'Flat Daddy' cutouts ease longingApart from the fact that there is precious little comment from the US mainstream media on the thousands of Lebanese children who will have to make do with just the memory of their daddies and mommies for the rest of their lives after US-made bombs dropped by Israel blew them to pieces, one has to wonder about the quality of parenting in US military families when a mere cardboard cut-out of a father or mother can provide "comfort" and "support" in the absence of the real thing. On the other hand, if the military mom or dad happens to never return home alive from their job of dispensing 'freedom' to the Arab world, and due to the nature of their death cannot be displayed in an open casket, the flat daddies and mommies would again come in handy.
Globe Staff
August 30, 2006
Maine National Guard members in Iraq and Afghanistan are never far from the thoughts of their loved ones.
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But now, thanks to a popular family-support program, they're even closer.
Welcome to the "Flat Daddy" and "Flat Mommy" phenomenon, in which life-size cutouts of deployed service members are given by the Maine National Guard to spouses, children, and relatives back home.
The Flat Daddies ride in cars, sit at the dinner table, visit the dentist, and even are brought to confession, according to their significant others on the home front.
"I prop him up in a chair, or sometimes put him on the couch and cover him up with a blanket," said Kay Judkins of Caribou, whose husband, Jim, is a minesweeper mechanic in Afghanistan. "The cat will curl up on the blanket, and it looks kind of weird. I've tricked several people by that. They think he's home again."
At the request of relatives, about 200 Flat Daddy and Flat Mommy photos have been enlarged and printed at the state National Guard headquarters in Augusta. The families cut out the photos, which show the Guard members from the waist up, and glue them to a $2 piece of foam board.
Judkins said the cutout has been a comfort since her husband was deployed in January.
"He goes everywhere with me. Every day he comes to work with me," said Judkins, who works in a dentist's office. "I just bought a new table from the Amish community, and he sits at the head of the table. Yes, he does."
Cindy Branscom of Hallowell, whose husband, Colonel John Branscom, is in Afghanistan, said spouses of service members in the 240th Engineer Group often bring their Flat Daddies to monthly support meetings and group barbecues. She said one spouse, Mary Holbrook of Hermon, has been seen in the company of her cutout husband, Lieutenant Colonel Randall Holbrook.
"Mary has taken Randy to different events," Branscom said.
But then again, that's almost expected.
"I think it's wonderful," Branscom said. "My Flat Daddy sits in my dining room all the time. He even went to Easter dinner with us at my family's house."
"It's partially a statement on modern media that 'celebrity poop' has more entertainment value than health, famine or other critical issues facing society and governments today."Indeed, I always found famine and other critical issues to be entertaining, and it truly is a travesty that more such stories are being denied the average American. I mean, think of the entertainment value in millions of Americans being informed of the fact that their government and the government of Israel are planning to turn a large part of the Middle East along with its inhabitants into a glass parking lot that would easily eclipse Cruises' progeney's stool in any museum. Think of the 'wow' factor involved in Americans reading about how their last two presidential elections were stolen, that their political leaders are patholigical liars and that they murdered almost 3,000 American citizens on 9/11 to further their own entertaining agenda. Talk about reality TV! The ratings would go through the roof!
Palestinian citizens inspect their destroyed houses after an Israeli military operation in the West Bank city of Nablus, 27 August 2006. (MaanImages/Rami Swidan) |
IOF continue to raze agricultural land in Halhoul and Beit Omar to build sections of the Annexation Wall (PCHR) |
Footnotes
[1] 1 donum is equal to 1000 square meters.
The U.S. government's first experience with forcibly spreading democracy came in the wake of the Spanish-American War. When the U.S. government declared war on Spain in 1898, it pledged it would not annex foreign territory. But after a swift victory, the United States annexed all of the Philippines. As Tony Smith, author of America's Mission, noted,
Ultimately, the democratization of the Philippines came to be the principal reason the Americans were there; now the United States had a moral purpose to its imperialism and could rest more easily.William McKinley proclaimed that in the Philippines the U.S. occupation would "assure the residents in every possible way [of the] full measure of individual rights and liberties which is the heritage of a free people, substituting the mild sway of justice and right for arbitrary rule." He also promised to "Christianize" the Filipinos, as if he did not consider the large number of Filipino Catholics to be Christians. McKinley was devoted to forcibly spreading American values abroad at the same time that he championed high tariffs to stop Americans from buying foreign products.
The "mild sway of justice" worked out very well for Filipino undertakers. The United States Christianized and civilized the Filipinos by authorizing American troops to kill any Filipino male 10 years old and older and by burning down and massacring entire villages. (Filipino resistance fighters also committed atrocities against American soldiers.) Hundreds of thousands of Filipinos died as the United States struggled to crush resistance to its rule in a conflict that dragged on for a decade and cost the lives of 4,000 American troops.
Despite the brutal U.S. suppression of the Filipino independence movement, President Bush, in a 2003 speech in Manila, claimed credit for the United States's having brought democracy to the Philippines:
America is proud of its part in the great story of the Filipino people. Together our soldiers liberated the Philippines from colonial rule.Perhaps Bush believes that subservience to the U.S. government is the highest freedom that any foreign people can attain. His comments illustrated the continual "1984"-style rewriting of American history. Latin American interventions
Woodrow Wilson raised tub-thumping for democracy to new levels. As soon as he took office, he began saber-rattling against the Mexican government, outraged that the Mexican president, Victoriano Huerta, had come to power by military force (during the Mexican civil war that broke out in 1910). Wilson announced in May 1914,
They say the Mexicans are not fitted for self-government; and to this I reply that, when properly directed, there is no people not fitted for self-government.This is almost verbatim what Bush has said about Iraqis and other Arabs. And as long as a president praises self-government, many Americans seem oblivious when he oppresses foreigners.
Wilson summarized his Mexican policy: "I am going to teach the South American republics to elect good men!" U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain Walter Hines Page explained the U.S. government's attitude toward Latin America:
The United States will be here 200 years and it can continue to shoot men for that little space until they learn to vote and rule themselves.In order to cut off the Mexican government's tariff revenue, Wilson sent U.S. forces to seize the city of Veracruz, one of the most important Mexican ports. U.S. soldiers killed hundreds of Mexicans (while suffering 19 dead) and briefly rallied the Mexican opposition around the Mexican leader.
In 1916, U.S. Marines seized Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. After the United States could not find any Dominican politicians who would accept orders from Washington, it installed its own military government to run the country for eight years. The previous year, the U.S. military had seized control of Haiti and dictated terms to that nation's president. When local residents rebelled against U.S. rule in 1918, thousands of Haitians were killed. Tony Smith observes,
What makes Wilson's [Latin American] policy even more annoying is that its primary motive seems to have been to reinforce the self-righteous vanity of the president.World War I and II
After Wilson took the nation into World War I "to make the world safe for democracy," he acted as if fanning intolerance was the key to spreading democracy. He increasingly demonized all those who did not support the war and his crusade to shape the postwar world. He denounced Irish-Americans, German-Americans, and others, declaring, "Any man who carries a hyphen about him carries a dagger which he is ready to plunge into the vitals of the Republic." Wilson urged Americans to see military might as a supreme force for goodness, appealing in May 1918 for "force, force to the utmost, force without stint or limit, the righteous and triumphant force which shall make Right the law of the world." As Harvard professor Irving Babbitt commented,
Wilson, in the pursuit of his scheme for world service, was led to make light of the constitutional checks on his authority and to reach out almost automatically for unlimited power.Again, the parallels with Bush are almost uncanny. And many of the same intellectuals who currently praise Wilson for his abuses in the name of idealism also heap accolades on Bush's head.
The deaths of more than 100,000 Americans in World War I did nothing to bring Wilson's lofty visions to Earth. The 1919 Paris peace talks became a slaughter pen of Wilson's pretensions. One of his top aides, Henry White, later commented, "We had such high hopes of this adventure; we believed God called us and now we are doing hell's dirtiest work." Thomas Fleming, the author of The Illusion of Victory, noted, "The British and French exploited the war to forcibly expand their empires and place millions more people under their thumbs." Fleming concluded that one lesson of World War I is that "idealism is not synonymous with sainthood or virtue. It only sounds that way." But it did not take long for idealism to recover its capacity to induce political delusions.
During the 1920s and 1930s, U.S. military interventions in Latin America were routinely portrayed as "missions to establish democracy." The U.S. military sometimes served as a collection agency for American corporations or banks that had made unwise investments or loans in politically unstable foreign lands. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler bitterly lamented of his 33 years of active service,
I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.... I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.Franklin Roosevelt painted World War II as a crusade for democracy — hailing Joseph Stalin as a partner in liberation. Roosevelt praised Stalin as "truly representative of the heart and soul of Russia" — as if the lack of bona fide elections in Russia was a mere technicality, since Stalin was the nation's favorite. Roosevelt praised Soviet Russia as one of the "freedom-loving Nations" and stressed that Stalin was "thoroughly conversant with the provisions of our Constitution." Harold Ickes, one of Roosevelt's top aides, proclaimed that communism was "the antithesis of Nazism" because it was based on "belief in the control of the government, including the economic system, by the people themselves." The fact that the Soviet regime had been the most oppressive government in the world in the 1930s was irrelevant, as far as Roosevelt was concerned. If Stalin's regime was "close enough" to democracy, it is difficult to understand why Roosevelt is venerated as an idealist. Cold War interventions
Dwight Eisenhower was no slacker in invoking democracy. In 1957, he declared,
We as a nation ... have a job to do, a mission as the champion of human freedom. To conduct ourselves in all our international relations that we never compromise the fundamental principle that all peoples have a right to an independent government of their own full, free choice.He was perfectly in tune with the Republican Party platform of 1952, which proclaimed,
We shall again make liberty into a beacon light of hope that will penetrate the dark places.... The policies we espouse will revive the contagious, liberating influences which are inherent in freedom.But Eisenhower's idealism did not deter the CIA, dreading communist takeovers, from toppling at least two democratically elected regimes. In 1953, the CIA engineered a coup that put the shah in charge of Iran. In 1954, it aided a military coup in Guatemala that crushed that nation's first constitutionally based government.
The elected Guatemalan government and the United Fruit Company could not agree on the value of 400,000 acres that the Guatemalan government wanted to expropriate to distribute to small farmers. The Guatemalan government offered $1.2 million as compensation based on the "taxed value of the land; Washington insisted on behalf of United Fruit that the value was $15.9 million, that the company be reimbursed immediately and in full, and that [President Jacobo] Arbenz's insistence on taking the land was clear proof of his communist proclivities," as America's Mission noted.
Yet, at the same time, the federal government in the United States was confiscating huge swaths of private land throughout American inner cities for urban renewal and highway projects, often paying owners pittances for their homes. There was no foreign government to intervene to protect poor Americans from federal redevelopment schemes. The fact that the U.S. government got miffed over a 1954 Guatemalan government buyout offer helped produce decades of repressive rule and the killing of hundreds of thousands of Guatemalan civilians.
Since the Eisenhower era, U.S. government bogus efforts to spread democracy have sprouted like mushrooms. Especially with the creation of the National Endowment for Democracy in 1983, all limits were lifted on how many democratic cons that the U.S. government could bankroll abroad. The U.S. government is currently spending more than a billion dollars a year for democracy efforts abroad. But Thomas Carothers, the director of the Carnegie Endowment's Democracy and Rule of Law Project, warns that Bush policies are creating a "democracy backlash" around the globe.
The greatest gift the United States could give the world is an example that serves as a shining city on a hill. As University of Pennsylvania professor Walter McDougall observed, "The best way to promote our institutions and values abroad is to strengthen them at home." But there is scant glory for politicians in restraining their urge to "save humanity." The ignorance of the average American has provided no check on "run amok" politicians and bureaucrats.
James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy [2006] as well as The Bush Betrayal [2004], Lost Rights [1994] and Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil (Palgrave-Macmillan, September 2003) and serves as a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.
This article originally appeared in the June 2006 edition of Freedom Daily.
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Intel exec to lead CIA capital arm
By Joris Evers
CNET News.com
August 29, 2006
Intel executive and security industry veteran Christopher Darby has signed on to become the next chief executive officer at In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel said in a statement Tuesday. Darby was vice president of Intel's middleware products division and has held senior positions at security companies Sarvega, which was bought by Intel, and @stake, which was acquired by Symantec. He will take the helm at In-Q-Tel on Sept. 18, according to the statement.
In-Q-Tel had been looking for a new chief executive since April, when former U.S. cybersecurity chief Amit Yoran resigned only four months after his appointment. In-Q-Tel is charged with funding and developing new technologies for the intelligence community. Yoran resigned for personal reasons. For its CEO search, In-Q-Tel retained the services of the executive search firm Heidrick and Struggles.
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Senate puts Tomlinson nomination on hold
By BARRY SCHWEID
AP
Thu Aug 31, 2006
WASHINGTON - The Senate Foreign Relations Committee does not plan to act on President Bush's re-nomination of an agency head accused of misusing government money.
A summary of a report by the State Department's inspector general, released Tuesday, said Kenneth Tomlinson misused government funds for two years as chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors. That's the agency which oversees the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and other U.S. government broadcasting abroad.
Tomlinson is accused of overbilling for his time and hiring a friend as a consultant.
On Wednesday, Andy Fisher, a spokesman for the Foreign Relations Committee, said the panel had taken no action on the January 2005 nomination while the investigation was under way "and does not intend to now."
Under the 1994 law that created the board, Tomlinson, who has denied the allegations, can remain at his post until a successor is confirmed.
Tish King, a spokesperson, had no immediate reaction to the committee's move.
Reps. Howard Berman and Tom Lantos, California Democrats, and Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., said in a statement Tuesday they were outraged by what has emerged from the investigation that they requested last year.
They said in a letter to President Bush that the results of the investigation left no doubt that Tomlinson violated public trust and Bush's own ethical standards.
"We urge you to immediately remove Mr. Tomlinson from his position and to take all necessary steps to restore the integrity of the Broadcasting Board of Governors," they wrote.
Tomlinson's term expired in 2004, but he stayed on under board rules which permit him to continue until a replacement is confirmed, Fisher said.
The White House has not indicated what it might do about the situation, Fisher told The Associated Press.
Berman and Lantos asked the chairman of the House International Relations Committee, Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., to hold hearings on Tomlinson. Dodd asked the same of Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ill., chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.
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Governors take Guard appeal to Rumsfeld
By ROBERT TANNER
AP National Writer
Thu Aug 31, 2006
The nation's governors sought help Thursday from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in their ongoing fight against proposals in Congress to give President Bush more control - and governors less - over the National Guard during disasters.
A letter from the two chairpersons of the National Governors Association, along with the two governors who head the group's work on the Guard, asked Rumsfeld to join the unanimous opposition of governors to proposed changes spurred by the chaos and delays in sending help that followed Hurricane Katrina.
All 50 governors earlier this month signed a formal letter opposing a House provision in the National Defense Authorization Act that would let Bush federalize the Guard without governors' consent in the event of a "serious natural or manmade disaster, accident or catastrophe."
Adding to their worries, the NGA said, the Senate approved-version of the legislation would give Bush similar powers by redefining the Insurrection Act, a Civil War-era law that's rarely used.
"It's a basic reshuffling of the balance between the states and the federal government," said Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, chairwoman of the NGA. "It's ill-advised. It's a bad idea."
The letter states: "Each of these proposals represents a dramatic expansion of federal authority during natural disasters that could cause confusion in the command-and-control of the National Guard and interfere with states' ability to respond to natural disasters within their borders." It was signed by Napolitano, Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, Mike Easley of North Carolina and Mark Sanford of South Carolina.
A Rumsfeld spokeswoman, Cynthia Smith, said he would not comment publicly and would respond directly to the governors.
The four governors also sent a letter to leaders in the House and Senate, urging them to drop the proposals.
Under current law, governors are commanders of the Guard in their states, but the president must get their consent to federalize the troops domestically, except in cases of rebellion.
Governors were particularly upset that the proposals in Congress were made without any discussion with governors.
"Governors are commanders-in-chief. They need to be consulted, they need to be part of solutions," said David Quam, the NGA's director of federal relations. "They shouldn't have to catch things coming through Congress and on their way to the president's desk."
An agreement is expected later this month on the final legislation that would go to Bush.
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Dollars and Sense
H&R Block loss more than quadruples
By Jonathan Stempel
Reuters
August 31, 2006
NEW YORK - H&R Block Inc. on Thursday cut its full-year earnings outlook and said its quarterly loss more than quadrupled because of rising mortgage defaults.
The Kansas City, Missouri-based company, which is also the largest U.S. tax preparer, said its fiscal first-quarter net loss soared to $131.4 million, or 41 cents per share, from $28 million, or 8 cents, a year earlier. Revenue fell 12 percent to $540.8 million.
Results included a loss of $61.3 million, or 19 cents per share, for loans the company had to buy back from Wall Street investors because more customers of its Option One Mortgage Corp. subprime unit are falling behind on payments.
Subprime borrowers have weaker credit histories than prime borrowers, and often miss payments faster as interest rates rise or the economy slows.
The mortgage loss, disclosed on August 24, was the latest setback for a company already facing regulatory and litigation problems, errors in computing its own taxes, and a loss of market share to rival Jackson Hewitt Tax Service Inc. (NYSE:JTX - news)
H&R Block also cut its full-year profit per share forecast to between $1.60 and $1.85 from between $1.80 and $2.05. The company generates much of its profit and revenue in the quarter ending April 30, which includes the main tax filing season.
Analysts polled by Reuters Estimates on average forecast a first-quarter loss of 36 cents per share on revenue of $587 million, and full-year profit of $1.53 per share. Many cut their forecasts after last week's announcement.
Chief Executive Mark Ernst told reporters on a conference call that H&R Block is reserving twice as much for loan buybacks as it did three months earlier.
"Loan buyers are being much more stringent in the enforcement of provisions to buy back loans," Ernst said. "We've reserved for 100 percent of that exposure."
Ernst also said the company has tightened underwriting standards, especially in the Midwest and other regions where delinquencies are highest.
H&R Block shares closed Thursday up 13 cents at $21.03 on the New York Stock Exchange. They have fallen 14 percent this year, while Jackson Hewitt is up 14 percent.
LAWSUITS
Mortgage services generated a $4.9 million pretax quarterly loss, compared with $130.7 million of income a year earlier, as revenue fell 44 percent to $169.7 million.
Revenue increased 62 percent in business services and 15 percent in tax services, but fell 13 percent in consumer financial services.
This week, H&R Block agreed to a $39 million settlement to end a class-action lawsuit accusing it of deceiving customers into taking out high-interest loans while they waited for tax refunds.
The company is also still defending a lawsuit by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer accusing it of steering clients into retirement accounts that carry excessive fees.
Some investors have speculated H&R Block might sell some lagging businesses to bolster its share price, but it did not hint of plans to do so.
"You're going to a get a conglomerate discount against that share price unless all of the performing units in that entity are going very well," Chief Financial Officer William Trubeck told reporters.
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Pop Goes the Bubble
by Bill Bonner
LewRockwell.com
August 30, 2006
"What's that Hissing Sound?" headlines a piece in the Economist:
"The boom has lifted the (U.S.) economy in three ways: it has boosted residential construction: it has made people feel wealthier and so encouraged them to spend more; and it has allowed homeowners to use their property as a gigantic cash machine, taking out money by borrowing against their capital gains. Merrill Lynch estimates that the three together accounted for more than half of America's total GDP growth since last year.
"Counting construction, finance, and estate agency, the housing boom has been responsible for one-third of all the jobs created since 2001. If house-price rises level off, GDP growth could dip below 2% in 2007. If prices fall, expect a steeper slowdown." Since it is now in the Economist, it's official - housing is in trouble. But will prices actually go down?
We have a report directly from one of the hottest markets in the country, south Florida:
"We just missed it. The time to sell was a year ago. A guy came along and offered us $500,000 for that place we bought. We paid $450,000 for it two years ago. Our timing couldn't have been worse. We expected to tear down the house and build a new one...and we were sure we'd make a couple hundred thousand in profit. Minimum. But you warned us. And we didn't listen. And then, we got that offer for $500,000 and turned it down. We thought we could get much more. But that was then and this is now...I'd be happy to get back what we have in it. But we can't even get anyone to look at it."
Paul Kasriel says it's the worst supply/demand equation of residential real estate in 34 years. Sales in July were down more than a fifth. Inventories were up more than a fifth. And a lot of real estate investors are now going to the liquor store to get another fifth. They wish they could turn the clock back a few months and unload properties at last year's prices.
But maybe the situation is not as bad as it looks. The New York Times reported the news last week that real estate downturns in England and Australia have been surprisingly mild. And now, Business Week has a big story entitled "Housing: The Roof Won't Collapse On The U.S. Economy."
According to Business Week, housing can go a little soft without damaging the economy too severely. That view has become the mainstream dream. What do we know; maybe it will turn out to be true. As our friend John Mauldin points out, we usually muddle through. Usually, tomorrow is like today. Usually, nothing too bad or too good...happens. Usually, things are average, ordinary, common, and regular.
But wait, there is nothing ordinary about this housing bubble. In the space of less than 10 years, according to Robert Shiller's index, the real value of residential property doubled. And householders doubled up their debt, too. Neither are things that happen every day; in fact, they've never happened before!
We are not looking into a crystal ball here. We are just putting two and two together. If things are usually usual, then when they are unusually unusual, they are probably more likely to become usual again, rather than become more unusually unusual. That seems so obvious to us, we won't bother to explain it.
And when housing prices become usual, then the poor sap who has bet his house on something extraordinary is likely to be in a tight spot. And since the entire U.S. economy, and by extension the entire world economy, depends on him being able to continue to spend, then they're all in a tight spot.
Yes, the whole world economy now depends on a man who spends money he doesn't have - money of no sure value - on what he surely can't afford, and which he probably doesn't need anyway. He can only do so as long as his house rises in price. And now, that the rise in housing prices has come to an end. What next?
Everyone has come to expect slowing real estate gains. The boom is over; everyone seems to think so. So, where is the surprise? Where's the money to be made...or lost?
Again, we don't know. But in August 1982, Business Week famously predicted that the equity market was finished. Now, in August 2006, BW tells us not to worry: the roof will not collapse. BW might not be right, but it might be consistent; the roof might blow up.
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Hamish McRae: Americans are in for tough times, even if the Fed won't (yet) say it
The Independent
31 August 2006
Even the shortest visits to the US tell you things about the economy that you would not get from the figures. While this university town might seem to be sailing comfortably along, it is only an hour from Detroit, home of the US auto industry.
The American education industry remains in pretty good shape but the car industry most certainly is not. The talk is about globalization and the energy squeeze but the practical impact of both is being felt in jobs and most particularly in property prices.
For there is a huge imponderable in the US at the moment: will the stalled housing market spread through into a stalled consumer boom? If it does, then a recession in the early part of next year will loom. If not, then the present growth phase will end in a "soft landing". The figures so far are ambivalent, but what a visit has brought home is that some parts of this huge country will certainly experience recession, even if the overall numbers say one hasn't happened.
The housing story can be swiftly told. Price inflation in housing had been running at close to 10 per cent a year but in the past few months this has ground to a halt. The supply of new homes on the market has shot up and is now equivalent to ten months' sales (first graph).
The number of housing permits, which had been rising steadily since the early 1990s - and which did not turn down significantly during the 2001 recession - has suddenly fallen (second graph). And inflation for existing homes is now zero, maybe negative (final graph).
It is actually quite difficult to get up-to-date figures for house prices in the US, but I gather from a paper by Commerzbank that one of the more reliable series comes from the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. In the past 30 years this has never turned negative, though in real terms it fell in economic downturns of the early 1980s and early 1990s.
Some calculations by the bank suggest outcomes somewhere between prices being flat in real terms to a fall of 5 per cent in real terms. That would be less serious than the house price deflation in the UK in the early 1990s, and the bank concludes that a decline in housing activity likely to provoke a recession next year is unlikely at present interest rates. So, a soft landing.
That is still the majority view on Wall Street and at the Federal Reserve. Minutes out this week from the last meeting, when the Fed held rates instead of increasing them as it had done steadily over the previous two years, confirm that it expects a slowdown next year. Specifically it thinks there will be 18 months of below-trend growth but nothing worse.
But then they would say that, wouldn't they? It is very hard in the context of the public debate for mainstream forecasters to predict recession. For the Fed to do so, given its authority, would almost certainly be to provoke one. If you are seeking the opposing view you have to go to the mavericks.
One small independent forecasting unit that had not previously come up on my radar is the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI). It was one of the very few organizations in the US to predict the 2001 recession and its views now have just been reported in the New York Times.
The ECRI does not yet call a recession but it is concerned. It thinks that the last six months show similarities to two situations. One is the run-up to previous recessions; the other to the gentle slowdowns that took place in the middle of the cycle in the 1980s and 1990s. At the moment it feels it is too early to decide which way things will flip.
This notion that it is evens whether there will be a recession next year, while much more gloomy than the mainstream position, feels to me to about the right judgement at the moment. In another couple of months we will know much more.
Meanwhile consumers are worried. The economic forecasting unit, the Conference Board, found that consumer confidence in August was at its lowest since November last year. You would expect that. The issue is the extent to which a lack of confidence translates into lower purchases. The evidence is consistent but not conclusive, but the danger is there.
The questions that follow are whether this danger is fully understood by the rest of the world and whether US policy could respond effectively if and when the danger of recession becomes more apparent. I think the answer to both is "probably not".
You have to remember that the world economy now is very different to the world economy during the run-up to the last US recession in 2001. Most obviously, China is much more important in terms of incremental demand, while Europe is much less important.
But China is very dependent on the US market to maintain demand, much more so than Europe ever was. China would ride through a US recession by switching output to the domestic market, but the shock would linger. What concerns me is that there is really very little folk-memory in China of a US recession - even the one in 2001 was a very mild one.
As for the US response, the Fed would stop increasing rates but its ability to start cutting them is very limited. Inflation remains high relative to money interest rates, at least by historical standards. Real interest rates are still only about 2 per cent. If real rates at 2 per cent are enough to stop the economy, that tells you that an awful lot of people are over-borrowed.
Yes, in extremis, the Fed can cut rates. Were there some kind of financial crash that is what central banks do. But trimming rates when inflation is above 3 per cent is not really credible. Indeed were it to cut short rates there would be a danger that long rates would move upwards and long rates are extremely important for housing finance.
Monthly payments matter. They matter to many people in Britain, of course, but I think they matter more in the US. They crop up in casual conversation - in a chat with the immigration official at Detroit airport, for example - in a way that they don't quite dominate things in Britain.
My overriding impression is that that the US consumer is quite close to a tipping point, a point where collectively he or she will at last decide to slow down the growth of spending and maybe start to cut back. In Detroit I guess that has already happened.
That would indeed point towards recession. But set against that another thought. It is that economies are like supertankers and America's is more "supertankerish" than any other. Things change quite slowly; momentum takes a long time to lose pace. If the "recession next spring" view is wrong, it will be because of that momentum.
But then, you say, how will the US cope with a long period of slower growth, little or no rise in house prices and still-high energy costs? Americans are in for tougher times, and I think they know it.
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Taxpayers pay for Bush's campaign travel
Associated Press
Wed Aug 30 2006
WASHINGTON - Bankrolled almost entirely by taxpayers,
President Bush is roaming far and wide on Air Force One to help Republicans retain control of Congress and capture statehouse contests in high-stakes midterm elections.
In 15 months, including back-to-back fundraisers Wednesday in Little Rock, Ark., and Nashville, Tenn., Bush has collected $166 million for the campaign accounts of 27 Republican candidates, the national GOP and its state counterparts across the country, according to the
Republican National Committee.
High-dollar Washington galas headlined by the fundraiser-in-chief brought in a big share of the total. The president also has scooped up campaign cash in 36 cities, travels that have taken him as near as McLean, Va., in the Washington suburbs and as far as Medina, Wash., 2,800 miles to the west. On Thursday, Bush adds yet another locale to the list: Salt Lake City.
All this to-and-fro presidential politicking is only expected to increase as November draws closer. And it is the taxpayers, not the campaigns or political parties, who foot most of the travel bill.
When Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, first lady
Laura Bush or any federal official helps a candidate,
Federal Election Commission guidelines say the campaign must reimburse the government only the equivalent of a first-class fare for each political traveler on each leg of the trip. Typically, that means paying a few hundred or at most a few thousand dollars to cover the president and a couple of aides from the White House Office of Political Affairs.
The White House deems staffers from any other office "official," eliminating any need for campaigns to cover their travel.
And the White House requires reimbursement only if the president specifically advocates a candidate's election, for instance by headlining a fundraiser or a rally on their behalf. That means that staging appearances alongside the president - from Air Force One's jetway or at a policy event - costs a candidate nothing even though they can bask in the media spotlight.
Bush is not the first president to operate this way. The federal regulations governing reimbursement for political travel have been on the books at least since the Reagan administration, and the White House said Bush adheres to all rules.
Pete Sepp, spokesman for the National Taxpayers Union, a taxpayers advocacy organization, suggested at least requiring campaigns to cover the actual cost of fueling and providing a crew to Air Force One, which runs to tens of thousands of dollars each hour for the specially retrofitted Boeing 747-200B Bush usually uses.
But Massie Ritsch, spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks money's impact on politics, said that seems unrealistic. "You would bankrupt the campaign," he said.
Ritsch said the system is likely to remain for the foreseeable future - mostly because both Democrats and Republicans have benefited, leaving little will on either side to change it.
"Having a member of your party in the White House is a perk for any candidate in that party," he said. "He comes with all the trappings of the president and you as a candidate really don't have to pay for any of it."
Beside the substantial Air Force One costs, other expenses not covered by the airfare reimbursement are extensive.
The
Secret Service provides massive presidential protection. Advance teams fan out before trips to map every move. Overnight stays bring hotel costs for the large presidential entourage. Duplicate motorcades of well over a dozen vehicles each, including armored limousines and sometimes several helicopters, must be shipped ahead on cargo planes to every city.
Like others before it, the White House often transfers more of the bill-paying burden onto taxpayers by pairing an "official" event with the political one. Then, the percentage of time spent on official and political duties is calculated to determine what portion of the first-class fare is owed by the campaign.
Nearly two-thirds of Bush's travel days outside of Washington for political appearances this election cycle have included an "official" event. Most of the time, the two events are near enough not to require a separate flight, making it even more economical for the campaign.
At the beginning of August, for instance, Bush stopped briefly at a county emergency operations center outside Cleveland to commemorate routine disaster declarations for the area's heavy rains. It was a stop added only at the last minute, and just five minutes from a home where he was scheduled to raise $1.5 million for Ohio's Republican candidate for governor, Kenneth Blackwell.
An increasingly common approach is to pick a local business for Bush to tour and use as a backdrop for casual remarks on the economy. A visit earlier this month to a York, Pa., Harley-Davidson plant preceded a fundraiser for Republican gubernatorial candidate Lynn Swann.
In July, Bush chatted with workers at a Wisconsin Allen-Edmonds shoe factory before helping GOP Rep. Mark Green (news, bio, voting record)'s gubernatorial campaign. And in mid-August, the president raised money for Republican congressional candidate John Gard in Oneida, Wis., following a brief stop at a nearby metal plant.
A president's unique ability to attract large donations from party faithful, and to do it on the cheap for the benefiting campaign, help explain why Bush is in demand as a fundraiser despite low approval ratings. Many candidates, however, are choosing this year to set up their Bush-headlined donor receptions in private homes, where the media is barred.
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Ford looks for buyers for Aston Martin
By Sean O'Grady
The Independent
01 September 2006
James Bond's favourite car maker may be up for grabs. The Ford Motor Company, the owner of the famous Aston Martin marque since 1993, made another bold move in its search for long-term financial stability yesterday when it announced its most glamorous operation might be sold off.
Ford's chairman and chief executive, Bill Ford, said: "As part of our ongoing strategic review, we have determined that Aston Martin may be an opportunity to raise capital and generate value".
The review is being led by Kenneth Leet, a former Goldman Sachs and Bank of America executive, and has already mooted a possible sale of Jaguar.
However, that option looks less likely now, with Mr Ford stating: "We continue to be encouraged by Jaguar's progress and by the strength and appeal of the Jaguar, Land Rover and Volvo product line-ups." By contrast, Aston Martin is "the most logical and smart divestiture choice", he said. A source at Ford of Europe confirmed that "some parties had expressed an interest" in Aston Martin.
Despite the continuing fame of Aston Martin sports cars, their role in numerous Bond films, the rave reviews they routinely generate among motoring journalists, and their high price tags (the range tops out at £177,000) Aston Martin loses money: $162m (£85m) in the second quarter.
Its disposal would bring relief to Ford's hard-pressed shareholders and would be the first tangible fruit of the strategic review.
Although no names are yet firmly in the frame, the JCB chairman, Sir Anthony Bamford, would seem a possible buyer given his very public recent interest in Jaguar. He would not be alone. Various private equity interests, the former Ford boss Jacques Nasser, Oleg Deripaska, the billionaire head of the Russian GAZ concern, and car groups from Renault-Nissan to Hyundai have been mentioned in the context of Jaguar, and will no doubt be quietly running their slide rules over Aston Martin, a fine ornament for any of them.
It may be that Ford has discovered that selling off Jaguar but keeping Land Rover is too logistically demanding, given the way the two have been so closely integrated - sharing engines for example. Aston Martin's headquarters is at the old British Leyland technical centre in Gaydon, Warwickshire where it shares facilities with Land Rover. However, because it is a much smaller, niche player, making about 5,000 cars a year, Aston Martin should be easier to extricate.
Even by the dramatic standards of the British motor industry, Aston Martin has had a chequered history, going bust and moving premises many times. It was founded in 1921 by Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford (no relation to Sir Anthony) to race cars up Aston Clinton hill in Buckinghamshire, hence the name. It enjoyed its greatest success in the 1950s and 1960s when owned by a tractor maker, David Brown, who pioneered the DB series. Perhaps JCB ownership might similarly see James Bond in his first Aston Martin JCB.
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It's India calling for US arms biggies
THE TIMES OF INDIA
1 Sep, 2006
WASHINGTON: As India's economic and strategic ties to the United States expand, defence contractors are eyeing its growing military budget and ageing arsenal as a multibillion dollar opportunity.
According to the Washington Post , at stake are contracts worth billions that could help offset a projected slowdown in Pentagon weapons spending and extend production lines for such items as the F-16 fighter.
While not the largest foreign defence market, the daily said industry officials and analysts consider it one of the fastest growing as it replaces fleets of Soviet-era planes and goes shopping for new radar and missile systems.
The largest near-term opportunity is India's plan to buy 126 fighter aircraft, which would replace their older Russian MiGs. Lockheed and Boeing are marketing their F-16 and F-18 aircraft respectively, squaring off against Britain's Eurofighter and Israel's Rafael.
"That will be the bellwether. How serious is India in looking at us as a supplier, how serious is the US in releasing technology?" Joel L. Johnson, an analyst at Teal Group Corp., a Fairfax research firm, told the Post .
"It's an untapped market that nobody has the inside track on yet," Johnson said citing Teal Group's estimate that India's defence budget is expected to reach more than $23 billion this year, compared with about $13 billion in 2000.
"The Indians have money, their economy is growing and, so, US companies are guessing that when our own defence budget finally gets crunched" the Indian market will be profitable, he was quoted as saying.
For both Lockheed and Boeing the orders could help extend their production lines. Lockheed has supported the F-16 line for years with international orders, but recently began laying off hundreds of workers as it prepared for demand to dwindle.
"If they pick us to re-capitalise their Air Force, you're talking about 25 years of relationship," the daily quoted Ron Covais, Lockheed's vice president for corporate international business development as saying.
Several of the Pentagon's largest contractors, including Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing Co., have either opened new offices or beefed up existing ones in India and are part of an industry-wide wooing of military officials and business leaders there.
Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., maker of the Black Hawk helicopter, opened an office in India in April and is competing for a contract for 200 helicopters potentially worth more than $3 billion. General Dynamics Corp., based in Falls Church, bought an Indian company in 2004 and is using it to sell communications equipment.
The Aerospace Industries Association, a lobbying group, is planning a trip there in December with executives from up to 20 companies.
"The biggest hurdle is going to be patience," Torkel Patterson, president of Raytheon International Inc., said of joining the market. "We're getting to know each other."
The company is hoping to sell Patriot missiles to India and to help it upgrade its missile defence system.
Overseas sales have become an increasingly important part of revenue for US defence contractors. Lockheed, headquartered in Bethesda, aims to increase its foreign business to 20 percent of revenue by the end of the decade, up from about 14 percent now.
Lockheed got a "toe" into the Indian market this year when it was hired to supply parts for submarines. "It's modest, but part of confidence building," said Lockheed's Covais.
Developing a significant presence in India will not be easy. The country has traditionally bought its weapons from Europe or Russia and has a complicated and lengthy procurement process, according to industry insiders cited by the Post.
"The cost of marketing could equal 5 to 10 percent of contract. You're looking at a lot of upfront costs," said Richard Aboulafia, an aviation analyst for Teal Group.
Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman, the maker of the Global Hawk, has tapped the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development for help, as it prepares to open an office in New Delhi next year.
The agency has arranged meetings for the firm and introduced them to Indian military officials, company officials said. "They have been educating us on how the Indian aerospace business has been developing," said Scott Porter, a Northrop vice president.
Critical to any contract, industry officials acknowledge, will be partnerships with Indian businesses, the Post said. The Indian government is expected to require contractors to do about 30 percent of the work in the country, aiding local businesses and ensuring that they will have access to critical technologies.
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Chavez forges new-oil based partnership with Angola
AFP
Thu Aug 31, 2006
LUANDA - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called for a new political partnership with fellow oil producer Angola after holding historic talks with his counterpart Jose Eduardo dos Santos in Luanda.
Chavez, on the first visit by a Venezuelan head of state since Angola won independence in 1975, also pledged to open a first embassy in Luanda as a symbol of the burgeoning bilateral relationship.
"Our intention is to establish a partnership in the political, social and economic fields as well as cooperation in the petroleum sector," Chavez told reporters after the pair held talks in the Angolan capital.
"I am convinced that such an approach will enable us to move further down the road in our relations," he added.
Chavez said that he wanted to open an embassy in the Angolan capital shortly, adding that it was "a priority of ours."
Venezuela is now the fifth largest oil exporter in the world, producing 3.27 million barrels a day while Angola, already Sub-Saharan Africa's biggest exporter after Nigeria, is on course to produce two million bpd by 2007.
The two leaders were expected to hold another round of talks later in the evening before Chavez flies out in the early hours of Friday morning.
Angolan officials said prior to the visit that the two leaders also planned to discuss the situation in the Middle East.
Chavez arrived in Angola the day after a trip to Damascus where he met fellow US arch-foe President Bashar al-Assad and pledged to "reject the American empire's imperialism and attempts at hegemony."
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Australia's 200 rich list records largest ever rise in wealth
By Tania Kent
wsws.org
1 September 2006
The Business Review Weekly's annual rich list this year registered a staggering increase in the wealth of the super rich in Australia. Five new billionaires were created in 2005-06, taking the total to 22-the biggest single jump in combined wealth in the list's history.
The richest 200 people in Australia were worth a combined income of $A101.5 billion, up 22 percent from a year ago.
The minimum wealth needed to qualify was $A130 million, 13 times higher than the $10 million needed when the list was first published in 1983.
The latest results confirm that the enrichment of the privileged that began in 1983 under the Hawke-Keating Labor government has accelerated under Howard's Liberal-National Coalition since 1996. This process will only intensify further through the Howard government's massive tax handouts for the rich in the past two budgets.
Many of the super-rich have benefited from the current "commodities boom"-soaring corporate profits generated by high prices for mining exports, especially to China, and the resulting speculative investments in stocks and shares on global markets.
Highly inflated property prices, whilst preventing many low-income earners from buying and imposing rising debts onto others, have also produced spectacular returns for major property developers and investors. No less than 58 of the 200 members of the Rich List gained their wealth via property.
Parasitism prevails at almost every level. Some of the biggest tycoons simply inherited their riches, including James Packer, son of Kerry Parker, the media and gambling magnate, and Gina Rinehart, daughter of iron ore baron Lang Hancock.
One of the most loathsome enterprises, the gaming industry, which has produced chronic social problems from gambling addiction, continued its heavy presence in the Business Review Weekly list. James Packer assumed his late father's spot at the top of the list with assets of more than $7.1 billion. Buoyed by casino and other gambling profits, the family's wealth rose $200 million in 12 months.
Frank Lowy, the founder of the Westfield Group, the world's biggest owner of shopping malls, remained at number two after increasing his wealth by $600 million to $5.4 billion. In other words, Lowy's worth grew by almost $2 million a day, about 12,000 times the income of an average worker on $60,000 per year.
Packaging billionaire Richard Pratt, who controls the Visy group, came in third after adding another $500 million to his name and taking his total wealth to $5.2 billion. Next came Chinese-born solar panel manufacturer Zhengrong Shi with $3 billion.
Other billionaires included Harry Triguboff, whose $2.5 billion was acquired through property investment; racing personality David Hains ($2.3 billion); poker machine supplier Len Ainsworth and his sons ($1.9 billion); property and service magnate John Gandel ($1.8 billion) and Channel Seven television network owner Kerry Stokes ($1.8 billion).
Rinehart became Australia's first female billionaire with a fortune valued at $1.8 billion, doubling her $900 million listing last year. She is now ranked the 8th richest person in Australia.
While millions of ordinary people struggle to relieve the mounting financial stress produced by soaring fuel prices, rising interest rates, credit card debt and cuts in benefits for the unemployed, single parents and the disabled, the rich have difficulty spending their spectacular fortunes.
Consumer surveys reveal that spending on maintaining extravagant and self-indulgent lifestyles has hit record highs. At the Sydney Easter yearling sale, the world's third largest auction of year-old horses, the average price of a racehorse climbed 39 percent to $288,497 and 13 thoroughbreds sold for more than $1 million, compared with eight last year.
Sotheby's, the auctioneers, sold at least eight paintings in Australia for more than $1 million during 2005, compared to none the year before. Mark Fraser, managing director of Sotheby's Australia, said: "A lot of people accumulate vast wealth and then have no idea why they have bothered because once they have got the houses and the yachts; they're not quite sure what to do what next. Art is something they become passionate about."
Fifteen Lamborghinis were sold in the first four months of 2006, compared with six during the same period in 2005, according to figures kept by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries.
Such spending provides a glimpse of a world that millions in Australia can barely imagine. While guaranteeing further tax cuts for the rich, the Howard government has abolished social security rights for tens of thousands of people through its "welfare to work" packages. The new industrial relations legislation, which has already produced drastic cuts in wages and conditions for many workers, will only fuel the social polarisation and exacerbate class tensions.
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Target: Iran
Iran: IAEA report indicates U.S. propaganda baseless
www.chinaview.cn 2006-09-01 06:03:45
TEHRAN, Aug. 31 (Xinhua) -- The vice president of Iran's atomic energy organization said on Thursday that a new report of the IAEA on Iran's nuclear issue had proved the fact that the U.S. propaganda against Iran was baseless, the Mehr news agency reported.
"Although the report does not meet our expectations, it shows the U.S. propaganda against the Islamic Republic's peaceful nuclear program is completely baseless," Mohammad Saeedi told the news agency shortly after International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohammed ElBaradei released a report on Iran's nuclear program.
"The report of the IAEA is not negative, and it is very factual and adds that the Iranian nuclear program is under the supervision of the IAEA and that there has been no deviation," Saeedi said. He stressed that on the whole, the report presented that Iran had opened gates of its nuclear establishment to investigators and IAEA easily.
"The investigators have been able, during this time, to watch Iran's nuclear activities and install extra cameras in enriching establishments for more and better surveillance," he said.
Earlier in the day, ElBaradei presented the report to the UN Security Council, saying "Iran has continued enriching uranium despite a UN nuclear deadline for it to suspend or face possible sanctions."
However, a senior official in Vienna close to IAEA said Thursday that UN nuclear inspectors have found no "concrete proof" that Iran's nuclear program is of military nature.
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No Concrete Proof Iran Nuclear Program Is Military
AFP
Aug 31, 2006
Vienna - UN nuclear inspectors have found no "concrete proof" that Iran's nuclear program is of a military nature, a senior official close to the UN nuclear agency said Thursday. "Inspectors have not uncovered any concrete proof that Iran's nuclear program is of a military nature," the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.
The official said this conclusion came as inspectors from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were investigating "additional questions about the scope and nature of Iran's nuclear program" as part of an ongoing investigation since February 2003.
These questions have involved Iran's work with sophisticated P2 centrifuges to enrich uranium and blueprints Iran possesses to make nuclear weapons parts.
Iran has not been forthcoming in answering these questions.
"There is a standstill with regard to the resolution of outstanding issues which would clarify the peaceful nature of Iran's program," the official said.
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Russia rejects Iran sanctions
By Alireza Ronaghi
Reuters
September 1, 2006
TEHRAN - Iran said on Friday that a nuclear standoff with the West could only be settled through negotiation while Russia called imposing punitive sanctions on Tehran for not ending sensitive atomic work a dead end.
European Union foreign ministers, meeting in Finland, want further dialogue with Iran rather than sanctions after Tehran defied Thursday's U.N. deadline to stop work that the West fears could be a prelude to making a nuclear bomb, officials said.
At a two-day informal meeting near Finland's border with Russia, the EU ministers were expected to seek fresh talks despite U.S. pressure for a rapid move to impose sanctions.
"The Islamic Republic of Iran believes the only possible way to achieve fair and acceptable results for all parties is through negotiations and by respecting Iran's legitimate rights," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said.
"Iran's activities are transparent, public and have peaceful aims far away from any ambiguities and it (the issue) can be easily solved through negotiations," he was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.
The U.N. watchdog, the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said on Thursday that Tehran had failed to meet an August 31 deadline to halt uranium enrichment.
The West accuses Iran of seeking to build atomic bombs, a charge Iran denies, saying its aim is to produce electricity.
The IAEA report also said Iran had recently resumed enriching small amounts of uranium and said Iran's lack of cooperation had blocked the U.N. atomic watchdog's probes.
Asefi said the report showed Iran had met its commitments under international regulations, including the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and also showed Iran's "extensive cooperation" with the IAEA.
IRAN DEFIANT
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeated his defiant line on Friday, vowing never to give up Iran's nuclear ambitions.
The European Union expressed continued concern.
"Unfortunately Iran has show that ... for the moment at least it doesn't plan to cooperate on the nuclear issue and it's clear that on a matter of such importance the international community cannot stand idly by," EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said.
"But at the same time we also said we want a diplomatic solution, so therefore I hope that the channels of communication can be still kept open," she told a news conference.
French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin echoed this position. "I regret very strongly the insufficient response of Iran," Villepin said at a news conference in Rome.
"We think it is possible to go forward with dialogue but it is important that the international community show Iran the necessity to change position."
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana told Reuters he hoped to meet Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, in the coming days to seek a clear answer to major power proposals for broad cooperation if Tehran halts uranium enrichment.
An EU diplomat said they were tentatively due to meet in Berlin next Tuesday, one day before six big powers meet in the German capital to chart next steps in the standoff with Iran.
An EU official said Finland, which holds the 25-nation bloc's rotating presidency, did not want any substantial discussion of sanctions at their meeting.
Iran sent a confidential 21-page reply last week to explain its position but Western officials said it evaded the world community's key demand to halt making nuclear fuel.
FACE TO FACE MEETING
"We have to see if we can get some understanding of the elements of the document which are not clear enough for us and I think a meeting face to face could clarify that," Solana said.
Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja, who will chair the meeting, said the EU should try to convince the Islamic Republic to give a straightforward answer and suspend enrichment.
Diplomats said Iran's tactic was to fudge the deadline, and try to divide Russia and China from the West and the Europeans from the United States by dangling the possibility of a negotiated freeze on enrichment at a later date.
Russia's foreign minister cast doubt on whether the
U.N. Security Council can reach quick consensus on punitive measures.
"We take into account the experience of the past and we cannot ally ourselves with ultimatums, which all lead to a dead end," Interfax news agency quoted Sergei Lavrov as saying.
"Yes, there are countries whose policies raise doubts, and cause discontent, but we all live in the same world and we need to ... draw them into dialogue, and not isolation and sanctions."
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Bolton: Unanimity Not Necessary on Iran
By GEORGE JAHN
Associated Press
Aug 31, 2006
VIENNA, Austria - Iran remained defiant Thursday as a U.N. deadline arrived for it to halt uranium enrichment, and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said unanimity among the Security Council was not needed to take action against Tehran.
Key European nations will meet with Iran in September in a last-ditch effort to seek a negotiated solution to the standoff over Tehran's refusal to freeze uranium enrichment, a senior U.N. diplomat said Thursday.
President Bush said "there must be consequences" for Iran, adding that the war between Tehran-backed Hezbollah militants and Israel demonstrated that "the world now faces a grave threat from the radical regime in Iran."
The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in a report obtained by The Associated Press that Iran shows no signs of freezing enrichment, adding that Tehran started work on a new batch Aug. 24.
The confidential IAEA report will be given to its 35-nation board. That is expected to trigger U.N. Security Council members - by mid- September - to begin considering economic or political sanctions.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a crowd of thousands in the northwestern city of Orumiyeh that "the Iranian nation will not accept for one moment any bullying, invasion and violation of its rights."
He also said enemies of the country were trying to stir up differences among the Iranian people, but "I tell them: you are wrong. The Iranian nation is united."
"They claim to be supporting freedom but they support the most tyrannical governments in the world to pursue their own interests," he said, referring to the United States. "They talk about human rights while maintaining the most notorious prisons. Those powers that do not abide by God and follow evil are the main source of all the current problems of mankind."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said an Iranian refusal to freeze uranium enrichment by the deadline would be "very regrettable," and the international community would be unable to ignore it.
"We have made Iran a very, very good offer," she during a visit to the Baltic Sea port of Warnemuende, alluding to a package of incentives aimed at persuading Tehran to curb its nuclear activities.
If Iran does not accept, "we will not slam the door shut, but we cannot act as if nothing had happened," Merkel said, adding that the next step would have to be discussed, but gave no details.
The State Department has not said publicly what type of punishment it might seek. But U.S. and European officials have indicated they might push for travel restrictions on Iranian officials or a ban on sale of dual-use technology to Iran. The hope is to start with relatively low-level punishments in a bid to attract Russian and Chinese support, the officials have said.
More extreme sanctions could include a freeze on Iranian assets or a broader trade ban - although opposition to that by Russia, China and perhaps others would be strong, particularly since it could cut off badly needed oil exports from Iran.
Russia and China, which have traditional economic and strategic ties with Tehran, seem likely to resist U.S.-led efforts for a quick response, which means sanctions do not loom immediately. That has prompted the Bush administration to consider rallying its allies to impose sanctions or financial restrictions of their own, independent of the Security Council.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi shrugged off the possibility of sanctions, telling state-run television that Iran "will find a way to avoid pressure eventually."
The deadline was widely reported on the front pages of major Iranian newspapers. The daily Aftab said the showdown offers "the enemies" a chance to ratchet up pressure on Iran. Another newspaper, Kargozaran, expressed doubt that the U.S. would muster enough support within the Security Council for punitive sanctions.
It's not clear when exactly Thursday's deadline will run out. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, said he believed it would end at 12:01 a.m. Friday in Tehran - or 3:31 p.m. Thursday at the Security Council in New York.
But diplomats said the exact timing was not particularly relevant for two reasons: They believe Iran already has given its answer; and they would almost certainly abandon their sanctions threat if Iran decides to suspend enrichment after the deadline.
On Wednesday, Ahmadinejad urged European members of the council against resorting to sanctions, saying punishment would not dissuade his country. Another top Iranian official urged Japan on Thursday to help peacefully resolve the standoff without sanctions.
Abbas Araghchi, deputy minister for legal and international affairs of the Iranian Foreign Ministry, met with Japan's foreign minister in a clear sign of Iran's continued efforts to lobby countries worldwide against support for sanctions.
"We are confident of the peaceful nature of our program. So if there is also goodwill and sincerity in the other side, we are sure that we can reach a good solution, a good conclusion through negotiations," Araghchi said.
Tehran insists it wants to enrich uranium as fuel solely for civilian nuclear power stations. However, the U.S. and other Western countries suspect it wants to use it in nuclear warheads.
Comment: Bolton stated point blank (again) that the US doesn't give a damn about international law or agreement. If the US feels like blowing up a country with its pal Israel, it'll do just that. And what will the world's response be (again)?
"Oh... Um, okay... We're just gonna sit over here in the corner and, um, knit a sweater. OH! If you need some more soldiers, just let us know..."
See anything wrong with this picture??
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US Unsuited For Long War: Cato Institute Paper
by Pamela Hess
UPI Pentagon Correspondent
Aug. 31, 2006
Washington - As the U.S. president and defense secretary try to shore up support for the Iraq war with a series of tough speeches, a professor at a U.S. military graduate school argues the United States is politically, militarily and culturally ill suited to fight and win insurgent wars, beginning with Iraq, but extending to much of what America will face in the long war on terrorism.
Jeffrey Record is a professor in the Department of Strategy and International Security at the U.S. Air Force's Air War College in Montgomery, Ala., has written extensively on the U.S. military, and served as assistant province adviser in the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War.
In a forthcoming paper for the libertarian Cato Institute, Record says the attributes that have made the U.S. military the premier conventional force are the same ones that prevent it from being effective against an insurgent enemy.
"Counter-insurgency and imperial policing operations demand forbearance, personnel continuity, foreign language skills, cultural understanding, historical knowledge, minimal employment of force, and robust interagency involvement and cooperation," he writes. "None of these are virtues of American statecraft and warmaking. Americans view war as a suspension of politics; they want to believe that the politics of war will somehow sort themselves out once military victory is achieved."
Post-war Iraq is an example of those very weaknesses, he said.
"Most (military operations other than war) are ... inherently manpower intensive and rely heavily on special skills ... that are secondary, even marginal to the prosecution of conventional warfare," he writes. "Forces capable of achieving swift conventional military victory thus may be quantitatively and qualitatively unsuited for post victory tasks of the kind the United States has encountered in Iraq.
"The very attributes that have contributed to the establishment of unchallenged and unchallengeable American conventional military supremacy -- impatience, an engineering approach to war, confidence in tech solutions to non-technological problems, preference for decisive conventional military operations, sensitivity to casualties, and above all the habit of divorcing war from politics -- are liabilities in approaching war against motivated and resourceful irregular armies, he said."
To win a counter-insurgency war, the U.S military, and its political establishment and its citizenry, would have to turn its fundamental predilections on their head: it would need far greater numbers, because counter-insurgency is manpower intensive. It would need to embrace the idea that small wars are won not by inflicting greater casualties than the enemy but by affecting local opinion, and firepower is always a last report.
It would need to abandon ingrained American optimism and notions of control and instead embrace the lessons of history, to recognize what lesser goals might be achievable. It must become culturally adept, reduce its dependency on technology and engage with vulnerable populations. It would have to patient, occupy foreign countries with a smaller logistical footprint, and give up its sensitivity to casualties.
Record sees no sign of that happening.
For 20 years, the military was guided by the so-called Weinberger-Powell doctrine, a philosophy that counseled the use of overwhelming force, clearly defined objectives, strong popular support, and an exit strategy. It was an "all or nothing" approach that came out of the Vietnam war experience, and one that left the U.S. Army ill-prepared for the Iraq insurgency.
"The Army may well leave that country with an 'Iraq Syndrome' as hostile to counter-insurgency as the 'Vietnam syndrome,'" he writes.
Even in the midst of an insurgent war, the Pentagon still resists making the sweeping and difficult changes that would enable a victory, according to Record.
The Pentagon conducted a bottom-up review of forces and capabilities in its 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review. While it called for a modest increase in special forces -- those best able to fight an insurgency and that embody many of the above characteristics -- it did not seriously address the problem, he writes.
"Four years of war against a deadly unconventional enemy have not disturbed any Navy or Air Force conventional weapon system in the acquisition pipeline even though these two services are supporting players in counter-insurgent operations," he writes. "The U.S. military force posture appears increasingly at odds with the emerging strategic environment."
The Army is half the size it was 15 years ago, and there is no effort to enlarge it. The Pentagon, and Army, is insistent that a temporary increase of 30,000 soldiers during the Iraq war be just that -- temporary. The Marine Corps has been repeatedly rebuffed in its effort to add at least 5,000 Marines permanently. The smaller troops numbers are supposed to be offset by improved weapons and technology that puts more "boots on the ground."
Record told UPI Thursday the situation in Iraq may have been unavoidable, given the nature of the U.S. military and U.S. politics, which he considers fundamentally incapable of fighting a protracted small war.
"I'm not sure we are in the mess we are in because faulty execution," he said. "It was doomed from the beginning, one can argue.
"Barring profound changes in America's political and military cultures, the United States runs a significant risk of failure in entering small wars of choice, and great power intervention in small wars is almost always a matter of choice," he writes
Small wars serve more to showcase the "embarrassing" limits of American conventional military power, he believes.
"Indeed the very act of intervention in small wars risks gratuitous damage to American military reputation," he writes.
Record calls for a rejection of intervention in foreign internal conflicts except when American interests are directly threatened.
"We're no good at this stuff, and we never will be. If we are no good at it, why do we keep getting involved in it?" he said.
"The policy question is not whether the United States should abandon its conventional capabilities but whether given the evolving strategic environment it should create ground (and supporting air forces) dedicated to performing operations other than war, including counter-insurgency, or simply abandon direct military intervention in foreign internal wars all together unless there is a compelling national interest at stake and intervention commands broad public support."
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Who Benefits?
Holy Land churches attack Christian Zionism
By Matthew Tostevin
Reuters
Thu Aug 31, 2006
JERUSALEM - The Vatican's envoy in the Holy Land and bishops from three other churches have launched a rare joint attack on the Christian Zionist movement, accusing it of promoting "racial exclusivity and perpetual war."
Christian Zionists form a growing part of the pro-Israel lobby in the United States, the Jewish state's main ally. They believe the return of Jews to the Holy Land and establishment of Israel are proof of God's promises to biblical patriarchs.
Churches in the Middle East often appear closer to the Palestinians, whose Christian minority makes up a substantial portion of their clergy in the region.
The "Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism" was signed by Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, a Palestinian, and by bishops of the Episcopal, Evangelical Lutheran and Syrian Orthodox Churches in Jerusalem.
Many Christian Zionists are evangelical Protestants, and the declaration is a sign of a growing struggle between the groups.
"The Christian Zionist programme provides a world view where the Gospel is identified with the ideology of empire, colonialism and militarism," said the declaration, accusing Christian Zionists of hurting hopes for Middle East peace.
"We reject the teachings of Christian Zionism that facilitate and support these policies as they advance racial exclusivity and perpetual war," the declaration added.
The three main Christian Zionist groups in Jerusalem said in a statement that they were concerned at the declaration's "inflammatory language" and that it was far from the truth.
Christian Zionists stress Christianity's Jewish roots. Some back the movement to settle the occupied West Bank, the cradle of Jewish civilization, which Palestinians want as part of an independent state.
INFLAMMATORY
"We pray for peace. But we note with sadness that the present Palestinian government is totally dedicated to the destruction of Israel," the Christian Zionist groups said in their statement, referring to the governing Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.
The prospect of Middle East peace talks has looked even more unlikely since Hamas's election victory in January. The group is formally dedicated to destroying Israel.
"The problem in the region is not as simple as the Jerusalem Declaration makes out," the Christian Zionists' statement said.
Some Christian Zionists believe that the return of the Jews to the Holy Land will bring about the end of the world and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Some also believe Jews themselves will have to become Christians or perish.
The Christian Zionist groups in Jerusalem said they had no "thirst for Armageddon" and do not base their theological position on "end time prophecy." They called for dialogue with the clerics behind the declaration that condemned them.
Christian Zionism is strongest in the United States, where support is much higher than in Europe or other parts of the world for Israel in its conflicts with the Palestinians and in its recent war with Hizbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.
James Rudin, senior advisor on inter-religious affairs for the American Jewish Committee in New York, said there are "millions and millions of American Christians" who support Israel but who do not consider themselves Zionists.
He said they represent a core of support far larger than those who base their backing of Israel on the Bible.
Comment: Well, the "anti-Semitic" Vatican is in trouble now...
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Thousands could be grounded by US-EU air security spat: IATA
AFP
Thursday August 31, 2006
Over 100,000 people a week could be stopped from flying unless the United States and the European Union strike a deal over the provision of sensitive information on passengers, the top industry body said.
The EU's top court in May overturned a decision forcing airlines to supply data on European passengers to US authorities as part of a security crackdown, giving the two sides until September 30 to reach a new agreement.
"The US and Europe must move quickly to avoid a big potential crisis over the Atlantic in the following weeks," said the director general of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), Giovanni Bisignani.
"Failure to agree by September 30 could ground up to 105,000 travellers a week," he told reporters in a speech in Tokyo.
The European Commission, the EU's executive body, wants a new deal after the European Court of Justice quashed the previous agreement, ruling that it was "founded on an inappropriate legal basis."
Under the old agreement, airlines were required to provide the US authorities with more than 30 pieces of data on passengers and crew, including credit card information, addresses and telephone numbers, 15 minutes before departure.
The EU-US accord was reached in 2004 as a number of aircraft were being prevented from entering the United States over concerns that suspicious passengers were aboard. It was lambasted by civil liberties and privacy groups.
Meanwhile, IATA also predicted that the global airline industry will almost halve its losses in 2006 thanks to buoyant economic growth and deep cost cuts.
After a loss of 3.2 billion dollars in 2005, the industry is now expected to remain in the red to the tune of 1.7 billion dollars this year, much less than the 3.0 billion dollars previously feared, the association said.
"With an average price of oil at 68 dollars (per barrel) for the year we expect the total fuel bill to be 115 billion dollars but losses will be cut to 1.7 billion dollars," Bisignani said.
He attributed the improvement to "efficiency, hard work and a strong revenue environment.
"Overall, the industry has never been so lean, mean and well poised to return to profitability," he added.
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Two Die, Many Hurt in Southern Thailand Bomb Attacks
By Sutin Wannabovorn/AP Writer
The Irrawaddy
August 31, 2006
At least 22 bombs exploded almost simultaneously Thursday inside commercial banks in southern Thailand, killing two people and injuring 28 in a region tackling a Moslem insurgency.
The homemade bombs, triggered by mobile phone signals, were placed in garbage bins, at newspaper stands and near seats where customers wait for service in the banks in Yala province, said Maj-Gen. Paithoon Choochaiya, who heads the provincial police force. Authorities said two suspects had been arrested.
The army chief in the south, Lt-Gen. Ongkorn Thongprasom, said some of the apparently small devices were hidden in women's handbags or secreted into thick books carried by teenagers dressed in student uniforms.
The bombs were set off in 22 of Yala's 30 bank branches, which are normally crowded at month's end as customers draw on pay-check accounts.
The Islamic Bank of Thailand was among those attacked, according to reporters at the scene. The bank, set up in five southern provinces by the government, was created according to Muslim law, which prohibits interest.
Deputy Prime Minister Chitchai Wannasathit told reporters in Bangkok that authorities had learned militants planned to launch a major attack Thursday to coincide with the national day of neighboring Malaysia and the founding day of Bersatu, believed to be an umbrella group for a number of rebel groups fighting the Bangkok government.
"I ordered them [the authorities] to take precautions and prevention but this incident still occurred," he said.
More than 1,500 people have been killed in the insurgency in southern Thailand since early 2004, most of them in the Muslim-dominated provinces of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani. The militants are seeking to separate from a country where Buddhists form the vast majority.
Their targets have included government officials, school teachers, policemen, Buddhist monks and many Muslims accused of co-operating with the government. Violent incidents - bombings, drive-by shootings and beheadings - occur almost daily.
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Vietnam: Passenger tries to board plane with gun
VietnamNet Bridge
01/09/2006
Security forces at HCM City's Tan Son Nhat Airport on August 29 found a gun in the luggage of a passenger of Latvian nationality.
Police have temporary held this passenger to determine the origin of the gun and the reason the passenger put it in his luggage.
Also on August 28 at Tan Son Nhat Airport, a drunken passenger on a French airline flight to Thailand said that his luggage had a bomb.
Relevant bodies checked the aircraft and found no bomb. The drunken passenger is being held for further investigation.
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U.S. erred in Iraq rebuilding program: auditor
By Ross Colvin
Reuters
Thu Aug 31, 2006
BAGHDAD - The U.S. government should have been quicker to employ local firms to help rebuild Iraq instead of relying on U.S. corporations whose contracts gave them no incentive to minimize costs, a U.S. official said on Thursday.
The top U.S. auditor for Iraqi reconstruction also said it was too early to say whether Iraqis would "get value for money" from the $22 billion Washington is investing on rebuilding postwar Iraq. The program has been beset by complaints of waste, fraud and corruption that his office is investigating.
Thirty percent of the projects inspected by his office had not met the required standard and some were outright failures.
"The program is obviously still in full swing, and to make a judgment about its success or failure at this point would be premature," Stuart Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, told journalists in Baghdad.
Of the 56 sample projects his office had inspected, 70 percent had met "contract expectations," he said. "Admittedly there have been some failures in that other 30 percent, but the overwhelming majority indicate good work."
Fraud and corruption were not common but "waste is an issue," he said, noting that $6 billion, the biggest percentage of the fund, had been swallowed by the cost of protecting sites from insurgents.
"Poor security limits movement, which prevents contractors from getting the job done. It is a cost."
He said the U.S. government should have made less use of expensive U.S. corporations. There has been a big shift in the past year toward giving most contracts to Iraqi firms, he added.
PAYING FOR EVERYTHING
"We used them because we did not know what the conditions would be in postwar Iraq. But we could have moved sooner away from design-build consortia, employing more Iraqi firms. That puts money where it should be, into the Iraqi economy."
He said the U.S. corporations had been given cost-plus contracts, under which the contractors are paid in full even if mistakes are made and the costs of the project go over budget.
"You pay for everything. Mistakes, everything. It is the cost of doing business," Bowen, a former White House lawyer on his 13th visit to Iraq, told Reuters.
Of the $22 billion in the reconstruction fund, $15 billion had now been spent, he said. A total of $21 billion had been "obligated," or put under contract. The remaining money would be obligated by September 30, when all unused funds are due to revert to the U.S. Treasury.
Bowen also said the United States needed to give more help to the Iraqi government in fighting corruption, which Iraqi graft inspectors estimate costs $4 billion a year.
"More U.S. financial and personnel support needs to be given to the anti-corruption effort," said Bowen, whose office was created by the U.S. Congress in November 2003.
Comment: It's nice to see that American tax dollars are funding this "auditor" who has revealed conclusions that the rest of the world figured out several years ago.
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Big Mama Ain't Happy
Ernesto lashes coast of Carolinas
BBC News Online
Tropical Storm Ernesto has made landfall on the North Carolina coast, bringing heavy rains and winds just below hurricane strength.
More than eight inches (20cm) of rain fell around the Wilmington area, and forecasters warned of more to come.
The governors of both North and South Carolina have activated National Guard troops, while the Virginia governor has declared a state of emergency.
Forecasters issued warnings of tornadoes and storm surges.
Ernesto made landfall near Cape Fear in North Carolina at 2330 (0330 GMT).
It is packing maximum sustained wind speeds of 70mph (113 km/h) - just below the 74mph threshold for it to be declared a hurricane. It is moving north-northwest at 18mph, said the National Hurricane Center.
It brought heavy rain to both North and South Carolina from mid-afternoon on Thursday.
Services closed
Power companies reported some outages and some roads were flooded.
Some ferry services, ports and campsites were closed, though no evacuations have been ordered in either state.
A tropical storm warning remains in effect from north of the South Santee river to Currituck Beach Light, forecasters said. A hurricane watch is in effect from South Santee river to Cape Lookout in North Carolina.
Forecasters also warned that storm surges of up to five feet above normal tide levels were possible along the North Carolina coast, and that heavy rain of up to 10 inches could fall in north-eastern South Carolina into the mid-Atlantic states.
They say Ernesto could spawn isolated tornadoes in parts of North Caroline and Virginia.
For North Carolinians, some rain is welcome after a widespread summer drought, but residents fear a repeat of catastrophic flooding caused by Hurricane Floyd in 1999.
"We need some rain around here - just not all at once," convenience store worker Jean Evans told Associated Press from North Caroline's Holden Beach.
Ernesto was briefly the year's first hurricane on Sunday when its winds reached 75mph before it weakened over the mountains of Haiti.
The storm killed at least two people in Haiti before striking Cuba, where it dropped up to seven inches of rain before fading into showers and thunderstorms.
It began intensifying after passing over Cuba and forecasters had feared it could come ashore at hurricane strength. But in the end Ernesto passed through Florida as a weak tropical storm.
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Mexico braces for strengthened hurricane John
Associated Press
01/09/2006
CABO SAN LUCAS, MEXICO - Hurricane John strengthened Friday as it took aim at Mexico's Baja California peninsula, where authorities threatened to forcibly evacuate people from their homes and thousands of tourists sheltered in hotel ballrooms.
John, which was upgraded to a Category 3 hurricane, was expected to make landfall somewhere along the southern tip of the peninsula around midday. The storm had maximum sustained winds of 115 mph and could drop up to 18 inches of rain in places and create up to a 1.5-metre-foot storm surge, forecasters at the U.S. National Weather Center in Miami said.
John was about 160 kilometres southeast of Baja's tip early Friday, moving at 16 kph. A hurricane warning was in effect for the southern part of the peninsula, including Cabo San Lucas and fellow resort San Jose del Cabo.
The storm's track was expected to take it out to sea this weekend, meaning there was little threat to the United States. Thus far, no deaths have been reported.
Officials on Thursday ordered the evacuation of about 10,000 people from Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo and at least 5,000 others from La Paz, the capital of the state of Baja California del Sur. Shelters had been set up at more than 100 schools.
In La Palma, where thousands of construction workers and hotel employees who work in the luxurious tourist resorts live under tarps and tarpaper shacks along a dry riverbed, police drove by ordering residents to evacuate. "This is the last warning, the next time we'll come and force you to leave," officers announced over loudspeakers.
State Gov. Narciso Agundez earlier said that residents who refuse to head for higher ground will be removed from their homes.
"I'm leaving for safety's sake. Things can be replaced, but not lives," said Ana Maria de Martinez, 60, as she nervously bundled up the tarps that make up the walls of her shack and her few items of clothing and climbed into a Mexican Navy truck.
At one school shelter, distraught mothers stared at the bare concrete floors as their children scampered around them, most unaware of the menace approaching from the sea.
"I left more for the sake of my children's safety, than mine. I've already had a life, but they still have to live theirs," said Leonora Lazaro Alonso, 30, as her 8-year-old son and two daughters, 4 and 6, explored their temporary home at the shelter.
Across the peninsula, shop owners and hotels boarded up windows and hotel workers stripped rooms of light fixtures and furniture, in case plate-glass windows were shattered. Long lines snaked from gas stations and grocery store shelves were picked clean of many items.
Meanwhile, between 7,000 and 8,000 tourists who remained in Cabo San Lucas were relocated Thursday to hotel ballrooms and rooms away from the beach to wait out the storm.
"There's no other place to go," said Bill Crowley, a 42-year-old tourist from Lakewood, Colo. "I would evacuate the first floor of these hotels, but we're on the third floor, so we should be all right."
Paul Mares, also from Colorado, stocked up on a 12-pack of beer at a local store the evening before the hurricane was to strike, noting, "It's good to be prepared."
Officials closed the local airport Thursday night, ending a mad scramble for last-minute flights. Driving out wasn't much of an alternative - there's only one narrow road, 640 kilometres long, leading to Tijuana.
Tourism authorities said late Thursday that hotel occupancy rates were only about 40-50 per cent, as most visitors had been advised to return home.
Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Kristy was downgraded from a hurricane Friday as it churned farther out in the Pacific Ocean, with maximum sustained winds of 110 kph. Forecasters said it was possible the larger Hurricane John could eventually absorb Kristy.
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Strong Earthquake Registered Near Pacific Coast, However No Tsunami Predicted
Nidhi Sharma
AllHeadlineNews.com
September 1, 2006
Sacramento, CA - The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center tracked a strong earthquake near the Solomon Islands but says no tsunami is expected along the California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, or Alaska coasts.
The earthquake occurred at 3:19 AM Pacific Daylight Time on September 1, with a preliminary of magnitude 6.9 on the richter scale.
Based on the earthquake's magnitude and other historical tsunami information- no tsunami is expected. However local tsunamis are possible at coastal locations which experienced strong ground shaking due to underwater landslides.
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California sets global example with historic deal to reduce emissions
The Independent
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
Published: 01 September 2006
The state of California is embarking on a ground-breaking effort to curb global warming, following an agreement between Arnold Schwarzenegger, the state's movie star Republican Governor, and the Democrat-dominated state legislature, to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent by 2020.
The agreement, the result of months of fractious negotiation and considerable bad blood between Mr Schwarzenegger and his fellow Republicans, sets California far apart from the Bush administration, which has rejected the Kyoto Protocol and questioned the very existence of global warming.
It also opens the way to an outpouring of technological advances in alternative energy in the Golden State - from solar panels on homes and businesses to battery-powered cars and biodiesel trucks.
Like others, Mr Schwarzenegger argues that fighting global warming makes good business as well as environmental sense.
"We can now move forward with developing a market-based system that makes California a world leader in the effort to reduce carbon emissions," the Governor said in a statement. "The success of our system will be an example for other states and nations to follow as the fight against climate change continues. [This deal] strengthens our economy, cleans our environment and once again, establishes California as the leader in environmental protection."
Environmentalists and Democratic leaders with whom Mr Schwarzenegger hashed out the deal on Wednesday were equally ecstatic. California state assembly speaker Fabian Nunez said the deal was "the most important day in my legislative career". Bob Epstein, of the business lobbying group Environmental Entrepreneurs, said: "This is the tipping point in the country's climate-change debate."
The deal settled the final wording of Assembly Bill 32, which is expected to sail across the Governor's desk. Mr Schwarzenegger is also expected to sign a second bill from the state Senate, prohibiting California from importing new energy sources that did not meet strict emissions standards.
Perhaps the most intriguing part of the legislation is the creation of a system of emissions credits. If a company exceeds its targets on emissions reduction, it can sell the excess to a company lagging behind, creating a financial incentive for businesses to do their bit for the environment.
This was one of the talking points when Mr Schwarzenegger and Mr Blair signed their UK-California partnership agreement on global warming in Los Angeles at the end of last month.
There are signs that the idea may now be copied in other states, starting with Illinois, which sent a delegation of lawmakers on a fact-finding trip to California a few days ago.
The deal is a political coup for Mr Schwarzenegger as he faces a race for re-election in November and may emerge as the signature achievement of his first term. After his popularity slumped to record lows by steering his administration too far to the right last year, he has now gone in the other direction, in part under the influence of his die-hard Democrat wife Maria Shriver, a member of the Kennedy clan.
His environmental advisers are not former energy industry lobbyists, like many of President Bush's appointees, but are long-standing green activists. They have encouraged him to offer incentives for Californians to build solar panels on their roofs. He has also championed research into alternative energies, especially hydrogen fuel cells, and pushed for cleaner car exhausts.
Such initiatives make eminent good sense in an environmentally conscious state like California, which is always at the forefront of regulations to curb pollution - not least because of numerous smog crises suffered first in Los Angeles and, more recently, in the agriculture-intensive Central Valley.
Mr Schwarzenegger has nevertheless broken several rules of modern-day partisan politicking. The Republican minority in the California legislature has opposed the greenhouse gas initiative all the way and has not offered a single vote in favour of either of the bills.
George Plescia, who leads the Republican delegation in the California assembly, condemned the deal almost immediately. "Adopting costly and unattainable regulations will drive businesses and jobs out of California into other states," he said, "and even into other countries with no commitment to improve air quality."
Industry lobbyists and their political allies are unlikely to give up. History suggests they will press to water down Assembly Bill 32, continuing all the way to 2012, when the first emissions mandates kick in.
But there are also reasons to suppose some business interests will continue to support the bill. "Imposing environmental regulations and cleaning up the air clearly hasn't hurt the Californian economy in the past," said Mark Bernstein, a senior policy researcher specialising in energy and environmental issues at the Rand Corporation.
"Now there's money to be made on developing technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. California is where a lot of the research and development is going to take place."
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Bloodbaths and Bliars
Fears of Shiite reprisals after Baghdad bloodbath
by Jay Deshmukh
AFP
Fri Sep 1, 2006
BAGHDAD - Iraqis braced for tit-for-tat violence on the Muslim day of rest after a spate of attacks on mainly Shiite areas of the capital raised already sky-high tensions.
A relentless five-day bloodbath across Iraq has left nearly 400 people dead, many of them in brutal attacks on Shiite markets and neighbourhoods in Baghdad.
The US military has also reported 17 servicemen dead since Sunday.
On Friday it announced that two more troops had been killed in "enemy action" in the mainly Sunni western province of Al-Anbar.
The latest deaths took the military's losses since the March 2003 invasion to 2,637, according to an AFP count based on
Pentagon figures.
Baghdad saw some of the worst fighting over the past five days.
On Thursday, a wave of seven synchronised car bomb and rocket attacks killed at least 43 people and wounded another 160 in Shiite and Christian areas like Sadr City and Al-Amin.
The attacks -- which came shortly before the dusk-to-dawn curfew -- saw dozens of men, women and children falling prey to deadly assaults. They will be blamed on Sunni extremists.
The attack in the Al-Amin neighbourhood left 14 people dead after a car bomb exploded in a market busy with shoppers making last-minute purchases before the curfew -- a common target for Sunni militants.
Six more explosive devices, including rockets, were detonated in three areas, killing another 29 people. Two of them hit the capital's most populous Shiite district of Sadr City.
Previous attacks by Sunni insurgents have been avenged by Shiite death squads and tension was high as hundreds of thousands of Iraqis from the rival communities went to their respective mosques.
Health officials report that nearly 100 people are killed daily across Iraq in sectarian and insurgent violence.
The latest fighting in Baghdad comes despite a massive security crackdown enforced by Iraqi and US forces since mid-June which has seen all vehicle traffic banned from the streets around the main weekly prayers.
The bloodshed has undermined attempts by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to reconcile the warring Muslim sects.
The latest bout of killing burst out after a meeting last Saturday between Maliki and hundreds of tribal leaders, who agreed to back the Shiite premier's reconcilation plans.
Despite the failure of security forces to rein in the raging violence, Maliki on Thursday said that his troop were ready to take charge of security from British-led forces in the southern province of Dhi Qar this month.
"The transfer of responsibility gives us confidence that we are coming closer to taking over overall security responsibility throughout Iraq," Maliki said, in a statement released by the cabinet office.
Dhi Qar will be the second province to be handed over to Iraqi forces after the July 13 transfer of Al-Muthanna province.
Both provinces lie in Iraq's mainly Shiite south, where British-led forces, who have been in charge since the 2003 invasion, have faced less resistance than their US allies further north.
Iraq is to launch a new joint military headquarters on Saturday to command its navy, air force and 10 army divisions, totaling 115,000 troops.
Iraq's armed forces are currently coordinated by US headquarters.
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N.Y. man kills his children and himself
By TOM HAYS
Associated Press
Thu Aug 31, 2006
NEW YORK - A father, convinced he was the victim of a voodoo curse, drowned his two young children in the bathtub and then jumped to his death in front of a subway train, police said Thursday.
Franz Bordes, 39, died at Wednesday evening at a Brooklyn subway station. Investigators found several suicide notes indicating he was at odds with relatives of the children's mother, a Haitian immigrant like Bordes.
"They're using everything they can to destroy me, most of all voodoo," one of the notes read, according to police.
Bordes, who was unemployed, lived with Francoise Mercier, 42, and their children, Sweitzer, 2, and Stephanie, 4, in an apartment on Staten Island. Family members told police that the father usually looked after the children while Mercier worked as a nurse's aide.
After Mercier learned Bordes was dead, she rushed home from work to check on her children, and found them in the bathtub, not breathing, police said. Paramedics later pronounced them dead.
One of the suicide notes was found on Bordes' body. Six more were in the home.
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UK's Blair defies critics over departure date
By Adrian Croft
Reuters
August 31, 2006
LONDON - British Prime Minister Tony Blair urged an end to speculation about when he will leave office and asked to be allowed to get on with his job in an interview published on Friday.
The Times newspaper said Blair had defied critics in his Labour Party by refusing to name a date for stepping down.
Dashing expectations, he insisted he had no intention of saying more about his future either before or during the Labour Party annual conference that opens on September 24, The Times said.
Blair has faced constant rumors about when he will step down after he pledged before winning a third successive general election last year that he would not seek a fourth term.
With his popularity plunging, calls have grown within the Labour Party for Blair to set a date for handing over power to his expected successor, finance minister Gordon Brown.
"I have done what no other prime minister has done before me. I've said I'm not going to go on and on and on, and said I'll leave ample time for my successor. Now at some point I think people have to accept that as a reasonable proposition and let me get on with the job," Blair said.
"I think if it is speculation that people are worried about, there is a simple answer -- stop speculating," said Blair, who has just returned from a Caribbean holiday.
Blair, in office for nine years, said members of parliament who "carried on and on" about his leadership really wanted the party to change direction away from Blair's free-market "New Labour" policies, The Times said.
Despite Blair's refusal to give a timetable, the Guardian newspaper quoted sources as saying that Blair's "current thinking" was that he would stand down in the summer of 2007.
Under pressure to set out a transition timetable, Blair promised in May to give his successor ample time to settle in before the next election, expected in 2009.
But the Sunday Telegraph reported in August that Blair planned to stay on for at least another year, longer than many Labour politicians wanted. It said this could cause friction with Brown, who is impatient to take over.
A poll in the Guardian last week said Britain's opposition Conservatives, under leader David Cameron, had opened a nine-point lead over Labour -- enough to give them a slim parliamentary majority if repeated at a general election.
Blair's popularity has plunged after a series of government scandals over sex, sleaze and mismanagement. He has also faced sharp criticism recently -- some of it from Labour politicians -- for failing initially to call for an immediate ceasefire in the war between Israel and Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas.
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For Your Health
Body acceptance tied to healthy eating
By Megan Rauscher
Reuters
Wed Aug 30, 2006
NEW YORK - Women who accept their bodies, flaws and all, are more likely to eat healthily or intuitively, new research shows. This suggests that women's typical reasons for dieting -- dissatisfaction with their bodies -- may backfire.
"There is a lot of negative body talk among women; women think that they can best lose weight and feel better if they are first dissatisfied with their bodies," Dr. Tracy Tylka told Reuters Health. "Rather, this research shows that adopting a positive body image is more likely to be associated with intuitive eating."
Intuitive eaters don't diet -- they recognize and respond to internal hunger and fullness cues to regulate what and how much they eat, Tylka explained. Intuitive eating has three components: "unconditional permission to eat when hungry and whatever food is desired; eating for physical rather than emotional reasons; and reliance on internal hunger/fullness cues."
Tylka, an assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State University's Marion campus has conducted several studies on the concept of intuitive eating. In one study published in April involving 199 college-aged women, Tylka found that women who followed intuitive eating principles had a slightly lower body weight than women who did not.
"Intuitive eating was negatively associated with body mass, such that people who ate intuitively weighed less than people who dieted," she said.
In her latest studies presented this month at the American Psychological Association meeting, Tylka and her colleagues examined who was most likely to follow intuitive eating principles.
They found, among nearly 600 college women, that those with higher levels of appreciation and acceptance for their body were more likely to be intuitive eaters.
Intuitive eaters spend less time thinking about how their body appears to others and more time considering how their body feels and functions, Tylka observed. They "perceive the body as an agent of action rather than an object of attraction...focusing on how the body functions rather than its appearance," Tylka told Reuters Health.
Intuitive eating, Tylka's found, is "positively associated with psychological well-being, such as self-esteem, positive emotions, adaptive coping, self-acceptance, optimism, and resilience in the face of stress."
Intuitive eaters also reported receiving more positive messages from parents and others regarding their bodies.
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Cold, humidity bad for heart
Kathimerini English Edition
August 31, 2006
The combination of cold weather and high levels of humidity can be fatal for those with heart problems, according to a group of Greek scientists whose groundbreaking research showed that a third more fatal heart attacks occur in the winter than in summer.
A group of cardiologists from Athens's Ippocrateio Hospital studied statistics related to fatal heart attacks recorded in 2001 alongside daily reports by the National Meteorological Service (EMY) regarding temperature and humidity levels.
The research revealed that the average number of fatal heart attacks per day recorded in the winter of that year was about 32 percent greater than the daily average that summer. For those aged over 70, the number of fatal heart attacks recorded in December was double that in June.
In December, the average lowest temperature was 5.9 degrees Celsius (42.6 Fahrenheit) with 72.6 percent humidity as compared to 34.3 degrees Celsius (93.7 Fahrenheit) and 43.6 percent humidity in August.
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Semen 'may fuel cervical cancer'
BBC News Online
The growth of cervical and womb cancers may be fuelled by a hormone-like molecule in semen, a study suggests.
The Medical Research Council team found that the exceptionally high levels of prostaglandin fuelled tumour growth.
They told the Journal of Endocrinology and Human Reproduction that women with either cancer should ask their partners to wear condoms during sex.
But a cancer expert said the chances of unprotected sex affecting a patient's outcome was "slight".
Cervical cancer is usually triggered by the human papilloma virus.
There are about 2,800 cases each year in the UK. In 2004, the latest year for which there are figures, there were just over 1,000 deaths from the disease.
It is the second most common cancer in women under 35.
But scientists believe other factors are involved in causing the virus to develop into cancer.
Potential treatment
Prostaglandin occurs naturally in the cells which line the female reproductive organs. Its role is to regulate cell growth and direct the womb lining to either thicken or shed during the monthly menstrual cycle.
But the concentration of prostaglandin in semen is 1,000 times higher.
Cervical and womb (uterine) tumour cells have prostaglandin receptor molecules on their surface.
The MRC team exposed cancerous tissue to prostaglandin.
They found that the influx of prostaglandin in semen boosted the normal level of signalling between cells.
This high volume starts new cascades of signals that eventually lead to an increase in tumour growth.
The researchers say the finding may help develop a treatment which could stop prostaglandin reaching the tumour cell receptors, and therefore slow the progress of a cancer.
Smear tests
Dr Henry Jabbour, who led the research, added there was action women could take now.
"Sexually active women who are at risk of cervical or uterine cancer should encourage their partners to wear a condom to prevent increased exposure to the prostaglandins that might make their condition worse.
''This also highlights the potential for a new therapeutic approach that will tackle both possible sources of prostaglandin - those produced naturally by women and those introduced to the body by sperm.''
And he said women with pre-cancerous cells may also be affected as it was possible those cells also had prostaglandin receptors, though more work was needed to look into that.
Professor John Toy, medical director at Cancer Research UK, said: "This an interesting piece of laboratory research but it has little relevance to women already diagnosed with cervical cancer in the UK because they will already be receiving appropriate anti-cancer treatment.
"The likelihood of any unprotected sex affecting the successful outcome of their treatment is considered slight.
"The most important thing that women can do at this time to prevent cervical cancer from developing is to go for regular cervical smear tests."
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Coincidence or...?
80 killed when Iranian jetliner landing gear catches fire
CNN
September 1, 2006
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iranian state TV reported 80 people were killed when their passenger plane caught fire as it was landing Friday in Mashhad, northeastern Iran.
The fire began after a tire blew out as the aircraft was landing, television reported.
The flight, by Iran Airtour, which is affiliated to Iran's national air carrier, originated in Bandar Abbas, in the south of the country.
The Russian-made TU-154 was carrying 147 passengers. None of the crew members died in the fire, and other passengers were evacuated, state-TV reported.
Mashhad, 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) northeast of Tehran, is visited by 12 million people annually on pilgrimage to its Shiite Islamic shrines.
State television did not say whether the fire had been extinguished, only that it was under control and that investigators were on the scene.
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US Airways jet's landing gear catches fire in Miami
AP
Thu Aug 31, 2006
MIAMI - A jetliner's landing gear caught fire on the runway at Miami International Airport after two tires blew out during landing, officials said. No one was injured, and the fire was quickly extinguished.
The U.S. Airways Flight 431 was arriving from Charlotte, N.C., with 113 passengers and five crew members when it blew two tires on the runway shortly before noon, airline spokesman Morgan Durrant said.
A small fire ignited in one of the Boeing 737's tires, Durrant said.
The passengers and crew escaped using inflatable slides from the plane's exits, then waited in a grassy area near the runway, officials said. Helicopter footage showed the flames extinguished and the plane surrounded by white foam.
According to Federal Aviation Administration records, the plane was built in 1989.
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