFP
Aug 28, 2006
London - British military forces in Afghanistan are using up missiles, rockets and spare parts at a faster rate than expected, The Daily Telegraph reported on Monday. The newspaper said one unnamed officer in Afghanistan predicted that the stocks of weapons and components that were meant to last until April next year, may be depleted "well before Christmas".
All eight British Apache helicopters are being flown on a daily basis, even though it was intended that only six should fly every day, the newspaper said. A number of them have been hit by Taliban shooters, but none have been seriously damaged.
The defense ministry was given one billion pounds (1.5 billion euros, 1.9 billion dollars) for the Afghanistan mission, money that is being used up at a much faster pace than expected, according to The Daily Telegraph's unnamed sources, and it may have to ask the Treasury for more money.
The defence ministry disputed the claims, however, with a spokeswoman telling AFP: "There's no problems with re-supply."
"The force package in Afghanistan is a full and robust package which was asked for by commanders on the ground. They are content with the package." "Of course, its always kept under review."
Some 21 British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan -- 14 in combat -- since the start of operations against the Taliban in November 2001 following the September 11 attacks on the United States.
Some 4,000 British troops are currently in Helmand province, with the figure set to rise to around 4,500. A further 1,000 are in the capital Kabul and a few hundred are in the southern city of Kandahar.
There are about 30,000 foreign troops from 30 countries in Afghanistan.
Although the Taliban were ousted from power five years ago, supporters of the extremist movement have this year stepped up attacks on foreign and Afghan troops.
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Tourists warned to stay away as bomb attacks rock Turkey
Nick Birch in Marmaris and Steven Morris
Tuesday August 29, 2006
The Guardian
A separatist group yesterday warned tourists to stay away from Turkey after a wave of bomb blasts killed three people and injured dozens, including 10 Britons. The Kurdistan Freedom Falcons claimed responsibility for four of the five bombs and warned on its website: "Turkey is not a safe country; tourists should not come to Turkey."
Three people were killed and as many as 50 injured in the most serious of the blasts, which wreaked havoc in the southern city of Antalya yesterday afternoon.
Earlier in the day 10 Britons, including four children, were hurt when a bomb exploded on a bus in the popular south-western coastal resort of Marmaris, and on Sunday evening there was an explosion in Istanbul.
In the major port city of Izmir, police yesterday detained a suspected member of the Kurdish separatist guerrilla group PKK they claimed was planning an attack there, and seized plastic explosives, the state news agency Anatolian reported.
The bombings are a blow to the Turkish tourist industry, which is worth £10bn a year. Almost 2 million Britons visit the country annually and there are currently thousands in the area around Marmaris. Beaches in the resort were quieter than usual yesterday as many people decided to stay in their hotels, and some began making plans to abort their holiday.
The series of blasts began on Sunday evening when a bomb exploded near a government building in an Istanbul suburb. Six people were hurt, one of them critically. Shortly after midnight yesterday there were three explosions in Marmaris. The most serious was on one of the many minibuses which ferry visitors around the resort and surrounding areas.
Ten Britons who were on board were injured. The 10, aged between seven and 73, were treated for burns and shrapnel-like wounds. Four were seriously hurt.
Among them were Sarah Wilson and her two sons, Jamie, eight and Adam, seven. Ms Wilson told the Guardian: "All of a sudden there was a flash and a hot wind against the back of my legs and a pain. There was lots of noise, lots of screams, lots of shouting." Her son Adam suffered burns to his hand and cheek and shrapnel wounds
A 13-year-old British girl, Jennifer Smith, needed an operation and 11 local people were also hurt.
The most destructive blast happened yesterday afternoon in the southern city of Antalya, another tourist centre more popular with visitors from Russia and continental Europe. Two people were killed and many injured in the explosion which happened in or near a building housing restaurants and cafes.
One witness reported hearing a loud blast which shattered windows and caused a fire. "A parked motorbike exploded and pieces were shattered all around," he said. "A man who was a street vendor was dead."
Even before the bombings the Foreign Office had warned of a "high threat from terrorism" in Turkey. "We believe that international terrorist groups, as well as indigenous ones, are currently active in Turkey. Further attacks, including in tourist areas, could well occur," it said.
Keith Betton of the Association of British Travel Agents said almost all tourists booked to leave the UK yesterday for Marmaris had gone. He said: "I do not envisage that people will react negatively to this - this is something like the 15th attack in Turkey in less than a year."
Britain's ambassador to Turkey, Peter Westmacott, said: "The people who set off these bombs have reminded us how vulnerable we are to the scourge of terrorism and the need for all governments to work together to defeat it."
The Kurdistan Freedom Falcons, also known as the Liberation Hawks, claimed responsibility for the blasts in Istanbul and Marmaris. Nobody immediately claimed responsibility for the blast in Antalya.
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Mother Nature's Revenge
Meteor rattles Hawke's Bay
1.00pm Tuesday August 29, 2006
HAWKE'S BAY TODAY
New Zealand
A meteor lit up the Hawke's Bay sky last night and burned up with a boom that rattled windows.
"It was like an earthquake, but without the shaking," said one Akina woman.
Maraekakaho woman Liz Wilson heard "the weirdest noise, like a V8 engine" at about 9.45pm.
"We got in the car, as you do, and had a look around the place ... we so wanted to find a big, burning thing," she said.
An Otane woman said her father saw a "huge, big fireball with a long tail" overhead and heading towards Elsthorpe.
Bruce Hoyt was driving south along the Hawke's Bay Expressway when the sky lit up as if by lightning.
"It came down, heading south, then broke up into six to eight pieces, before fading out. A second or so later, I heard a bang.
"I would say the bang was from the meteor hitting the atmosphere. The sound came later because it travels slower than light."
That summation was right, said Hawke's Bay Astronomical Society president Gary Sparks. "When these things come in, it is explosive decompression. With the heat of re-entry they reach a critical temperature and they explode," he said.
The clear sky last night would have helped the sound travel. His guess was the meteor would have been no larger than a basketball.
August is one of the times of year when meteor showers were more frequent, Mr Sparks said, with the Earth - orbiting the Sun at 100,000km/h - meeting the dust trail of a meteor.
"What people saw last night was probably a rogue meteor, something that was not in the same path as the dust trail," Mr Sparks said.
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Florida awaits Ernesto's arrival
Last Updated Tue, 29 Aug 2006 09:36:37 EDT
CBC News
Warnings have been extended along Florida's east and west coasts as forecasters predict tropical storm Ernesto could grow in strength and reach the state by Tuesday evening.
Ernesto could come ashore near the densely packed area around Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, which is home to about five million people, forecasters say.
"The centre of Ernesto will be near the Florida Keys or southeast Florida by [Tuesday] evening," according to an update issued at 5 a.m. by the U.S. National Hurricane Center.
The storm is currently packing winds of close to 75 km/h, and could strengthen to hurricane force throughout the day, said forecasters. Its winds are extending 140 kilometres from the storm's centre.
Ernesto will become a Category 1 hurricane if its winds reach 120 km/h.
A tropical storm warning and hurricane watch extends down Florida's east coast from New Smyrna through the Florida Keys and up along the west coast to Bonita Springs.
Residents are lining up at gas stations and are stocking up on plywood, batteries and water after Gov. Jeb Bush advised them to have 72 hours worth of supplies on hand.
"My suggestion: Take this storm very seriously. A hurricane is a hurricane," Bush warned on Monday.
According to an early forecast track, Ernesto could travel north up the U.S. east coast later this week, and move into southern Ontario by early Sunday morning.
Ernesto soaks Cuba
Ernesto moving off Cuba's northern coast early Tuesday morning after drenching the island nation on Monday.
The rain prompted officials to evacuate homes in low-lying areas, and train and commercial flights were suspended.
There were no reports of major damage, but state television showed flooding in some eastern parts of the island. In Guantanamo province, home to a U.S. military base and prison, 194 millimetres of rain fell Monday, said officials.
A U.S. Defence Department spokesperson said none of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay were exposed to the weather.
Dominican Republic and Haiti mopping up
Ernesto is the fifth named storm of the hurricane season. Over the weekend, it became the first hurricane of the Atlantic season and lashed the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
In the Dominican Republic, rain-swollen rivers flooded more than 400 houses in Santo Domingo and nearby San Cristobal province, forcing more than 1,600 people from their homes. No injuries or death were reported.
In Haiti, a woman died Sunday after being swept away by floodwaters on Vache Island, off Haiti's south coast.
John forms in Pacific
As Ernesto churned northward, another tropical storm formed Tuesday in the Pacific.
Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center warned tropical storm John could become a hurricane later in the day.
With winds near 110 km/h, tropical storm John was about 400 kilometres south of Acapulco on Tuesday morning.
Officials in the Baja Peninsula have issued a tropical storm watch for the region.
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Brown says White House wanted him to lie about Katrina response
UPI
By Michael Kirkland
The ousted head of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency says the White House wanted him to lie about the response to Hurricane Katrina.
Former Director Michael Brown told ABC News' "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" Sunday he stood by comments in a Playboy interview, and President Bush wanted him to take the heat for the bungling.
"The lie was that we were ready and that everything was working as a team. Behind the scenes, it wasn't working at all," Brown said. "There were political considerations going into all the discussions. There was the fact that New Orleans did not evacuate and the mayor (Ray Nagin) had no plan."
Brown said it was natural to "want to put the spin on that things are working the way they're supposed to do. And behind the scenes, they're not. Again, my biggest mistake was just not leveling with the American public and saying, 'Folks, this isn't working.'"
The former FEMA chief cited what he called an e-mail "from a very high source in the White House that says the president at a Cabinet meeting said, 'Thank goodness Brown's taking all the heat because it's better that he takes the heat than I do.'"
Also on "This Week," U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., said the administration still doesn't understand the magnitude of the reconstruction problem; but the president's Gulf Coast coordinator, Don Powell, said the federal government's No. 1 priority is to rebuild the area in a businesslike way.
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Bush visits New Orleans on Katrina anniversary
Associated Press
Tuesday August 29, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
George Bush is today visiting New Orleans to pay tribute to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, which hit the Gulf Coast a year ago today.
More than 1,500 people were killed when the storm devastated the city, flooding huge areas.
Mr Bush this morning met the New Orleans mayor, Ray Nagin, and is due to attend a service at the city's St Louis Cathedral later today.
In the aftermath of the disaster, the president stood by the cathedral, in the French Quarter, and admitted that his administration had failed to respond adequately.
The White House hopes regeneration of the Gulf Coast will erase the damage done to Mr Bush by the sluggish official reaction to the storm. Earlier this month, an AP-Ipsos poll revealed that 67% of Americans disapproved of his handling of Katrina.
The president this week met local leaders involved in rebuilding plans. Speaking in Biloxi, Mississippi, yesterday, he said: "Money is beginning to go out the door so people can rebuild their lives."
He admitted that help in Louisiana had been "a little slower" in arriving, but claimed there was a "sense of renewal" on the Gulf Coast and stressed that states and local governments needed to play their part in getting government cash to victims.
Officials said the purpose of Mr Bush's trip was not to dwell on the disaster but to highlight rebuilding efforts, thank volunteers and celebrate community spirit.
"My message to the people down here is that we understand there's more work to be done, and just because a year has passed, the federal government will remember the people," Mr Bush said.
"This is an anniversary, but it doesn't mean it ends. It's the beginning of what is going to be a long recovery, but I'm amazed by the opportunity. I'm amazed by the hope that I feel down here."
However, frustration at the state, local and federal response in New Orleans - which still has no master rebuilding plan - remains intense. Only 50% of the city has electricity, half its hospitals remain closed and violent crime has risen.
Less than half the population has returned after the storm, tens of thousands of families are living in trailers and mobile homes, and insurance settlements are mired in red tape.
When he spoke in Jackson Square last year, Mr Bush put forward proposals to help fight poverty in the area. They included the Gulf Opportunity Zone, which will give more than £5bn in tax breaks to developers of low-income housing, small businesses and individuals.
However, worker recovery accounts - which were meant to help storm victims find work by paying for school, job training and childcare - did not materialise.
Neither did the Urban Homesteading Act, which had been intended to provide the poor with sites on which to build self-financed homes.
Comment: A year later and little or nothing has been done to help the people who lost everything. Bush says that there is a "sense of renewal"! That doesn't help people whose homes are destroyed, who lost all they own, whose communities were broken up, and who were shot at for trying to survive while the government left them to rot.
But it couldn't be different. The pathocrats don't give a damn about the ordinary people in this world. Their plans are to kill us off through war, disasters like Katrina, disease, climate change, and whatever other schemes they can come up with. That is who they are. That is what they do for a living. And if we don't wake up to this fact very quickly, if we don't see the world for what it really is, then there will be nothing we can do to stop it.
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Wake Island evacuated as 'super typhoon' roars in
CNN
August 29, 2006
HONOLULU, Hawaii (AP) -- The U.S. military has evacuated 200 people from Wake Island before the arrival of Typhoon Ioke, the strongest Central Pacific hurricane in more than decade.
Classified as a Category 5 "super typhoon," Ioke is expected to extensively damage the U.S. territory when it hits Wednesday with 155-mph winds, said Jeff Powell, lead forecaster for the National Weather Service in Honolulu.
"This is going to roll up a storm surge that will probably submerge the island and destroy everything that's not made of concrete," Powell said.
The evacuees, mostly American and Thai contractors, on Monday were flown to Hickam Air Force Base on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, said Maj. Clare Reed, a spokeswoman for the 15th Airlift Wing.
The contractors work at a civilian base, Reed said. No other permanent residents live on the tiny island, she said.
Ioke had winds of 160 mph and gusts up to 185 mph on Monday, Powell said.
The storm was 560 miles southeast of Wake Island and on track for a direct hit, according to the forecast.
Wake Island is 2,300 miles west of Honolulu and 1,510 miles east of Guam. The storm is expected to strike at 8 p.m. ET on Wednesday, or noon Thursday on the island.
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Scientists puzzled by straying mammals
August 28, 2006
Associated Press
BRIGANTINE, N.J. - Hooded seals, bottlenose whales and a manatee have been spotted in the waters of the northeastern U.S., leaving marine biologists puzzled as to why they have strayed from their natural habitats.
The presence along the Jersey Shore of mammals who normally swim in much warmer or colder waters took a troubling turn recently with the discovery of three of the seals on New Jersey beaches. All were suffering from starvation or exposure.
Those seals and two others found in North Carolina and Virginia - all of them pups about six months old - are being cared for at the Marine Mammal Stranding Center. The center has never had to rescue any in the summer months before, according to founding director Bob Schoelkopf.
The sudden influx has Schoelkopf and others searching for clues.
"We've never had this rate of strandings in the summer months, and we really have no definitive idea why it's happening," Schoelkopf told The Philadelphia Inquirer. "And why these animals are turning up in all these strange places. It's truly a mystery."
The bottlenose whales, which normally are found in the North Atlantic, have also been sighted along the East Coast, Schoelkopf said. And a manatee, whose habitat is chiefly the warmer waters off Florida, made its way up the Hudson River through New York City this month and was last spotted off Cape Cod.
Studies conducted by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California at San Diego suggest the strange migrations could be attributed to underwater noise created by long-range sonar testing conducted by the Navy and to expanded global shipping.
Whales, dolphins and other marine mammals use sound signals to mate and communicate with each other and may be misreading the man-made sounds.
"We're very concerned about this because we think the research is clear that the sonar testing can have an adverse impact on the marine environment," said Michelle Duval, a senior scientist with Environmental Defense, a Washington-based nonprofit advocacy group.
The group has opposed the establishment of a 500-square-mile sonar range in the Atlantic Ocean off the North Carolina coast.
Navy officials said the studies don't prove any long-term effects of sonar on marine mammals.
At the Brigantine facility, one of only a half-dozen federally licensed centers on the East Coast that aid stranded mammals, resources are being strained as workers dip into reserve supplies of fish to feed the seals.
If the seals survive, they will be taken to Maine and released into the North Atlantic.
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Nepal floods, landslides leave 31 dead, 63 missing
by Sam Taylor
AFP
Tue Aug 29, 2006
KATHMANDU - Helicopters ferried people to higher ground in flood-devastated western Nepal after rains left at least 31 people dead, 63 missing and displaced tens of thousands.
The government ordered local officials to accelerate rescue operations after the rains triggered massive landslides in the mountainous regions and flooding on the plains of west Nepal.
Army helicopters flying rescue missions carried stranded people away from fast-flowing floodwaters to safer areas, state-run television showed Tuesday.
Government spokesman Baman Prasad Neupane said Home Minister Krishna Prasad Sitaula, who made an aerial tour of the area Monday, had "directed the local administration in the flood- and landslide-affected areas to speed up rescue efforts".
He said rescuers were urgently trying to discover the fate of 63 people in a village in badly-hit Banke area in mid-western Nepal that has been cut off by floods.
He said the village inhabitants were missing but could not confirm the overall death tally of 31 reported in the media.
Monsoon rains that sweep Nepal and the rest of the subcontinent in the summer cause hundreds of deaths every year from flooding and landslides.
The worst flooding this year has been in Banke district, 510 kilometres (318 miles) west of Kathmandu, where 377 millimetres (15 inches of rain) fell over the weekend, local meteorological officials said.
The Rapti River flowing through the district broke its banks, washing away scores of mud houses and forcing tens of thousands of people to flee to higher ground.
"Some 40,000 people were displaced by the floods ... due to the incessant rainfall," said Banke chief district officer Narendra Raj Sharma.
One journalist in Banke, Janak Nepal, quoted locals as saying the flooding was the worst in four decades.
Officials said that the waters were gradually receding as the rains stopped and India opened a dam bordering Nepal.
"The water level has fallen after the Indian administration ...agreed to open the Laxmanpur Dam that was holding back floodwaters," Sharma said.
State-run television said nine labourers working on a road construction site died when they were hit by a landslide late Monday in the remote northern Mustang region.
Another 22 were killed in floods and landslides over the last two days, the Kathmandu Post reported.
The government has released an initial 28,000 dollars in relief for badly hit areas, the media said, and more funds were expected later.
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Haze worsens, disrupts flights in Indonesia's Sumatra
AFP
Aug 26, 2006
Choking haze from forest and ground fires blanketed the southern parts of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, disrupting flight schedules in one of the region's towns, officials said.
In the town of Jambi, thin vertical visibility around the airport delayed the departure of two domestic flights, said an airport official who identified herself only as Ida.
She said the haze had forced another domestic flight to land at Palembang airport in nearby South Sumatra province.
"The plane tried six times to land here but it eventually was re-routed to Palembang. But so far, we are still in operation," Ida said.
Airport chief Basuki Mardianto, in a report on ElShinta radio, described Saturday's haze as the worst this week and warned the airport could close if conditions deteriorated.
Vertical visibility in Jambi at 0200 GMT was only 300 meters (990 feet), said Remus Tobing, a scientist at Jambi's meterological agency.
Tobing said Jambi's environmental impact agency registered Saturday's air pollution index at an unhealthy level but had provided no figures.
"The core problem here remains the burning of forests and ground clearing," he told AFP.
He said satellites had Friday recorded 40 hot spots or burning areas in four districts surrounding Jambi.
Jambi police said 1,000 officers were helping state forest firemen extinguish the hotspots.
In the neighbouring town of Pekanbaru in Riau province, haze continued to shroud parts of the city but had not disturbed flights there, said airport chief Alexius Kiswoyo.
Visibility at 0400 GMT was measured at 1.5 kilometres (0.93 miles).
"There is still some smoke blanketing the city. The meteorological agency predicted that today's (Saturday) weather should improve but the people who carry out forest and ground burning are unpredictable and ignorant," Kiswoyo said.
Burning in Indonesia and some parts of Malaysia to clear land for crops causes an annual haze that afflicts Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand as well as Indonesia.
Malaysia on Thursday urged Indonesia to crack down on forest fires and warned that the choking pollution was hurting economies and deterring tourists.
Singapore and Thailand have also been affected in recent years.
Malaysia's worst-affected region so far this year is in Sarawak where Kuching had an unhealthily high reading of 157 last week.
The Indonesian government has outlawed land clearing by fire but weak enforcement means the ban is largely ignored.
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Minor earthquake shakes western islands of Greece
29/08/2006 - 09:33:22
A mild earthquake measuring 4.8 on the Richter scale shook Greece's western islands, but no damage or injuries were reported.
Thessaloniki's Aristotle University reported the quake, which occurred at 1.49am (11.49pm Irish time Monday), had its epicentre below the seabed south-west of the island of Cephallonia in the Ionian island chain, about 185 miles north-west of Athens.
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Cities in peril as Andean glaciers melt
John Vidal, environment editor
Tuesday August 29, 2006
The Guardian
Andean glaciers are melting so fast that some are expected to disappear within 15-25 years, denying major cities water supplies and putting populations and food supplies at risk in Colombia, Peru, Chile, Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina and Bolivia.
The Chacaltaya glacier in Bolivia, the source of fresh water for the cities of La Paz and El Alto, is expected to completely melt within 15 years if present trends continue. Mount Huascarán, Peru's most famous mountain, has lost 1,280 hectares (3,163 acres) of ice, around 40% of the area it covered only 30 years ago. The O'Higgins glacier in Chile has shrunk by nine miles in 100 years and Argentina's Upsala glacier is losing 14 metres (46ft) a year.
Although a few glaciers in southern Patagonia are increasing in size, almost all near the tropics are in rapid retreat. Some glaciers in Colombia are now less than 20% of the mass recorded in 1850 and Ecuador could lose half its most important glaciers within 20 years.
The rate of glacier retreat has shocked scientists, says a report on the effects of global warming in Latin America by 20 UK-based environment and development groups who have drawn on national scientific assessments. Their study says climate change is accelerating the deglaciation phenomenon.
"The speeding up of the ... process is a catastrophic danger," says Carmen Felipe, president of Peru's water management institute. In the short term, the president says, it could cause overflows of reservoirs and trigger mudslides, and in the longer term cut water supplies.
According to the Colombian institute of hydrology, back in 1983 the five major glaciers in El Cocuy national park were expected to last at least 300 years, but measurements taken last year suggest that they may all disappear within 25 years. Meanwhile, the ice sheet on the Ecuadorean volcano Cotopaxi and its glacier has shrunk by 30% since 1976.
"The [drastic melt] forces people to farm at higher altitudes to grow their crops, adding to deforestation, which in turn undermines water sources and leads to soil erosion and putting the survival of Andean cultures at risk," says the report by the Working Group on Climate Change and Development, which includes the International Institute for Environment and Development, Christian Aid, Cafod, WWF, Greenpeace and Progressio.
Their report, Up in Smoke, says snow and rainfall patterns in South America and the Caribbean are becoming less predictable and more extreme. "East of the Andes, rainfall has been increasing since about 1970, accompanied by more destructive, sudden deluges. Meanwhile, the last two hurricane seasons in the Caribbean rim have caused $12bn (£6.3bn) damage to countries other than the US. Tropical storms are expected to become more destructive as climate change intensifies. Climate change models predict more rainfall in eastern South America and less in central and southern Chile with a likelihood of greater and opposite extremes. The 2005 drought in the Amazon basin was probably the worst since records began."
Rises in sea level are expected to be especially severe in the region over the next 50 years, with 60 of Latin America's 77 largest cities located on the coast. The first hurricanes have recently hit south of the equator line in Brazil. "The net effect ... is to reduce the capacity of natural ecosystems to act as buffers against extreme weather."
"What we are seeing are many more negative and cumulative impacts. The larger the rate of [climate] change, the more the adverse effects predominate. Climate change is set to turn an already rough ride into an impossible one," says the report, which adds that the impact of climate change is "hugely" magnified by existing environmental abuse.
It proposes that Latin American governments do not repeat the mistakes made by past and present North American and European governments. Several countries in the region are proposing a new generation of mega dams which would displace thousands more people and destroy vast areas of the Brazilian Amazon. The new importance of soya, both as a food and biofuel crop, could also devastate the environment, leading to a battle for land between companies.
Large-scale coal, oil, and copper mining not only threaten fragile environments, says the report, but in some cases can physically endanger remaining glaciers and greatly increase climate changing emissions. "The Pascua Lama project on the borders of Chile and Argentina intends to move three glaciers that cover gold, silver and copper deposits. The glaciers sustain the mountain and valley ecosystems and there are fears that toxic wastes used in the mining will contaminate land and water," says the report.
Yesterday, the groups called on rich countries to urgently reduce greenhouse gas emissions and proposed that Latin America and the Caribbean governments be helped to reduce their vulnerability to extreme weather.
"The only option we have, apart from demanding that developed countries take responsibility for the damages that climate change is causing, is to try to neutralise the adverse impacts that are [already] upon us. It is time to rethink the model of international aid," said Juan Maldonado, former Colombian environment minister and president of the UN convention on biological diversity.
Backstory
"With each new flood, drought or hurricane in Latin America, precious gains in poverty reduction are lost. Extreme weather is set to cause massive loss of life in developing countries throughout the region. The international community must invest more in helping poor communities cope with the effect of climate change," said Simon Trace, chief executive of Practical Action.The world's many thousands of glaciers have been stable or in slow retreat for more than 100 years but since around 1980 they have mostly been retreating drastically. The fastest decline is in the Himalayas, the Arctic, the Alps, the Rockies and the tropics. Most glaciologists believe this natural phenomenon is being accelerated by global warming. The effects of glacier melt are expected to be severe. Hundreds of millions of people in Asia and Latin America are dependent on glacier water. A reduction in runoff will affect the ability to irrigate crops and will reduce summer stream flows to keep dams and reservoirs replenished. In Norway, the Alps, and the Pacific north-west, glacier runoff is important for hydropower. If all the ice on the polar icecaps were to melt, the oceans would rise an estimated 70 metres (230ft). But even a small melt will affect coastal life.
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Big Money
The Gates and Buffet Foundation Shell Game
Sheldon Drobny
Common Dreams
23/08/2006
My background is finance and accounting. As a socially conscious venture capitalist and philanthropist, I have a very good understanding of wealth management and philanthropy. I started my career in 1967 with the IRS as a specialist in taxation covering many areas of the tax law including the so-called legal loopholes to charitable giving. I have known for years that a smart wealthy person could keep control of all his assets without estate or income taxes through cleverly structured charitable foundations. These foundations are perfectly legal and allow the donors to keep absolute control of all their money and power and accumulate enormous appreciation free of taxation. In 1967, the loopholes were outrageous and the law has tightened some of these tactics for the rich. However, the Gates Buffet foundation grant is nothing more than a shell game in which control of assets for both Gates and Buffet remain the same.
The only difference is that the accumulation of wealth by these two will be much more massive because they will no longer have to pay any taxes.
The Gates Foundation now has about $60 Billion under the control of the wealthiest people in America. They do not have to sell any of their positions in the stocks that they put under the tax-exempt umbrella. Furthermore, they can vote their stock holdings the same as if they did before and they can make the same investment decisions about their considerable corporate holdings. Both Buffet and Gates exhibited the most predatory capitalistic practices as corporate executives and investors. Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway are not models of socially responsible capitalism. That being said, this foundation will be in the long run richer than the Catholic Church, which has accumulated wealth and power for over 1500 years. However, the results will be exactly the same. They will never liquidate enough of their assets to do any real good for the most onerous problem we have as humans; the worldwide poverty that is caused by the great disparity between the haves and the have-nots.
The Gates Foundation and the Catholic Church have the same goals. They are to keep the legacies for which they were created. For Bill Gates and Warren Buffet it is the control and legacy of family wealth as in the ancient days of the Pharos of Egypt. And by not paying any taxes, Gates will be more powerful than the Pope. I realize that this foundation has done more for disease research and education than any single government institution. But, that is just a condemnation of how little rich countries do for the less fortunate. And the United States is one of the worst examples of how little it does for its own people.
The great problems of the world today are a direct result of the wide disparity between the rich and poor. But, it is hard for the wealthiest to even look at this as an issue of most importance. Catholic Charities do a lot for the poor and I am sure that the Gates Foundation will do a lot for diseases of the poor. But, that is merely a band-aid for one of the symptoms of poverty. The real issue today is poverty.
The governments that keep their people in abject poverty while their leaders are obscenely rich from oil revenues cause many of the problems in the Middle East. But, even the poorest of their people now have access to satellite TV and Internet information that shows these people how much they are being exploited. The simple answer that they hate us for our freedom is absurd. They hate us because they see the wealthy and powerful as the cause of their suffering. As was the case in Germany in the 1920s, even a cultured society can succumb to irrationally violent leaders if they are hungry and poor. It is a human problem that we saw occur in a 1st world country. The 1968 movie, The Shoes of the Fisherman was a fictional account of a new Pope who had the conscience to solve world poverty by giving away all the Church's assets. Below is a summary of the plot from www.imdb.com.
"After twenty years in a Siberian labor camp, Kiril Lakota, the Metropolitan Archbishop of Lvov, is set free. The Catholic Archbishop is released and sent to Rome, where the ailing Pope makes him a Cardinal. The world is in a state of crisis - a famine in China is exacerbated by United States restrictions on Chinese trade and the ongoing Chinese-Soviet feud. When the Pontiff dies, Lakota finds himself elected Pope. But the new Pope Kiril I is plagued by self-doubt, by his years in prison, and by the strange world he knows so little about. This movie contains extensive information about Catholic faith & practice, as a television news reporter steps in from time-to-time to explain the procedures involved in selecting a new Pope."
The movie was not great but it did emphasize the point I am making in this piece. Unless wealthy people and governments around the world recognize the threat that poverty has on humanity, our chances of survival are markedly decreased. And unless the major wealth of the world is used to help feed its people, the diseases caused by poverty will never be cured. The prevention of diseases, both physical and mental, caused by hunger and poverty are the real dangers we face. And with all the concentrated wealth, we have the capacity to give everyone enough to survive and still leave the wealthy with plenty of luxuries. If Bill Gates gave $29 Billion away and kept only $1Billion he would still have a wonderful life. If he gave it to Sally Struthers, she could probably feed the world.
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Shareholder raps Shell's 'corroded' gas pipes
By Julia Kollewe
The Independent
29 August 2006
Royal Dutch Shell has come under fire over corroded gas pipes, just days after BP was forced to shut down production at an oilfield in Alaska due to severe pipeline corrosion.
A shareholder group has lambasted Shell for letting gas pipes corrode in Ireland. Canon Christopher Hall, a Shell shareholder and spokesman for the Ecumenical Council for Corporate Responsibility (ECCR), said he had alerted Shell in May to the corroded pipeline sections which await installation to bring gas ashore from the Corrib field. They have been stored for years in the open air in a quarry at Killybegs, Co Donegal.
Canon Hall said: "If the pipes are showing corrosion even before they are installed, one wonders what might happen later."
However, Andy Pyle, the managing director of Shell Ireland, shrugged off the concerns yesterday, saying: "If you store pipes you obviously get some surface rusting - that is quite normal. We would obviously clean up the pipes before installation."
The laying of the pipeline to transport high-pressure gas from the Corrib field has been on hold after protests from several local landowners who did not want the pipeline built across their land. Shell said it was consulting them to modify the route and hopes to be able to build the onshore part of the pipeline in 2008, while the (larger) offshore bit could be laid next year. The pipeline would supply 60 per cent of Ireland's needs - the country currently imports 85 per cent of its gas supplies.
In May, Canon Hall highlighted his concerns in a letter to Mr Pyle, who wrote back admitting that the pipes had to be stored for longer than anticipated in Killybegs due to delays on the Corrib project. He said the pipes needed some reconditioning to have rust, dust and debris removed and to be prepared for the laying of the pipeline. Some of that work is now under way.
Mr Pyle wrote: "The observed corrosion of this high-quality steel is superficial, as demonstrated by regular ultrasonic inspection, and the condition of the pipe remains well within the design limits."
Canon Hall said at the annual meeting of the Anglo-Dutch company in the Hague in May: "Members of the board and shareholders would be up in arms themselves if what is done by our company in other lands were to be done in their own backyards." He said the corroded pipe issue formed part of wider concerns the ECCR had about Shell's record in countries such as Nigeria where the company has been fined for environmental damage to the Niger Delta from its oil exploration. He deplored the group's failure to consult shareholders on upcoming projects.
Meanwhile, BP is facing a growing political backlash in the US after documents emerged that appeared to show the company was warned about the pipeline corrosion problem that has crippled output at the Prudhoe Bay oilfield in Alaska.
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US Customs and Border Protection Awards Northrop Grumman Port Security Contract
SPX
Aug 29, 2006
McLean, VA - U.S. Customs and Border Protection, an agency of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has awarded Northrop Grumman Corporation a contract to provide border security surveillance for land ports of entry along the southwest U.S. border. The pilot program will offer total operational security while facilitating the flow of legitimate trade and travel.
As part of the contract, Northrop Grumman's Information Technology (IT) sector will design, develop, test, and install a surveillance solution to secure more than 40 official border crossings along the 1,900-mile U.S. border with Mexico, from San Diego, Calif., to Brownsville, Texas. The company will also train personnel.
"Our team's past experience designing the DHS's security command center as well as our extensive work for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) installing similar security systems and command centers along the entire northern U.S. border speaks to our ability to serve CBP effectively," said Wood Parker, president of Northrop Grumman IT's intelligence group.
Northrop Grumman will also design and implement four regional command centers to monitor security systems at each port of entry. These centers will allow designated personnel to survey port perimeters, secured areas, and the interactions between CBP personnel and the public at these critical facilities. The security solution includes surveillance, communications, video analytics, network and IT components, and data archival capabilities.
"Border security problems should be addressed with an integrated solution of processes, technology, infrastructure and rapid response capability, which will produce a comprehensive border protection system," said Tom Arnsmeyer, Northrop Grumman vice president and program manager. "Through our experience integrating large, complex programs, our integrated security solution for this contract will allow border agents to focus on what they do best: protecting our borders."
Northrop Grumman and its team will deliver a system that will identify potential threats at and to ports of entry; collect information through surveillance technologies; characterize and resolve threats through preventive measures and interdiction of cross border violations; tie sensing capabilities into a common operational picture, allowing surveillance of port activities at Customs Area Security Centers and other entry ports; and allow designated personnel to survey port perimeters, secured areas, and personnel interaction.
The contract is potentially valued at up to $33.7 million over five years, and was awarded by the General Services Administration (GSA) under the GSA Millennia contract.
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Government admits to malnutrition in hospitals
Matt Weaver and agencies
Tuesday August 29, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
The government has admitted there are problems with malnutrition in hospitals after a survey found that nurses are often too busy to feed older people.
But the health minister Caroline Flint insisted much was being done to resolve the issue.
The survey, by the charity Age Concern, found that nine out of 10 nurses did not always have time to assist those older patients who needed help with eating and drinking.
Ms Flint said it was vital that patients' aftercare was given the same priority as the operation for which they were originally admitted. "There is no excuse for people coming into our hospitals not being fed properly," she told GMTV.
She said there were guidelines to ensure that hospitals - both nurses and management - targeted the problem.
And she pointed out that 85,000 extra nurses had been employed by the NHS. But in reference to malnutrition, she conceded: "I am afraid to say there are still places, probably too many, where this still happens."
New initiatives had been introduced, such as prioritised meal times, where nurses focused entirely on patients' eating, and "red tray" policies, where those patients with dietary problems were highlighted, she said.
The survey, which canvassed 500 nurses, found that 60% of older patients - who occupy two-thirds of general hospital beds - were at risk of becoming malnourished or seeing their health worsen.
Those aged over 80 were particularly at risk, having a rate of malnutrition five times higher than that for the under-50s, according to Age Concern.
Ms Flint said 40% of elderly people being admitted to hospital were already malnourished. She urged Age Concern to share its findings with the Department of Health to identify hospitals where malnutrition was a problem.
Age Concern's survey coincides with the launch of its campaign, Hungry To Be Heard, aimed at "ending the scandal of older people being malnourished in hospitals".
The director general, Gordon Lishman, said: "Hospitals are in danger of becoming bad for the health of older people.
"The majority of older patients are being denied some of the basic care they need, leaving hundreds of thousands of older patients malnourished."
He said it was "shocking" that Age Concern had to campaign for the implementation of simple measures.
"Food, and help with eating it, should be recognised by ward staff as an essential part of care, and they should be given time to perform this task, " he said.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said the findings exposed the serious consequences of hospital understaffing.
Pauline Ford, the RCN adviser for older people, said: "This survey highlights just how serious the problem of under-staffing on many hospital wards has become and how, for so many nurses, time has become a luxury.
"It is unacceptable if patients are not getting the help they need to eat or drink.
"Nurses desperately want to be able to give the standards of care they were trained to give but need the support and resources to do so. Most importantly, they need to be given the time to care."
Jonathan Ellis, the senior policy manager at Help the Aged, said: "The fact that malnutrition is a stark reality among older people in a supposedly dignified and developed 21st century country is of great concern.
"Despite many nurses and doctors working against the odds to give their best, it would appear older people's needs are often the last to be met on overstretched wards.
"Lack of resources within the NHS means that many older people in a vulnerable position are neglected at a time they need help the most."
Comment: The pathocrats don't give a damn about you or me. The pathocrats don't give a damn if people are malnurished in hospitals. They have their own hospitals were their needs are attended to.
Make no mistake, it is no accident that the health care systems of the Western countries are under attack. It is planned that way.
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France: EU functioning worrisome
www.chinaview.cn 2006-08-29 20:03:35
PARIS, Aug 29 (Xinhua) -- France's European affairs minister Catherine Colonna said on Tuesday that the European Union (EU) was in a worrying state and warned that the construction of bloc faced "dilution".
"The functioning of the Union, and largely the state of the Union seems alarming to me," she told a gathering of French ambassadors.
The EU was "suffering from a kind of wasting disease, a general fatigue that bodes ill for its ability to answer the needs of its peoples," she said.
"Can the European Union carry on at this pace for long? Can Europe even take crucial decisions any more?" she asked.
"We need a more fundamental start, if we are to avoid the risk of a collapse of European construction, a slow and inexorable dilution," she said.
The 25-member EU faced many questions after the French and Dutch last year rejected by referendum a European constitutional treaty aimed at reforming the body's decision-making processes.
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France faces claims over Nazi deportation
Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
Tuesday August 29, 2006
The Guardian
- 200 families to sue state and railway for war role
- Millions of euros may be paid in compensation
France and its national railway company, SNCF, face a deluge of compensation claims for their role in the deportation of Jews during the second world war.
More than 200 families from France, Israel, Belgium, the US and Canada will launch suits this week against the French state and SNCF for colluding in the transport of Jews, political prisoners, homosexuals and Gypsies to the Nazi death camps during the German occupation.
Cases brought in dozens of tribunals across France could last years and, if successful, force the state and the railway to pay millions of euros in compensation.
Many of the cases are being brought by pensioners who as children were interned in Drancy, the transit camp north of Paris known as the "antechamber of death" - from which about 67,000 Jews were sent to their deaths in the concentration camps. They were transported to the camp on the national railway system, often crammed into cattle trucks. SNCF classified them as third-class passengers and continued to send bills for their tickets even after the liberation of France.
Of the 330,000 Jews living in France in 1940, 75,721 were deported to death camps and only about 2,500 returned. For decades France refused to face up to accusations of its collaboration. In 1995 President Jacques Chirac made a historic admission that the Vichy government did bear a heavy responsibility in the deportation of France's Jews.
But it was only in June, when the French Green party MEP Alain Lipietz won a historic case against the state and SNCF, that families came forward. Mr Lipietz sought compensation after his father was taken to Drancy in 1944, aged 21. He was transported from Toulouse by SNCF train, travelling for more than 30 hours in a cattle truck crammed with 52 people without sanitation, one opening for air and only once given water by the Red Cross. He and three relatives survived the camp.
A Toulouse tribunal set a precedent when it awarded the Lipietz family €62,000 (£42,000) in damages, saying the transportation amounted to an "act of negligence of the state's responsibilities" and because SNCF never voiced "any objection" about transporting prisoners. SNCF is appealing against the ruling.
One of the complainants remembers spending her seventh birthday in Drancy. Others were hidden when their parents were rounded up. Some were born after the war to parents who escaped the camps. Not all are Jewish. One family's relative was a Spanish republican sent to the camps as a political prisoner.
A French pensioner said that in 1943 his parents sent his older sister, Odette, to Nice, hoping to save her life. In February 1944 she was denounced as Jewish by a newsagent, arrested and sent to Auschwitz where she died. When her mother heard of the deportation, her hair went white overnight and she suffered a mental breakdown. She died in a care home, still repeating: "My daughter Odette will be here soon."
Another complainant was born after the war to a Jewish woman who had survived the camp. She told her lawyer: "My mother came back with nothing, no family, no money. She was psychologically traumatised. She couldn't keep me with her so she put me in an orphanage. I have suffered all my life from it and that's why I am bringing this case."
SNCF declined to comment. In June its lawyer said the railway could not be held responsible because it had been forced to cooperate with German occupying forces.
Comment: Any chance of the Zionists, who collaborated with the Nazis in their deportation plans in order to populate the new state of Israel, might offer some compensation too? Didn't think so.
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Trade envoy: U.S. benefits much from China's rapid progress
www.chinaview.cn 2006-08-29 19:32:29
BEIJING, Aug. 29 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab said Tuesday the United States benefited greatly from China's rapid economic progress due to its embrace of market-oriented reform and entry into the rules-based international trading system.
Addressing an event hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce, Schwab said the impact of China's decision to embrace market-oriented reform and join the rules-based international trading system was "nothing short of breathtaking".
Over the past 20 years, China's economy had grown by nearly 10 percent a year and experienced a total growth in real gross domestic product of over 500 percent, she said.
Importantly, the people of China had benefited greatly from its engagement with the rest of the world, with an estimated 377 million people lifted out of poverty.
"We are now, ourselves, major beneficiaries of China's rapid development. U.S. manufacturers, farmers and service providers have seen U.S. exports to China grow an average of 22 percent a year since China joined the WTO (World Trade Organization) in December of 2001, and U.S. consumers enjoy access to a wide array of high-quality, competitively priced products," said Schwab.
Schwab said few trade relationships were more important than that between the U.S. and China.
"And while we have issues that divide us in our bilateral trade relations, we still have fundamental interests in common," she said.
She also talked about the progress the United States and China had made in resolving trading disputes and issues through "quiet" conversations.
Citing as an example, she said China agreed in April to reopen its market to U.S. beef, and also to eliminate duplicate testing and certification requirements for imported medical equipment, and to improve market access for telecommunications service providers.
In addition, China announced that its computer manufacturers would be required to install legal operating system software on all computers before they left the factory, and committed to close optical disc plants that produced pirated CDs and DVDs.
"These are important steps on the road to addressing a very tough IPR situation, and every step that brings tangible results counts," she said.
"These and other initiatives show that as major trading partners in a mature relationship, the U.S. and China can work together to resolve concerns and improve commercial ties."
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Last but not Least
Shots fired in security scare in Villepin vicinity
AFP
Aug 29, 2006
SALLANCHES, France - Police opened fire Tuesday after a man forced a roadblock near a restaurant where French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin was lunching with a group of officials, local authorities said.
The man, who was driving a stolen car and was suspected of a string of robberies in the area, was arrested shortly afterwards, according to the local prefecture in Sallanches, in the southeastern French Alps.
An AFP journalist saw a black BMW pull up suddenly in front of the building, screeching to a halt and veering around, before heading off down a side road.
Local gendarme chief Olivier Kim said the incident had "nothing to do with the prime minister", who was in
town for a meeting of the national mountain council and later continued his visit to a farm in the region.
The gendarmes, or military police, "used their firearms" to carry out the arrest but injured no one, an official at the prefecture said. The suspect was injured during his arrest, but not by gunfire, Kim said.
Witnesses heard three shots being fired, while a police helicopter arrived at the scene shortly afterwards.
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Mars probe may have struck 'dark comet'
Tony Phillips
Science@NASA
Tuesday, 29 August 2006
With flawless precision, Mariner 4 dipped less than 10,000 km above the planet's surface and took 22 pictures. Mars was covered with desert sand and ancient craters. No cities. No canals. No Martians. No one would ever look at the red planet the same way again.
Most histories of the mission end right there, with Mariner 4 buzzing Mars - "the first spacecraft to visit the red planet" - and throwing cold water on a lot of good science fiction. But there's more to the story. After the flyby, something strange happened to Mariner 4, setting the stage for a 40-year mystery.
HUNTSVILLE, 29 August 2006: The mystery of the meteor storm that bombarded Mariner 4 - the first probe to photograph Mars - may have been solved by a Canadian researcher.
The story began on 14 July 1965, as Mariner 4 swooped over Mars. It was a moment of high drama. Six other probes had already tried to reach Mars and failed - most malfunctioning before they even left Earth. Since the days of H.G. Wells - author of the 1898 classic, The War of the Worlds - people had been hearing about life on Mars and they were ready to see the canals and cities. But the wait was becoming excruciating.
With flawless precision, Mariner 4 dipped less than 10,000 km above the planet's surface and took 22 pictures. Mars was covered with desert sand and ancient craters. No cities. No canals. No Martians. No one would ever look at the red planet the same way again.
Most histories of the mission end right there, with Mariner 4 buzzing Mars - "the first spacecraft to visit the red planet" - and throwing cold water on a lot of good science fiction. But there's more to the story. After the flyby, something strange happened to Mariner 4, setting the stage for a 40-year mystery.
Fast-forward to 15 September 1967. Mariner 4 was cruising the dark emptiness between Earth and Mars. Having shot past Mars in 1965 without enough fuel to turn around and go back, there was nothing else to do. All was quiet. Fuel was running low. Soon, Mariner 4 would fade into history.
That's when the meteor storm hit.
"For about 45 minutes, the spacecraft experienced a shower of meteoroids more intense than any Leonid meteor storm we've ever seen on Earth," according to Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office in Huntsville, Alabama. The impacts ripped away bits of insulation and temporarily changed the craft's orientation in space. "It was a complete surprise."
Think about it. Out in the 'emptiness' between Earth and Mars, a region of space astronauts are going cross one day on their way to Mars, lurks a dark stream of meteoroids capable of producing a shower more intense than anything we've seen in centuries of sky watching on Earth. "Until Mariner 4 stumbled onto it," says Cooke, "we had no idea it was there."
For almost 40 years the source of the shower remained a mystery. But now, meteor expert Paul Wiegert of Canada's University of Western Ontario may have cracked the case. The culprit, he believes, is a "dark comet" named 'D/1895 Q1 (Swift)' ... or D/Swift for short. For the record: the prefix D/ indicates a lost or broken-up comet, one that was well-observed on one or more occasions, but which failed to reappear as expected.
"Comet D/Swift was first seen in August 1895 by the prolific comet hunter, Lewis A. Swift," says Wiegert. Swift discovered or co-discovered more than a dozen comets, including 109P/Swift-Tuttle, the source of the well-known Perseid meteor shower. Unlike his other comets, however, "D/Swift quickly vanished. The comet was last spotted in February 1896 heading out of the inner Solar System, and it has never been seen since, even though its orbit indicates it should come back and brighten every five years or so."
So what happened to D/Swift? "The comet may have disintegrated," says Wiegert. Comets are notoriously fragile and sometimes a little sunlight is all it takes to make them crumble. Comet D/Swift probably overheated when it passed by the sun in 1895 and later fell apart.
D/Swift was mostly forgotten until last year when Bill Cooke wondered if "some old D/ comet" might be responsible for the Mariner 4 episode. Comets, especially disrupted comets, leave a stream of debris in their wake as they orbit the Sun. If Mariner 4 passed through such a stream, "it would have been sandblasted."
He asked Wiegert, a friend and colleague, to look into it. Wiegert began to examine old comet data and - voilà - "Mariner 4 was close to the orbit of Comet D/Swift at the time of the meteor encounter."
Amazingly, Mariner 4 was not merely close to the comet's orbit, it may have been close to the comet itself. "According to our calculations, the [possibly shattered] nucleus of D/Swift was only 20 million kilometers from the spacecraft." As distances go in the solar system, that's nearby.
"It's like in Star Trek when the Enterprise stumbles across a comet in the middle of deep space. Of course, that's crazy," says Cooke. "Space is so big, the chances of running across a comet are almost nil." Yet this may be what happened to Mariner 4.
Mariner's cameras weren't turned on at the time, so a comet could've passed by unnoticed - except for the jostling of comet dust. Telescopes on Earth saw nothing, but that's no surprise. An old, shattered nucleus wouldn't necessarily glow. It all makes sense.
Case closed? Wiegert still has doubts. "The complicating factor is that, because D/Swift was seen for only a short time in 1895 to 1896, its orbit is not terribly well-known. Our extrapolations could be wrong. We're in the process of collecting more observations from 19th century archives and re-analyzing them. Soon, I hope there will be enough information to convict or acquit Comet D/Swift."
This investigation may lead to others. "The space between Earth and Mars is probably criss-crossed by old debris streams," says Cooke. Wiegert's methods can be used to find some of them, "so the next meteor storm won't be such a surprise."
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A meeting of civilisations: The mystery of China's celtic mummies
29 August 2006 16:19
Solid as a warrior of the Caledonii tribe, the man's hair is reddish brown flecked with grey, framing high cheekbones, a long nose, full lips and a ginger beard. When he lived three thousand years ago, he stood six feet tall, and was buried wearing a red twill tunic and tartan leggings. He looks like a Bronze Age European. In fact, he's every inch a Celt. Even his DNA says so.
But this is no early Celt from central Scotland. This is the mummified corpse of Cherchen Man, unearthed from the scorched sands of the Taklamakan Desert in the far-flung region of Xinjiang in western China, and now housed in a new museum in the provincial capital of Urumqi. In the language spoken by the local Uighur people in Xinjiang, "Taklamakan" means: "You come in and never come out."
he extraordinary thing is that Cherchen Man was found - with the mummies of three women and a baby - in a burial site thousands of miles to the east of where the Celts established their biggest settlements in France and the British Isles.
DNA testing confirms that he and hundreds of other mummies found in Xinjiang's Tarim Basin are of European origin. We don't know how he got there, what brought him there, or how long he and his kind lived there for. But, as the desert's name suggests, it is certain that he never came out.
His discovery provides an unexpected connection between east and west and some valuable clues to early European history.
One of the women who shared a tomb with Cherchen Man has light brown hair which looks as if it was brushed and braided for her funeral only yesterday. Her face is painted with curling designs, and her striking red burial gown has lost none of its lustre during the three millenniums that this tall, fine-featured woman has been lying beneath the sand of the Northern Silk Road.
The bodies are far better preserved than the Egyptian mummies, and it is sad to see the infants on display; to see how the baby was wrapped in a beautiful brown cloth tied with red and blue cord, then a blue stone placed on each eye. Beside it was a baby's milk bottle with a teat, made from a sheep's udder.
Based on the mummy, the museum has reconstructed what Cherchen Man would have looked like and how he lived. The similarities to the traditional Bronze Age Celts are uncanny, and analysis has shown that the weave of the cloth is the same as that of those found on the bodies of salt miners in Austria from 1300BC.
The burial sites of Cherchen Man and his fellow people were marked with stone structures that look like dolmens from Britain, ringed by round-faced, Celtic figures, or standing stones. Among their icons were figures reminiscent of the sheela-na-gigs, wild females who flaunted their bodies and can still be found in mediaeval churches in Britain. A female mummy wears a long, conical hat which has to be a witch or a wizard's hat. Or a druid's, perhaps? The wooden combs they used to fan their tresses are familiar to students of ancient Celtic art.
At their peak, around 300BC, the influence of the Celts stretched from Ireland in the west to the south of Spain and across to Italy's Po Valley, and probably extended to parts of Poland and Ukraine and the central plain of Turkey in the east. These mummies seem to suggest, however, that the Celts penetrated well into central Asia, nearly making it as far as Tibet.
The Celts gradually infiltrated Britain between about 500 and 100BC. There was probably never anything like an organised Celtic invasion: they arrived at different times, and are considered a group of peoples loosely connected by similar language, religion, and cultural expression.
The eastern Celts spoke a now-dead language called Tocharian, which is related to Celtic languages and part of the Indo-European group. They seem to have been a peaceful folk, as there are few weapons among the Cherchen find and there is little evidence of a caste system.
Even older than the Cherchen find is that of the 4,000-year-old Loulan Beauty, who has long flowing fair hair and is one of a number of mummies discovered near the town of Loulan. One of these mummies was an eight-year-old child wrapped in a piece of patterned wool cloth, closed with bone pegs.
The Loulan Beauty's features are Nordic. She was 45 when she died, and was buried with a basket of food for the next life, including domesticated wheat, combs and a feather.
The Taklamakan desert has given up hundreds of desiccated corpses in the past 25 years, and archaeologists say the discoveries in the Tarim Basin are some of the most significant finds in the past quarter of a century.
"From around 1800BC, the earliest mummies in the Tarim Basin were exclusively Caucausoid, or Europoid," says Professor Victor Mair of Pennsylvania University, who has been captivated by the mummies since he spotted them partially obscured in a back room in the old museum in 1988. "He looked like my brother Dave sleeping there, and that's what really got me. Lying there with his eyes closed," Professor Mair said.
It's a subject that exercises him and he has gone to extraordinary lengths, dodging difficult political issues, to gain further knowledge of these remarkable people.
East Asian migrants arrived in the eastern portions of the Tarim Basin about 3,000 years ago, Professor Mair says, while the Uighur peoples arrived after the collapse of the Orkon Uighur Kingdom, based in modern-day Mongolia, around the year 842.
A believer in the "inter-relatedness of all human communities", Professor Mair resists attempts to impose a theory of a single people arriving in Xinjiang, and believes rather that the early Europeans headed in different directions, some travelling west to become the Celts in Britain and Ireland, others taking a northern route to become the Germanic tribes, and then another offshoot heading east and ending up in Xinjiang.
This section of the ancient Silk Road is one of the world's most barren precincts. You are further away from the sea here than at any other place, and you can feel it. This where China tests its nuclear weapons. Labour camps are scattered all around - who would try to escape? But the remoteness has worked to the archaeologists' advantage. The ancient corpses have avoided decay because the Tarim Basin is so dry, with alkaline soils. Scientists have been able to glean information about many aspects of our Bronze Age forebears from the mummies, from their physical make-up to information about how they buried their dead, what tools they used and what clothes they wore.
In her book The Mummies of Urumchi, the textile expert Elizabeth Wayland Barber examines the tartan-style cloth, and reckons it can be traced back to Anatolia and the Caucasus, the steppe area north of the Black Sea. Her theory is that this group divided, starting in the Caucasus and then splitting, one group going west and another east.
Even though they have been dead for thousands of years, every perfectly preserved fibre of the mummies' make-up has been relentlessly politicised.
The received wisdom in China says that two hundred years before the birth of Christ, China's emperor Wu Di sent an ambassador to the west to establish an alliance against the marauding Huns, then based in Mongolia. The route across Asia that the emissary, Zhang Qian, took eventually became the Silk Road to Europe. Hundreds of years later Marco Polo came, and the opening up of China began.
The very thought that Caucasians were settled in a part of China thousands of years before Wu Di's early contacts with the west and Marco Polo's travels has enormous political ramifications. And that these Europeans should have been in restive Xinjiang hundreds of years before East Asians is explosive.
The Chinese historian Ji Xianlin, writing a preface to Ancient Corpses of Xinjiang by the Chinese archaeologist Wang Binghua, translated by Professor Mair, says China "supported and admired" research by foreign experts into the mummies. "However, within China a small group of ethnic separatists have taken advantage of this opportunity to stir up trouble and are acting like buffoons. Some of them have even styled themselves the descendants of these ancient 'white people' with the aim of dividing the motherland. But these perverse acts will not succeed," Ji wrote.
Many Uighurs consider the Han Chinese as invaders. The territory was annexed by China in 1955, and the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region established, and there have been numerous incidents of unrest over the years. In 1997 in the northern city of Yining there were riots by Muslim separatists and Chinese security forces cracked down, with nine deaths. There are occasional outbursts, and the region remains very heavily policed.
Not surprisingly, the government has been slow to publicise these valuable historical finds for fear of fuelling separatist currents in Xinjiang.
The Loulan Beauty, for example, was claimed by the Uighurs as their symbol in song and image, although genetic testing now shows that she was in fact European.
Professor Mair acknowledges that the political dimension to all this has made his work difficult, but says that the research shows that the people of Xinjiang are a dizzying mixture. "They tend to mix as you enter the Han Dynasty. By that time the East Asian component is very noticeable," he says. "Modern DNA and ancient DNA show that Uighurs, Kazaks, Kyrgyzs, the peoples of central Asia are all mixed Caucasian and East Asian. The modern and ancient DNA tell the same story," he says.
Altogether there are 400 mummies in various degrees of desiccation and decomposition, including the prominent Han Chinese warrior Zhang Xiong and other Uighur mummies, and thousands of skulls. The mummies will keep the scientists busy for a long time. Only a handful of the better-preserved ones are on display in the impressive new Xinjiang museum. Work began in 1999, but was stopped in 2002 after a corruption scandal and the jailing of a former director for involvement in the theft of antiques.
The museum finally opened on the 50th anniversary of China's annexation of the restive region, and the mummies are housed in glass display cases (which were sealed with what looked like Sellotape) in a multi-media wing.
In the same room are the much more recent Han mummies - equally interesting, but rendering the display confusing, as it groups all the mummies closely together. Which makes sound political sense.
This political correctness continues in another section of the museum dedicated to the achievements of the Chinese revolution, and boasts artefacts from the Anti-Japanese War (1931-1945).
Best preserved of all the corpses is Yingpan Man, known as the Handsome Man, a 2,000-year-old Caucasian mummy discovered in 1995. He had a gold foil death mask - a Greek tradition - covering his blond, bearded face, and wore elaborate golden embroidered red and maroon wool garments with images of fighting Greeks or Romans. The hemp mask is painted with a soft smile and the thin moustache of a dandy. Currently on display at a museum in Tokyo, the handsome Yingpan man was two metres tall (six feet six inches), and pushing 30 when he died. His head rests on a pillow in the shape of a crowing cockerel.
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Bus crash kills 5 in upstate New York
AP
Tue Aug 29, 2006
WESTPORT, N.Y. - A Greyhound bus traveling from New York City to Montreal crashed through a guard rail and landed upside down in an embankment Monday, killing at least five people and injuring many others, officials said.
The bus departed New York at 1 p.m. and made stops in Albany and Saratoga Springs before the crash, said Greyhound spokeswoman Anna Folmnsbee. There were 52 passengers and one driver onboard, she said.
Ray Thatcher, Director of Emergency Services for Essex County, said at least five people were dead. By 1 a.m. Tuesday firefighters had not yet reached the body of the driver, which was still stuck deep inside the wreckage.
It was unlikely that more bodies remained inside, but rescue workers continued to pick through the wreckage of the crushed bus, he said.
"We won't know until we get the bus turned over," he said.
Mike Hildebran, a spokesman for Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital Medical Center in Plattsburgh, said more than 30 people had been treated there and several more were en route. The patients were of all ages, including a few children, and had injuries including cuts, bruises and broken bones.
The bus was traveling north on Interstate 87 at about 6:45 p.m. when it overturned near Elizabethtown, went down a small embankment and stopped wedged between the median.
The highway remained closed early Tuesday near the crash site. Westport is 110 miles north of Albany.
The bus, a model DL-3, just passed its annual Federal Department of Transportation inspection last week, Folmnsbee said.
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