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Editorial: The Right to Bear Arms: Wishful Thinking and the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution
Henry See
5 October 2006
Signs of the Times
U.S. Constitution: Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
The idea that ownership of guns is intimately tied to political freedom is a cornerstone of political thought in the United States. It informs and shapes many a debate, from the question of gun control to the existence of militias, from individual rights to the central power of the federal government. It is not our intention to enter into this debate in this article.
We wish to look at a different aspect of the debate by following the logic inherent in the idea that the keeping and bearing of arms is closely linked to freedom, in the specific situation facing the citizens and residents of the United States today.
It is clear to lucid observers of the American political scene that the Bush administration is waging a war against the U.S. Constitution. Bush himself has referred to it as a "just a piece of paper", a curious position for the man given the task of defending that same Constitution. The presidential oath of office, which appears in Article 2 of the Constitution , states:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Clearly, it is the last thing on Bush's mind.
Last week's enshrining of the "right to torture" as the right of the central government in assuring its security is but one more step on this path, a path that has seen individual rights and liberties fall one by one in the face of the need for "greater security" and the "necessity of protecting our freedoms". Many observers have pointed out the inherent contradiction in sacrificing rights and liberties in order to preserve those same rights and liberties, so we will not go into that here.
In the five years since 9/11, then, the Bush administration has carried out the greatest attack on rights and liberties in the history of the republic -- without disarming the population.
Isn't this curious? Shouldn't that fact tell us something? Might not the entire debate over the right to bear arms be a diversion, a smokescreen, encouraging U.S. citizens to reduce liberty to the right to bear arms? To lull them into a false sense of security: "I have my gun, therefore I am free"? What liberty is left when one's only defence against false arrest, unlawful detention, and torture is to force a stand off at gunpoint when they come to take you away?
Most Americans have been so brainwashed and emptied of the ability to think critically that they are willingly going to the slaughter, still metaphorical at present, but for how long? While they have their TV's, iPod's, SUV's, and fast food, they believe they are free. They send their sons and daughters to far-off lands to die for what they are told by pathological liars is a noble cause. As one reader of the Signs page wrote to us recently:
"Only those who are willing to be led to slaughter will be slaughtered without a fight."
Therefore it is in the interests of the government and those behind it calling the shots to mould a citizenry that will go willingly to slaughter. They are obviously doing this very successfully.
If we look at the attacks Bush & Co are making on the Constitution, these are happening in spite of the fact that many Americans bear arms. People are being controlled in other ways, ways that go around the use of arms: the media, the education system, the fear of Arabs and "Islamic terrorists" whipped up after 9/11, the control of Congress, the Judiciary, and the Executive by the Israel Lobby. It may even extend to the foods people are encouraged to eat that give them junk calories and not nutrition, to the omnipresence of microwaves and cell phone towers.
We repeat, when we look at all that has changed in the USA since 9/11, we see it has been done without disarming Americans.
But people have been disarmed of their capacity to think.
By the time it gets to guns, it is too late, those freedoms have already been lost, so that concentrating on the right to bear arms is looking in the wrong place. That is what I mean when I say it may lead to a false sense of security. People could think that because they are still armed, they, and their freedoms, are still safe even though those freedoms have already been lost.
It looks as if the freedoms of Americans will be lost in spite of an armed population because first, the tyrants have figured out a way of turning the majority of people into sheep, and second, those left will be isolated and unable to make a difference, even with guns.
I take very seriously the attacks on the Constitution. I am shocked that more Americans do not, that they do not see what is happening to their country and that they do not do more to take it back. Before it comes down to a question of guns. It seems to be a case of what we call 'wishful thinking'.
Wishful Thinking
Our goal at Signs of the Times is to present a description of reality that is as close as we can get to the facts, to what is really happening. We publish articles from many points of view, in the context of our commentary and the research of the Quantum Future Group. Obviously, we are still limited in what we see and know, but with each month and year, our understanding deepens.
Such an approach is the opposite of what we term 'wishful thinking', that is, seeing the world as one would like it to be rather than as it is. "How one would like it to be" is influenced by many things, from our education, the way we were raised in our families, the propaganda in the media, the social reinforcement coming from the continual repetition of this propaganda by our friends, colleagues, and family, our need to feel secure, etc. Wishful thinking is the easy way, the path of least resistence. One doesn't need to think; one simply accepts what one hears and parrots it back.
'Wishful thinking' is influenced by those ideas we hold strongly and dear, such as "The US is the pinnacle of freedom in the world".
More cruelly, these different factors become layers in our ability to cut through our filters and blinders. We may beleive that we are "thinking through" a problem or issue, but we are blind to other filters and beliefs that exist in layers deeper down.
'Wishful thinking' also latches onto the visible forms of things and ignores the possibility that the forms may stay stable while the content of those forms change. Look at the form of the U.S. government for example. It is divided into the Legislative, the Judiciary, and the Executive. On paper, it looks the same as the government formed at the close of the 18th century by the founding fathers of the U.S. However, the actual workings of that government have completely changed. Think of George W. Bush's "signing statements", the influence of lobbyists, as well as the changes discussed above since 9/11. Is the Judiciary still independent when it can be used to install a man as president who was not voted in by the electorate?
Look as well at the nature of society those 217 years ago when George Wasdhington became president. When civilians or members of militias had arms at home, they were muskets, rifles, pistols, swords, and bayonets. And when they confronted the opposing army, their opponents were armed with pretty much the same things. Add a few cannons into the mixture, and you have people and arms on both sides, meeting face to face on a battlefield.
What is the situation today? The U.S. army and police forces have access to arms that no civilian will ever have, without going onto the illegal arms market. They have remotely controlled weapons that can attack at great distances. What will happen if there is ever a confrontation between the forces of the government and the civil population? Will it be an even match?
Furthermore, given that the majority of the civilian population is being willingly led to slaughter, what kind of organized populace would ever be able to confront the government? How free are a people engaged in the type of battle we see in Iraq or in Palestine?
Clearly, the situation today has changed from that in 1776 or 1789.
But 'wishful thinking' is highly resistant to fact and proof, preferring the comfort of belief to the ambiguities and instability of a constant putting into question of one's thoughts and ideas.
In the case of the right to bear arms, we can see 'wishful thinking'. It manifests as the idea that "as long as I have my gun, I am free". As we have shown above, this idea is dangerous to those very freedoms. It encourages passivity in the immediate because guns are the means of last resort. If guns come into play in the U.S., it will most likely be because the country has been pushed into a civil war.
And who will that benefit?
The pathocrats, the pathological figures in power, holding real power, whose goal is the death of billions of people of conscience. That includes people of conscience in the United States of America.
For those of you who have guns, please understand. We wish only to encourage you to think through the logic we are describing in this article so that you will not be manoeuvered into a battle of force you cannot win. If it comes to guns, we are convinced that it will already be too late to protect your freedoms, not to mention your families.
Do not be lulled and taken in by the idea that your guns alone will protect you. Knowledge will protect you: the knowledge of the true nature of the enemy, the psychopath and other pathological types; the knowledge of how they operate, of how they manipulate; the knowledge of the true reasons for war in the Middle East; the knowledge of why Bush and Co. are waging a war on the Constitution, and knowledge, as well, of the rest of the world and the justness of its anger towards the government of your country.
Extricating ourselves from the flames of the world and the plans of the pathoicrats will take great care and an understanding of complexity. Reliance upon and faith in simple solutions and simple slogans will only ensure the loss of our freedoms and the victory of tyranny.
Comment on this Editorial
Editorial: Republicans Pass Mandatory Child Strip Search Bill
Daily Kos
05/10/2006
Republicans managed to sneak a bill through recently, and from the looks of it, not many noticed. The MSM didn't seem to notice, and I haven't been able to find mention of it here. It doesn't surprise me though, the bill passed quietly with a 'Voice Vote.' Here's a glimpseHouse Approves Strip Search Bill
A bill approved by the U.S. House yesterday would require school districts
around the country to establish policies making it easier for teachers and school
officials to conduct wide scale searches of students. These searches could take
the form of pat-downs, bag searches, or strip searches depending on how administrators
interpret the law.
The Student Teacher Safety Act of 2006 (HR 5295) would
require any school receiving federal funding--essentially every public school--to
adopt policies allowing teachers and school officials to conduct random, warrantless
searches of every student, at any time, on the flimsiest of pretexts. Saying
they suspect that one student might have drugs could give officials the authority
to search every student in the building.
The text of the 'Student and Teacher Safety Act' reads, in part:
Sec 3. Searches Based On Reasonable Suspicion.
(a) IN GENERAL.-- Each local educational agency shall have in effect throughout
the jurisdiction of the agency policies that ensure that a search described
in subsection (b) is deemed reasonable and permissible.
(b) Searches
Covered.-- A search referred to in subsection (a) is a search by a full-time
teacher or school official, acting on any reasonable suspicion based on professional
experience and judgment, of any minor student on the grounds of any public
school, if the search is conducted to ensure that classrooms, school buildings,
school property and students remain free from the threat of all weapons,
dangerous materials, or illegal narcotics. The measures used to conduct any
search must be reasonably related to the search's objectives, without being
excessively intrusive in light of the student's age, sex, and the nature
of the offense.
Sec 4. ENCOURAGEMENT TO PROTECT STUDENTS AND TEACHERS
(a) IN GENERAL.--
A local educational agency that fails to comply with section 3 shall not,
during the period of non-compliance, receive any Safe and Drug Free School
funds after fiscal year 2008.
Here is the status of HR 5295:
9/19/2006 Passed/agreed to in House: On motion to suspend the rules
and pass the bill, as amended Agreed to by voice vote.
9/20/2006 Referred
to Senate committee: Received in the Senate and Read twice and referred to
the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
This legislation mandates that every public school provide a policy that permits
teachers and school officials to conduct invasive searches of any type on minors,
including strip searches. The legislation also insulates those that conduct the
searches from liability by requiring that school policy deem such searches as
'reasonable' and 'permissible.'
This is what the PTA has to say about it:
Though we laud your efforts to make our classrooms safer, we believe this
legislation fails to create constructive policy that will actually improve
the safety of students and school personnel. Instead, as noted in Sec.2(13)
of the bill as introduced on May 4, 2006, this legislation will only "help to insulate teachers and school officials who conduct student searches from lawsuits." In
this age of zero-tolerance policies, we must be cautious to not overextend
the government's reach. We must allow schools and districts to set policy
according to the needs and special circumstances of that school and community.
Further, this legislation fails to provide any resources to reduce drugs and
violence in our schools. In fact, the funds that would be denied schools that
fail to comply with this legislation are the very resources intended to help
make our schools safer. The Safe and Drug Free Schools program provides funds
for drug- and violence-prevention activities focused primarily on school-age
youths. These activities may include developing instructional materials; providing
counseling services and professional development programs for school personnel;
implementing community service projects and conflict resolution, peer mediation,
mentoring and character education programs; establishing safe zones of passage
for students to and from school; acquiring and installing metal detectors;
and hiring security personnel. What's more, Congress has cut funding for this
program by nearly 50 percent since 2002 and plans to cut an additional $36.5
million in fiscal 2007 appropriations.
The PTA isn't the only organization opposed to this legislation. It is also
opposed by the National School Boards Association, the American Association
of School Administrators, the American Federation of Teachers, and the Great
City Council Schools (Source). Another interesting opponent to the legislation is Congress's own legal advisors. The 'Congressional Research Service' says this about the legislation, in part:
Under H.R. 5295, school districts that receive federal funds under the Safe and
Drug-Free School programs would be required to establish certain policies with
respect to schoolbased searches. Specifically, school districts would be required
to establish policies deeming reasonable and permissible:
a search by a full-time teacher or school official, acting on any reasonable suspicion based on professional experience and judgment, of any minor student on the grounds of any public school, if the search is conducted to ensure that classrooms, school buildings, school property and students remain free from the threat of all weapons, dangerous materials, or illegal narcotics. The measures used to conduct any search must be reasonably related to the search's objectives, without being excessively intrusive in light of the student's age, sex, and the nature of the offense.
In addition to considerations of constitutional jurisprudence, any federal legislation
requiring school districts to establish a uniform school search policy would
also have implications for federalism, i.e., the relationship between the federal
government and the states and the relative autonomy of each. Traditionally,
education, public health and safety, and law enforcement have all been issues
that are primarily governed by state and local law, largely because of the
local nature of these issues. Enacting federal legislation with respect to
school-based searches could therefore interfere with state and local law in
areas of traditional state and local responsibility.
One of the most troublesome aspects of this legislation is that it requires that
the determination of 'reasonableness' be left to the person conducting the
search, based upon their professional experience and judgment. Personally,
I'd feel uncomfortable entrusting the invasiveness of search procedures to
every individual teacher or school officials 'Professional Experience and Judgment.'
Here's a sampling of such 'Professional Experience and Judgment' that would
be permissible under this legislation:
McMINNVILLE, Ore. No charges will be filed against the two adults who had 34
middle-school girls strip-searched by police in a hunt for stolen cash, CDs
and makeup.
District Attorney Brad Berry said Friday he found no evidence of criminal intent
in the Jan. 29 search at Duniway Middle School and no grounds for charges of
sexual abuse or official misconduct against the vice principal or the policeman
who was liaison officer at the school.
"That does not mean mistakes were not made," the district attorney said. "Whether or not that's a civil rights violation, for example, or some other civil violation, that's not my concern."
Since the search, the officer has been reassigned, and the vice principal resigned.
The girls, ages 12 to 14, were searched after no one would admit to the theft
of CDs, makeup and cash from the locker room.
Two women from the police department were called in and the girls were taken
into the locker room, where they were asked to take off their shoes and socks,
shake out their bras, and pull down their pants and underwear to see whether
anything fell out. Nothing did. (Source)
One student, Matt Klassen, 15, said after a classmate reported $90 missing
from his gym bag, vice-principal John MacDonald and gym teacher Dan Bondy "made
us go into the phys ed office one at a time and we had to take our clothes
off in front of them."
He said he was told to remove his underwear as well. "I was embarrassed. They told me to bend over but I just crouched. It was kind of frightening."
Matt said all the boys in the class -- about 25 -- were upset by the incident
and yesterday hundreds of students left the school at lunch time and stayed
out for more than an hour in protest.
"The whole town is in an uproar," said Ed Hardy, whose son Jay, 14, was the first to be searched. "I've talked to the teachers and the Board of Education because I don't agree with their actions." (Source)
"The strip search was prompted by a teacher who accused the four boys of
stealing her ring. Another administrator pulled the boys out of gym class and
forced them to individually strip down to their underwear, jump up and down,
and wiggle their toes. The administrator threatened to call the police and
send the boys to jail "for a long time" if they did not comply. The ring was
never found. In his deposition, the administrator claimed that the search was
one of his "best" and
that he learned the invasive procedure from his former supervisor." (Source)
"The case stems from a May 2000 incident in which a high school student reported
that money had been taken from her gym bag during gym class. In an unsuccessful
attempt to find the money, teachers, at the direction of the acting principal,
strip-searched all members of the gym class. The boys were forced to pull down
their pants and underwear while they were examined by a teacher. The girls
were forced to stand in a circle and pull up their shirts and pull down their
shorts." (Source)
I believe that each one of these 'Mild' examples reflects the potential for abuse
under this legislation. Each one of the teachers and school officials undoubtedly
believed that their actions were 'reasonable,' and under this legislation it
would be. There is nothing in the legislation to prevent some sicko from strip
searching children for his own depraved pleasure, and then justifying it as
a search for drugs or weapons, based upon his 'Professional Experience and
Judgment.' The Courts would ultimately determine the 'Reasonableness' of such
conduct, but in the meantime the children are forced to endure it. That is
unacceptable!
As a side note... it's interesting to note that one of the co-sponsors of the
legislation is none other than Foley enabler John Shimkus. If that wasn't enough, John Boehner had this to say:
Parents should be able to have confidence that their children are in a safe environment
while at school. (Source)
Somehow, I just don't have alot of confidence in Foley enablers talking about
the safety of children, and this legislation is the perfect example of the
'Wrong' way to go about achieving that.
Original
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Editorial: Echoes of Ireland in Palestine
Jordan Times
04/10/2006
Watching "The Wind That Shakes the Barley", UK director Ken Loach's new feature film set mainly during the Irish civil war in the early 1920s, it is impossible not to make comparisons with contemporary events.
Indeed Loach, whose film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, has been quite explicit about his own view that the film is not merely an examination of the past, but a comment on the times we live in. He recently announced his support for the call by Palestinian filmmakers, artists and others to boycott state-sponsored Israeli cultural institutions and acknowledged that "Palestinians are driven to call for this boycott after forty years of the occupation of their land, destruction of their homes and the kidnapping and murder of their civilians".
The film opens in 1920 in the rolling countryside of Ireland. A group of young men are playing a boisterous field game. As they get back to their village, they are confronted by British soldiers. Their crime had been to play hurling, an ancient Irish sport similar to hockey. The British had banned the sport because of its identification with Irish nationalism and because the hurley, the stick used to play it, was used by resistance fighters in their drills in lieu of difficult to obtain rifles. When one of the young men, Micheail, refuses to give his name to the British officer in English, he is beaten to death in front of his family and friends, galvanising them to rally to the cause of the Irish Republican Army, fighting to rid Ireland of British rule.
This painful scene is a timeless reminder that colonial rulers - no matter how much they pretend to represent civilisation and democracy - maintain their power in the manner of common street thugs: beating out people's teeth and breaking their bones with rifle butts, and when that doesn't work, torturing and killing them and destroying their houses.
This mentality is alive and well in Palestine-Israel.
The morning after I saw Loach's film, I was confronted by two statements. The first was from the UN's special rapporteur for human rights, distinguished South African jurist John Dugard who declared that the situation Israel had created for ordinary Palestinians in Gaza was "intolerable, appalling, and tragic" and that Israel had turned Gaza into a giant "prison" and "thrown away the key".
The second statement came from Israel's Trade Minister Eli Yishai who demanded that Israel completely raze Palestinian villages in Gaza until Palestinians learn to submit quietly to their fate. "And to do this village after village until they stop firing rockets against us."
"The Wind That Shakes the Barley" is no feel-good story of a heroic indigenous resistance battling against the foreign occupier. The narrative is centred on two characters, Damien (Cillian Murphy) and Teddy (Padraic Delaney), brothers who grow up to fight side by side against the British, but then find themselves on opposite sides in the brutal civil war.
Several events are key to understanding the civil war. In 1916, a group of Irish nationalist and socialist leaders staged the Easter Rising in Dublin, proclaiming an independent "Irish Republic". At the time, they had relatively little popular support, and the rising failed. But the brutal British response, which included executing the leaders of the uprising, spurred growing hostility to British rule. In the 1918 general election to the British parliament, the nationalist party Sinn Fein won a landslide on a platform of total independence from Britain. Although its members refused to take seats in the British parliament, they met in Dublin in January 1919 and ratified the 1916 proclamation of the Irish Republic. The Irish Republican Army, resisting the British, was adopted as the armed forces of this state.
The British banned the self-proclaimed Irish parliament, and moved to crush Irish resistance - the same violent approach the British took to the leaders of the 1936-39 Palestinian uprising. Exhausted by the war, leaders of the Irish Republic signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty with the British government in 1921. This established not an independent Ireland, but an "Irish Free State", a dominion of the British empire, whose officials would have to swear an oath of allegiance to the British crown. The treaty also partitioned Ireland; the Free State's jurisdiction extended only to 26 counties, while six counties in the north became Northern Ireland, created to allow the Protestant minority, mostly descended from settlers and loyal to the British but with centuries-old roots in the country, to have their own state.
The treaty bitterly split the Irish nationalist movement. Those loyal to the Irish Republic of 1919 saw it as an enormous betrayal of the independence struggle. The consequences for the protagonists in the film are catastrophic. In real life, families and communities were torn apart and this dark period left a bitter legacy that defined the main fault line in Irish politics for most of the years since.
Through Palestinian eyes, there is a strong echo with the split that has emerged, on the one hand between those who view the 1993 Oslo accords and a two-state solution (with a Palestinian state to be created on a tiny fraction of Palestine) as a reasonable and desirable settlement with Israel, and those, on the other, who view the accords as a sell-out that allowed Israel to maintain and expand its colonial rule of Palestinians under the guise of a "peace process".
European Union officials like to make the comparison between modern Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland renouncing armed struggle for purely political means with what they hope Hamas will do. The comparison they do not mention is between the banning of the Sinn Fein MPs who won the 1918 election and Israel's wholesale kidnapping of Hamas legislators freely elected by Palestinians under occupation in 2006.
Early in "The Wind That Shakes the Barley", we see Irish resistance fighters being tortured by British officers in a prison. We see the same prison again later, but now Free State officers are using it to hold and interrogate their Republican former comrades. Yet another scene so unfortunately reminiscent of what happened after Oslo. A key difference to celebrate is that across Palestinian society there remains a determination to avoid internal conflict even though Israel and the United States have often demanded that the Oslo-created security forces crush continued resistance to Israel just as the Free State army crushed and executed Irish Republicans with British-supplied weapons.
Palestinians must strive to ensure that they are never pulled into such a trap.
Talk to almost anyone in Ireland today and they will tell you it is not so simple, so black and white as the film makes it appear. In 1949, the contested Free State became the Republic of Ireland, recognised by all but a small minority of Republicans. Today Ireland is a prosperous independent country and a member of the European Union, whose national mythology includes the Anglo-Irish Treaty and Civil War and celebrates the "martyrs" of the 1916 Easter Rising and the long struggle against British rule.
In the end, it was possible to get the British out of most of Ireland, allowing independence, but that was not enough to bring peace. In the British-ruled six counties of the north, continued oppression of the Catholic population led to The Troubles, the thirty-year war that broke out in 1968. Although violence has ended, a political settlement acceptable to all the people who live there seems only slightly closer than it was the day after partition.
The basic structure of the conflict in Palestine-Israel today is like Northern Ireland writ large - two communities of roughly equal size with nowhere else to go brought into bloody confrontation by colonialism. There can be no solution that preserves the domination of one over the other and none that is good for everyone that comes out of violence. A just solution based on full equality is still to be worked for and hoped for in Northern Ireland and in Palestine-Israel. But as "The Wind That Shakes the Barley" so movingly depicts, history does not always provide easy or happy endings that fit neatly with passionately held ideals.
The writer is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of "One Country, A Bold-Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse" (Metropolitan Books, 2006). He contributed this article to The Jordan Times.
Original
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Editorial: Alvaro Vargas Llosa Sends Hugo Chavez to Dante's Inferno
by Stephen Lendman
5 October 2006
Alvaro Vargas Llosa is no stranger to those who know his writings and affilation with the conservative Center on Global Prosperity at the Independent Institute in Oakland, CA. Vargas Llosa is Director of the Center and in that role is a vocal champion of essentially the same predatory market-based policies, known not to work, that growing numbers of people around the world are resisting more than ever - especially in Peru-born Vargas Llosa's Latin America.
Vargas Llosa is a member in good standing of the privileged elite and preaches the false gospel that everyone can have the same benefits he's gotten, but it's up to them to get them on their own. Simply put, that means market-based policies are always the solution (even though they consistently fail when corrupted by corporate predators making all the rules), and it's the fault of the poor for their own misery.
Vargas Llosa is clever enough to disguise his message to make his case in language sounding sensible but which, in fact, is the same old doctrine he disingenuously claims to be against: "failed domestic policies....dysfunctional national and international institutions....unjust terms of trade, and unfair capital flows." It sounds prudent until the mask comes off revealing his real agenda. He decries the notion of government-run efforts to end poverty and inequality and makes no pretense that the only solutions he thinks will work are the same kind of market-based ones that never do. He preaches the gospel of "the entrepreneurial spirit shown by millions of destitute people around the world (and the) success stories" of how they've risen from their impoverishment and prospered. If only he'd tell us where these millions are located and how can he explain the fact that poverty is increasing in most countries, and the dominant entrepreneurial class (the ones that fund his Center) are responsible for it.
In his September 25 article on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal (a venue where his views are always welcome), Vargas Llosa joins a growing chorus taking aim at Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez. And does he ever in a piece of trash journalism titled Chavez's Inferno in which he begins by saying Hugo Chavez should have held up a copy of Dante's Divine Comedy (many of us read in college) at the UN instead of Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival. Vargas Llosa notes in the first part of Dante's work the Italian master takes his readers on a journey through the nine concentric circles of his Inferno representing various types of evil. Dante's description of the underworld, he says, "reads like a script of present-day Venezuela," and in one phrase Vargas Llosa destroys whatever credibility he claims to have. He then confirms it by taking his readers through each of Dante's nine circles consigning parts of Chavez's Bolivarian Revolution (and the Venezuelan President) to each of them without ever explaining the elements in it and how they've improved the lives of most Venezuelans. Vargas Llosa thus portrays a false picture of life in Venezuela under Hugo Chavez making him a likely candidate for a special place in one of the circles he takes us through.
He begins with the first circle for those who lack faith. This for Chavez, he falsely claims, is for the 80% of Venezuelans who lack food and can't afford a basic daily diet. He says it's because since Chavez took office in 1999, the poverty rate either rose (according to one report he cites) or held steady (in another) and in either case shows Chavez's policies don't work. Vargas Llosa conveniently twists the facts ignoring the humanitarian social programs under Chavez that provide low-cost food and cheap or free housing for the needy. He also says nothing about Venezuela's dismal history under the oligarchs he admires before Hugo Chavez became President and the vastly different performance record in the country afterward. If he did, he'd have had to have told readers that in the 28 years prior to Chavez's election under the corrupted corporatists, Venezuelan per capita income fell 35%. It was the worst decline in the region and one of the worst in the world.
Vargas Llosa also fails to mention the poverty rate in the country in 1997 was 61% according to Venezuela's National Statistics Institute (INE), in 1999 it was 50% when Chavez was elected, and at the end of 2005 it stood at 44%. He also ignored the US and Venezuelan oligarch-directed crippling oil strike in 2002-03 that devastated the economy. Once it ended, the economy began to grow impressively, per capita income rose, unemployment fell and the poverty rate declined from a high of 62% in 2003 to a level near 40% today. The Chavez Revolution has been so successful (helped in no small measure by high oil prices) that since 2004 Venezuela had the highest growth rate in the hemisphere. Vargas Llosa clearly has a credibility problem. He poses as a Latin American expert, so either his claim is false or he knows the facts, chooses to suppress them and thus has an even greater problem for his lack of principle and integrity. Maybe the wrong person belongs in Dante's Inferno, but we're only through the first circle.
The second level is for those unable to control their lust. For Chavez, says Vargas Llosa, it's for those "unable to control their homicidal instincts (because) His government has degraded social coexistence so much (there were) more homicides in Venezuela (during the Chavez years) than there have been deaths in any single armed conflict around the world in recent years." Is this man living on another planet? Readers need to pause for breathe to recover their senses after such an absurdity. Aside from the hundreds to thousands of monthly deaths in obvious places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur, and the Congo where hot conflicts rage, just across the border in Colombia scores of people or more are being murdered or displaced monthly by President Alvaro Uribe's thuggish military enforcers (armed by the US) and paramilitary hired assassins in service to the corporate interests (getting similar help) plus the many other murders George Bush's favorite Latin American president is responsible for inside Venezuela which Vargas Llosa wants to blame on Hugo Chavez who's trying to stop them.
On to circle three which Dante has for gluttons who leave us with no food. Vargas Llosa says it's for Chavez's "corrupt authorities who leave Venezuelans with no wealth." Here he says nothing intelligible other than to mouth disconnected thoughts with no explanation and blame it on Plan Bolivar 2000 that was the first of the new Bolivarian social missions under which 40,000 Venezuelan soldiers were involved helping the country's poor unlike in the US where its military marauds to kill them around the world and does a good job of it. Under this Chavez plan, the Venezuelan military distributes food to the poor, assists in education and conducts mass-vaccinations. It also provides transportation for thousands of poor and sick people who can't afford the travel cost to get to where help is available. Vargas Llosa called this plan corrupt and also leveled a broadside against the state-owned oil company and all the social missions and their budgets he falsely claims are controlled "personally" by Hugo Chavez hidden from public view.
All that's true in this garbled paragraph is that corruption is systemic and a serious problem in Venezuela, but it's the result of rule by the oligarchs for decades who always stole from the people to enrich themselves. Vargas Llosa fails to explain Hugo Chavez has fought to change this system of privilege, has made important strides reducing it, but still has far to go to claim success. As for the social programs known as Misiones, the've been a huge success and the main reason Chavez is beloved by the great majority of his people. Since 1999, Hugo Chavez not only reduced poverty in Venezuela, he's greatly improved the living standards of his people from the non-cash benefits these programs provide. They include free quality health and dental care for all, free education to the highest level, housing assistance, subsidized food, land reform, job training, micro-credit and lots more. Vargas Llosa thinks these programs are a bad idea and ending them all would be good for the people. He prefers how things are done in the US under a system where people can have anything they want - as long as they can pay for it. Vargas Llosa is sinking lower into Dante's Inferno.
The fourth circle of the Inferno is for misers. "In Chavez's Inferno," that level is for "bureaucrats who claim to provide social services but use funds to pay people to attend rallies or bust up opposition gatherings." Vargas Llosa has a bad habit of inventing a single example from his strange imagination to make his claim while ignoring the vast amount of information that would refute it. He pays no attention to how the vital services Venezuelans now receive make all the difference in the world to them because they never had them before and wouldn't now if it weren't for Hugo Chavez. Vargas Llosa ignores this because if he explained it, his argument evaporates just like his credibility is doing.
Just one of many important improvements under Chavez is his education program. It's free to the highest level for all Venezuelans and virtually eliminated illiteracy in the country. Cuba under Fidel Castro, achieved the same success under his world-class educational system free for all Cubans. Compare that to the "free market" US economy Vargas Llosa champions where the US Department of Education reports about a 20% level of functional illiteracy and vast numbers more close to it. It's especially out of control in the inner cities where the rates are astronomically high according to reliable studies and important writings from authors and experts like Jonathan Kozol.
Look also at the state of health care delivery in the US where despite the huge expenditure of $2 trillion annually on it nearly 47 million people in the country have no health insurance and many millions more have too little. As a result, these people are denied the vital care they can't get when they need it most. In Hugo Chavez's Venezuela (and in Fidel Castro's Cuba) virtually everyone gets free high quality health care. Vargas Llosa is unimpressed by these kinds of government-run programs that work and undistubed by the "free market" ones that don't even exist or work poorly when they do.
Dante's fifth circle is for those succumbing to wrath. This for Chavez, says Vargas Llosa, is for "political persecution (and) Venezuela's human rights record is atrocious." This man must love going to bad movies and watching TV soap operas as he seems to prefer pulp fiction to fact. As evidence of his preposterous claim, he cites the killing of 12 people in April, 2002 who "were protesting near the government palace." Vargas Llosa never explains the street violence that took place then came from his favorite US president's instigated, funded and directed coup to topple the democratically elected Chavez government. It was committed by CIA hired thugs and assassins who did it trying to blame Hugo Chavez unjustly who was a victim of it and not a perpetrator.
Vargas Llosa also falsely claims there are political prisoners, including former officials, imprisoned because they spoke out against President Chavez. This is another outrageous lie as the opposition freely denounces Hugo Chavez daily including over the dominant corporate-run media where the criticism and vitriol are intense all the time. Try finding any of that in the US corporate media that love whatever George Bush does and suppress most all dissent against his policies and crimes. In contrast, there's a thriving free press in Venezuela because Hugo Chavez does nothing to curtail or suppress it other than to counter the oligarchs' lies and hostility with his own forceful responses and, above all else, by his extraordinary social programs and participatory democracy that speak loudly for themselves.
Dante places heretics in circle six. In Chavez's Venezuela, this level is for heretic journalists, says Vargas Llosa "who try to tell the truth." He doesn't explain these "heretics" work for the corporate-run media and are paid flacks for their failed policies most Venezuelans want no more of. He goes on to falsely claim Chavez tries to "gag" them, "withdraw radio and TV licenses (and) Government-controlled mobs called Bolivarian Circles, formed with the help of Cuban intelligence, harass journalists." With this kind of black propaganda, Vargas Llosa is heading for the depths of one of Dante's lowest circles (we've yet to get to) reserved for those the Italian master feels are the worst ones. The truth, as already stated and Vargas Llosa ignores, is that the dominant corporate-run media and journalists in their employ spew their vitriol daily against the Chavez government unobstructed.
As for those Bolivarian Circle "mobs," people living in the US might only wish for them here if they understood what they are and how well they work for the people of Venezuela. These Circles are the heart of Hugo Chavez's participatory democracy meaning, unlike in the US, Venezuelans really have a say in how their country is governed. That right was given to them in Articles 166 and 192 in the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela which the people voted to approve overwhelmingly in a national referendum in December, 1999 and that went into effect one year later. As for Cuban intelligence, the only Cubans in the country, besides the diplomatic ones every country has to conduct normal relations, are the many thousands of doctors and other health workers and teachers who've played a major role in improving the lives of the Venezuelan people. Vargas Llosa disapproves.
Dante puts the violent in his seventh circle. For Vargas Llosa it's for Chavez's "imperialism." This staggering misstatement of fact is based on Chavez having purchased "100,000 AK-47s, 53 Mi-35 assault helicopters, fighter jets, transport planes, patrol boats, speed boats and Tucano jets from Russia, Spain and Brazil." No mention is made that most nations buy weapons from abroad or produce their own, and no nation produces and sells more of them than the US in volumes greater than the rest of the world combined. Hugo Chavez denounces imperialism, never attacked another nation or threatened to do it. In contrast, the US is an out-of-control hegemon waging aggressive wars without end for world dominance and is a threat to world peace, security and the ability of the environment to sustain life. Most other nations need whatever weapons they can get and afford just for security and self-defense, especially when they're up against the Bush administration. In the case of Venezuela, Washington already tried and failed three times to oust Hugo Chavez. In light of this and knowing another US attempt to overthrow his government is coming, the action Chavez is taking is prudent but by no means excessive.
Another false claim is that Chavez "is a long-time supporter of FARC, Colombia's terrorist group." No mention is made of the Uribe government in Colombia that has one of the worst documented records in the world of state-directed terrorism against its own people. Also, at the likely direction, funding and insistence of the Bush administration, he's doing it against Venezuelans as well. He's been at it for many months by infiltrating his state-supported paramilitary death squads across the Venezuelan border to commit a growing number of killings and kidnappings that Hugo Chavez has now created civilian and military units to combat. Tachina state on the Colombian border has been particularly hard hit as the number of deaths there rose from 212 in 2002 to 566 last year and over 2,000 since Hugo Chavez became President. Alvaro Uribe and George Bush are widely believed to be behind this as part of a plan to destabilize the Chavez government and create a reason for the US to intervene militarily - supposedly to protect US citizens as happened using those contrived pretexts in the 1980s to justify invading Grenada and Panama. In those cases, the real reasons were to overthrown governments not adhering to the US agenda. The same situation is true in Venezuela because Hugo Chavez refuses to follow the same old neoliberal Washington Consensus policies that don't work and denounces them forthrightly.
One more claim was that Hugo Chavez supports Evo Morales in Bolivia politically and financially as well as the opposition in Peru and Mexico which "was a major factor in both men's recent defeats." Chavez does support Evo Morales and lent political support to Ollanta Humala and Lopez Obrador in Peru and Mexico respectively. Those candidates' defeats, however, had nothing to do with that support and everything to do with both elections having been stolen by the dominant parties of Alan Garcia and Felipe Calderon (with plenty of US help) who both pledge their allegiance to the corporate interests of their countries and to Washington and its corrupted business-as-usual policies.
"Chavez (also) buys influence through oil," says Vargas Llosa. "It's a form of blackmail: At OPEC Chavez fights for increasing prices, making life hard for poor countries that import oil, and then offers those very nations oil subsidies they have no choice but to accept.....Chavez is denying his nation its wealth from oil....He sponsors 30 countries....to buy their vote for a seat at the U.N. Security Council." Where to begin to debunk this outrageous barrage of unfounded and poisonous inversions of fact. Reverse all the Vargas Llosa claims and therein lies the truth about Hugo Chavez, his dedication to his people, and his enlightened social programs and real participatory democracy people in most other nations might only dream of, if they knew about them, but don't have.
Chavez has also been a champion of his progressive Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas (ALBA). It's his alternative to the corrupted neoliberal Washington Consensus model based on exploitation, military conquest and domination. He believes in the "social state" benefitting everyone and not just the privileged elite Vargas Llosa pledges fealty to. He even once proposed a put-up-or-shut-up offer to George Bush as part of an effort to normalize relations between the two countries and was turned down flat. He offered to sell discounted oil to the US at $50 a barrel when it was selling on world markets in the $70 range. Had the offer been accepted, it could have lowered the cost of gasoline at the pump as much as $1 dollar a gallon and been a boon to US consumers who were never told about Chavez's generosity.
Vargas Llosa surely knows this but left it out of his column. He also didn't mention that Chavez's generosity was rejected because the Big Oil interests so close to the Bush administration wanted no part of it as lower gas prices would come right out of their bottom line. As for buying votes to win the Latin American seat on the UN Security Council, the nations supporting Venezuela's bid see the Chavez government as the only alternative to the unacceptable other choice - Guatemala with its long history of thuggishness and brutality against its majority indigenous people earning it no right for anything but world condemnation.
Dante's eighth circle is for those who commit fraud which is Chavez's "fraudulent anti-Americanism" for Vargas Llosa. Because Venezuela sells much of its oil to the US and imports billions of dollars in return in goods and services, by Vargas Llosa's strange reasoning that means Hugo Chavez "lusts for....US capitalism." What he "lusts for" is the full development of the "social state" and his desire for forthright dealings with all other nations based on cooperation, solidarity and fairness.
To help his people, Chavez is committed to building a socialist state, but he's done nothing to abolish the basic elements of a capitalist one that includes private and foreign ownership and the right to private profits. What he does insist on is that private businesses, domestic and foreign-owned, operate under fair practice rules. That includes paying their fair share of taxes to the state and for foreign owners in joint state-owned resource ventures agreeing to a minority ownership arrangement of 49% maximum. This is no different than how most developed nations deal with foreign investors, but it's way different from the freewheeling, deregulated, low tax, full or majority ownership arrangements that used to prevail in Venezuela and throughout Latin America for decades. It's also the inverse of the corrupted one-way US Washington Consensus "free market" model based on rule by a dominant corporatocracy and the exploitation of ordinary people to make it work.
Vargas Llosa also makes the absurd claim that Chavez "manipulted the voter registration rolls, adding two million phantom voters, including 30,000 who are 100 years old and citizens named 'Superman.' " Further, "Four out of five members of the Electoral Council are Chavez lackeys." Where does this man come up with this stuff? Vargas Llosa knows the truth but prefers to ignore it and concentrate instead on unfounded and outrageous accusations.
In fact, all elections in which Chavez was a candidate were monitored by the opposition and independent observers who judged them to be free and fair. In addition, there's no evidence whatever of manipulating voter registration rolls or unfairly stacking the Electoral Council. The simple truth, Vargas Llosa ignores, is that Hugo Chavez is so popular he just has to announce he's running, put his name on the ballot, show up on election day (unlike the opposition afraid to run against him), and he's swept to victory overwhelmingly.
Compare that to the way things are under the Bush administration Vargas Llosa won't talk about. The US president's lackeys stack the Congress and court system up to the High Court, and the electoral system is so corrupted and flawed that any notion of a free and fair process is something from another age. It's this way now because increasing numbers of far-right candidates and George Bush are themselves lackeys of the corporate interests and war-profiteers they represent. The result is wars without end and growing repression at home to keep a restive population in line. Growing numbers of voters are getting so fed up with this and their needs being ignored because of it, they'd surely vote the bums out in a really free and fair election. They can't do it because the process is controlled and corrupted by the big corporations running it. Their hand-picked officials decide who gets on and stays on the voter roles and they're in charge of proceedings on election day. Worst of all, corporate-owned and operated electronic voting machines are now widely used and are easily manipulated to rig the outcomes so enough business-friendly candidates win. It's called democracy, American-style.
The ninth and lowest of Dante's circles is for traitors, the worst ones in Dante's world. Surely George Bush would qualify for that level and Vargas Llosa with him based on the above discourse of hateful dishonesty and character assassination. Vargas Llosa makes another choice reserving a spot in all of Dante's nine levels for Hugo Chavez. Here again his comments are garbled. He first mentions Army officers betraying Chavez with three of them, imprisoned for real crimes he won't explain, managing to escape. More likely they were sprung with CIA help, but that's unmentioned in his column. The CIA is an old hand at this kind of business. In 1985 it's operatives bribed prison guards in Venezuela so that world-class terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, on the CIA's payroll, was allowed to "escape" to find sanctuary in El Salvador from where he resumed his CIA service participating in the Contra wars in Nicaragua. No mention is made of this in Vargas Llosa's anti-Chavez diatribe which then ends comparing Dante's center of the earth Cocytus frozen lake, where Satan is held captive, to "Venezuela's Inferno (where) Satan is oil-rich Lake Maracaibo" that he uses metaphorically for the "astronomical wealth squandered by (Chavez's) tyrannical popularism."
Again, the facts on the ground and in the hearts and minds of most Venezuelans belie the outrageous inversions of truth coming from the Director for a Center on Global Prosperity, presumably an intellect, and claiming to be a Latin American scholar and expert. What Vargas Llosa is expert at is black propaganda, gross distortion of truth and shameless lies. Based on what he recounts above, he deserves a special place in in one of the lower circles of Dante's Inferno. For those who know how Hugo Chavez's Bolivarian Revolution has benefitted the Venezuelan people, Vargas Llosa has lost all credibility and disgraced himself. He lies exposed as a charlatan and false prophet of right wing imperialism based on market-based solutions that don't work and must be forced on the unwilling from the barrel of a gun. Hugo Chavez has a different world vision that's growing and spreading because his way does work. The Venezuelan people know it, and greater numbers of others are beginning to find it out and want the same benefits for themselves. Those people are fed up with the old order based on exploitation and want no more of it. Someone should explain that to Alvaro Vargas Llosa. He's on the wrong track supporting a failed system, and nothing he says trumpeting the party line will ever change that.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
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Editorial: Now That You Could be Labeled an Enemy Combatant...
Common Dreams
04/10/2006
Since Congress recently handed Bush the power to identify American citizens as "unlawful enemy combatants" and detain them indefinitely without charge, it's worth examining the administration's record of prisoner abuse as well as the building of stateside detention centers.
As Texas governor (from 1995-2000) Bush oversaw the executions of 152 prisoners, and thus became the most-killing governor in the history of the United States. Ethnic minorities, many of whom did not have access to proper legal representation, comprised a large percentage of those Bush put to death, and in one particularly egregious example, Bush executed an immigrant who hadn't even seen a consular official from his own country (as is required by the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, to which the US was a signatory). Bush's explanation: "Texas did not sign the Vienna Convention, so why should we be subject to it?"
Governor Bush also flouted the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child by choosing to execute juvenile offenders, a practice shared at the time only by Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Significantly, in 1998 a full 92% of the juvenile offenders on Bush's death row were ethnic minorities.
Conditions inside Texan prisons during Bush's reign were so notorious that federal Judge William Wayne Justice wrote, "Many inmates credibly testified to the existence of violence, rape and extortion in the prison system and about their own suffering from such abysmal conditions."
In September 1996, for example, a videotaped raid on inmates at a county jail in Texas showed guards using stun guns and an attack dog on prisoners, who were later dragged face-down back to their cells.
Funding of mental health programs during Bush's reign was so poor that Texan prisons had a sizeable number of mentally-impaired inmates; defying international human rights standards, these inmates ended up on death row. For instance, a prisoner named Emile Duhamel, with severe psychological disabilities and an IQ of 56, died in his Texan death-row jail cell in July 1998. Authorities blamed "natural causes" but a lack of air conditioning in cells that topped 100 degrees Fahrenheit in a summer heat wave may have killed Duhamel instead. How many other Texan prisoners died of such neglect during Bush's governorship is unclear.
As president, Bush presides over a prison population topping two million people, giving America the dubious distinction of having a higher percentage of its citizens behind bars than any other country. When considering that (based on 2003 figures) the US has three times more prisoners per capita than Iran and seven times more than Germany, the nation looks more like a Gulag than the Land of the Free.
The White House has also stifled investigation into the roughly 760 aliens (mainly Muslim men) the US government rounded up post-9/11, ostensibly for immigration violations. Amnesty International reports that 9/11 detainees have suffered "a pattern of physical and verbal abuse by some corrections officers" and a denial of "basic human rights."
Then of course, there's Guantanamo, where the US is holding hundreds of detainees in top secrecy and without access to courts, legal counsel or family visits. Add to that the thousands of Afghans and Iraqis the US has imprisoned (including a large percentage of innocent civilians) and countless US secret prisons across the globe, and it looks as if incarceration is the nation's best export.
While Abu Ghraib may have left administration officials falling over themselves with protestations of compassion, it's worth remembering that the Bush White House has fought hard against the International Convention Against Torture, especially a proposal to establish voluntary inspections of prisons and detention centers in signatory countries, such as the United States.
Put it all together, and last week's passage of the Military Commissions Act is ominous for those in the US. As Bruce Ackerman noted recently in The Los Angeles Times, the legislation "authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any protections of the Bill of Rights." The vague criteria for being labeled an enemy combatant (taking part in "hostilities against the United States") don't help either. Would that include anti-war protestors? People who criticize Bush? Unclear.
In 2002, wacko former Attorney General John Ashcroft called for the indefinite detainment of US citizens he considered to be "enemy combatants," and while widely criticized at the time, Congress went ahead and fulfilled Ashcroft's nefarious vision last week. Ashcroft had also called for stateside internment camps, and accordingly, in January 2006 the US government awarded a Halliburton subsidiary $385 million to build detention centers to be used for, "an unexpected influx of immigrants or to house people after a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space." New programs that require additional detention space. Hmm.
The disgraceful Military Commissions Act and the building of domestic internment camps are yet more examples of blowback from the administration's so-called war on terror, and we ignore these increasing assaults on our civil liberties at our own peril.
Action Ideas:
1. Read the Military Commissions Act of 2006 for yourself here. Find out how your congressmembers voted on this legislation, and raise the topic when they ask for your vote this November.
2. For more information on US prisoner abuse, check out BBC's report from 2005 entitled "Torture Inc. Americas Brutal Prisons." Text and video versions are archived here. You can learn more about US prisoner's rights from the American Civil Liberties Union.
3. To take action regarding "the plight of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and other detainees held as part of the War on Terror," visit Cageprisoners.com.
Original
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Look! Up in the sky!
Night lights attributed to meteor
ABC
27 September 2006
Coloured lights spotted in the skies over SA's mid-north last night are believed to be from a bright meteor.
The flare-like object was first spotted by a fisherman near Whyalla.
It was also seen in Port Pirie and Port Augusta.
There have been suggestions the object may have been space junk, but it is more likely to have been a meteor.
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Meteor reported over Yakima area; FAA says no planes in trouble
Associated Press
1 October 06
YAKIMA, Wash. -- Several people reported seeing a meteor streak through the sky Sunday night over Yakima.
Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Mike O'Connor said he received about eight calls about it, but no reports of any aircraft in trouble.
A dispatcher with the Yakima County Sheriff's Office said one woman and an area police officer spotted a bright object shooting across the sky.
"It was just like a big bright light, and it had a tail on it - kind of like a comet, but not real long," Mary Cline, 63, told The Associated Press.
Cline said she saw it near a warehouse in Selah, a town about five miles north of Yakima. "It seemed to be really close. It seemed like it was just right over the roof of the warehouse."
Asya Guerrero, 21 of Yakima, called the AP to say she spotted an object that looked like a shooting star, only much closer, headed toward the city's Terrace Heights area.
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Giant Meteor Sails Over Saguaro Lake
By Senta Scarborough and JJ Hensley
The Arizona Republic
2 October 06
PHOENIX, AZ -- Residents who saw a ball of fire in the sky late Sunday evening near Saguaro Lake witnessed a giant meteor, officials said.
Phoenix and Scottsdale police and Rural/Metro Fire Department dispatchers received calls from residents reporting a plane going down in "a ball of fire." Another caller reported seeing a meteor.
"It was a large ball of flame," Rural/Metro Fire Department spokeswoman Alison Cooper said. "It was very large. It was seen as far as Washington state."
Kip and Valerie Wachter saw the fireball pass over their heads about 10:15 Sunday evening as they walked north of Pinetop.
"The colors were a bright green, red, white. The size was about three times wider than its length. It seemed to emanate a low, soft swishing sound as it passed overhead," the Wachters wrote in an e-mail to The Republic.
Steve Kates, a Chandler resident and science journalist known as "Dr. Sky," said that description, particularly the noise, was consistent with meteoric activity.
Most meteors visible on earth occur high in the atmosphere and these "shooting stars" are about the size of a grain of dust, said Jeffrey Hall, associate director at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff.
"The great majority are these tiny particles moving through the atmosphere at a high rate of speed," Hall said. "Larger ones tend to be moving more slowly and produce a much larger trail through the sky."
Between 10 and 50 meteor events occur over the Earth each day, according to the American Meteor Society, with the vast majority happening over oceans and out of eyesight. Meteors lose mass and decelerate as they enter the atmosphere, with only the largest slamming into the Earth and forming a crater. Scientists think the Barringer Crater, near Winslow, was formed by an iron meteor about 50,000 years ago.
Kates said a meteorite the size of a human fist could have created the light show West Coast residents witnessed Sunday night.
Rural/Metro responded to the north side of Saguaro Lake but found no sign of damage or destruction from a plane crash, Cooper said. Witnesses reported seeing the meteor travel from southwest to northeast.
Hall said the meteor likely never made it to the ground.
"This is not like a mountain coming into the atmosphere. It's more like the size of a softball," Hall said. "Even something this bright probably burned up completely in the atmosphere."
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UFO surprise in five cities
Sabah
2 October 06
In several regions of Turkey, there was a surprise sighting of a "UFO" Saturday night. However, the object is speculated to have been a meteor.
In Turkey, a flaming ball in the sky caused a stir of a UFO sighting Saturday night. Telephone calls were made all over the country to the route control center at Ankara Esenboğa Airport. Citizens from Ankara, Nevşehir, Balıkesir, Konya and Antalya said: "We have seen a blazing ball with a flaming tail in the sky; we have seen a UFO." A flying plane around Antalya also reported to the control center that: "an undefined flying object was spotted."
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Strange, bright lights surprise stargazers
By TOM SHARPE AND Jason Auslander
The New Mexican
October 3, 2006
Sky-watchers across the western U.S. reported seeing bright lights late Sunday, but theories abound on just what they saw.
It was probably a meteor, one agency said. A UFO expert said space junk is another possibility.
And depending on the observer, this thing that hurtled across the darkness was either red, orange, yellow, blue or white. Or some combination of the above.
Santa Fe County Sheriff Greg Solano said six people called his dispatcher to report the lights in the sky, including one who thought it might have been a falling airplane.
The National UFO Reporting Center in eastern Washington State reported that about 30 people across the West reported seeing something in the sky, with most of the calls coming from Colorado.
Menka Jain, who was driving near Los Alamos on Sunday night, said she saw what looked to be an orange fiery projectile that exploded into pieces.
Peggy Crumbacher, who lives south of Santa Fe off N.M. 14, said she looked to the north at about 11:15 p.m. "It went from white to blue, and then I could see it turned toward the north, and then it absolutely disappeared,'' she said. "This was not a meteor. Meteors would be bright lights.''
Peter Davenport of the National UFO Reporting Center said Sunday evening's reports began with a fireball over Seattle about 9:26 p.m. New Mexico time.
He said other reports Sunday evening came from:
_Winslow, Ariz., where a large light green fireball was observed at 10:18 p.m.
_Cheyenne, Wyo., where an airplane pilot flying at 30,000 feet observed to the south at 11:15 p.m. at approximately the same altitude a bright object that seemed to eject five golden objects out its back end at regular intervals. The objects remained visible for about 30 seconds.
_Cascade, Colo., where eight to 10 orange objects were seen flying from north to south for about 10 seconds about 11:15 p.m. An airplane was spotted nearby about 10 seconds later.
_Hartsel, Colo., where eight to 10 glowing orange, yellow and red objects were seen about 11:15 p.m. moving south to north. Several of the objects broke off in different directions, while the lead objects changed their color to blue and white before disappearing within one minute.
_Raton, N.M., where a motel employee observed a large gold star about 11:20 p.m. that split into three, then seven objects that moved in a straight line for several seconds.
Davenport said similar lights were reported Sunday evening in Roseville, Calif.; Boulder, Colo.; Silver City and Las Cruces.
"The first thing that comes to my mind was the possibility of space debris,'' he said. "But usually when that happens, NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) at Peterson Air Force Base (in Colorado) makes a statement. ... And I have not heard from NORAD.''
Davenport said some of Sunday's reports had the characteristics of a meteor -- fragments coming off a main object, objects moving in a straight line, flaring up like a match and lasting only a few seconds.
Federal Aviation Administration officials also said the lights were likely a meteor, according to KOB-TV. A person at LodeStar Astronomy Center in Albuquerque didn't know about the lights, and neither did a person who answered the phone at Santa Fe Community College's planetarium.
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George Dvorsky: Unidentified flying idiots
George Dvorsky
October 02, 2006
Bob Dylan once sang, "We sit here stranded, though we're all doin' our best to deny it." While this might have been a reference to God, Dylan's lyric often gets me thinking about how utterly abandoned we are here on Earth - and it's not just by some illusory God. We haven't heard so much as boo or moo from anyone, namely extraterrestrial intelligences (ETIs).
Now, many people will read that last paragraph and nod their heads in agreement. Trouble is, however, a significant and burgeoning segment of society doesn't believe this to be true - the so-called UFOlogists. You know, the folks who talk about flying saucers, little green men (or is that grey men?), crop circles - the whole X-Files bit. Today, an entire sub-culture exists devoted to these topics as if they were matter of fact.
Closer to home, I've known for some time that UFO aficionados frequent my blog. I often get nasty letters from them complaining about my UFO denial and my fixation with such empirical anomalies as the Fermi Paradox. At the same time however, I have to assume that UFOlogists read my blog and integrate my reports on science and philosophy with their own beliefs in extraterrestrial visitations.
For example, last week I blogged about the search for artificial objects in the cosmos. A quick Googling for that post shows that the article was referenced by the UFO site, Virtually Strange and distributed on their newsletter (much to my chagrin and without my permission). My hit counter revealed similar referencing links.
I am also aware that Raelians frequently visit Sentient Developments; I've even had the opportunity to meet some of them in person - but once the conversation turns to a discussion of how to quantify the varying energy content of crop circles, I tend to lose it and start to rant. I don't have many friends among the Raelians, but I don't have very many Seventh Day Adventists and Scientologists as friends either.
And I also know that Mac Tonnies over at Posthuman Blues links to my articles from time-to-time. Posthuman Blues often deals with transhumanist and other future issues, but Tonnies's legitimate content is offset by his misguided focus on UFOlogy. As a result, the transhumanist movement may have a harder time gaining public acceptance and support with this kind of negative association.
I'm sorry, folks, but you can't have your cake and eat it to. You can't choose and pick the science that appeals to you and then attempt to tie it in with bogus and unfounded speculations. It's like Fox Mulder in the X-Files who has a poster on his wall which reads, "I want to believe." Well, I also want to belive in UFOs. I also want to belive in Jesus and the tooth fairly, but wanting to believe in those things ain't gonna make it so.
Part of the problem here, aside from wishful thinking, is the rampant scientific illiteracy that now pervades much of Western society, particularly in parts of the United States. Many people these days are unable to determine which claims have scientific credence and which do not. Popular culture does little to remedy this, with shows like the X-Files and Coast to Coast perpetuating the idea that it's okay to discuss UFOs and other pseudoscientific claims in the context of legitimate science.
Let's take my blog entry on the search for artificial objects in space. Many UFOlogists, I'm sure, took that article as further proof that there are aliens in our midst. Wrong! It's actually telling us the opposite. The work that Luc Arnold is doing is important from the perspective that we have devised yet another way of detecting signs of ETIs. Given the sheer simplicity and elegance of Arnold's theorized calling-card technique, the cosmos should be screaming with signs of ETIs. I fully suspect that work by astronomers over the next several decades will reveal none of these calling cards. The search for artificial objects, like SETI's impossible search for radio signals, will provide further proof that there's nobody out there zipping around in spaceships.
I am already imagining the comments and emails I'm going to receive in response to this post. I'm going to read about how UFOlogy is in fact a legitimate scientific endeavor and that I'm being both unfair and closed minded. I'm going to be asked where I get off denying all the sightings and testimonials and how I can account for these things. Bla, bla, bla.
While I'm loathe to engage in these conversations, there is one point that I wish to make in hopes that I can influence the thinking of those UFOlogists who visit my blog, particularly those with an interest in such things as posthumanism and the Singularity.
My message is this: STOP THINKING SO SMALL!
This whole UFO thing reminds me of something Carl Sagan once said about religion: "How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant'? Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.' A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths."
Indeed, the advanced space-faring species of the UFOlogist is a little UFO. He zooms around in his flying saucer annoying us with his crop circles, all the while looking to inflict his anal probe on some poor unsuspecting trailer trash. And of course he's a frail and little creature, clammy grey skin, big head and all.
Give me a break. What kind of pathetic vision of advanced intelligence is this?
Meanwhile, transhumanists are discussing the radical potential for god-like artificial superintelligences, megascale computational projects like matrioshka and Jupiter brains, uploaded societies, metaconsciousness, Kardashev scale civilizations, existential paradigm shifts, universe re-engineering and immortality.
Given these potentials, the UFO vision is an absurdity of the highest order. The fact that our civilization hasn't been uplifted by an advanced ETI is a blatant indication that something strange and different is going on out there in the depths of space. That's where the Fermi Paradox comes in, and it's in that discussion that we can meaningfully discuss topics as they pertain to astrobiology, astrosociobiology, cosmology, and computer science. It will also give us an indication as to where we ourselves may be headed as a species.
One final note to the UFOlogists, you're obviously welcome to keep visiting my blog, but it's apparent to me that you're just not getting it.
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Ray sez: Lack Of Air To Dvorsky's Brain Affects His Thinking
Ray's X-Blog
October 04, 2006
Doctors Rush To Place Oxygen Line Up His Backside
George P. Dvorsky is a bigot.
Recently at his blog, he took some cheap shots at Mac Tonnies and everyone who has a serious interest in UFOs.
To quote him: "Trouble is, however, a significant and burgeoning segment of society doesn't believe this to be true - the so-called UFOlogists. You know, the folks who talk about flying saucers, little green men (or is that grey men?), crop circles - the whole X-Files bit. Today, an entire sub-culture exists devoted to these topics as if they were matter of fact."
It's so easy to stereotype a whole group with one sweeping statement. I don't consider myself an ufologist, but I am interested in the topic. Apparently, in Dvorksy's eyes, I believe in "flying saucers," "little green men," and all sorts of kooky stuff. Never mind that he's invoking the saucer nut stereotype of the 1950s, jamming us all into the space brothers/contactee fringe pigeonhole.
Yes, there are kooks in the UFO field. But I'll bet if you dig deep enough, you will find a few scientists or skeptics with "kooky" beliefs.
And to quote The Great Dvorsky again: "And I also know that Mac Tonnies over at Posthuman Blues links to my articles from time-to-time. Posthuman Blues often deals with transhumanist and other future issues, but Tonnies's legitimate content is offset by his misguided focus on UFOlogy. As a result, the transhumanist movement may have a harder time gaining public acceptance and support with this kind of negative association."
As if the transhumanist movement won't have a hard time gaining acceptance with bigots like Dvorsky and his kind of negative outlook.
I don't agree with Mac on everything -- occasionally I find him a bit downbeat and too "bluesy" - but at least I respectfully disagree with his viewpoints. Anyway, he runs his blog the way he wants. I would never tell him what to say or think, unlike The Great Dvorsky.
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Yellow fireball seen in Waikato sky
By AARON LEAMAN
21 September 2006
A bright yellow ball was seen streaking across the Hamilton sky about 6.15pm yesterday, leaving a whispy black line in its wake.
Times reporter Aaron Leaman saw the object and thought it was a meteor.
He saw the object from the Waikato University tennis courts and said it was heading west toward Raglan.
It was visible for about 30 seconds before dropping out of sight.
Hamilton Astronomical Society member, and past president, Carol Thompson said the streaking object could have been a meteor.
Meteor sightings were not uncommon, she said.
It was impossible to say where it might have landed although it could have burnt up before hitting the Earth or landed out to sea, she said.
Earlier this month a meteor was seen racing across the Canterbury skies and was accompanied by a sonic boom as it travelled at an estimated 40,000km/h.
Mrs Thompson said anyone who saw yesterday's streaking object should contact the Hamilton Astronomical Society and fill out a fireball-meteor report form.
# Have your say: Did you see the meteor? Email Aaron Leaman or phone 07-849-9670.
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Did Jimmy Carter Withold Information on a 1956 UFO Incident?
Openpress
October 5th, 2006
In 1973, Jimmy Carter, then the governor of Georgia, filed a form with the NICAP to report a UFO sighting. Carter said that if he became president, he would make every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings available to the public. But this was not to be. And one of the UFO incidents that the government continued to hold from the American people took place in Jasper, Colorado, in 1956, the subject of "The Top Secret UFO Project," filmmaker R. J. Thomas' parody of UFO documentaries.
"Jimmy Carter was the first president ever to admit that he had seen a UFO," Mr. Thomas said. "Many applauded him for his bravery. He was taking a chance. A man preparing for a presidential bid is in no position to say things that make him sound like a crackpot."
It was 1969, and Governor Carter was in Leary, Georgia, for a meeting with the Lion's Club. Shortly after dark, he saw a bright object in the sky that was a big as the moon and kept changing colors.
After he filed his report in 1973, he said, "If I become president, I'll make every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings available to the public and the scientists."
But after Carter took office in January of 1977, Walter Wurfel, the administration's Deputy Press Secretary, made it clear that this would not be the case.
"There might be some aspects of some sightings that would have defense implications that possibly should be safe-guarded against immediate and full disclosure," Wurfel told the press.
And one of the stories covered up was the Jasper UFO Incident.
According to "The Top Secret UFO Project," in the summer of 1956, mysterious occurrences in Jasper forced President Eisenhower to prepare for a showdown with aliens, setting up huge military operations in the little Colorado town south of Denver.
Based on Thomas' 2004 novella of the same name, "The Top Secret UFO Project" chronicles the UFO-related events experienced by this tiny Colorado hamlet. According to the film, the town dealt with one unusual event after another. After a farmer spotted a flying saucer zipping over his property, scientists rushed into Jasper to investigate, reporters rushed in looking for stories, and government officials rushed in to keep it a secret from the world.
Billed as "the movie the government does not want you to see," "The Top Secret UFO Project," is a parody of the cheesy UFO documentaries of the 70's like "Overlords of the UFO" and TV programs like "In Search Of."
Mr. Thomas plays a documentary filmmaker who, in 2003, discovered some top secret government films pertaining to the Jasper Incident of 1956. This inspired him to make a documentary about Jasper's UFO story, and to discover the truth behind what really happened that mysterious summer in Colorado.
And as for the former president's sighting?
"Carter looked at that UFO for at least ten minutes," Mr. Thomas said. "He really believes he saw a UFO. Not everybody agreed with him as far as his politics go, but I don't think anybody ever saw him as crazy. But, remember, MacArthur never saw a UFO, and he so firmly believed in them that he was ready to prepare for an invasion from Mars!"
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Genocide in Palestine
Rice fails to win Israel pledge to ease Palestinian restrictions
by Sylvie Lanteaume
AFP
October 25, 2006
JERUSALEM - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice failed to secure a pledge from Israel to ease restrictions on the beleaguered Palestinian territories as she ended a visit aimed at breathing life into the moribund Middle East peace process.
Washington's top diplomat left Israel on Thursday without making any public statement following meetings with her Israeli counterpart Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Amir Peretz.
She had been expected to announce "progress" on Israeli restrictions on crossings into the Gaza Strip at the tail end of her trip, aimed in part at boosting moderate Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas in the face of the ruling Islamist Hamas movement, branded a terrorist organisation by the West.
"We hope to make some progress on the access and movements issues," a senior State Department official had said after Rice met Prime Minister Ehud Olmert over dinner Wednesday.
The premier told Rice that Karni, the main crossing point for the transit of goods between Gaza and Israel, would reopen shortly and that Peretz would brief her on the details, said a government statement.
But Peretz made no announcement on the crossing in comments following his meeting with Rice, in an apparent sign that no firm agreement had been reached.
Karni has been closed since August 15, affecting Gaza's vital supplies of food, medicines and fuel in a territory where living standards have plummeted owing to aid boycotts and Israel's bombing of the only power station in June.
A senior Israeli security official had said Wednesday that Peretz would present Rice with options for reopening Karni as well as the Rafah crossing in the south, Gaza's only border point that bypasses Israel.
The Rafah terminal has been closed almost continuously since Israel launched a massive offensive on Gaza in late June aiming to recover a soldier abducted by militants. It was reopened on Wednesday and Thursday.
During her dinner with Olmert, Rice also failed to get Israel to agree to release customs duties collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority that the Jewish state has been withholding since before Hamas took office.
"(Olmert) said that Israel would present ideas on humanitarian assistance, such as aid to hospitals, medicines, etc," said a statement from his office.
According to the World Bank, the customs duties amounted to 65 million dollars a month in 2005, or two-thirds of the Palestinian government's budget.
The withholding of the revenue, along with a Western freeze on direct aid since Hamas took office, has wrought havoc on the Palestinian territories, prompting warnings from the
United Nations of a humanitarian disaster.
On Wednesday, Rice met with Abbas in Ramallah, where the duo presented a united front, saying any Palestinian government should respect the peace principles set out by the so-called Middle East quartet -- the European Union, Russia, the United States and the United Nations.
After meeting Abbas on the third leg of a Middle East tour aimed at bolstering "moderate" Arab leaders and reviving the moribund peace process, Rice said the Palestinians should be served by a government "that observes the quartet principles and that can form the basis then for movement forward on what we all desire.
Abbas, locked in a standoff with Hamas over a platform for a national unity government, said any future cabinet would have to abide by past peace deals -- one of the key Western demands to which Hamas refuses to accede.
He reiterated that stalled talks with Hamas on forming a unity government could not go on forever and warned that "the Palestinian leadership will decide on the measures to take to get us out of this crisis."
The quartet, which has boycotted the Hamas government, demands that any new cabinet recognize Israel, renounce violence and abide by past peace deals as a condition for renewing aid.
Hamas has so far refused immense pressure to soften its stance and prime minister Ismail Haniya accused Washington of being interested only in reshaping the region to fit its interests.
As part of its efforts to boost Abbas, Washington is backing an international plan to boost the Palestinian presidential guard from 3,500 to 6,000 men, the senior State Department official said.
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Rice: U.S. will double its efforts to aid Palestinians
Haaretz
05/10/2006
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday told Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas that the United States would double its efforts to alleviate the Palestinian condition.
Rice said the U.S. wants to help make practical improvements in the Palestinians' daily lives, as violence, deprivation and political chaos are reaching threatening levels in the PA. The secretary of state said the U.S. is "very concerned" about the plight of the Palestinians.
At a joint press conference in Ramallah with Abbas, Rice expressed her sorrow over the fact that much of the Palestinian population lacked basic supplies for the holiday month of Ramadan.
"I promised Chairman Abbas to double our efforts to improve the living conditions of Palestinians," she said.
Rice also promised to pass on to Olmert a Palestinian request that Israel resume transferring the taxes it collects on the PA's behalf - something it stopped doing following Hamas's election - open the border crossings and end settlement expansion.
Rice is putting mild pressure on Israel to loosen what Palestinians claim is a blockade of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. These territories are not economically viable without extensive trade across their borders with both Israel and, for Gaza, Egypt, and without Palestinians being able to leave daily for jobs elsewhere.
Rice met Abbas in Ramallah Wednesday and held talks on the crisis in the PA and how the U.S. could bolster the chairman's position.
Throughout her visit in the region this week, Rice has emphasized her intention to rally moderate elements in the Middle East, and Abbas, she said, is one of these.
"The Palestinians need a government that can provide for their needs and meet the conditions of the Quartet," she said, referring to the international community's conditions for recognizing the Palestinian government. These require the PA government to recognize Israel, relinquish violence and accept agreements previously signed by the
PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization). Since its election to power in January, Hamas has refused to meet these conditions, and the PA has suffered a severe economic crisis as a result of the consequent international aid cutoff.
Rice's visit was coolly received by Hamas leaders Wednesday. PA Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said the secretary's visit was meant to serve Israel's interests and to "categorize the states of the region," a reference to the Bush administration's tendency to distinguish between moderates and extremists in the Middle East.
In his meeting with Rice, Olmert was to reiterate a message he gave visiting members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, that "for the first time in my life I feel that there is an existential threat against the State of Israel."
Olmert was expected to stress in talks with Rice that the United States must play a central role in countering the threat posed by Iran and its nuclear ambitions.
On Thursday, Rice will meet Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Defense Minister Amir Peretz, and is then expected to leave Israel - possibly for an unscheduled visit to Beirut.
Rice is visiting Israel following a meeting Tuesday in Cairo with the foreign ministers of six Gulf States, Egypt and Jordan, in a mini-summit that was meant to coalesce moderate Arab states in the region.
At the end of the summit, Rice called for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
This is the first meeting of this forum, which has raised many questions among Arab states regarding its purpose. "This is not a coalition against anybody," said Rice.
The Egyptian foreign minister, Ahmed Abul Gheit, said that no differences of opinion emerged during the meeting, since all the participants are friendly states.
"Our purpose is peace in the region, stability and development. The aim is the establishment of a Palestinian state," he added.
Rice's tour of the region takes place amid growing criticism regarding her conduct as National Security Adviser in the Bush administration, prior to 9/11. A new book by Bob Woodward of the Washington Post suggests that she ignored a warning that Al-Qaida planned to carry out a major terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
According to political sources in Jerusalem, there were reservations among administration insiders whether Rice should visit Israel and the Palestinian Authority at a time when the main purpose of her tour of the area is to foment a unified front of moderates in the Middle East against Iran.
These views stemmed from the assessment that the current political climate on the Israeli-Palestinian front is not conducive to any talks or a breakthrough.
However, the conclusion was that skipping over Jerusalem and Ramallah would be perceived negatively among the same moderates, at a time when the U.S. is trying to restore confidence in its regional role.
Rice and Israel's leadership are expected to discuss the Iranian threat, the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1701 in Lebanon, and the problematic domestic situation in the Palestinian Authority.
According to political sources in Jerusalem, it will be difficult to seriously discuss "steps for strengthening the position of Abbas" at a time when there are violent clashes between Fatah and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Judging from statements made by Olmert in a meeting with visiting members of the Senate Armed Services Committee in Jerusalem on Tuesday, Israel, like the Bush administration, is focused on Iran.
The senators informed Olmert of their visit to Jordan and stressed the need for the formation of a "coalition of moderates," in the region against the threat of a more powerful Iran.
During a meeting with Peretz, the senators were interested to hear about ways in which the results of the Lebanon war could affect the situation in Iraq.
Peretz stressed the difference between "facts and symbols."
"Obviously the fact is that we have an advantage. Hezbollah paid dearly, and will consider very carefully before attacking Israel again," he told the visiting senators.
Comment: What faith or trust can anyone place in the pledges of an animal? For that is what Condolezza Rice is. She is certainly no human being. For her to sit there and announce her concern for the Palestinian people when she and her cohorts in Washington have done more than anyone else (save the Israelis) to worsen the plight of millions of innocent Palestinians, is as despicable an act as any imaginable.
However, her math is correct. 2 x 0 = 0.
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Israeli Army Rounds-up Non-violent Activists in Bil'in
Palestine Solidarity Campaign
05/10/2006
Last night in Bil'in the Palestinian village near Ramallah that has become a symbol of non-violent resistance to the apartheid wall, the Israeli army invaded the village at around 2am and kidnapped eight villagers. Five of the villagers were later released, but three remain in captivity in the Ofer military prison, west of Ramallah. The kidnappings were carried out on the western side of the village near Wajee's house.
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Israeli Policeman Murders Palestinian Civilian, Execution Style
Haaretz
05/10/2006
The brother of a Palestinian man killed by Border Police in Jaffa on Wednesday said the officer had opened fire without any provocation from the victim.
"The officer shot my brother when he was laying on the floor, his head down," Murad Abu Aya said. "We are not terrorists, we can me here to work. Do you want us to steal? You want us to be terrorists? We are never given permits even though we ask," he said.
The man was killed under disputed circumstances during a round up of illegal laborers in the flea market in Jaffa on Wednesday morning.
The Justice Ministry's Police Investigative Unit (PID) has refuted the version of events given by the Border Police officer who killed the Palestinian.
Police said the Palestinian, a 29-year old West Bank Palestinian from Tarqumiya who worked in a building site next to the Jaffa flea market, was shot after he tried to steal a rifle from one of the officers. During the struggle the gun went off, fatally wounding the Palestinian, a police spokesman said.
However, the PID investigation found that, contrary to the policeman's initial testimony the officer illegally used his weapon thus causing the death of the Palestinian.
Over the course of the investigation, the policeman changed his testimony, and stated that he fired his weapon without a struggle or any sort of provocation from the victim or his friends.
Upon hearing of the incident, a PID team arrived on the scene and opened an investigation, including gathering testimony from witnesses and evidence from the crime scene.
The team is seeking to determine whether or not the shooting happened as the policeman testified, or if it was an unintentional discharge of the weapon, or an intentional shooting on the part of the policeman.
Neighbors claim they heard police shouting "stop or I'll shoot" before shots were heard, implying that the shooting had been deliberate and not accidental, as police claim.
The policeman is currently being held under house arrest.
Arab MK Taleb El-Sana (Ra'am-Ta'al) blamed police for having a "light finger on the trigger."
"It appears the police have not learned the lessons of October 2000," he said, referring to events in which police shot dead 13 unarmed Israeli Arabs during protests in the north following the outbreak of the intifada.
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Palestinian Politician assassinated by IDF in Qalqilya
Ynet
05/10/2006
Palestinians sources told Ynet that the assassination was an operation of an elite Israel Defense Forces unit, and was carried out by Israeli soldiers disguised as Arabs. Military sources, however, said that they had no knowledge of any activity carried out in the area Wednesday morning, but added that "we are looking into the report."
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Palestinians get 15 minutes to go, then house is blown up by Israel
Conal Urquhart in Rafah
Monday October 2, 2006
The Guardian
Everyone in Rafah is dreading a call from Abu Nimr. It could come at any time but it normally means the recipient has 30 minutes to evacuate his house before it is blown up.
Abu Nimr has been busy. Last week he called five households in Rafah, on the border between Gaza and Egypt. The families fled their homes in time to see them destroyed by two or three missiles. Abu Nimr tells those he calls that he is a representative of Israeli military intelligence and he knows their house hides the entrance to a smuggling tunnel.
Normally he says they have 15 minutes to get out, but he's a reasonable guy and often holds off for 30 minutes.
After each attack last week, the Israeli army issued a statement. "The attack was based on specific intelligence information," it said, adding that it had "warned the population not to stay in structures that are used by terrorist organisations for storing weaponry".
It is not always possible to believe Israeli army statements, but in this case they appear to be accurate. There have been disputes between neighbours over the tunnels and in one case a gun battle between Palestinian police and a family believed to have been digging one.
Sami Shaher,46, was rebuilding his house 50 metres from the border after it was destroyed by the Israeli army in 2002. He said he received a call at 10.30pm on Wednesday from Abu Nimr. Thirty minutes later his unfinished house was blown up, leaving a crater 20 metres wide and 10 metres deep. A 14-year-old girl was killed by flying debris. There is no visible evidence of a tunnel.
Further west in the Yibna area of Rafah, women were salvaging belongings from the wreckage of a three-storey building that was home to five families. Abdul Karime Breakah, 28, said his brother was contacted by Abu Nimr on Thursday morning. Both Mr Breakah and Mr Shaher said they were aware of tunnels being dug in their area but denied they were in their homes.
Smugglers have been digging tunnels between Rafah and Egypt for more than 10 years. Abu Nimr's campaign coincides with a flurry of Israeli intelligence briefings that Hamas is trying to acquire advanced weapons. However, although shiny new guns and Egyptian cigarettes can be seen on the streets of Gaza, there is no evidence of such weapons.
Since the Israeli soldiers left, there have been few impediments to smugglers and now Gaza is in economic and political paralysis, tunnelling is more common. The signal that Israel now knows where some of the tunnels are and will destroy houses hiding them has sent a shockwave around the region.
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Israeli Fuel Company Turns Off Fuel Supply To Palestinians
05/10/2006
IMEMC
The Israeli Transnational Corporation fuel company will not deliver fuel to West Bank cities until the Palestinian Authority pays its debt of hundreds of millions of shekels. But with the U.S.-led diplomatic and economic boycott since January, the PA has no chance of paying its debt, resulting in a two-day rush for fuel throughout the West Bank.
Comment: There's nothing a psychopath likes better than to make impossible demands of an impoverished people. The Israeli government has been deliberately withholding millions of dollars in tax rebates form the Palestinian authority, making it impossible for bills such as the fuel bill for the West Bank? Solution? Let the Palestinians starve and freeze this winter.
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Gazans react to factional violence
BBC
4 Oct 06
Palestinian frustration at financial hardships and political stalemate exploded into violence last weekend.
At least 10 people have died since fighting broke out on Sunday between gunmen loyal to the governing Hamas party and the rival Fatah movement.
Tens of thousands of Palestinian civil servants have not received a full monthly salary for more than six months.
Tension is highest in Gaza, where Israeli closures of the border posts leave people trapped.
The BBC News website returns to its panel of Gaza residents to hear their reaction to the unrest and who they think would win the power struggle between Hamas and Fatah.
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Group calling itself al-Qaida in Palestine posts Web video
By Associated Press
Haaretz
05/10/2006
A group calling itself al-Qaida in Palestine posted a Web video Wednesday denouncing those who "work in the service of the Jews."
The 5-minute video contains previously-aired clips of Osama bin Laden and slain al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as well as footage of a masked man sitting alongside an automatic weapon and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
"My speech is directed against... those who announce blasphemy against Islam and who are allied with enemies of God and religion, and work in the service of the Jews and the Christians," the man said.
It was unclear how large or sophisticated the group was, or whether it was indeed linked to al-Qaida. It has never claimed responsibility for any attacks.
The video surfaced as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice held a news conference with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.
The man on the video identifies himself as Abu Hafs, a field commander for the group al-Qaida in Palestine. He appeared to criticize Palestinian leaders without naming them, along with Palestinians he viewed as not doing enough for their national cause.
A senior Palestinian security official in Gaza said he had never heard of Abu Hafs and could not confirm or deny the existence of the group.
"They own investments, companies and real estate inside and outside the
country while the people are starving and without clothes," he said. Big
salaries had lured some Palestinians to cooperate with Israel "like a herd of sheep," he said.
Speaking directly to Palestinians, the man said: "In every crisis, your
leaders flee abroad and hand you over to killing and horror."
Some Israeli media have reported that al-Qaida was trying to build cells in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, and Israel has indicted two West Bank militants for al-Qaida membership.
The man on the video threatened "a severe war (against) anyone who carries a weapon defending a traitor, an informer or a security coordinator."
"He will be a target for our swords if he does not repent and return to the people's ranks.... Be aware not to accompany them to death," he warned.
The Palestinian security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he did not believe there are any Al-Qaida cells present in Gaza, though there may be individuals who sympathize with the group's ideology.
Comment: "Al-Qaeda in Iraq" = Mossad. See here for more.
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Israeli War Crimes in the Recent Israel/Hezbollah War
CNI Foundation
October 03, 2006
In the recent war between Israel and Hezbollah that started in June 2006, Israeli offensive strikes not only displaced hundreds of thousands of Lebanese citizens but also were responsible for massive human rights abuses. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have defined much of the Israeli army's tactics, such as using cluster bombs and targeting civilian populations and civilian entities, as war crimes.
According to international law, indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure constitute war crimes, which Israel's army has repeatedly committed since the beginning of the war. In a report entitled "Deliberate destruction or 'collateral damage?' Israeli attacks on civilian infrastructure," Amnesty International examines the tactics used and destruction inflicted upon Lebanon by the Israeli military. Focusing mainly on damage to infrastructure, the organization cites numerous instances of war crimes committed by the Israeli military, which it has tried to defend by stating that Hezbollah used civilians as "human shields" and therefore the attacks on civilian entities were justified.
However, the laws of war contradict such justification, stating that destruction to civilian entities must be proportionate to the military objectives achieved through such attacks. The report states that, "Disproportionate attacks, also prohibited, are those in which the 'collateral damage' would be regarded as excessive in relation to the direct military advantage to be gained." These attacks on civilians were entirely out of proportion and did not give Israel a direct military advantage against Hezbollah.
Not only were the Israeli attacks on civilians and civilian entities disproportionate, they were entirely indiscriminate, which is also defined as a war crime and violation of humanitarian law. As stated by Amnesty International, "The principle of distinction is a cornerstone of the laws of war." The Israeli military did not discriminate between a building that housed Hezbollah fighters and one that did not; instead it bombed entire areas without regard for who would be harmed and the extent of the damage, as long as it fit into the larger picture of diminishing Hezbollah's military capabilities. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Lebanese citizens, who were not involved in the incidents that initiated the war, are now displaced and in serious risk of being harmed by unexploded bombs on their return home, not to mention the serious economic and psychological damage they have endured. Their displacement, by the nature of the way in which they were displaced, is also illegal, according to humanitarian law.
Human Rights Watch in its publication "Fatal Strikes: Israel's Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon," also noticed a failure of the Israeli army to distinguish between combatants and civilians, although its report does not address attacks on infrastructure. It cites the law of proportionality, stating that the Israeli army "tolerated a high level of civilian casualties for questionable military gain."
In response to Israel's claims that Hezbollah used civilians as military shields, Human Rights Watch "found no cases in which Hezbollah deliberately used civilians as shields to protect them from retaliatory IDF attack. Hezbollah occasionally did store weapons in or near civilian homes and fighters placed rocket launchers within populated areas or near UN observers, which are serious violations of the laws of war...However, those cases do not justify the IDF's extensive use of indiscriminate force which has cost so many civilian lives."
The two organizations clearly agree that the Israeli military was indiscriminate and disproportionate in its attacks on Lebanese citizens, both qualities that constitute war crimes and human rights violations.
To support these claims, Human Rights Watch cites cases of attacks on civilian homes and attacks on fleeing civilians. The organization notes that, at the time of publishing, the primary cause of civilian deaths was the targeting of civilian homes in southern Lebanon. In most cases, Hezbollah was not even present in the houses when the attacks took place. The military objectives in targeting these homes is once again questionable. Furthermore, rescue workers, who are supposed to be protected from military attacks, came under fire by the Israeli military. Human Rights Watch presents 15 cases of attacks on civilian homes in its report, which covers the time period from 12 July 2006 until 27 July 2006 and 30 July 2006.
The organization also cites attacks on fleeing civilians who were trying to escape their villages after being warned about upcoming attacks in the area or after already being attacked. Somehow, civilians managed to leave under the rules "not to travel by motorcycle, van, or truck and that anyone traveling after 10 a.m. was at risk," yet still they were attacked while leaving in accordance with these rules and flying white flags, a sign of civilian status. In the words of HRW, "at best, the continued attacks on fleeing civilians show reckless disregard by Israel for its obligation to distinguish between civilian and military objects, and a complete failure to take adequate safeguards to prevent civilian deaths." The report by Amnesty International demonstrates similar conclusions.
The Amnesty International report shows that the Israeli attacks on Lebanon's infrastructure were entirely devastating to the civilian population and divides the infrastructural damage into ten main areas. These are:
- Civilian homes Using air-delivered munitions, cluster bombs, and artillery shelling, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 15,000 civilian homes were destroyed in the war by August 16, 2006. Amnesty International believes this to be an underestimate.
- Water facilities Means of collecting, storing, transporting, and treating water were destroyed during the war, making the lack of clean water life threatening in many circumstances. Amnesty International states that humanitarian law protects objects that are necessary to the survival of the civilian population, and it is difficult to see how targeting water stations could have any military advantages for the Israeli army.
- Electricity and fuel supply Many fuel stations and depots were destroyed, and by the time of the ceasefire the south of Lebanon was completely without power, a cost of about US $208 million.
- Environmental damage Attacks of power stations, fuel tanks, and factories have released massive amounts of soot, dust, and toxins into the air, causing measurable long-term damage to not only the environment but to the health of civilians living in the area. Such chemicals released into the air can cause respiratory damage, cancer, and hormonal problems, according to the Lebanese environmental NGO Greenline. Moreover, an oil spill off the Lebanese coast is an environmental disaster that can affect the future health of the area and its citizens.
- Roads and bridges Some of the worst damage was inflicted upon Lebanese roads and bridges, about US $300 million worth, which is in turn disastrously affecting other aspects of everyday life. It has disrupted the food supply chain and efforts for humanitarian relief, which could cause a major food crisis, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization. Amnesty International states that under humanitarian law the parties to a conflict must allow for rapid relief and must respect the personnel involved in humanitarian relief, by which Israel has not abided.
- Airports All of the airports in Lebanon have been attacked, sometimes repeatedly, including the Beirut international airport. Although the Israeli government claims that the airport is used by Hezbollah for transporting weapons, it has also unashamedly denied responsibility for the destruction of these facilities by arguing that the Lebanese government is responsible for all the damage due to the fact that it has not removed Hezbollah from the Lebanon-Israel border.
- Ports Not only have roads, bridges, and airports been destroyed by the Israeli military, ports have also been targeted, including three main ports.
- Hospitals Due to fuel shortages, about 60 percent of Lebanon's hospitals were nonfunctional as of August 12 and many were forced to close because of constant bomb attacks in the area. One hospital was even targeted because it was alleged to have been a headquarters for Hezbollah. According to Amnesty International, even if Hezbollah were using a hospital as a shelter, the Israeli army would have to take precautions to protect civilian life while carrying out its attack, which it did not take into account while it was firing cluster bombs around the hospital.
- Communications Israeli raids targeted communications and broadcast stations that had no ties to Hezbollah. Clearly, these attacks are unwarranted and illegal according to the laws of war. They also targeted a Hezbollah-backed television station, al-Manar TV, but according to Amnesty International, " The fact that al-Manar television broadcasts propaganda in support of Hizbullah's attacks against Israel does not render it a legitimate military objective."
- Economic infrastructure Throughout the war, various buildings have been bombed and people have been displaced, including private businesses and factories and businesspeople. At the time of the report, Amnesty International reported that the Lebanese government believed the unemployment rate to be at 75 percent.
The facts presented here should be shocking, at the least. What should be even more shocking is the fact that the United States, a source of moral influence in the world, did not once condemn Israel for committing such violations of humanitarian law during its war with Hezbollah and continued to provide it with arms for fighting the war. Amnesty International's Secretary General Irene Khan stated that, "governments supplying Israel and Hizbullah with arms and military equipment are fuelling their capacity to commit war crimes," which is clearly evident by the disturbing facts presented in the report. Human Rights Watch calls on the United States to "immediately suspend transfer of arms...alleged to have been used in violation of international humanitarian law in Lebanon, as well as funding or support for such materiel." The government of the United States needs to reconsider its policy toward Israel and the Middle East in order to preserve its highly valuable moral influence, because human rights violations such as the ones committed by Israel in this recent war will not be tolerated for much longer by the international community.
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Use and Abuse of Science
Natural disaster due: expert
01 October 2006
By GREG MEYLAN
New Zealand is a country coming apart at the seams. Or, more accurately, subducting at the seams of two continental plates, making it periodically shake, crumble, explode and prone to tsunamis.
As part of Te Papa's Earth Rocks event on Labour Weekend the museum has organised a panel of experts to answer the public's questions about how best to survive the earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes or landslides that come with our geology.
Panel leader Dr Hamish Campbell of GNS Science said New Zealand was one of the most geologically active places on earth. Our farms, homes and forests are perched on an unusually thin skin of the earth's crust at the boundary of two tectonic plates.
The panel expects questions such as the best place to find cover in an earthquake, where the most dangerous place to live is, which volcano is likely to erupt next, who provides insurance cover in a landslide and how to escape a tsunami.
The natural threats to New Zealand were widespread and, statistically at least, several of the most dangerous were due to go, Campbell said.
"A full-scale Taupo eruption would literally take out all of the North Island," he said.
Lake Taupo erupted an average of once every 950 years but has not erupted since 181AD. Its largest known eruption left half a metre of volcanic debris on the Chatham Islands 1000km away. The Alpine fault, which runs the length of the Southern Alps, is due a major move that would shake every city in the South Island, Campbell said, flattening many houses.
Evidence of the last time the Alpine fault moved include a large area of southern beech forest in which every standing tree was snapped off at the trunk.
Landslides were less apocalyptic but more frequent and were the most common cause of destruction to property. In Auckland, it was only a matter of time before a new volcano appeared and began oozing molten lava.
"There is ample evidence to show there is plenty of activity going on under Auckland. Auckland is built on a hot spot that is deeply rooted; the magma is coming from very, very deep down."
But that would be fairly benign compared to what scientists believed was in store for Wanganui. The ground beneath the city was regularly experiencing tiny tremors, indicating something big was building up.
"We think there will be another volcano like Ruapehu smack on Wanganui," Campbell said.
To the west Mt Taranaki - with an eruption average of every 100 to 200 years - was also overdue.
"It is like Mt St Helens (which erupted in 1980 in the US, killing 57 people), so you get very big blowouts and big bits collapsing."
Campbell said a report commissioned after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami concluded the risk to New Zealand from a tsunami was probably as great as from earthquakes.
"And there is no part of New Zealand that is immune to earthquakes."
You have until October 16 to put questions to the panel via www.tepapa.govt.nz/disasterask. Its answers will be filmed and broadcast via the site on October 21.
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US jury says Wyeth drug caused woman's breast cancer
By Jon Hurdle
Reuters
Wed Oct 4, 2006
PHILADELPHIA - A jury on Wednesday awarded a woman $1 million and her husband $500,000 in compensatory damages after finding that Wyeth's hormone replacement drug Prempro was a cause of her breast cancer.
The trial in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas now moves into a second phase to begin on October 12, in which the jury will decide whether Wyeth failed to warn of the dangers of Prempro.
The jury of five men and three women may award additional punitive damages if it finds Wyeth failed to warn. However, if it finds that the company adequately warned of the drug's risks no damages will be payable, including the compensatory damages awarded by the jury on Wednesday.
"The plaintiff has the burden of proof that the defendant's conduct is negligent, and that it failed to adequately warn of the dangers," Judge Norman Ackerman instructed the jurors.
The lawsuit charged that Wyeth was negligent in the testing, manufacture and marketing of its hormone replacement therapy drugs.
"We disagree that there is any scientific basis to support the jury's finding of a causal link between hormone replacement therapy and the plaintiff's breast cancer," Wyeth spokesman Chris Garland said.
"This is one jury's verdict and cannot be used to predict the outcome of future cases," he added.
In the first federal Prempro trial, a jury last month in Little Rock, Arkansas found Wyeth was not negligent and had adequately warned patients and doctors of the cancer risk associated with the drug.
Wyeth is facing some 5,000 lawsuits involving its hormone replacement drugs.
"Lawyers all around the country are watching what happens in these cases to get a sense of whether Prempro plaintiffs have a chance of winning," said Howard Erichson, professor of law at Seton Hall Law School in Newark, New Jersey.
Deutsche Bank analyst Barbara Ryan predicted that few Prempro plaintiffs will win punitive damages because Wyeth immediately changed the drug's label to reflect an increased cancer risk after a federally sponsored trial showed long-term use of the drug in combination with the female hormone replacement estrogen caused a 26 percent higher risk of breast cancer in women aged 50 to 79 who had not undergone hysterectomies.
"Right away they appropriately relabeled the drug, which resulted in a 60 percent decline in the number of prescriptions" for Prempro, Ryan said. "So the company has very strong defenses against punitive damages."
The plaintiff, Jennie Nelson, 67, of Dayton, Ohio, took Prempro for about six years and blamed it for her breast cancer. As a result of the cancer, she underwent a mastectomy and chemotherapy and radiation therapy.
The jury deliberated for about 33 hours over six days before reaching its verdict.
It had appeared to be deadlocked by the second day, but was urged to continue its deliberations by the judge. About three hours before the verdict was announced, the judge replaced one male juror with an alternate.
Nelson's attorneys declined to comment on the reason for the juror replacement, but said the deliberation time reflected a jury that had taken a careful approach to its task.
The market shrugged off the news and Wyeth shares finished off their earlier highs but still up 26 cents at $51.18 on the New York Stock Exchange.
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Interior Dept. reports computer abuse
By JENNIFER TALHELM
Associated Press
Wed Oct 4, 2006
WASHINGTON - Interior Department employees aren't just using their computers to oversee parks and wildlife, an investigation found. They're spending thousands of hours a week visiting shopping, sex and gambling Web sites.
A report made public Wednesday on an internal investigation examining a week of computer use found more than more than 1 million log entries in which 7,700 employees visited game and auction sites.
More than 4,700 log entries were to sexually explicit and gambling Web sites.
The findings are "egregious" and "alarming," the department's inspector general, Earl Devaney, wrote in the report.
"Computer users at the department have continued to access sexually explicit and gambling Web sites due to the lack of consistency in department controls over Internet use," he wrote.
Devaney titled his report, "Excessive Indulgences." Its cover illustration is a photo montage of the types of Web sites employees have visited. One picture includes a shot of a woman's bare stomach.
Department officials say they are taking action to cut back on abuses by the agency's almost 80,000 employees with Internet access.
Devaney said in his report that he wanted to test the effectiveness of the department's rules on Internet usage. He looked primarily for visits to sexually explicit, gambling, gaming and auction sites because they are time-consuming and obviously not work-related, he said.
The investigation also found:
- A number of computers accessed sexually explicit Web sites for 30 minutes to an hour.
- One computer had 2,369 log entries at two game sites for about 12 hours.
- At least one computer accessed an Internet auction for almost eight hours.
Despite the findings, Devaney noted that since 1999, the department has taken just 177 disciplinary actions, 112 of which were for accessing pornographic or sexually explicit Web sites.
"Without strong and effective controls, we believe that this activity will continue and possibly increase," Devaney wrote.
In response, department officials issued a memo to all employees on Sept. 27 reminding them that some of the activities Devaney found "have significant legal and administrative consequences" and that violators could be fired or turned over to the police.
The department is working on blocking inappropriate Internet sites, the memo said. But it reminded employees that "just because an inappropriate site is not blocked does not mean that it is authorized for access."
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Bernanke: Baby Boomers Will Strain U.S.
By JEANNINE AVERSA
AP Economics Writer
Oct 04, 2006
WASHINGTON - Unless Social Security and Medicare are revamped, the massive burden from retiring baby boomers will place major strains on the nation's budget and the economy, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday.
"Reform of our unsustainable entitlement programs" should be a priority, he said in prepared remarks to the Economics Club of Washington. "The imperative to undertake reform earlier rather than later is great," Bernanke added.
It marked the Fed chief's most extensive comments to date on the challenges facing the United States with the looming retirement of 78 million baby boomers.
In his remarks, Bernanke did not offer Congress and the Bush administration recommendations on how the massive entitlement programs should be changed. Efforts by the administration to overhaul the Social Security program - once a centerpiece of President Bush's second-term agenda - sputtered last year, meeting resistance from Republicans and Democrats alike.
As the population ages, the nation will have to choose among higher taxes, less non-entitlement spending by the government, a reduction in spending on entitlement programs, a sharply higher budget deficit or some combination thereof, Bernanke said.
Government spending on Social Security and Medicare alone will increase from about 7 percent of the total size of the U.S. economy to almost 13 percent by 2030 and to more than 15 percent by 2050, he said.
Bernanke declared: "The fiscal consequences of these trends are large and unavoidable."
The government recorded a budget deficit of $319 billion last year. This year's red ink is projected by the White House to total around $296 billion.
Financially shoring up Social Security and Medicare will involve difficult choices by lawmakers and other policymakers, Bernanke said.
For instance, if the government tried to finance projected entitlement spending entirely by revenue increases, the taxes collected by the federal government would have to rise from about 18 percent of the total size of the economy to about 24 percent in 2030, he said.
In his speech, Bernanke did not discuss the future course of interest rates.
The Federal Reserve meets next on Oct. 24-25, and many economists believe the policymakers will leave rates unchanged for the third meeting in a row.
With the economy slowing, the central bank in early August decided to halt - for the first time - a two-year long campaign to boost interest rates to fend off inflation. Policymakers suggested that the cooling economy would eventually lessen inflation pressures.
There's been relief on the inflation front as once-surging energy prices have settled down. Gasoline prices, which had topped $3 a gallon in the summer, have slid and are now averaging $2.31 a gallon nationwide, the Energy Department says.
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DNA discovery may crack old murder cases
Hugh Muir
Thursday October 5, 2006
The Guardian
Thousands of unsolved criminal cases could be reopened after the discovery by scientists of a new DNA testing technique.
The revolutionary technology, called DNAboost, could shed new light on tens of thousands of cold cases from up to 30 years ago, including a number of high profile murders.
Officials behind the system, launched yesterday by the Forensic Science Service (FSS), say it enables them to separate mixed or poor quality samples of DNA. It is a world first in analysing samples that have been extremely difficult to interpret.
The FSS, which carries out forensic testing for police forces throughout the country, is piloting DNAboost with the police forces of West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Northumbria and Humberside.
The system is particularly effective in cases where more than one person has touched a surface. Previously there was a low success rate in distinguishing one person from another, particularly where DNA traces were small or of poor quality.
Tests suggest it will increase crime detection rates by at least 15% and will lead to scientists identifying 40% more samples than at present. Paul Hackett, DNA manager at FSS headquarters in Birmingham, said: "This means a great many more cases have the potential to be solved and a great many more families could look forward to securing justice."
British-based FSS runs the world's first and largest national DNA database under contract to the Home Office. The company can complete analysis in one week that might take a year in other European countries. The pilot scheme will run for three months, after which it will be available to other police forces in the country.
DNAboost is the biggest advance since the introduction in 1999 of Low Copy Number, which can match a minute DNA sample and was used by the Australian authorities to ensure the conviction in December 2005 of Bradley John Murdoch for the murder of Peter Falconio.
The FSS used a single hair as evidence to convict Sarah Payne's killer, Roy Whiting, who was found guilty of murder and kidnapping in December 2001.
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Oxbridge closes gap on Harvard in world university rankings
Alexandra Smith
Thursday October 5, 2006
EducationGuardian.co.uk
Cambridge and Oxford have edged closer to Harvard in the latest world university rankings, securing second and third places respectively in a list dominated by US institutions.
The 2006 world university rankings, published today by the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES), reveal that Oxford and Cambridge are now Harvard's closest competitors after the US institution's lead slipped from 13% last year to just 3% this year.
Last year, Cambridge was in third place and Oxford in fourth, beaten by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). This year that was reversed and MIT slipped to 4th spot.
Imperial College London finished in ninth position in the rankings, edging out Princeton and Columbia universities. Beijing University and the Australian National University were the first outside the UK or US to appear on the list, securing the 14th and 16th positions.
Glasgow and Birmingham universities made it into the top 100 for the first time this year, while University College London improved its position from 28th to 25th and King's College rose from 73rd to 46th.
However, the London School of Economics came in at number 17, a slip from its position at number 11 last year, while Bristol also fell from 49th in 2005 to 64th position this year.
Ian Leslie, the pro-vice chancellor for research at Cambridge said: "It is very reassuring that the collegiate systems of Cambridge and Oxford continue to be valued and respected by peers, and that the excellence of teaching and of research at both institutions is reflected in this ranking."
The vice-chancellor Oxford, John Hood, said: "The exceptional talents of Oxford's students and staff are on display daily. This last year has seen many faculty members gaining national and international plaudits for their teaching, scholarship and research, and our motivated students continue to achieve in a number of fields, not just academically.
"Our place amongst the handful of truly world-class universities, despite the financial challenges we face, is testament to the quality and the drive of the members of this university."
The study is based on a survey of more than 3,000 academics and 736 graduate employers, and takes into account a university's student-staff ratio, its ability to attract foreign students and its internationally renowned academics.
The world university rankings 2006
1. Harvard
2: Cambridge
3: Oxford
4: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
5: Yale
6: Stanford
7: California Institute of Technology
8: University of California, Berkeley
9: Imperial College London
10: Princeton
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Delhi on high alert as dengue fever epidemic looms
By Justin Huggler in Delhi
05 October 2006
The Indian capital was on an emergency footing yesterday to contain an outbreak of dengue fever, with medical teams moving door-to-door and spraying the streets with insecticide in an attempt to kill millions of mosquitoes that carry the disease.
The authorities are considering declaring an epidemic, which would mean anyone breaking public health orders by leaving out open pools of water - mosquitoes breed in water -- could face a jail sentence.
So far 11 people have died in Delhi. But there is no mistaking the danger of a serious outbreak of dengue. In the Philippines, 167 people have died of the disease this year. In Indonesia in 2004, there were 800 deaths.
In the West, people are used to thinking of mosquitoes as nothing more than a nuisance. But in much of Asia they can pose a serious problem. A mosquito bite can kill, and at this time of year Delhi is teeming with mosquitoes.
Most Western tourists visiting India still take long courses of malaria pills. But malaria, though it is one of the world's biggest killers, is more of a problem in rural areas than in cities. It is dengue that has invaded modern, 21st-century cities, and left them struggling to cope. And there are no vaccine or preventive pills for dengue.
Tourists need not cancel their holidays in Delhi yet. At the moment the city is not facing a major outbreak, but it is on alert to prevent one. Every autumn there are cases of dengue in the city, but this year there have been more than usual, and that has the authorities worried.
"There is no need to panic and we are not declaring it an epidemic yet," the health minister for Delhi state, Yoganand Shastri, said after emergency talks. There has been public concern after it emerged there had been an outbreak at one of India's premier hospitals, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, and a doctor had died.
Very few of those infected with dengue die of the disease. The problem is that the rate of infection is so high that this small proportion can still mean a lot of people. When 800 people died in Indonesia in 2004, at least 80,000 people were believed to have been infected.
So far this year there have only been 497 cases of infection in Delhi.
Known as break-bone fever for the excruciating joint pain it can cause, dengue causes a severe fever, headaches and rashes. In the overwhelming majority of cases, it lasts six or seven days, and the patient makes a full recovery. In rare cases it can cause potentially serious brain symptoms, or develop into the more dangerous dengue haemmorrhagic fever, which causes internal bleeding. It can also cause dengue shock syndrome, which has a high rate or mortality.
Dengue is on the rise throughout much of Asia and is fast becoming a major menace.
There are only a few methods for protecting against mosquitoes. They are a problem year-round in Delhi, except for a few weeks in the winter when it is too cold for them, and a few weeks in the summer when it is too hot, but it is only at this time of year they carry dengue.
It is impossible to keep them out of houses and office blocks. Even with the windows closed, they come in through the air conditioning vents. Delhi is not a clean city. There are pools of stagnant water where the mosquitoes breed. But much better kept cities have not been able to keep them out.
Unlike malaria, which is usually passed on by mosquitoes that are active at night, dengue is carried by mosquitoes that bite by day. That means mosquito nets are not an option.
The best form of prevention is to cover up despite the heat, which still lingers into October, and the authorities have called for children to wear long-sleeved shirts to school to avoid being bitten.
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The 2006 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony - Thursday, October 5, 2006, 7:30 pm.
Sanders Theater
Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
The 16th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony will announce and introduce the ten new Ig Nobel Prize winners. The winners are traveling to the ceremony, at their own expense, from several continents. The Prizes will be handed to them by a group of genuine, genuinely bemused Nobel Laureates, all before a standing-room only audience of 1200 people. Full details and action pictures will appear in the Nov/Dec 2006 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. The ceremony also includes other wonders.
Go to original for details if you wish to attend.
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Mexican archeologists make major Aztec find
By Gunther Hamm
Reuters
Wed Oct 4, 2006
MEXICO CITY - Mexican archeologists have made the most significant Aztec find in decades, unearthing a 15th century altar and a huge stone slab at a ruined temple in the throbbing heart of Mexico City.
The works were uncovered last weekend at the Aztec empire's main Templo Mayor temple, near the central Zocalo square, which was used for worship and human sacrifice.
It was the most meaningful find since electricity workers stumbled upon an eight-tonne carving of an Aztec goddess at the same site in 1978.
"It is a very important discovery, the biggest we have made in 28 years. It will allow us to find out a lot more," Mexico City's mayor, Alejandro Encinas, said on Wednesday.
The altar has a frieze of the rain god Tlaloc and an agricultural deity.
Archeologists are still unearthing the 11-foot (3.5-m) monolith, which they think might be part of an entrance to an underground chamber.
At the site, excavators with pick axes and shovels hacked at the earth above the monolith while groups of archeologists, government officials and reporters waited around the deep pit.
"The importance of the monolith is what we are going to discover...It's likely that it is part of a chamber, of some offering. We won't know until we get close. First we have to get the stone out," said Alberto Diaz, a member of the archeological team.
The Aztecs, a warlike and deeply religious people who built monumental works, ruled an empire stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean and encompassing much of modern-day central Mexico.
Their often bloody reign began in the 14th century and ended when they were subjugated in 1521 by the Spanish led by Hernan Cortes.
TALE OF THREE CITIES
The Aztecs began building the Templo Mayor pyramid-shaped temple in 1375. Its ruins are now only yards from downtown's choking traffic.
The temple was a center of human sacrifice. At one ceremony in 1487, historians say tens of thousands of victims were sacrificed, their hearts ripped out.
Spanish conquistadors destroyed the temple when they razed the city and used its stones to help build their own capital.
Now the site is surrounded by Spanish colonial buildings like Mexico City's cathedral and the historical National Palace as well as convenience stores and fast-food restaurants.
"Really, when we begin to excavate, we realize that we are in three different times, three different cities: You see the current city, the colonial city and the pre-Hispanic city," said Diaz.
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Haze disrupts air travel in Malaysia's Sarawak state
AFP
Thursday October 5, 2006
Smog from fires raging on Indonesia's side of Borneo island has disrupted air traffic in neighbouring Malaysia's Sarawak state which is choking under unhealthy levels of haze.
The haze situation in peninsular Malaysia is also worsening, with five states facing Indonesia's Sumatra island now hit by unhealthy air quality.
"The helicopter service, a key mode of transport in Sarawak, has been stopped due to poor visibility," an official with the Department of Civil Aviation in Sarawak's capital Kuching told AFP.
Three scheduled flights operated by Malaysia Airlines and a unit of budget carrier AirAsia were also diverted on Wednesday due to poor visibility, he said.
Helicopters are required to have a minimum visibility of 1.5 kilometers (one mile) but visibility in most parts of the state is now less than one kilometer, the official said.
Air quality in Sarawak continued to remain unhealthy in most areas, with Air Pollutant Index readings of between 106 and 188. The index considers haze levels of 100-200 to be unhealthy.
"Hopefully by the end of the month, when the monsoon season kicks in, we will have rain and we will see the end of the haze," a meteorological services department official said.
In peninsular Malaysia, locations in five states including the tourist destination of Malacca posted unhealthy air quality between 101 and 116, up from two states on Wednesday.
Malaysia is hoping to post a sharp rise in tourist arrivals and earnings next year but top travel officials have warned that haze from the Indonesian forest fires could choke the industry.
The Malaysian and Indonesian governments have outlawed land clearing by fire but weak enforcement means the ban is largely ignored.
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Is Iraq Free Yet?
Bombings as US casualties mount as Iraq has worst week yet
by Dave Clark
AFP
Thu Oct 5, 2006
BAGHDAD - More blasts rocked Baghdad, spreading yet more carnage during what was already Iraq's worst week for bombings since the US invasion, and as American casualties continued to mount.
For the fourth time this year a bomb exploded in bustling Tehran Square in downtown Baghdad, wounding at least 20 day labourers waiting at a spot popular for seeking work, security and medical officials said.
In the north of the city, a bomb exploded in a mixed Sunni and Shiite district, killing two civilians, according to a security source
And in Samawa, south of the capital, gunmen murdered two women and a girl from the same Shiite family, in an apparent sectarian attack, police said.
The latest attacks came after a US military spokesman told reporters that attacks by car bombs and roadside booby traps are running at an all-time high, three-and-a-half years after US-led forces overthrew Saddam Hussein.
US casualties are also mounting. Four more soldiers were killed on Wednesday in southwest Baghdad when their unit was attacked by gunfire and mortars.
Since Monday, 14 US soldiers have been killed, mostly in Baghdad, in a spike in casualties that brought the number killed since March 2003 to 2,729, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.
Iraqi and US forces have responded to the violence wracking Baghdad with Operation Together Forward, a joint security plan which has brough 15,000 US troops and more than 40,000 Iraqi soldiers and police onto the streets.
By Monday, they had "cleared approximately 95,000 buildings, 80 mosques and 60 muhallas (small administrative districts), detained more than 125 terrorist suspects, seized more than 1,700 weapons, registered more than 750 weapons and found 35 weapons caches."
"The combined forces have also removed more than 196,921 cubic meters (seven million cubic feet) of trash from the streets of Baghdad," a US statement said.
House-to-house searches have been cut back during the Mulsim holy month of Ramadan, however, and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has been reluctant to allow US troops to raid Sadr City, stronghold of the Shiite Mahdi Army militia.
US intelligence officers believe that Mahdi militiamen, who are nominally loyal to the radical anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, are linked to the death squads that hunt political and sectarian targets on Baghdad's streets.
Sadr is, however, a powerful figure and his supporters are a key component of Maliki's fragile coalition government.
The loyalty of Iraqi security forces has also been in question, with some Shiite-dominated units accused of collaborating with the militias and death squads fighting a sectarian dirty war which leaves 100 people dead every day.
Iraq on Wednesday demobilised an entire 800-strong police brigade and quarantined them in a US military base where they will receive what a US spokesman said was "anti-militia, anti-sectarian, national unity training".
"There was clear evidence that there was some complicity in allowing death squad elements to move freely, when in fact they were supposed to be impeding their movement," Major General William Caldwell told reporters.
The development of Iraqi security forces is of vital important to President George W. Bush's administration, which has pinned its strategy on training local troops to replace the 142,000 US soldiers in the country.
But the discipline of US forces has also been called into question.
On Wednesday, two US Marines pleaded not guilty to murdering an Iraqi civilian, at a pre-court martial hearing in Camp Pendleton, California.
The charges relate to the death of Hashim Ibrahim Awad on April 26 in Hamdania. Prosecutors allege that a gang of eight US servicemen kidnapped the 52-year-old from his home, shot him dead and planted a rifle near his body.
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Azzaman, Iraq: Iraqi Uncompensated Victims Lose Faith in American Forces
By Abdulsamia al-Smaraai
September 25, 2006
After having relatives killed and wounded and their homes and property destroyed, thousands of furious victims of American attacks on Iraqi cities, towns and villages have yet to receive compensation.
The U.S. invasion of Iraq began in March 2003, and the official announcement of the end of major combat operations came shortly after its forces landed in Baghdad. But there has been no letup in these operations. Many Iraqi cities, towns and villages have seen a wave of "invasions," ostensibly to root out the sources of "terror and insurgency."
And with the insurgency and resistance mushrooming, so have these "invasions" by U.S. forces.
Major cities like Falluja, Samarra, Mosul, Ramadi, Tal Affar and several others, lying within the so-called Sunni Triangle, have been invaded several times.
Before, during and immediately after these invasions, American and Iraqi officials routinely make big promises to the civilian population. They vow to rebuild the destroyed cities and pay handsomely for casualties and damage. And the local media carry stories on the amounts of money already earmarked for the purpose.
For example, $25 million was allocated to the city of Samarra alone, after a large-scale U.S. invasion of the city in October, 2004. But residents say that while they continue to be bombed, there has been no trace of the money.
Along with two cars, Mr. Abu Rihab had his house destroyed. He estimates the damage at $300,000, but despite four applications for compensation he has so far received nothing.
"U.S. warplanes struck my home, destroyed my house and two cars as well as my store, which sells air-conditioning equipment. I have a right to compensation, since I had nothing to do with the so-called mujahiddeen or resistance," he said.
The neighborhood of al-Jibriya is perhaps among the most affected in Samarra. American bombing of the neighborhood has turned Mohammed Nadeem's life into a tragedy.
"U.S. warplanes bombarded my sister's home. The bombing turned the house into a heap of debris. We had to dig up the corpses of my sister, her husband and three children from the ruins. We have submitted several applications for compensation, but to no avail," Nadeemd said.
Stories like these are the most likely source of the mistrust many Iraqis feel toward the U.S. occupiers. Confidence in America and its occupation forces in the country is at a very low ebb.
But local authorities say that the $25 million allocated for Samarra, most of it part of an American grant, is set aside in the Central Bank and will be released as quickly as possible.
Hussain Jabbara, senior provincial official from Takreet, where Samarra is located, said he recently had a meeting with Iraqi officials and U.S. military officers who confirmed that "appropriate compensation" will be made for those affected in Samarra.
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Azzaman, Iraq: Moqtada Al Sadr Calls for 'Peaceful War' Against Occupier
By Abdulhussein Zair
September 23, 2006
The radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is urging his followers not to use force in opposing the Iraqi government and the presence of U.S. troops, and seems open to compromise.
Al-Sadr's military wing, the al-Mahdi Army, is one of Iraq's most powerful and lethal militias. It has already waged two major uprisings against U.S. forces and a number of mutinies against the government.
In the southern city of Diwaniya earlier this month, the al-Mahdi Army easily defeated Iraqi military and police forces. To help regain some semblance of control, the troops had to seek the aid of U.S. forces.
Sadr said his call for compromise and civil resistance was for the sake of sparing Iraqi blood. But nevertheless, he still had some harsh words for the United States.
"I don't think this new attitude will persuade America to give up its tyranny. It is an aggressor country and will remain so. As for me, there will be no letup in my opposition to the occupier," he said.
Sadr's bloc took part in the last parliamentary elections and won 30 of the 275 seats in the National Assembly. His bloc has two ministers in the government as part of the ruling Shiite coalition.
Sadr has a large following among the Shiites in Baghdad and several other cities in southern Iraq.
"I want you to wage a peaceful war against them (Americans). I do not wish to see a single drop of blood shed, because this is very dear to us. Engage them (Americans) in a popular, peaceful and political war," he asked his followers.
However, he said Iraqis should expect nothing but "death and destruction" from the United States.
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Al-Zawraa, Iraq: After Car Crash, Witnesses Say Americans Set Iraqis Afire
By Mahend Fadil
Translated by James Murray
September 25, 2006
Babylon: While driving on the wrong road in the Nile region of Babil Province, an Iraqi citizen driving an Opel was killed in a collision with a vehicle belonging to American forces, eyewitnesses have told the Zarwaa Media Network. The incident took place at 7:30 am yesterday morning [September 24th].
U.S. troops remained at the scene to inspect the vehicle, examine documents and generally act aggressively toward the passenger that survived the incident. Two Iraqi bystanders tried to apologize to the American troops and clarify the matter, saying that it was merely a traffic accident. But the Americans were unconcerned and wouldn't listen. Then, after spraying the two bystanders with incendiary materiel, the Americans set the two Iraqis alight and departed in their vehicle, leaving the flames to consume their corpses.
It is worth mentioning that the types of vehicle mentioned [GMC Envoys] are used by American security companies in charge of protecting officials, U.S. Army commanders and the contractors working alongside them.
State authorities have said nothing to the press about the accident, and local authorities have taken no action nor have they launched an investigation into what happened. Due to this atrocious behavior and the fact that the incident coincided with the first day of Ramadan, great anger and congestion reigned over this street in Babel this day.
In a separate incident, two policemen were killed today and five injured as a result of mortar shells that fell on the Jurf al Sakhar police station in Qada al Musib, in the north of the Babil Province. The spokesman for the Babil police command said, "Following an attack comprised of about 20 mortar rounds, unknown gunmen attacked with a heavy barrage of small arms fire that left two policemen dead and seven injured." The spokesman added that "American forces clashed with the gunmen, but they escaped."
It is unknown whether this incident was a reaction to the burning of the two citizens.
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Officials: Al-Masri Probably Not Killed
By QAIS AL-BASHIR
The Associated Press
Thursday, October 5, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The U.S. military is performing DNA tests on a slain militant to determine if he is the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, but U.S. and Iraqi officials said Thursday it did not appear that Abu Ayyub al-Masri had been killed.
Reports that al-Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, had been killed surfaced after a raid Tuesday that killed four terror suspects in the western Iraqi town of Haditha.
U.S. forces initially "thought there was a possibility al-Masri was among them," Lt. Col. Barry Johnson said. But he said it did not appear the terror chief was killed.
"We have no reason to believe that we've killed al-Masri," Johnson told the Associated Press. "We are doing DNA testing to completely eliminate the possibility that this would be al-Masri, but we do not believe it is."
The statement came four days after Iraq's national security adviser, Mouwafak al-Rubaie, said U.S. and Iraqi forces were closing in on al-Masri.
But chief U.S. military spokesman Maj. William B. Caldwell was more skeptical on Wednesday.
"I'd love to tell you we're going to get him tonight," he told reporters. "But, obviously, that's a very key, critical target for all of us operating here in Iraq. ... We feel very comfortable that we're continuing to move forward very deliberately in an effort to find him and kill or capture him."
Caldwell said a driver for al-Masri had been captured in a Sept. 28 raid in Baghdad, the second figure close to the al-Qaida in Iraq chief to be captured that month.
"We're obviously gleaning some key critical information from those individuals and others that have been picked up," he said, adding that 110 al-Qaida suspects were killed and 520 detained in September.
Johnson would not say what kind of a DNA sample existed that tests of the body might be compared to, but said "we're confident we will be make a positive I.D., or not, when the time comes."
The process "can take weeks to resolve," Johnson said.
Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh and Defense Ministry spokesman Qassim al-Moussawi expressed even more certainty that the dead man was not al-Masri.
"The body belonged to someone else," said al-Dabbagh, without identifying the slain militant. "The DNA check will be completed" to make sure, he said.
In violence Thursday, a car bomb exploded in the mainly Shiite neighborhood of Hurriyah in Baghdad, killing two people and wounding two more, police 1st Lt. Thaer Mahmoud said.
Another bomb struck a group of laborers waiting for work at a downtown square in the capital, killing two and wounding 26, Mahmoud said.
The province of Diyala, an increasingly violent region north of Baghdad, saw a string of attacks early Thursday. Bombings and shooting in and around the province's capital Baqouba left seven dead. Iraqi officials have warned of increasing al-Qaida presence in Diyala.
Baghdad has been torn by escalating violence over past weeks, a deadly combination of Sunni insurgent attacks and sectarian killings between Shiites and Sunnis. At least 21 U.S. soldiers have been killed since Saturday, most in Baghdad amid a massive security sweep by American and Iraqi forces that has been going on since August.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki vowed in comments to Iraqi state TV that the country is in the final stage of "confronting the security challenge" and that security would be achieved "within the two or three months to come."
Caldwell also said Wednesday the number of car bombs and roadside bombs that went off or had been found and defused over the past week was the highest this year. He declined to give firm numbers, but said, "The trend line has been up over the last couple of months."
Amid the escalating violence, Iraqi authorities on Wednesday pulled a brigade of about 700 policemen out of service in its biggest move ever to uproot troops linked to death squads, aiming to signal the government's seriousness in cleansing Baghdad of sectarian violence.
It was the first time the Iraqi government has taken such dramatic action to discipline security forces over possible links to militiamen, though some individual soldiers have been investigated in the past.
Sunnis widely fear the Shiite-led police, especially in Baghdad, accusing them of cooperating with death squads who snatch Sunnis and kill them.
The brigade was responsible for a region of northeast Baghdad with a slight Shiite majority, where gunmen on Sunday kidnapped 24 workers from a frozen food factory. Hours later, the bodies of seven of the workers were found dumped in a district miles away.
Sunni politicians have said all those who were kidnapped were members of the minority sect. They blamed Shiite militias for the abduction and accused police of letting the gunmen escape and move freely with their captives.
Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the chief spokesman for the Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, said the brigade was being investigated because it "didn't respond quickly" to the kidnapping.
Caldwell said the police brigade in the area had been ordered to stand down and was undergoing retraining. He said some troops were being investigated and that any found to have militia ties would be removed.
"There is clear evidence that there was some complicity in allowing death squad elements to move freely when, in fact, they were supposed to have been impeding their movement," Caldwell said at a news conference.
Al-Masri, whose pseudonym means "the Egyptian," is believed to have taken over al-Qaida in Iraq after Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed June 7 in a U.S. air strike in Diyala province.
Iraqi intelligence knows the militant's real name and has samples of his fingerprints for comparison, said defense spokesman al-Moussawi, who refused to give the real name.
U.S. officials said al-Masri joined an extremist group led by al-Qaida's No. 2 official Ayman al-Zawahri in 1982. He joined al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan in 1999 and trained as a car bombing expert before traveling to Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
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Shameless!!! US sets aside £11m for Iraq 'success party'
By Andrew Buncombe
Published: 05 October 2006
What a celebration they have in mind is unclear. When the celebration will take place is also uncertain. But Republicans in Washington are so certain of the US making progress in Iraq and Afghanistan that they have set aside $20m (£11m) for a "commemoration of success".
The funding was tucked away in the small print attached to a congressional military spending bill for the past year. Also inserted was a provision for the money to roll over into 2007 if it was not used in the current period.
The news from Iraq suggests the party will not be taking place soon. Yesterday, it was reported that 28 people had been killed in a series of bombs and attacks. Among the dead were two US soldiers - bringing to 17 the number of American troops killed since Saturday.
The US casualty toll now stands at more than 2,730, with almost 120 British troops killed. Two years ago a report in The Lancet suggested more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed.
The Bush administration has repeatedly claimed US soldiers will be withdrawn from Iraq once Iraqi security forces are able to fill their position. But yesterday the Iraqi government suspended a brigade of up to 700 policemen and placed some of them under investigation for suspected "complicity" with death squads.
The police are suspected of involvement with death squads which carried out a series of recent kidnappings and murders. Informed of the $20m that has been set for the "commemoration of success", Nadia McCaffrey, whose son, Patrick, a National Guardsman, was killed in Iraq in 2004, said: "I don't know what to think any more. I think it is totally out of hand. We don't know where we are going."
Ms McCaffrey was among hundreds of protesters who gathered outside the Stockton Memorial Civic Auditorium in California on Tuesday where President Bush told supporters: "When this chapter of history will be written ... it's going to be a comma. The Iraqis voted, comma, and the United States of America understood that Iraq was a central front in the war on terror and helped this young democracy flourish."
The legislation for the celebration, first revealed by The New York Times, empowers the President to designate "a day of celebration" and to "issue a proclamation calling on the people of the United States to observe that day with appropriate ceremonies and activities".
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Bigger Brother
Software to monitor overseas opinions of U.S.
By Eric Lipton
The New York Times
October 4, 2006
A consortium of major universities, using Department of Homeland Security money, is developing software that would let the government monitor negative opinions of the United States or its leaders in newspapers and other publications overseas.
Such a "sentiment analysis" is intended to identify potential threats to the nation, security officials said.
Researchers at institutions such as Cornell University, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Utah intend to test the system on hundreds of articles published in 2001 and 2002 on topics like President Bush's use of the term "axis of evil," the handling of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, the debate over global warming and the coup attempt against Venezuela President Hugo Chavez.
A $2.4 million grant will finance the research over three years.
American officials have long relied on newspapers and other news sources to track events and opinions here and abroad, a goal that has included the routine translation of articles from many foreign publications and news services.
The software would allow much more rapid and comprehensive monitoring of the global news media, as the Homeland Security Department and, perhaps, intelligence agencies look "to identify common patterns from numerous sources of information which might be indicative of potential threats to the nation," a department statement said.
It could take several years for such a monitoring system to be in place, said Joe Kielman, coordinator of the research effort. The monitoring would not extend to U.S. news, Kielman said.
"We want to understand the rhetoric that is being published and how intense it is, such as the difference between dislike and excoriate," he said.
Even the basic research has raised concern among journalism advocates and privacy groups, as well as representatives of the foreign news media.
"It is just creepy and Orwellian," said Lucy Dalglish, a lawyer and former editor who is executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
Andrei Sitov, Washington bureau chief of the Itar-Tass news agency of Russia, said he hoped that the objective does not go beyond simply identifying threats to efforts to stifle criticism about an American president or administration.
"This is what makes your country great--the open society where people can criticize their own government," Sitov said.
The researchers, using a grant provided by a research group once affiliated with the CIA, have complied a database of hundreds of articles that is being used to train a computer to recognize, rank and interpret statements.
The software would need to be able to distinguish between statements like "this spaghetti is good" and "this spaghetti is not very good - it's excellent," said Claire T. Cardie, a professor of computer science at Cornell.
Cardie ranked the second statement as a more intense, positive opinion than the first.
The articles in the database include work from many American newspapers and news wire services, including The Miami Herald and The New York Times, as well as foreign sources like Agence France-Presse and Dawn, a newspaper in Pakistan.
One article discusses how a rabid fox bit a grazing cow in Romania, hardly a threat to the United States. Another item, an editorial in response to Bush's use in 2002 of "axis of evil" to describe Iraq, Iran and North Korea, said, "The U.S. is the first nation to have developed nuclear weapons. Moreover, the U.S. is the first and only nation ever to deploy such weapons."
The approach, called natural language processing, has been under development for decades. It is widely used to summarize basic facts in a text or to create abridged versions of articles.
But interpreting and rating expressions of opinion, without making too many errors, has been much more challenging, said Cardie and Janyce M. Wiebe, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Pittsburgh. Their system would include a confidence rating for each "opinion" that it evaluates and would allow an official to refer quickly to the actual text that the computer indicates contains an intense anti-American statement.
Ultimately, the government could in a semiautomated way track a statement by specific individuals abroad or track reports by particular foreign news outlets or journalists, rating comments about American policies or officials.
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in Washington, said the effort recalled the aborted 2002 push by a Defense Department agency to develop a tracking system called Total Information Awareness that was intended to detect terrorists by analyzing troves of information.
"That is really chilling," Rotenberg said. "And it seems far afield from the mission of Homeland Security."
Federal law prohibits the Homeland Security Department or other intelligence agencies from building such a database on American citizens, and no effort would be made to do that, a spokesman for the department, Christopher Kelly, said. But there would be no such restrictions on using foreign news media, Kelly said.
Kielman, the project coordinator, said questions on using the software were premature because the department was just now financing the basic research necessary to set up an operating system.
Professors Cardie and Wiebe said they understood that there were legitimate questions about the ultimate use of their software.
"There (have) to be guidelines and restrictions on the use of this kind of technology by the government," Wiebe said. "But it doesn't mean it is not useful. It can just as easily help the government understand what is going on in places around the world."
Comment: Another item, an editorial in response to Bush's use in 2002 of "axis of evil" to describe Iraq, Iran and North Korea, said, "The U.S. is the first nation to have developed nuclear weapons. Moreover, the U.S. is the first and only nation ever to deploy such weapons."
From the example above, it appears the software is going to be trained to see completely true statements about the USA as "terrorist threats".
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Court temporarily OKs domestic spying
By DAN SEWELL
Associated Press
Wed Oct 4, 2006
CINCINNATI - The Bush administration can continue its warrantless surveillance program while it appeals a judge's ruling that the program is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
The president has said the program is needed in the war on terrorism; opponents argue it oversteps constitutional boundaries on free speech, privacy and executive powers.
The unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave little explanation for the decision. In the three-paragraph ruling, judges said that they balanced the likelihood an appeal would succeed, the potential damage to both sides and the public interest.
The Bush administration applauded the decision.
"We are pleased to see that it will be allowed to continue while the Court of Appeals examines the trial court's decision, with which we strongly disagree," Deputy White House press secretary Dana Perino said in a statement.
The program monitors international phone calls and e-mails to or from the United States involving people the government suspects have terrorist links. A secret court has been set up to grant warrants for such surveillance, but the government says it can't always wait for a court to take action.
U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit ruled Aug. 17 that the program was unconstitutional because it violates the rights to free speech and privacy and the separation of powers.
The Justice Department had urged the appeals court to allow it to keep the program in place while it argues its appeal, claiming that the nation faced "potential irreparable harm" and would be more vulnerable to a terrorist attack. The appeal is likely to take months.
"This program is both critical to preventing terrorist attacks and fully consistent with law," said Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in January seeking to stop the program on behalf of journalists, scholars and lawyers who say it has made it difficult for them to do their jobs because they believe many of their overseas contacts are likely targets. Many said they had been forced to take expensive and time-consuming overseas trips because their contacts wouldn't speak openly on the phone or because they didn't want to violate their contacts' confidentiality.
The ACLU contends that the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which set up the secret court to grant warrants for such surveillance, gave the government enough tools to monitor suspected terrorists.
"We are confident that when the 6th Circuit addresses the merits of this case, it will agree that warrantless wiretapping of Americans violates the law and is unconstitutional," Melissa Goodman, an ACLU attorney, said in a news release.
Similar lawsuits challenging the program have been filed by other groups, including in New York and San Francisco. The issue could wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Comment: After the passage of the Military Commissions Act, can there be any doubt that the Bush administration will get its way on the issue of domestic spying??
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Milwaukee alderman wants "security cameras" in bars
By LARRY SANDLER
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Oct. 3, 2006
Milwaukee's taverns and nightclubs could be required to install security cameras to keep an eye on customers both inside and outside, under an ordinance proposed by downtown Ald. Bob Bauman.
As written, the measure would apply to all bars in the city. But Bauman said it could be revised to exclude restaurants and small taverns, leaving the focus on the largest establishments - and on the places where patrons cause the most trouble.
"Video allows us to be eyewitnesses to the incidents we're being asked to make judgments on," when neighbors appear at license renewal hearings with claims of violence and disorder at taverns, Bauman told the Common Council's Licenses Committee on Tuesday.
Tavern and restaurant representatives say they understand the advantages of cameras, but they're concerned about the cost of the equipment, which could run into the thousands of dollars for each establishment.
Ed Lump, president of the Wisconsin Restaurant Association, said a small restaurant could spend $10,000 to $12,000 on security cameras.
Police Deputy Inspector Anna Ruzinski disputed that claim, saying her department priced a four-camera system at $1,200 last year. But Sally Ferguson, owner of Fhaze II, 3363 N. 27th St., said she spent nearly $7,000 three years ago on a one-camera system with a monitor and recorder, plus the cost of tapes and maintenance.
Bauman's measure calls for taverns and nightclubs to install digital video cameras that produce color images, to keep the images for at least a week and to give them to any law enforcement agency that asks for them. Cameras would be placed outside to watch the parking lot and the street, and inside to provide "a panoramic, full-frame view" of the entire premises.
The requirements would not apply to not-for-profit organizations with liquor licenses, such as churches and veterans' groups, because fights don't usually break out at those places, the legislation says. Bauman said he could support excluding restaurants and "the proverbial ma-and-pa establishments" for the same reason.
Fights, shootings and rowdy behavior are frequently cited - and often disputed - when taverns are facing license suspensions or revocations. Bauman said the videos "really would improve the quality of the evidence" at the committee's license hearings.
Convenience stores already are required to have video cameras, as is any retail establishment where police are called more than three times a year, Bauman noted.
Ruzinski said police believe cameras could be a deterrent to crime and could help police investigate crimes that do occur.
But Prentice McKinney, representing the Milwaukee Metropolitan Entertainment Association, a group of bars and nightclubs, said: "I've never known a camera to prevent crime," although he agreed they are useful in investigations.
McKinney said he has cameras at his bar, Savoy's, 2901 N. 5th St. When his customers become disorderly, he warns them that they're being recorded, but it doesn't stop them, he said.
Mayor Tom Barrett would support the concept, based on a recent study that found shootings dropped at bars targeted for extra scrutiny by police, mayoral spokeswoman Eileen Force said after the meeting.
The committee delayed action on the measure to give Bauman time to modify the legislation in response to tavern and restaurant concerns.
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Argenpress, Argentina: Contemporary Fascism in the United States
By Nestor Nunez
Translated by Barabara Howe
October 2, 2006
A Soviet-era documentary about fascism summarizes the absurd package of lies that the Nazis employed to justify their supposed superiority over other peoples on this planet, as well as their brutal crimes committed against humanity.
In Germany back then, speeches about a "pre-existing need" to fight "wars of ethnic cleansing" and to "purify the world" were applauded. During this nearly universal purge, concentration camps where millions of Russians, Slavs, Jews and other Europeans lost their lives were regarded as a "blessing."
Six decades after these crimes were committed, it seemed as though in the history of our species, nothing like them would ever be seen again. Nevertheless, the George W. Bush government and lawmakers in the North American Congress have just turned a similar page, by establishing "legalized" torture against their supposed opponents
This new law for the courts and authorities of the United States renders those "inconvenient" Geneva Conventions, which prohibit abuse and offenses against the detained, obsolete.
The Oval Office insisted on this legislative battle. The President needed to get his "law" on the books before the upcoming mid-term elections, when his Republican party risks losing its majority in Congress.
The neoconservatives achieved their purpose. W. Bush's controversial and partisan "war against terrorism" can now depend on having a special tool to repeat the atrocities of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, but this time under the appearance of normality and official recognition.
These are the facts which emerge into view from this serious and shameful step adopted by the sacrosanct powers of the Union [the U.S.] As even former Secretary of State Colin Powell has observed, the image of the United States has been severely damaged by official admissions of torture. But the story doesn't stop there.
It is now more evident than ever that claims about the savageries committed against detainees at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo as being isolated acts of individuals, was a false "history." As has been said many times before, there was an underlying politics of violence that today has been legally sanctioned.
And at this point it is reasonable to ask oneself if the approval of the use of aggressive interrogation methods against prisoners, Washington has reached a moral crossroads when is says that it will not send the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles to face justice in Venezuela because, according to a local judge, he could be tortured by the government of Caracas.
The government of the United States has taken an embarrassing step that the international community should not ignore and which should serve as an added incentive to the American people themselves to reject the current administration.
Now we will see what happens at the U.N. Human Rights Council which in its previous life as the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, was the scene of resistance to the powerful, when it sought to investigate and denounce the abuses against "enemy combatants" detained at the illegal American naval base in Guantanamo.
In fact, various U.N. officials have described the legislation proposed by the White House as immoral and as a violation of civil rights. Now that it has been written into the Empire's laws, the least that can be hoped for is the condemnation of this century's Nazis.
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Diario de Noticias, Brazil: Bush Discredits Spy Agencies; Gives Boost to the Lunatic Fringe
By Vicente Jorge Silva
Translated By Brandi Miller
September 27, 2006
According to the respectable New York Times, a confidential report from the sixteen spy agencies of the United States produced over the last two years has concluded that the invasion of Iraq provoked a growth in Islamic fundamentalism, international terrorism and threats to America's domestic security. There are two or three extraordinary consequences to this conclusion.
The first is that such an extensive network of secret entities took two years to diagnose something that any observer not suffering from ideological blindness had already perceived at least two years ago.
The second is the flagrant contrast between the conclusion of these sixteen spy agencies and the official doctrine of the White House, and the infinite perplexity this creates over how the central tenets of American foreign policy could have been based on mistakes of such unprecedented magnitude.
Then there is the third extraordinary thing: if the conclusions of the intelligence community are exactly contrary that that being defended by the Administration of the planet's only superpower, the divorce threatens to catastrophically discredit and erode America's authority around the world.
Confronted with all this, it's possible to accept the beliefs of more-or-less crazy people - that for example, the intelligence agencies - outwardly at least, sixteen of them - serve little or no useful purpose, or that despite all the evidence, those making American imperial security policy can dispense with the activities, information or diagnoses of these agencies - and do the opposite of what they recommend.
From hence forward, the White House will radically domesticate the CIA and other agencies, transforming them into merely propagandistic appendages of its policies, drowning them in the same suicidal autism that blinded the KGB to the implosion of the Soviet empire.
But there is an alternative scenario on the level of the most celebrated conspiracy theories: the secret services appear as a kind of fifth column or domestic enemy, bent on toppling the legitimate political authorities (as we have already seen, by the way, in so many fictional movie and television story lines).
The delirious speculations are as much a part of the American imagination as are those of the recent and very impressive "conspiracy" documentary about September 11th: Loose Change, by Dylan Avery WindowsVideo shown on channel 2.
Already, the White House has taken upon itself to discredit the report of the intelligence services in the "truncated" form that was published in The New York Times as "biased." After the fact, it's always easy to mistakenly attribute the responsibility for past mistakes on the analysis and lack of political perspective of the intelligence agencies (invoking to the point of shouting the failure of the CIA and other agencies before and after September 11th).
Except that this time, the broad shoulders of the intelligence services aren't broad enough to carry the missionary adventurism of the Bush Administration. In any case, if the intelligence services endorse a report that radically puts in check the intervention in Iraq - considering it responsible for the expansion of terrorism - this cannot but provoke a deadly short-circuit in the credibility of the White House. When the most reliable measures of American public opinion show that confidence in George W. Bush has fallen to historically levels just two months before crucial elections, this revelation threatens to definitively convert Bush into that lame duck that The Economist mentioned some time ago.
If, as America's sixteen intelligence agencies have recognized, the White House's Iraqi policy has failed its main objective to halt the spread of terrorism, it is no surprise that today's climate is favorable to conspiracy theories. This is precisely the case of Loose Change, which manipulates the disturbing official inconsistencies, mysterious links and inexplicable holes of September 11th (and there is no lack if these regarding the attack on the Pentagon and the collapse of the Twin Towers) to "demonstrate" that all of this was nothing but a dark conspiracy of America against itself - as if al-Qaeda or bin Laden never existed or were virtual creations of America's sinister hidden powers.
In the mean time, after the crude fantasy of Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" and the idea that that nation was a staging ground for terrorism, isn't the morbid fascination with insane conspiracies understandable? Won't they in the end be more imaginative and exciting than the carelessly formulated lies, ideological idiocy or political and military incompetence of the Bush Administration - which is so unbelievable that it looks like a conspiracy?
Comment: Ya hafta wonder if this guy is being facetious or not.
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Spokane sheriff acknowledges porn search was at wrong house
Seattle Times
5 Oct 06
For a 67-year-old homeowner and his wife "Oops, wrong number" is not enough.
SPOKANE - For a 67-year-old homeowner and his wife, wrongly subjected to a shattering pornography search, saying, "Oops, wrong number" is not enough.
Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie D. Knezovich apologized Tuesday for the blunder, which he said resulted when Detective Timothy D. Hines tried to nail whoever was responsible for obscene calls to at least 20 or women enrolled at Whitworth College.
Hines wrote down the wrong figures for a telephone number associated with the calls, so he obtained a search warrant for a house in Spokane, miles from the correct location in suburban Spokane Valley, Knezovich said.
Through a spokesman in the sheriff's office Hines declined an interview request from the newspaper.
The irate homeowner told by The Spokesman-Review, which did not identify him at his request, that deputies dumped out drawers, went through his wallet and checkbook, seized computers, CDs, floppy disks, VHS tapes and other material and refused to clean up the mess in the raid Sept. 27.
Half a dozen sheriff's vehicles converged on the house, and after taking photographs outside Hines told officers within hearing of the neighbors, "Now let's go inside and get some porn," the owner said.
"It's like the gang that can't do it right," he said. "They shoot themselves in the foot and then they all come to make peace...
"What would you do if somebody came to your door and ripped your whole house apart, turned everything upside down and said you are a porno freak?"
Among the confiscated items were copies of "The Lion King" and "Snow White," found in a bedroom where the couple's granddaughter stays when she comes to visit, the man said.
He said Hines argued with his wife of 37 years when she insisted the voice on recording of "that filthy stuff" in the obscene calls was not that of her husband.
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He said he had hired a lawyer. He did not say whether he planned to sue but told the newspaper, "I'm not going to be treated like this and dragged around."
Hines realized his mistake Monday when he checked the accuracy of the phone number with a telephone company, sheriff's Capt. Bruce E. Mathews said. By then the target of the search - a 40-year-old man who used parts of his name to contrive aliases - was gone.
Knezovich said he plans to adopted a more structured system for checking facts in search warrants, adding that Hines probably would not be disciplined.
"I could see it if it was a blatant lack of diligence," the sheriff said, "but sometimes things like that happen. A number can get transposed."
Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company
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Kassim Mohamed's battle with secrecy
Toronto Star
1 October 06
Kassim Mohamed is struggling to clear his name in court, after being investigated as a possible terrorist. And his battle should concern everyone who cares about civil rights.
He is a Canadian citizen and former Toronto bus driver. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service investigated him in 2004 when he was noticed filming the Yonge-Bloor subway. He says he was innocently compiling footage of popular city sites, such as the CN Tower, for his family abroad.
Police questioned him, his family, friends and colleagues. They pored through his films, computer, and garbage. At every turn, he co-operated. They never charged him with a crime.
But when he went to Egypt to visit family he was detained for two weeks, blindfolded, shackled and kept incommunicado, missing the birth of his child.
He was also detained briefly in Greece, on a prior trip, while en route to Egypt. At that time authorities in Athens pressured him to return to Canada, where he was met by police and interrogated.
Now he is suing Ottawa for $1 million, saying officials negligently gave information to Greece and Egypt that violated his rights. He also wants a letter affirming he is not a suspect.
But Mohamed's bid to hold Ottawa to account in open court is being frustrated by Attorney-General Vic Toews's office. Citing national security, officials do not want to disclose relevant information to Mohamed, or to anyone else.
Under Section 38 of the Canada Evidence Act, the government officials have asked Federal Court to hold a secret hearing to consider their request.
The Toronto Star is challenging the veil of secrecy that applies in such cases.
Federal Court Chief Justice Allan Lutfy is hearing this challenge.
But regardless of how Justice Lutfy may rule, Parliament should do its part to rectify draconian provisions in the law that make a mockery of the principle that courts must be open, and accountable.
Section 38 lets the attorney-general ask Federal Court to ban the disclosure of "potentially injurious" or "sensitive" information about Canada's foreign relations, national security or national defence.
In these cases:
#
The public has no right even to know that a Section 38 application has been made. In Mohamed's case, Ottawa authorized disclosure. It did not have to. Nor is Ottawa obliged to say where or when the hearing will take place. It hasn't.
#
The hearing is closed to the public, even though innocuous information may be given to the court. Ottawa can provide what's known as ex parte information to the judge alone, in secret, to protect national security. It can also provide non-sensitive information to the judge, Mohamed and his lawyer. But no party to the proceedings, including Mohamed, can tell anyone else about them.
#
The media are not allowed to know anything about these hearings, let alone attend them or publish anything that goes on during the hearings.
Five years after 9/11, Parliament must use its current review of the Anti-Terrorism Act to correct this lopsided law, which improperly favours secrecy over civil rights.
Whenever Section 38 is invoked, the public must be told.
Section 38 proceedings that do not endanger security should be open to the public. There is no need for blanket secrecy.
And the media must be able to report on what is said during these proceedings.
Anything less makes a mockery of Canada's open court system, discourages accountability by the police and security services and ultimately threatens our civil rights.
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People Going Off
Texas standoff ends after 14 hours
By JEFF CARLTON
Associated Press
October 5, 2006
FOREST HILL, Texas - A nearly 14-hour standoff between police and a man accused of shooting three people and taking a young boy hostage ended at dawn Thursday with the boy safe and the suspect in custody.
Police in the Fort Worth suburb of Forest Hill arrested Joe Dixon, 57, on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, Lt. Chris Hebert said.
The boy, described as a 4-year-old nephew of someone who lived in the house, was found unharmed and placed in the custody of an unidentified guardian, Hebert said. He said the child had been in the house with Dixon throughout the standoff but asleep during much of it.
Brenda Jackson said the dispute started with an argument between her 43-year-old sister and Dixon. She told The Dallas Morning News that she confronted Dixon and that he told her: "If y'all call police, it's gonna be a war."
Then, she said, "he was standing next door to my yard, and everybody who was outside was shot."
Police arrived to find the victims, at least one of them critically injured, and the suspect barricade inside a house with the boy and two guns, Hebert said.
SWAT teams surrounded the area and evacuated other homes within a block. Broadcast video showed police leading several children from the back of a home and then across open fields. Several wounded adults were taken to ambulances by the same route.
Hebert said authorities had established "sporadic" contact with the gunman during the standoff. Around midnight, police broke a window and threw a cellular phone inside to facilitate further negotiations, and those talks led to the surrender, he said.
An official at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth said a woman from the area, Tonya Gilstrap, was hospitalized there in fair condition. Gilstrap's husband, Alfredo Bueno, said his wife was injured in the back and the head, apparently from the spray of a shotgun blast.
The extent of her injuries and the conditions of the others were not immediately released.
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Bomb threat closes Va. school district
Associated Press
5 October 06
CULPEPER, Va. - A bomb threat shut down an entire school district Thursday, canceling classes for more than 7,200 students in eight public schools, as well as hundreds more in area religious schools and child care centers.
Culpeper Sheriff H. Lee Hart said the threat, which came on the heels of three deadly U.S. school attacks in the span of a week, was called into the county's communications center at about 11:30 p.m. Wednesday.
"The individual had a lengthy conversation, and in this conversation he said he was going to blow up schools," Hart said. "We do not know which schools or his plans. We don't know a lot about this individual."
State police used explosives-detecting dogs and bomb technicians in a search of the buildings on Thursday, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was called for assistance, officials said. Experts planned to sweep all the public school buildings and several private schools for bombs or other possible dangers.
"You simply can't be too cautious," said Culpeper County Schools Superintendent David A. Cox. "The safety of our students and our employees is our number one concern."
Culpeper, about 60 miles southwest of Washington, D.C., is in a mostly rural area that has become a bedroom community for people who work in the Capitol area.
In the past two weeks, three schools in three states have been hit by deadly attacks, and several others have faced threats.
A gunman killed himself and five girls Monday at a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania; on Friday a 15-year-old Wisconsin student was arrested in the shooting death of his principal; and on Sept. 27 a man took six girls hostage in Colorado, sexually assaulting them before fatally shooting one girl and killing himself.
In addition, schools in states including Nebraska, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon and Wisconsin have been closed or locked down in the past week over threats of violence or guns on campus.
Thursday morning, several Nebraska schools were under lockdown for a second day following an anonymous call that said there would be a shooting at an unspecified school.
On Wednesday, a high school student in Pikesville, Md., fired a pellet gun in a courtyard during lunch, leaving six boys with minor injuries, police said. And in Jonesboro, Ark., where a 1998 school attack killed five people, a middle school was locked down temporarily after a teacher discovered that a student had a Molotov cocktail in the building.
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Staunch beliefs help Amish to farewell loved ones
Sydney Morning Herald
6 October 06
BART, Pennsylvania: All day they trudged across the dusty farm fields - white-bearded Amish patriarchs, women in black dresses and white bonnets, strapping young men with cropped hair and tanned arms.
They came in their metal-wheeled black buggies, drawn by lathered horses that built clouds of grey dust on the gravel byways, sombre but dutiful people on timeless missions of grief.
Across the meadows and back roads of the village of Nickel Mines, clusters of the black-clad mourners could be seen on Wednesday outside the homes where the bodies of the five Amish children murdered on Monday lay. They gathered to pay respect, offer hope and have one last encounter with the departed that is an Amish tradition.
"Go ahead and touch her," a family friend said a mother told the sister of one of the dead. "She's cold now, but she's in heaven."
Three days after Charles Roberts walked into a nearby one-room school building, and shackled and shot 10 Amish schoolgirls before killing himself, the close-knit community began gathering for rituals honouring the dead. Five of the girls died.
But the Amish are exhibiting a stoic determination to carry on. Teaching has resumed at other Amish schools in Lancaster county. Many returned to work and chores the day after the shooting, and said that while they were shocked by the massacre, they believed it was somehow part of God's plan.
Many Amish are also weathering the tragedy because of their strong belief in the afterlife. They are confident the dead girls are in heaven now and are happy. "They have no more suffering on this Earth," one woman said.
A deputy coroner investigating the murders described a scene of carnage, with blood and glass on every desk inside the school.
"There was not one desk, not one chair, in the whole schoolroom that was not splattered with either blood or glass. There were bullet holes everywhere, everywhere," said the Lancaster county deputy coroner, Janice Ballenger.
Yesterday four of the girls - Naomi Rose Ebersol, 7, Marian Fisher, 13, and two sisters, Mary Liz Miller, 8, and Lina Miller, 7 - were to be borne in handmade wooden coffins from their homes to the cemetery. The fifth, Anna Mae Stoltzfus, 12, is due to be buried today.
Pennsylvania police announced that the two female relatives whose abuse Roberts said tormented him had no recollection of being attacked.
Police said the relatives, whom they did not identify, would have been about four or five at the time. Police did not say whether they believed the attacks never happened, but they had sounded sceptical of the story since it was revealed on Tuesday.
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Loss of infant child and guilt from past sex crimes hint at motive for Amish killings
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
04 October 2006
Two more girls have died of the injuries they suffered in the school shootings in south-eastern Pennsylvania on Monday, bringing to five the number of children killed by Charles Carl Roberts when, apparently in a demented mix of grief and dark sexual guilt, he went on the rampage at a single-room Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines.
But even as the death toll rose from one of America's worst school shootings in recent years, one question was paramount: What drove Roberts, a 32-year-old dairy truck driver and by all the evidence a model father to his own three children, to embark on a carefully planned slaughter, before taking his own life?
Jeffrey Miller, Pennsylvania's state Police Commissioner, suggested two possible causes for "this heinous crime": Roberts's enduring grief over the loss of a premature daughter nine years ago, and his claim a mystery to his wife and family that 20 years ago he molested two young relatives, aged three and four.
"He was angry with God. This was a very deeply disturbed individual, but not something that people could pick up on," the commissioner said, suggesting that he might have been about to molest the girls he had bound inside the schoolhouse, had police not arrived on the scene.
Yesterday, a numbed shock still hung over the tiny Bart township in Lancaster County in the heart of the Amish country. Groups of Amish the men in their traditional overalls and broad-brimmed straw hats, the women in their long skirts and hair pulled under their bonnets stood talking quietly in the bright sunshine of a perfect autumn day, struggling still to comprehend their loss.
Respectful of the tight-knit and intensely private Amish community, the authorities have given few details of the five girls who died in the execution-style killings, beyond their names and their ages between six and 13. Five other victims, also aged between six and 13, are currently receiving treatment at hospitals in the region. At least one was in a critical condition.
But at the heart of the tragedy lies the mystery of why Roberts acted as he did. "He planned this in advance, certainly for two or three days, and had laid in equipment for a siege," said Mr Miller. In Roberts's truck, police discovered a "to-buy" list of the items found with him after he killed himself, including pistols, a stun gun, tapes, knives, lubricant and ammunition, even a change of clothes.
As a dairy truck driver, he worked with many Amish farmers, but was not an Amish himself, and had no connection with the school. The authorities are convinced he chose the school not out of any hostility to the Amish community, but because it was an easy target, and "because it had the female victims he was looking for", Commissioner Miller said. Why he wanted to murder young girls has yet to be explained. Police mostly discount speculation of a "copycat" crime, inspired by last week's school shooting in Colorado, where the killer chose to molest and then murder a female victim.
But Roberts's behaviour does seem to be linked to the loss of his infant daughter, Elise, in 1997. It also appears connected to claims he made shortly before his death that he had molested two young relatives 20 years ago, when he would have been 12.
Mr Miller gave details of the rambling suicide note left by Roberts for his children and of his final phone call to his wife, Marie, made from the schoolhouse at about 10.50am. In it he spoke of how Elise's death had " changed his life for ever". He also mentioned the decades-old alleged assaults, saying that over the past two months he had had dreams that such molestations would recur, and that he wanted to "avenge" them. But he had no history of mental illness and no criminal record.
In the hours after the crimes, Roberts's wife and other relatives told police they had not the slightest idea of any such episodes. "The man that did this thing is not the Charles I was married to for nearly 10 years," Marie Roberts said. She later told the local paper, the Intelligencer Journal, that he was "loving, supportive, thoughtful all the things you'd want and more".
The only possible clue to what would happen, neighbours said, was that Roberts had been withdrawn of late but even then, his mood had improved in recent days. "He was relaxed with his family over the weekend," Commissioner Miller said.
On Monday, he returned from his early shift at 3am. Four-and-a-half-hours later he and his wife rose and got their two elder children ready for school. His wife then left for a prayer group meeting, and at 8.45am, as usual, he walked his two elder children to the school bus stop. He then returned home to complete preparations for his killing spree.
As for the Amish, any illusion that their ancient traditions and peaceful, almost innocent, way of life exempted them from the violence of contemporary American life has been shattered. But the mood seemed fatalistic and forgiving, rather than revengeful.
"It's just not the way we think. There is no sense in getting angry," said Henry Fisher, 62, a retired Amish farmer with five grown children and 33 grandchildren, who has spent his entire life in Bart township. Others described the attack as a freak accident, or an act of God.
President George Bush declared himself saddened and "deeply troubled" by the atrocity. The White House is convening a meeting of education and police officials from around the country next week to discuss how the government can help prevent such violence.
Message to wife
Text of the first page of a three-page suicide note written by Charles Carl Roberts IV to his wife, Marie:
"I don't know how you put up with me all those years. I am not worthy of you, you are the perfect wife you deserve so much better.
We had so many good memories together as well as the tragedy with Elise. It changed my life forever I haven't been the same since it affected me in a way I never felt possible. I am filled with so much hate, hate toward myself, hate towards God and unimaginable emptiness.
It seems like every time we do something fun I think about how Elise wasn't here to share it with us and I go right back to anger."
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School killer was 'ordinary, loving man'
AP
03 October 2006
The US gunman who stormed a one-room Amish school in Pennsylvania was an ordinary man and a devoted father and showed few signs of trouble in the days before the attack, according to several people who knew him.
And today Marie Roberts, the wife of Charles Roberts, the 32-year-old man accused of shooting students at an Amish school, said in a statement: "The man who did this was not the Charlie I've been married to for almost 10 years.
"My husband was loving, supportive and thoughtful - all the things you'd always want and more.
"He was an exceptional father. He took the kids to soccer and games, played ball in the backyard and took our seven-year-old daughter shopping. He never said no when I asked him to change a diaper.
"Our hearts are broken, our lives shattered and we grieve for the innocent lives that were lost. Above all, please pray. Pray for the families who lost children today. Please pray for our family and children."
Neighbours and family members saw no indication of problems that would lead Roberts to open fire yesterday on a dozen young girls in Nickel Mines.
"Absolutely not," said Lois Fiester, a relative of Roberts who was standing outside the family's modest ranch house. "They're a fine Christian family. It's ironic and it's heartbreaking."
When the shooting stopped, at least three of the girls were dead. At least seven others were wounded, some critically. And Roberts had killed himself.
State police hinted that Roberts was motivated by a childhood grudge, but they refused to divulge details, citing concern for other people involved.
Investigators also said they were looking into the possibility the attack may have been related to the death of one of Roberts' own children. According to an obituary, Roberts and his wife lost a daughter shortly after she was born in 1997.
Another neighbour, Dorothy Rineer, 83, said Roberts' wife had grown up in the neighbourhood. Roberts, a truck driver who worked the night shift picking up milk from farms, also came from south-eastern Lancaster County, she said.
"He was just an ordinary person," she said.
State police Commissioner Jeffrey Miller said it was clear from interviews with co-workers at the dairy that Roberts' mood had darkened in recent days and he had stopped chatting and joking around with employees and customers.
Land O'Lakes, based in Arden Hills, Minnesota, issued a statement confirming Roberts was employed as a truck driver and assigned to Northwest Food Products, a wholly owned Land O'Lakes subsidiary.
No one answered the door at the Roberts' home yesterday.
Firewood and children's toys, including two play guns, were on the porch. In the living room, visible through the front door, was a plaque reading "God Bless This House" and exercise equipment. A sand box and trampoline were in the back yard.
Josh Zook, an Amish man who lives three doors down, said: "I have no reason to think anything negative about him. It's just horrible."
Zook was still waiting to hear whether one of his own relatives had been a victim in the attack. "I just want to go up there with a bulldozer and bulldoze that school down," he said.
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Woman arrested after disrupting flight
AP
Wed Oct 4, 2006
WASHINGTON - A woman was charged Wednesday with sexual assault after an altercation with a flight attendant on an airplane flying from Charlotte, N.C., to London, an official said.
Conan Bruce, a spokesman for the Federal Air Marshal Service in Washington, said the woman got into an argument with a male flight attendant aboard US Airways Flight 1494.
"During the altercation, she grabbed his buttocks," Bruce said, adding that he based that information on police reports.
When the airplane landed at Gatwick Airport, Sussex police charged the woman with disrupting a flight and sexual assault, Bruce said.
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The Underbelly of the GOP
Compassionate Conservative Pedophiles
October 3, 2006
By JENNIFER VAN BERGEN
Do you remember the claim made by Republicans asking people to vote for their party in 2000? The claim was that they were going to restore a moral White House. Bill Clinton had diminished the stature of the Presidency. The Republicans would start a new era. Bush swept into office--many people still believe, illegitimately, unlawfully . . . and immorally--and fired all Clinton's White House staff. Republicans (and we are made to believe, Americans) were heartened.
Considering the amount of tax-payer millions spent on cleansing America of a philandering president, one would think Republicans would have some consistency with their own.
But what now? Do we have to ask what Foley was up to as he "aggressively" pursued boy pages down the halls of Congress? What about Scooter Libby, writing erotic novels?
What about all the people Rumsfeld took down by accusing them of sexual improprieties? Like Guantanamo chaplain Captain James Yee. Or General Kevin Byrnes.
And let's go back a bit to Abramoff. No sexual shenanigans there, right? Nope. I guess it is no longer considered obscene to defraud others of millions of dollars, including one's own Native American constituents.
Nor is it considered immoral for the President to reserve the right to torture, when he feels like it. Now--as one of my colleagues has frequently said--he can roast babies over a fire in order to gain what he deems necessary intelligence. But he wouldn't do that, would he? I wonder who is on record saying it was time to "take the gloves off"? (Hint: He's the VP.) Who authorized the extraordinary renditions? The CIA black sites? The sexual torture at Abu Ghraib? Wasn't it Rumsfeld? Or was it Gonzales? Or was it Bush? Oh, I forgot: despite the fact that they have gone on the record repeatedly, authorizing extreme procedures, they're not responsible for what their underlings do.
Ever hear of "command responsibility" or the Nuremburg Principles?
And let's take a look back for a moment at the time when this moral White House was bucking to get into office. What about the outrageous and immoral tactics used in that election? Intimidating voters, threatening recounters.
Or, for that matter, the legal strategies used by the Republicans to bring suit before the Supreme Court of the United States to stop a recount on completely frivolous grounds. Oh, the irony. A court that had repeatedly refused to consider an equal protection claim that did not prove discriminatory intent now was perfectly happy to decide that the Emperor-to-Be-with-no-Clothes really DID have clothes on, really did have an equal protection claim, even though he could not prove ANY discriminatory intent whatsoever. In fact, the laws Bush challenged were nearly identical to those he had signed into law in his home state of Texas while governor.
But the Supreme Court was perfectly willing to let him make the frivolous and insulting equal protection argument to their faces despite the fact that Bush didn't even have any standing to make the claim. He was, after all, bringing the claim for his voters, who couldn't be expected to speak for themselves, so the High Court decided that the naked Emperor-to-Be had a legitimate claim to challenge the laws that affected those he didn't yet electorally represent.
Naked, yes, and already clothed with illegality and impropriety. And astonishingly, nobody noticed a thing!
Now, fast forward to Abu Ghraib. Isn't it immoral to torture? Isn't it immoral to sexually humiliate someone? What would Jesus do? This is compassionate conservatism? But this IS what the President wants the freedom to do, isn't it? Isn't that what the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA), just passed by Congress, about?
No, I forgot. Torture is only part of what the DTA allows. It also allows Bush to declare anyone he pleases an unlawful enemy combatant and detain him for as long as he wants. It also suspends habeas corpus for aliens, although the Constitution says habeas corpus may only be suspended during insurrections or rebellions. Habeas corpus. Remember that thing? It's also been called the Great Writ of Liberty.
Now the President has succeeded in garnering exemptions from the War Crimes Act for his torturers and extraordinary renderers, as well as for himself and his Cabinet. That's real moral, isn't it?
And what about Iraq? Was it moral to invade Iraq on the basis of lies?
And where are the moral standard bearers now? Hiding their heads in the sand? Where are your morals now? How could you let this happen to your country?
Jennifer Van Bergen, a journalist with a law degree, is the author of THE TWILIGHT OF DEMOCRACY: THE BUSH PLAN FOR AMERICA (Common Courage Press, 2004). She writes frequently on civil liberties, human rights, and international law. Her book, ARCHETYPES FOR WRITERS, about the characterization method she developed and taught at the New School University, will be out in 2006. She can be reached at jvbxyz@earthlink.net.
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Email sex scandal puts Republican majority at risk
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Thursday October 5, 2006
The Guardian
The Republican leadership was struggling yesterday to stop a scandal over a Florida congressman's sexually charged email exchanges with teenage congressional assistants spiralling into an election debacle, amid growing pressure for the House Speaker to stand down.
With five weeks to go until the midterm elections, Republican strategists believe they must repudiate a party leadership that failed to act forcefully against the congressman - or risk losing control of the House of Representatives.
Polls yesterday showed the scandal taking a heavy toll on Republican electoral prospects, with one survey putting the Democrats within striking distance of taking control of the House.
Mark Foley, a six-term congressman who led a personal crusade against online sexual predators, resigned last week after being confronted with suggestive emails written to a former teenage male assistant, or page. Mr Foley is now under FBI investigation.
His lawyer insists that he never had sexual contact with a minor. In the days since his exit from Congress, Mr Foley has admitted to alcoholism, acknowledged being gay and revealed that he was a victim of abuse by Catholic clergy as a teenager.
The drip-feed of revelations - and the daily leak of new sexually explicit email exchanges between Mr Foley and male teenagers - has intensified the pressure on Republicans to demonstrate a more emphatic response to the scandal.
The first in the line of fire is the House Speaker, Dennis Hastert, whose office knew about Mr Foley's behaviour for nearly a year but did not seek an investigation until after the damaging email had become public.
Mr Hastert's political career was hanging in the balance yesterday, with the Speaker admitting: "If I thought it could help the party, I would consider it."
In the last 48 hours Mr Hastert has been attacked by Republicans worried about keeping their seats. Democrats have already begun to use the Foley scandal in TV ads. "We have to do something different, more dramatic," congressman Ray LaHood told reporters. "This is a political mess and what we have done so far is not working. Somebody has to take responsibility for this. It is on our watch."
The momentum for Mr Hastert's departure gathered pace on Tuesday, when his deputy, the House majority leader, John Boehner, told a radio station in Ohio that he believed the Speaker had had primary responsibility to deal with Mr Foley when he first learned of his activities. "I believe I talked to the Speaker and he told me it had been taken care of," Mr Boehner said. "And my position is [that] it's in his corner, it's his responsibility."
News reports yesterday suggested Mr Hastert would hang on until the end of the year to avoid a leadership battle, but he would not seek re-election to his post.
His might not be the only high-profile Republican departure, with anger building against campaign chief Thomas Reynolds. He also knew about Mr Foley's emails and has said he will not return $100,000 raised for the party by Mr Foley. Mr Reynolds was aware of the email exchanges when he received the funds.
The urgency of finding an exit from the scandal was underlined yesterday for the Republicans by a Wall Street Journal poll in which 41% of respondents said they felt less positively towards the Republicans than they had only weeks ago.
Meanwhile, another poll put the Democrats well within reach of taking control of the House of Representatives. The party needs to gain 15 seats to reclaim the House, which has had a Republican majority since 1994. Democratic candidates now lead Republicans in 11 of 15 closely contested seats, the Reuter-Zogby poll said. Republican incumbents were especially at risk, trailing Democrats in seven of nine competitive seats.
Part of the polling was conducted after the revelations about Mr Foley emerged, and pollster John Zogby said the growing scandal could put the Republicans into freefall. Republicans readily admit their concern that the lurid details about Mr Foley's contacts with the pages would alienate Christian conservatives .
On Tuesday night ABC, which first broke the story of Mr Foley's behaviour, reported that the congressman was having internet sex with a teenage male in 2003 as the House was preparing to vote on extra funds for the Iraq war.
"I better go vote ... did you know you would have this effect on me," Mr Foley writes in the transcript of the instant message exchange. The teenager replies: "Ya go vote ... I don't want to keep you from doing your job." Mr Foley then asks for a kiss goodnight.
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Republican Party in chaos as Speaker is pressed to resign
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
04 October 2006
Republicans were in disarray last night after a leading conservative newspaper called on Dennis Hastert, the Speaker, to resign, and an open rift developed between Mr Hastert and his top deputy, John Boehner, the majority leader in the House of Representatives.
The developments were further evidence that the scandal over a possible cover-up of the sexually explicit e-mail advances of the former Republican congressman Mark Foley to teenage House pages is turning into a pre-electoral debacle for the party.
Five days after details of the lurid e-mails were first revealed, the focus of the scandal has shifted from Mr Foley now in rehab for alleged alcoholism to the Speaker himself, the third-ranking figure in the US constitutional structure.
The questions are essentially two: why Mr Hastert did not take more vigorous action when word first reached him about Mr Foley's correspondence with the male pages late last year and whether he and his colleagues tried to keep the potentially explosive affair quiet, at least until after November's mid-term elections.
But even the more innocent explanation has outraged not just Democrats, who yesterday were rushing out new campaign ads for some of the most closely contested races Republicans too, especially the social conservatives who are the party's most reliable supporters, are appalled.
Their anger found thunderous echo in The Washington Times, normally loyal to the party leadership, which urged Mr Hastert "to do the only right thing and resign his speakership at once". "Either he was grossly negligent," said the Times, "for not taking the red flags fully into account and ordering a swift investigation, for not even remembering the order of events leading up to last week's revelations or he deliberately looked the other way in hopes that a brewing scandal would simply blow away." The affair, it added, was "a disgrace for every single Republican member of Congress".
Last night the Speaker flatly refused to step down. He would stay in his post and "lead the Republicans to another majority in the 110th Congress ".
But the demand that Mr Hastert fall on his sword is a sign of the fear in the party that without drastic action, the scandal could seal defeat at the polls next month.
President George Bush issued an expression of support for the Speaker, but he was "shocked and dismayed" at the behaviour of Mr Foley, who sent explicit messages to some pages, high-school students aged 16 and 17, from as early as 2003, and who is now under investigation by the FBI.
Another sign of the turmoil has been the friction between Mr Hastert and Mr Boehner. In a radio interview, the latter said he had been assured by the Speaker that the matter had been dealt with months ago. "It's in his corner, it's his responsibility," Mr Boehner declared, signalling that Mr Hastert should not look to him for any support.
The Speaker's version is that Mr Foley was quietly admonished after some far milder correspondence was brought to his attention. Mr Foley, who insisted he had only "tried to be friendly," was told to cease all contact with the page in question. Mr Hastert says he only learnt of the truly lurid material on Friday last week, when it became public and Mr Foley abruptly resigned.
Mr Foley said through his lawyer yesterday that he was abused by a clergyman as a teenager, but accepted full responsibility for sending salacious messages to the pages. He declined to identify the clergyman or the church, but Mr Foley is Roman Catholic. Mr Foley also acknowledged for the first time that he is a homosexual, saying the disclosure was part of his " recovery".
Many Republicans and non-partisan analysts believe that the damage done by the scandal to the party's hopes in November could be irreparable, whether the Speaker stays or goes. Until last week Republicans had been staging a modest comeback, in line with Mr Bush's own rise in the polls, amid hopes that they might after all cling on to control of the House, considered the chamber most vulnerable to a Democratic takeover. Now, some experts believe the Democrats could capture not only the 435-member House, where they need a net gain of just 15 seats, but also the Senate, where the 55-45 Republican majority has been considered almost impregnable.
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Hastert defiant in page scandal
By Rick Pearson and Mike Dorning
October 5, 2006
Denies plan to resign; Foley aide says he told speaker's office about concerns before 2004
WASHINGTON - A defiant House Speaker Dennis Hastert fought yesterday to hold on to his leadership post while fractures appeared among his lieutenants and a former senior aide to Rep. Mark Foley said he had repeatedly warned Hastert's top aide about Foley's inappropriate behavior toward underage pages more than two years ago.
In an interview, Hastert said he had no thoughts of resigning, and he blamed ABC News and Democratic operatives for the mushrooming scandal that threatens his tenure as speaker and Republicans' hold on power in the House.
"No," Hastert said. "I think that resignation is exactly what our opponents would like to have happen, that I'd fold my tent and others would fold our tent and they would sweep the House."
When asked about a groundswell of discontent among the GOP's conservative base over his handling of the issue, Hastert said: "I think the base has to realize after a while, 'Who knew about it? Who knew what, when?' When the base finds out who's feeding this monster, they're not going to be happy. The people who want to see this thing blow up are ABC News and a lot of Democratic operatives, people funded by George Soros."
Hastert suggested that operatives aligned with former President Bill Clinton knew about the allegations and might have been behind the disclosures in the closing weeks before the Nov. 7 elections, but he offered no proof.
Hastert said he had spoken with former President George Bush, whom he described as "very supportive." He said he had not spoken to President Bush.
"I'm sorry that the contact between Foley and the pages happened," Hastert said. "Something like this, I take the responsibility. The buck stops where I'm at. When we found out, we dealt with it immediately and the member is gone. ... We have reached out to experts to make sure that it never happens again."
But time did not seem to be Hastert's ally. In a day of rapid developments, his office denied the charge from former Foley chief of staff Kirk Fordham that he had alerted the speaker's chief of staff to Foley's behavior well before a former page complained last year of inappropriate e-mail from the Florida Republican congressman. Fordham had resigned earlier in the day as chief of staff to Rep. Tom Reynolds of New York, the Republicans' national congressional campaign chairman, and Reynolds was among those involved in discussions of the page's complaint about Foley.
Fordham's lawyer, Timothy Heaphy, said Fordham warned Hastert's chief of staff, Scott Palmer, at least two years ago about inappropriate behavior between Foley and pages. "Palmer subsequently had a meeting with Foley, and Foley mentioned it to Fordham," Heaphy said.
Fordham is unsure when the meeting with Palmer occurred, but Heaphy said it was between 2002 and January 2004, when Fordham was Foley's chief of staff.
The FBI has contacted Fordham and "he intends to cooperate completely," Heaphy said.
The usually disciplined House Republican leadership showed signs of disarray, with Majority Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri telling reporters that he would have urged a different course of action had colleagues informed him of the page's complaint.
"I think I could have given some good advice here, which is: 'You have to be curious, you have to ask all the questions you can think of,'" said Blunt, who ranks third in the Republican leadership. "You absolutely can't decide not to look into activities because one individual's parents don't want you to."
A day earlier, House Majority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio, who was informed of the page's complaint last spring, appeared to be insulating himself from Hastert, telling a radio audience that he had relied on assurances from Hastert that the issue had been handled.
Rep. Ron Lewis of Kentucky, in the midst of a tough re-election campaign, abruptly canceled a fundraiser at which Hastert was scheduled to appear.
Hastert's deputy chief of staff, Mike Stokke, said Hastert has not received any feelers from the White House or Republican officials about leaving and had been on the phone much of the day talking with GOP lawmakers.
Still, national Republican officials were trying to move beyond a scandal that has crippled their campaign for the midterm elections.
"This is a disaster. It's undermining our base. And it's been handled terribly," said a Republican official with close ties to the White House. "Right now, everybody's circling the wagons."
But the official pointed out that a departure by Hastert might not solve the party's political difficulties since Boehner also was in the loop on the complaint. "The No. 2 supposedly knew about this months ago," the official said.
With the House Ethics Committee scheduled to begin an investigation today, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said that Hastert and the rest of the GOP leadership should be "immediately questioned under oath."
Foley, 52, resigned Friday after ABC News disclosed sexually explicit instant messages that the congressman exchanged with teenage former congressional pages. Last fall, Hastert's staff received a complaint from the office of Rep. Rodney Alexander, a Louisiana Republican, that a former page Alexander had sponsored received an e-mail from Foley requesting a photo and asking the 16-year-old what he wanted for his birthday.
The controversy engulfing Hastert and other Republican leaders has focused on his handling of that complaint, and the speaker's staff has stressed that they were unaware of the other, more lurid messages until Foley's resignation.
The matter was referred to then-House Clerk Jeff Trandahl, a Republican appointee whose domain includes the page program, and Page Board Chairman Rep. John Shimkus of Illinois. They told Foley to cease contact with pages but did not inform authorities or otherwise investigate.
Stokke, who said he referred the complaint without informing Hastert, defended his actions.
"I didn't want it to look political," Stokke said. "It was turned over to the proper authority. And if the proper authority had found anything of a sexual nature, they would have reported back."
Stokke said he could not recall how he heard of the outcome, but he said, "I remember hearing that they had this intervention with Foley and it had been handled."
Stokke said no one on Hastert's staff had received any warnings about Foley's inappropriate conduct with pages until the congressman resigned.
"There were rumors rampant here that he was gay, which is not illegal," Stokke said.
Still, Fordham told the Associated Press that he had "more than one conversation with senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives asking them to intervene" several years ago. Fordham named Palmer, who issued a denial through the speaker's press office.
Rick Pearson and Mike Dorning write for the Chicago Tribune.
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An awful week for the Republicans - America's ruling party has been battered by bad news
Economist.com
3 October 06
ONE might argue that there are three types of Republican voter. Those who like small government. Those who think the "Grand Old Party" is the stronger party on defence. And those with solidly conservative social values. Today's free-spending Republicans have given the small-government types nothing to cheer about . A week of awful news may now help to alienate the other two.
The furore over last week's National Intelligence Estimate, which said that the war in Iraq was becoming a cause célèbre for jihadists around the world, was bad enough. It suggested that going into Iraq has made America less safe, though George Bush continues to insist the opposite. In separate but related news, a new gang of now-retired top officers in Iraq sharply criticised the Pentagon, and particularly Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defence, in public hearings. To win in Iraq, they said, will require far more troops and many more years. Taken together, the message is that going into Iraq was inherently dangerous, and Mr Rumsfeld did so haphazardly.
Now a book by Bob Woodward of the Washington Post is helping to turn the knife. He points to divisions inside the Bush administration. After Mr Bush was re-elected, Condoleezza Rice, now the secretary of state, and Stephen Hadley, the president's second-term national security adviser, apparently suggested that Mr Rumsfeld be sacked. So did Andy Card, Mr Bush's trusted chief of staff. Mr Rumsfeld has kept his job, reportedly, largely because Dick Cheney, the vice-president, and various political handlers worried about going through bruising confirmation hearings for a new secretary of defence. Such hearings would certainly have focused on the war in Iraq.
According to Mr Woodward internal rivalries also undermined planning for the war in Iraq in 2003. Mr Rumsfeld disdained the interagency process by which the State Department, the National Security Council and others work together with the Pentagon to plan big things like wars. Mr Rumsfeld isolated himself from dissent, sometimes even refusing calls from Ms Rice (who was then the national security adviser). The book buttresses the idea of a powerful team of Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld, with near complete control over Mr Bush's key decisions on Iraq, shutting out the administration's more cautious voices. As with the National Intelligence Estimate, the gist of Mr Woodward's book is not new, but it offers more evidence of what many have long thought.
As if internal revolt over Iraq were not enough, a scandal at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue threatens the Republicans before November's mid-term congressional elections. It emerged on Friday September 29th that a Republican congressman from Florida, Mark Foley, had written sexually suggestive messages to several teenage boys working as congressional pages (who deliver messages in the House and the Senate). Worse, Republican leaders had known of at least one inappropriate e-mail exchange with a teenager. Instead of investigating, one of them merely told Mr Foley to end contact. Now, the FBI is looking into the matter. Mr Foley has resigned in disgrace; his colleagues are running away from him as fast as they can.
Mr Foley's transgressions are those of a lone, troubled man. But as the Republicans' swagger was self-reinforcing in Mr Bush's first term, their struggles seem to compound themselves in his second. Mr Foley has landed a powerful blow on the only strong Republican pillar remaining: social conservatives. Though they will never vote for the Democrats, a good number may be so dispirited by the scandal that they stay at home on November 7th.
Can anything lift the Republicans now? Some have speculated recently that the Republicans may be planning an "October surprise" to help them in the election-some even joking that the death of Osama bin Laden, or even strikes on Iran, will be announced. But, so far in October, the only surprises are nasty ones for the ruling party.
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Cheney: GOP 'will retain control'
Bill Sammon
The Examiner
Oct 5, 2006
ABOARD AIR FORCE TWO - Vice President Dick Cheney said he "can't tell" how a Republican sex scandal will impact next month's elections, but insisted "it makes no sense" for House Speaker Dennis Hastert to resign.
In his first public remarks on the burgeoning scandal, Cheney told The Washington Examiner in an exclusive interview that fellow Republican Hastert, R-Ill., should reject Democratic calls for his resignation.
"I'm a huge Denny Hastert fan - I think he's a great speaker," Cheney said in his private cabin aboard Air Force Two. "And it makes no sense at all for him to think about stepping down."
Cheney aides described the vice president as repulsed by allegations that former Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., sent salacious e-mails and instant messages to teenage boys working as congressional pages. At the same time, Cheney is determined not to let the scandal overshadow campaign issues that he considers far more important - national security and the economy.
"I think we've got good stuff to work with," he said during a flight from Houston to Washington. "The Foley thing, again, as to how that cuts, I can't tell."
Cheney flatly rejected predictions by pundits that Democrats will take control of the House and Senate in November.
"We will retain control of both houses," he said.
If Cheney is wrong, some believe Democrats will spend the next two years investigating the Bush administration with subpoenas and hearings. Some Democrats have already called for Bush to be censured, while others have hinted at impeachment proceedings.
"I don't think we fear investigations," Cheney said. "I don't think they [Democrats] would get much done, if that's all they've got. And I don't think there's great enthusiasm on the part of the country for that.
"But I think the stronger argument is basic questions on the economy, tax policy on the one hand and national security on the other."
As for national security, Cheney rejected the notion that Democrats will win the argument if they decouple the Iraq war from the broader war on terror.
"They are linked," he said. "Democrats may not like that, but Osama bin Laden himself says Iraq is the central front in the war on terror. It just is.
"They may try to wish it away, but the bottom line is they don't have a policy, they don't have a strategy, they don't really have an effective philosophy for battling the global war on terror. They still, left to their own devices, probably would do what John Kerry seemed to focus on, and that's law enforcement. It's got to be a lot more than law enforcement."
Cheney said that even if the focus of the campaign remains on Iraq, as opposed to the larger war on terror, the debate redounds to the benefit of Republicans because Democrats such as Rep. John, D-Pa., Murtha want to withdraw U.S. forces.
"I don't think the majority of the American people want to withdraw from Iraq," Cheney said. "I think they'd prefer we complete the mission given to us.
"I also think it's important, if you're going to be responsible in this debate, that if you find things to criticize about Iraq - it's taking too long, we underestimated the difficulties of the task - you have to consider the consequences of a withdrawal from Iraq on all the other things you're doing in the global war on terror."
For example, he said, it would adversely affect U.S. allies such as Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"The United States is no longer a trusted ally if al-Qaida is right in its claim that the U.S. doesn't have the stomach for the fight," he said. "You'll have a hard time ever getting more allies to assist in this long-term struggle against the Islamic extremists. It's the worst possible thing you could do."
Cheney was also forceful in his warnings that Democrats will raise taxes if they take control of Congress. He pointed out that Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., who would be chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, recently said he "cannot think of one" tax cut from President Bush's first term that should be extended.
"He doesn't believe there's a single tax cut that should be extended," Cheney said. "If he simply doesn't act, as chairman, those taxes are going up. And I think that has significance for every family in the country."
As Cheney spoke, stock prices skated across a flat screen television on the wall that was displaying news coverage of the country's economy.
"I'm sitting here watching - we're up 122 points - a new all-time record high," he said of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. "And unemployment's down, inflation's down, productivity's up, gasoline prices have gone down significantly. If you look at the basic underlying fundamentals of how the country's doing, it's pretty damn well."
Earlier in the day, Cheney had appeared with former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to raise $196,000 for the Texas Republican's would-be successor, write-in candidate Shelley Sekula-Gibbs.
It was Cheney's 108th campaign event this season, bringing his haul for the cycle to $38.9 million, all of which will be used in the effort to elect Republicans.
"It is important to have a national perspective on a campaign," he said. "It does have consequences - not just in terms of a selection of an individual to represent a particular district. There are major consequences that will flow from the collective decision the American people make on Nov. 7."
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Fighting Back Against the Lies
Saudi envoy criticizes U.S. for "rhetoric, bombast"
By Sue Pleming
Reuters
Wed Oct 4, 2006
WASHINGTON - Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States criticized Washington on Wednesday for its "rhetoric and bombast" in dealing with Arab countries and urged greater efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Turning the tables on Washington, which has been critical of the pace of reform in Saudi Arabia, Prince Turki al-Faisal also took aim at what he said were needed reforms in the United States, particularly in political campaign contributions.
"We often hear political rhetoric and bombast, and not constructive commentary," he said.
"Your policy toward the Arab world must change and be reformed in order to overcome the slump in America's standing in my country, and in every other Arab and Muslim country," al-Faisal said in a speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.
The Bush administration has come under fire for its approach to many Arab countries, with opinion polls showing growing anti-Americanism.
Recent calls by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for a "new Middle East" and her description in July of the Lebanon-Israeli war as the "birth pangs" of democracy were ridiculed by most Arab media.
Conscious of how these statements were perceived in the Middle East, U.S. diplomats have tried to tone down rhetoric in recent weeks.
During a visit to Egypt on Tuesday, Rice was asked how she saw a "new" Middle East. The top U.S. diplomat quickly responded she preferred to talk about a "future" Middle East.
Rice, who was in Israel and the Palestinian Territories on Wednesday, made her Middle East trip partly to get support from moderate Arab nations to revive the stalled Arab-Israeli peace process.
Al-Faisal said it was time for the United States to play a more active role in resolving that conflict and he said his government had put pressure on Washington to do more.
"America has not been playing that role for the past few years," he said, adding, "You solve that problem and then you can go on and solve other problems in the area."
Saudi Arabia proposed a peace plan in 2002, which the Israelis have long seen as a nonstarter. But on Wednesday, a cabinet minister from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's party voiced some support for negotiations on the basis of the Saudi plan.
Al-Faisal said Arab leaders also wanted to push the Saudi plan. "Hopefully, we can get something moving about that," he said.
The Saudi plan calls for Israel to quit all land it conquered in the 1967 Middle East war, the formation of a Palestinian state and a solution for Palestinian refugees who fled what is now the Jewish state.
In exchange, the Palestinians and Arab nations would establish peaceful relations with Israel.
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Zaman, Turkey: After Punishing Week at U.N., Bush Still Doesn't Get It
By Ali H. Aslan
September 25, 2006
ISTANBUL: If it weren't for the Bush administration's grave error, perhaps September 11th would be remembered as a common day of commemoration, a day when the entire world condemns terrorism.
But just after the 5th anniversary of the terror attacks at the annual U.N General Assembly, it was clear that the sympathy that America had gained after September 11, 2001 has now turned to antipathy.
Of course, anti-American tirades from the usual suspects like Chavez of Venezuela and Ahmadinejad of Iran were no surprise. What was surprising was that a majority of U.N. members wholeheartedly applauded them. When Chavez described Bush as a "The Devil," many U.N. diplomats didn't appear the slightest bit distressed; to the contrary, they couldn't help laughing. And you can be sure that those who didn't have the courage to chuckle openly were laughing under their breath. These members chose more diplomatic ways of expressing what Chavez and Ahmadinejad had said. "Democracy cannot be forced" became the universal consensus.
As for me, I laughed the most at U.S. State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack's statement, "It was a good week for American diplomacy." If McCormack meant that Rice was able to convince her boss, Bush, to be a little more balanced and calm in his U.N. address, then he's right. Perhaps it can be said that the diplomatic community, which has had difficulty reining in its cowboy President over recent years, had a local success. But if he's claiming that it was a good week for the U.S. from the angle of tangible benefits to it, and if he genuinely believed this, I would be quite surprised.
At the General Assembly, one could say that Washington either left empty-handed or took a step backward in terms of the most important issues it has wanted to resolve. For example, they found no support for the idea of enforcing an embargo against Iran over to its nuclear program. Half-heartedly but helplessly, the U.S. agreed to give Tehran more time. The U.S. effort to obtain international intervention in Darfur, which they call a genocide, also had no results. And even from its closest NATO allies, Washington isn't getting the degree of assistance it wants against the Taliban uprising that flared up in Afghanistan. In Iraq, it has come face-to-face with its destiny. In short, by displaying at least passive resistance on many issues important to the U.S., the world is in fact punishing the Bush Administration. It is forming an anti-U.S. bloc.
This silent but effective resistance the world is applying against the Bush Administration is leading to differing reactions in Washington. Instead of learning a lesson, White House supported think-tanks are becoming even more obstinate, particularly the neocons and the right-wing Israeli lobby. As for more moderate groups, they are now beginning to find the courage to speak out against the attitudes that have led to the deep diplomatic helplessness that the U.S. has fallen victim to.
For example, despite all the protests of Secretary of State Rice and some Israeli lobbyists, the Council on Foreign Relations' gave Iranian President Ahmadinejad an opportunity to speak. This was a significant example of moral courage. Chairman Richard Haass explained that "opening the doors" of the Council to someone that many Jews have compared to Hitler this way: "The United States gets itself in trouble when it limits its options and approaches diplomacy as a value judgment. It's not obvious to me, looking at the last 50 or 60 years, that we paid a price for talking to the Soviets. At the end of all the talking, we won the Cold War."
If this approach by Dr. Haass, who was the director of Political Planning at the State Department during Bush's first term, had been dominant in Bush Administration today, neither the United States nor the world would now have such a tremendous headache. One can't say, "I won't talk to people I don't like; I'll just overthrow the regime with preventive attacks or by secret means and all will be fine." Even if you are a superpower, you can't do this. Even the U.S., which covers almost a third of the U.N. budget, can't prevent itself from ridicule and insult at that institution. Its authority does not equal its contribution. If it does, it is only through the use of force.
Diplomacy is the art of not cutting off dialogue with an enemy, drinking coffee with your adversaries when necessary and trying to will goodwill by sharing credit with others. But if a cup of coffee is worth 40 years of warm feeling, a bomb does 40 years of damage. For this reason, calls are increasing in the United States to remove obstacles to direct talks with the Iranian regime, which eagerly wants dialogue, and for Bush to keep his bombs in his pocket.
A peaceful solution to dispute between the U.S. and Iran would make the entire world more comfortable, including Turkey. If the Democrats take over Congress in the November elections, Bush's margin for hasty action will decrease. I hope he has learned his lesson in Iraq. But unfortunately due to Bush's character, no one can be certain that he will forego a fight with Iran or the world.
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Pak Tribune, Pakistan: Time to 'Drive the Nails' Into 'Dream of Empire's Coffin'
By Anwaar Hussain*
October 2, 2006
Bring out the nails to be hammered into the coffin. Waning badly from trying to create outposts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the death of America's dream of Empire is fast approaching. Bring out the nails.
Bring out the nails. In the first neoconservative neo-colony of Afghanistan, the Taliban are on the rise like the fabled phoenix rising from the ashes. Once again they openly control most of southern Afghanistan, setting up a shadow administration. Coalition forces are getting the beating of their lives from the rag tag Taliban. The whining and griping among coalition troops over their looming defeat increases with every passing day. Meanwhile on the Pakistani side of the frontier, rather than trying to reinforce failure, General Musharraf has beaten a hasty retreat from bordering Waziristan. Bring out the nails.
Bring out the nails. Drunk with delusions of grandeur and self-adulation, the Empire seekers made bad choices in Afghanistan when they ignored the warnings of Sir Olaf Caroe, the last British governor of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province. Caroe said: "Unlike other wars, Afghan wars become serious only when they are over." Bring out the nails.
Bring out the nails. The Empire seekers failed to understand, and still don't, that it's not the phenomenon of the Taliban that writes the epitaph on the grave of the Empire-builder's dream, but it's Pashtun RealVideo culture itself that is responsible. They failed to study the history that the British know only too well, but chose to withhold from their gullible partners. Bring out the nails.
Bring out the nails. The Empire seekers have tried to defeat with brawn what they should have conquered with brain. They failed to realize that the rise and fall of the Taliban was but a brief moment in history in this rugged part of the world, and that Taliban or no Taliban, resisting foreign occupation is a way of life for them. Bring out the nails.
Bring out the nails. The Empire seekers failed to comprehend that the Afghan Pashtuns may have been briefly subdued, but invariably they bounce back against their enemies with renewed strength and malice. They are equally renowned for their loyalty to friends and for their fierce blood feuds and hatred of their enemies. Bring out the nails.
Bring out the nails. The Empire seekers refused to learn from history that as far as their blood feuds are concerned, the patience of the Afghan Pashtuns is as great as their mighty Hindukush [mountains]. These are some of the most battle-hardened tribal people on earth, having withstood the military might of Alexander the Great, the Mogul Emperors, the Soviets and the British. They don't consider death too high a price to pay for their honor. Bring out the nails.
Bring out the nails. The Empire seekers ignored the wisdom passed on to them from the Europeans since the days of Alexander. Afghanistan is a vast expanse of desolate plains and untamed mountains, ferocious warriors, uncompromising Islam, vicious tribal rivalries, and a complex politics that entwines bloodlines, chivalry, religion and history. It is a land of great mystery that should have been left to find stability on its own. Bring out the nails.
Bring out the nails. In Iraq too, for the rigor mortis has nearly set in to corpse of the Empire-builder's dream. There is a sense of finality that hasn't existed during the past four years of occupation of that unfortunate country. Success in Iraq is no longer defined as defeating the sandal-footed resistance fighters, but rather to hold on long enough for something or someone to relieve the bogged down, war-weary and dehumanized American troops. Bring out the nails.
Bring out the nails. The recently declassified National Intelligence Estimate calls Iraq a "cause celebre RealVideo" not for resisters of American occupation, but for "terrorists." This deliberate attempt to confuse the two is likely to cost the Empire seekers more dearly with each passing day. Bring out the nails.
Bring out the nails. Veteran Washington reporter Bob Woodward tells Mike Wallace in an interview to be broadcast Oct. 1, that the Bush Administration has not told the truth regarding the level of violence in Iraq, especially against U.S. troops, and that attacks against coalition troops are getting to the point, "where there are eight, nine-hundred attacks a week. That's more than 100 a day. That is four an hour attacking our forces" Woodward said. And intelligence reports predict that the insurgency will only grow worse over next year. Bring out the nails.
Bring out the nails. According to Woodward, the President and Vice President have begun to regularly consult with Henry Kissinger, the war criminal and author of the Cambodian Bombing campaign which contributed so much to the civil war in that country. Kissinger thinks that in Iraq "victory is the only meaningful exit strategy" and that "the problem in Vietnam was that we lost our will." Bring out the nails.
Bring out the nails to hammer into the coffin of the Empire-builder's dream, but keep a silver bullet handy should the monster make a last-ditch attempt to escape from its eternal grave.
Bring out the nails.
*Anwaar Hussain is a former Pakistan Air Force F-16 fighter pilot. With a Masters in Defense and Strategic Studies from Quaid-e-Azam University Islamabad, he now resides in United Arab Emirates. He has published a series of articles in Defense Journal, South Asia Tribune and a host of other web portals. Other than international affairs, Anwaar Hussain has written extensively on the religious and political issues that plague Pakistan.
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Chosun Ilbo, South Korea: Are Opponents of U.S. Handover 'Supporters of Dictatorship?'
EDITORIAL
September 28, 2006
The President [Roh Moo-hyun] has done it again. On a TV program Thursday night he slammed the "arrogant attitude" of people who worry that the U.S. handover of wartime operational control of Korean troops will endanger the country's security. Their belief that only those who supported past dictatorships alone are patriots "is no help to the future of the nation." He demanded, "Do you really think that pro-democracy activists are unwilling or incapable of protecting the nation?"
Those who oppose our sole exercise of operational control, then, are supporters of dictatorship, and those who favor it are champions of democracy. Even over this vital question of national security, he divided the nation into "us" and "them." The Administration's first foreign minister, its first defense minister, its first ambassador to the U.S. and its first presidential defense and security adviser, have all expressed concern over the President's obsession with "independence," which is why he hammered through the issue of operational control. Does this mean that the President's entire inaugural diplomatic and security team were worshippers of dictatorship?
"South Korea is taking back operational control because it's the right thing to do," the President said. The growing danger of war is one thing, he said, and operational control is another.
However, under the Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command, the two allies jointly exercise operational control, and its deterrent effect is among the best in the world. No war must ever break out in our land. That is why until a lasting peace has been declared and assured, we should not take over sole operational control. And yet the President says the risk of war has nothing to do with operational control.
On Korea-U.S. relations, the President says that if the U.S. President and responsible officials say there are no problems, then there are no problems. But this is an unsophisticated perspective. Everyone knows that before the U.S. president and his underlings say that relations are troubled, they must first be beyond repair. Moon Jung-in, the ambassador for international affairs and security who is said to advise the President, said "Our relations with the U.S. are seriously troubled." The New York Times reported a barbed comment from a U.S. official that the gap in perceptions between Korea and the U.S. is as wide as the Far East. It is juvenile to believe everything is fine simply because the U.S. President makes polite noise about how nice things are.
Koreans heard the president say that our sole exercise of operational control means the retrieval of our national sovereignty, and many were enthusiastic. But they have changed their minds after listening to the concerns of former defense ministers, armed forces veterans, intellectuals, former foreign ministers and vice ministers, former police chiefs, Protestant ministers and other prominent figures. President Roh Moo-hyun alone, perhaps because he has shut his ears for good, keeps banging on about independence.
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Le Devoir, Canada: Bush-Senate Compromise 'a Setback for Human Rights'
By Guy Taillefer
Translated By Pascaline Jay
October 2, 2006
With all eyes turned toward the American legislative elections on November 7th, last week the Congress adopted a much debated new law on the detention and judgment of prisoners in the "war on Terror," most of whom are held at Guantanamo. Essentially, this new law endorses presidential prerogatives and special military tribunals, although last June these were declared illegal by the Supreme Court. It is a setback for human rights and the Constitutional state.
In order to justify his obsession with national security in general and the treatment of "enemy combatants" in particular, since September 11 George W. Bush has pled that desperate times require desperate measures. "Beware!" Objected the Supreme Court last June, in a divided decision:
The special tribunals, created on the margins of the legal system and without the approval of Congress, violate the right to a fair trial guaranteed under American law and the Geneva Conventions. It was a judgment applauded by organizations that defend human rights, which at the time, dared to see the beginning of the end of "the abuse of power that has become the trademark of this administration."
Still, as one of the Supreme Court justices pointed out at the time, nothing prevents the President from mending his ways and going to Congress to request the powers he believes needs. That has now occurred. Republicans in the Senate and House of Representatives, with the support of a minority of Democrats, just granted him most of what he asked for. "Our democracy is the big loser," scolded a New York Times editorial.
Around the world, September 11 precipitated the adoption anti-terror laws that have shaken the balance between the respect for civil rights and the imperatives of national security. Not a month has gone by without the media exposing abuses in the pursuit of the "war on terror." Considered essential by Mr. Bush, the new American law that sets the legal framework within which the Guantanamo prisoners will be judged doesn't erase the concerns and risks of a slippery slope.
The new legislation upholds the CIA's secret prisons. It legalizes unlimited detentions. It dangerously expands the definition of a terrorist suspect, which would then be considered an "illegal enemy combatant."
The law is shaky with regard to the prohibition of torture. Confessions obtained under the pressure of "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment will be prohibited ... even if the previous law passed December 30th 2005 already explicitly forbids it. Even though the new legislation provides a list of abusive interrogation methods considered war crimes by the Geneva Conventions, it leaves to the discretion of the President the "authority to interpret the meaning and application" of the conventions.
All guilty verdicts will be subject to federal court appeal. On the other hand, inmates will be denied the basic right to contest the length of their detentions and the conditions under which they are being held. It's an obvious distortion of the right to habeas corpus. It will however be astonishing, if human rights groups fail to bring this denial of justice before the Supreme Court.
No less distressing is the fact that Republicans in Congress approved this legislation for electoral reasons. Dropping in polls, they hope to reinforce their majority by making Democrats look weak on national security. As soon as the law passed the House of Representatives, its Republican Speaker, Dennis Hastert, qualified opponents of the legislation as, "defenders of the rights of terrorists." One can hardly imagine a more cynical logic.
A substantial minority of Democrats lost their spines and approved the law. But a majority of them, for once, stood fast, and made a clean break with cowering attitude Democrats have displayed since October 2002, at the time of the vote to approve of the Iraq War.
A majority of Democrats in the Senate - including potential candidates for the 2008 presidential election - voted against the law, calculating that Mr. Bush's failure on the Iraqi issue had changed the situation, and undermined the traditional support that Republicans receive on the issue of national security. The November 7th elections will show the degree to which Republican demagogy still functions.
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Our Friends, the Animals
Jackals attack Indian village injuring 35
Reuters
Wed Oct 4, 2006
RANCHI, India - A pack of jackals prowling for food attacked villages in the eastern Indian state of Bihar, injuring at least 35 people, officials said on Thursday.
The attack took place in Madhubani district, about 120 km (75 miles) north of the state capital, Patna, late on Wednesday.
"We are still trying to ascertain the number of jackals involved in the attack and the extent of injuries sustained by human beings," Mala Kumari, a government official said over the telephone from Madhubani.
Jackals have sometimes been seen roaming the streets in India as their forest habitat dwindles, but reports of attacks on humans are rare.
"We have not seen or heard anything like this in the last 12 years," Santosh Kumar, who saw the jackals attacking the villagers. "Some of them were badly bitten," he said.
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Controversial origins of the domestic dog
Darren Naish
October 04, 2006
It is becoming increasingly recognized that dogs are remarkable among mammals in exhibiting human-like social skills and communicative behaviour (Hare et al. 2002). More so even than chimpanzees, dogs can reliably interpret human acoustic and visual cues (e.g., pointing or nodding), they have an inherent understanding of human perception, and they can even use human-like gestures, such as pointing.
My adult education course on tetrapod evolution started this week. While I think it went ok, I hope I didn't overwhelm my students: the idea for the first teaching session was to quickly run through Palaeozoic and Mesozoic tetrapod history, looking at the major clades, so we dashed through tetrapod origins, lepospondyls, temnospondyls, the living amphibian groups, anthracosaurs, amniote origins, Palaeozoic synapsids, the turtle origins controversy, and diapsid diversity. It will be interesting to see how things progress. The next session covers Mesozoic marine reptiles (excluding plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs). Meanwhile, I have yet again been tinkering with that big review article on British dinosaurs (now at the final stages of the publication process), and Mike P. Taylor and I have been putting the finishing touches to a paper describing a new sauropod. Other areas of recent interest have been the 'necks for sex' hypothesis, Nick Longrich's paper on 'leg-wings' in Archaeopteryx, and gigantic feral cats. More on those subjects in future. Moving on, here at last is that text on domestic dog origins.
Most zoologists 'know' that the domestic dog is a domesticated wolf (or, more likely, a number of independently domesticated wolf populations) and so well known is this view that some scientists question the recognition of Canis familiaris as a species separate from C. lupus. This is the 'mainstream' view eloquently discussed in several good books on dogs and on domestication, including Olsen's Origins of the Domestic Dog: the Fossil Record (1985), Clutton-Brook's A Natural History of Domesticated Animals (1999), and Coppinger & Coppinger's Dogs: a Startling New Understanding of Canine Origins, Behavior and Evolution (2001). But here's the news. The 'domestic wolf' model is actually not as firmly established as you might think, possibly wrong, and in fact arguably inferior to an alternative model of domestic dog evolution championed by a minority of canid specialists.
Many papers published on the subject of domestic dog origins state flatly that 'the derivation of domestic dogs from the wolf is well established on behavioural and morphological grounds', without actually saying in detail what these behavioural and morphological grounds are. It's certainly true that domestic dogs and wolves are morphologically and genetically similar, but they're actually also notably different, and while they share behavioural traits, they also differ profoundly in some important respects.
My primary inspiration on all of this has been Janice Koler-Matznick, founder of the New Guinea Singing Dog Conservation Society. Besides publishing important papers on singers (and I won't be discussing those here: perhaps another time), her experience with them has caused her to re-evaluate theories about domestic dog origins and on domestication. Arguably her most important publication on this subject is Koler-Matznick (2002: free pdf here), which you should see for a good review.
I remain open-minded on the issue of both the phylogenetic affinities of domestic dogs, and on how domestication occurred, and frankly it's such a huge area that it's easy to become baffled by the literature. In an effort to keep things as simple as possible I've tried to restrict the discussion here to a consideration of one of the central issues: are domestic dogs really part of the species Canis lupus? Let me apologise now if there are areas that I've screwed up or misinterpreted, and apologies also to Jan for 'borrowing' her ideas so heavily.
Are domestic dogs really wolves? Some very obvious things to consider
As a rough rule of thumb, the domesticated forms of wild mammal species (1) revert back to wild-type after being feral for a few generations, and (2) readily interbreed with their wild ancestors. If domestic dogs are wolves, then the many populations of feral dogs that live world-wide should theoretically have reverted back to being wolf-like in appearance and behaviour. But they haven't. Instead, domestic dogs always end up looking like pariah dogs - the relatively small (11-16 kg), socially flexible semi-domesticated and feral dogs of the Old World tropics. Dingos and the unusual New Guinea singing dog are part of the pariah dog complex, though the singing dog is so odd in behavioural, molecular and morphological features that it might warrant specific status (Koler-Matznick et al. 2001, 2003).
Archaeological data shows that pariah dogs have a stable history, with dog skulls from 4000 year old deposits in Thailand being essentially identical to the modern dingo-like pariah dogs of the area. Until relatively recently, domestic dogs must have been free-ranging and hence would have had ample opportunity to interbreed with wolves. While this has certainly happened on many occasions (modern wolf/dog hybrids are known from North America, Italy, as well as from archaeological samples*), what is surprising is that it hasn't happened more often. This isn't the case in other domesticated mammals, where interbreeding with wild ancestors is widespread.
* Some coyote populations have also been shown to include genetic data from domestic dogs (Adams et al. 2003).
In Europe, wolves remain only as endangered, fragmented populations vastly outnumbered by domestic dogs, and there has long been concern that wolves will be genetically swamped through interbreeding with dogs. Actually, there is no good evidence for this, and in a recent study of Italian wolves Verardi et al. (2006) found the two to have distinct gene pools, that hybridization had occurred only very rarely, and that introgressive hybridization between the two is so limited that it doesn't pose a threat to the genetic integrity of the wolf. Wolves and domestic dogs are in fact staying distinct. This applies globally as well as locally: despite continuous, near-global sympatry between domestic dogs and wolves, hybridization has hardly occurred and only one mtDNA type is shared. On this basis Koler-Matznick (2002) argued that domestic dogs and wolves satisfy the biological species concept and shouldn't be regarded as conspecific.
While (to my knowledge) no-one doubts the idea that domestic dogs and wolves are close relatives, firm evidence showing that domestic dogs are nested within the species Canis lupus is lacking. Attempts to genetically link domestic dogs to living wolf populations failed to find a match, making the hypothetical wolf ancestor of the domestic dog a mystery. Morell (1997) wrote of the University of California's Robert Wayne, a leading researcher in this area, that 'Although he sampled as many wolves as possible, it may be that the ancestral wolf population is now extinct' (p. 1647). Of interest here is that the wolf most often cited as a potential domestic dog ancestor, the Indian peninsular wolf C. l. pallipes, has recently been shown to represent a radically unique, divergent lineage that is quite distinct from other wolves, and from domestic dogs (Jhala & Sharma 2004).
The implication from these lines of evidence is that domestic dogs descend from an ancestral pariah-like form which was quite different from wolves and that, while domestic dogs and wolves are closely related, they are distinct. Domestic dogs seem to have an independent history of descent and do not simply merge into wolves when the opportunity arises.
Wolves are behaviorally ill-suited for domestication
According to the conventional theory of dog domestication, wolves were domesticated either to function as big game hunters, or as guards. But here there are problems. If wolves really were domesticated prior to about 10,000 years ago (more on this date below), the earliest domestic dogs would have been living alongside people that were using clubs, spears and other such tools to subdue large prey, and therefore hunting via stealth and ambush. This poses a problem for the idea that people domesticated dogs to assist in large game hunting, as the chasing behaviour instinctive to wolves would presumably hinder human hunting efforts. Even in dingos we find that they've apparently always been preventing from participating in aboriginal kangaroo hunts because their chasing behaviour made the hunts a failure*. People would also have to pretty much fight with wolves in order to get any game animals back off them, given that wolves are highly food-possessive.
* I know that some hunting humans are outstanding long-distance runners that pursue wounded prey over km, and might theoretically benefit from canid assistance, but there is no evidence that this hunting strategy was widespread among ancient people. So far as we know it is limited to southern Africa (correct me if you know otherwise).
The possible use of wolves as guards is also problematical, given that wild canids function poorly in this role. Rather than defend a location, they will clear off when danger threatens, even if that location is their own den (including offspring). Sure, wolves might make some useful alerting noise if intruders were to come around, but other canids and other animals do this equally well.
While they can be tamed, wolves are actually very difficult to train. This probably results from their social system: only the dominant pair in the pack reproduces, and consequently there is an imperative to employ aggression to move up the pack hierarchy. These points don't make wolves seem like ideal animals for domestication. Indeed, the fact that domestic dogs don't form hierarchical packs makes them decidedly unwolf-like and it has been argued that the flexible social structure and high tolerance of domestic dogs to gregariousness suggests derivation from a canid that didn't have a wolf-like hierarchical pack (Koler-Matznick 2002) [adjacent image depicts a dingo].
It is becoming increasingly recognized that dogs are remarkable among mammals in exhibiting human-like social skills and communicative behaviour (Hare et al. 2002). More so even than chimpanzees, dogs can reliably interpret human acoustic and visual cues (e.g., pointing or nodding), they have an inherent understanding of human perception, and they can even use human-like gestures, such as pointing. The presence of these social skills in domestic dogs might suggest that humans and wolves developed a communicative bond early on, and that this facilitated or initiated domestication. However, wolves have been studied in this context and have been found to lack the social skills and communicative behaviour that characterizes domestic dogs, so the social skills of domestic dogs presumably arose during domestication. This is supported by the fact that the domesticated foxes bred by Dmitry Belyaev and his team match domestic dogs in their ability to recognise human visual cues (I don't want to discuss Belyaev's fascinating experiment here as it would involve adding too many words: see Trut 1999).
Might wolves have domesticated themselves?
In view of these problems and others, those workers supporting the wolf hypothesis have argued that wolves domesticated themselves: by scavenging around camps and villages they became human commensals and eventually evolved into pariah dogs. As a relatively large (20-55 kg) predator it is difficult to imagine that wolves might have integrated into human society in this way. Notably, those carnivoran species that have become human commensals are all generalized omnivores smaller than most wolves: raccoons Procyon lotor, Red foxes Vulpes vulpes, Golden jackals Canis aureus and coyotes C. latrans.
Furthermore, it has been argued that the human camps hypothesized as the earliest places frequented by hypothetical commensal wolves would not have produced the waste that a large predator would require in order to make that fundamental niche shift. It is also worth noting that wolves were almost certainly a very real danger to prehistoric people and that they would have been regarded as enemies, not as potential friends.
Given that domestic dogs were apparently domesticated multiple times in various places, it is difficult to accept that so many wolf populations became amenable to domestication when these problems exist.
Morphologically, are domestic dogs really wolf-like?
It has long been recognised that domestic dogs differ from wolves in a number of detailed skull characters. Compared to wolves, domestic dogs are smaller and have proportionally smaller teeth, a wider palate, broader braincase and higher frontals, and smaller, less rounded auditory bullae. Mostly these differences have been explained as the result of either reduced selection under domestication (Björnerfeldt et al. 2006), or artificial selection for neotenous characters. There are however a few features present in domestic dogs (and not in wolves) that can't be easily explained this way, such as the difference in the shape of the mandibular coronoid process.
While these characters might result from reduced selection under domestication, or artificial selection for neotenous characters, it's interesting that many of them recall the conditions seen in non-wolf canids, such as jackals and dholes. Indeed some authors have concluded that domestic dogs are less like wolves than they are like these other wild canids (Manwell & Baker 1983, Wayne 1986, Koler-Matznick 2002). In fact we don't know that the apparent neotenic features of domestic dogs result from artificial selection, given that neoteny can arise via other means, and it should at least be considered that the unwolf-like characters present in domestic dogs indicate derivation from a non-wolf ancestor.
A fairly logical assumption that one might make, were the 'domestic wolf' model valid, is that the most primitive domestic dogs (viz, those that had been exposed to the least amount of artificial selection) would be the most wolf-like of them all. This would apply both to fossils, and to the most primitive living breeds. As hinted at above however, archaeological specimens show that old dogs are pretty much the same as modern pariah dogs - there isn't a series of specimens morphologically intermediate between wolves and domestic dogs - while the most primitive living domestic dogs, the dingos and New Guinea singing dogs for example, are not wolf-like but quite distinct from them behaviourally, socially and morphologically.
Domestic dogs: ancient and genetically distinct
If domestic dogs are wolves, you would expect the two to be very close genetically, certainly closer than universally recognised non-domesticated carnivoran taxa. Surprisingly for the dogs-are-wolves model, this is not true. In fact domestic dogs and wolves are (based on allozyme electrophoresis) further apart genetically than are leopards and jaguars, and (based on DNA hybridization) further apart than some bear species (Wayne et al. 1991).
A major analysis of mitochondrial DNA in domestic dogs worldwide (sampling 67 breeds as well as wolves from 27 localities) found most domestic dogs to belong to a 'divergent monophyletic clade* sharing no sequences with wolves', but with some domestic dog clades including some wolf haplotypes, apparently resulting from recent hybridization (Vilà et al. 1997). These authors concluded from mitochondrial and nuclear genes that domestic dogs were ancient, and that they had repeatedly interbred with wolves at various times and places throughout their history. This could be consistent with a derivation of domestic dogs from wolves, but equally it could merely show that hybridization has occurred at various times and places and it may be uninformative as regards ancestry. Indeed we know that several wolf-like domestic dog breeds (e.g., Saarloos wolfhound, Czech wolfhound, American tundra shepherd, American timber shepherd) were produced by deliberate crossing with wolves.
* The term 'monophyletic clade' is redundant given that a clade, by definition, is monophyletic. Included especially for Mike P. Taylor :)
The hardest bit of this story to accept is just how ancient these authors propose domestic dogs to be: the answer is more than 100,000 years old. Well, we modern members of Homo sapiens are meant to be about that old (give or take 50,000 years), so if that date is accurate, we must have started domesticating dogs as soon as we got out of Africa. Archaeological evidence for domestic dogs extends back to 14,000 years (based on a jaw from Germany) and other studies have suggested an origin at about 15,000 years ago (Savolainen et al. 2002). Less securely identified alleged domestic dogs from Russia are perhaps 17,000 years old, but there are no remains approaching 100,000 years in age.
While there are good reasons for thinking that the domestication of dogs probably extends beyond 15,000 years ago (perhaps to, say, 40,000 years or so), the lack of domestic dog prototypes in the archaeological and fossil record has been a problem. Some supporters of the 'domestic wolf' model have argued that we haven't discovered wolf-dog intermediates because, prior to about 15,000 years ago, domestic dogs were morphologically indistinguishable from wolves. Unfortunately that is totally incompatible with the idea that wolves became domesticated after adopting a jackal-like commensal niche, as strong reduction in size is a requirement for the latter theory.
What might be a domestic dog prototype is known from strata extending back to 200,000-500,000 years however, and this is the extinct Chinese canid named C. l. variabilis Pei, 1934. Though classified as a small wolf, this form resembles domestic dogs in small size, detailed mandible shape and other features. Intriguingly, it appears to have been common and morphologically distinct for tens of thousands of years over a wide geographical area, despite sympatry with 'normal' C. lupus (Olsen 1985, Koler-Matznick 2002). Olsen has noted (pers. comm. cited in Koler-Matznick 2002) that the referral of C. l. variabilis to C. lupus was never satisfactory, and given the features mentioned here it is conceivable that this dog-like form was not really a wolf, but either a separate species ancestral to the domestic dog, or an early representative of C. familiaris.
If domestic dogs aren't wolves, what are they?
All of this begs the question: if domestic dogs aren't wolves, what are they? The answer seems to be that Canis familiaris is a distinct species with its own independent history. Prior to domestication, it presumably existed as a relatively small, generalized canid that voluntarily adopted the commensal pariah niche still occupied by many dog populations today. This is supported by the morphological and molecular distinctiveness of domestic dogs, by the anatomy and behaviour of primitive domestic dog breeds, and by the archaeological and fossil record.
If this is true then the truly wild ancestors of modern domestic dogs are extinct. True, there are wild pariah-type dogs in various places around the world (there are wild populations of New Guinea singing dogs and dingos, for example), but they've been introduced by people. However, the lack of the original wild form in a species that has become domesticated or at least semi-domesticated is not unprecedented nor unusual: Dromedaries Camelus dromedarius, for example, only exist in the wild today in feral form, and are otherwise entirely domesticated, and the wild ancestors of modern domestic horses and cattle are entirely extinct. In fact the eradication of the wild ancestors of a domestic form is thought by some to one of the key historical events that occurs during the domestication process (Dobney & Larson 2006).
The theory that domestic dogs descend, not from wolves, but from a wild Canis familiaris remains unpopular and overlooked, and even today relatively few zoologists are aware of the literature on this 'alternative' view of domestic dog origins. As mentioned earlier, my primary inspiration in this area has been Janice Koler-Matznick and her papers, and I have only scratched the surface in terms of the information she has provided. I've also avoided discussion of many other fascinating areas involved with this debate, such as Belyaev's farm-fox experiment and the morphological and physiological changes observed in his domesticated foxes, theories on the domestication and/or transportation of grey foxes, South American foxes and other species, the diversity of the different domestic dog clades, controversies over the origin of pre-contact American dogs such as the Xoloitzcuintli, and David Paxton's theory that the incorporation of dogs into human society resulted in morphological changes in humans.
It's a lot to think about.
PS - you might have noticed that the font size and font type varies in the text above. I have NO idea why this is and have done all that I can to correct it (I've spent an hour trying to iron things out by messing with the html).
Refs - -
Adams, J. R., Leonard, J. A. & Waits, L. P. 2003. Widespread occurrence of a domestic dog mitochondrial DNA haplotype in southeastern US coyotes. Molecular Ecology 12, 541-546.
Björnerfeldt, S., Webster, M. T. & Vilà, C. 2006. Relaxation of selective constraint on dog mitochondrial DNA following domestication. Genome Research 16, 990-994.
Dobney, K. & Larson, G. 2006. Genetics and animal domestication: new windows on an elusive process. Journal of Zoology 269, 261-271.
Hare, B., Brown, M., Williamson, C. & Tomasello, M. 2002. The domestication of social cognition in dogs. Science 298, 1634-1636.
Jhala, Y. & Sharma, D. K. 2004. The ancient wolves of India. International Wolf Summer 2004, 15-16.
Koler-Matznick, J. 2002. The origin of the dog revisited. Anthrozoös 15, 98-118.
- ., Brisbin, I. L., Feinstein, M. & Bulmer, S. 2003. An updated description of the New Guinea singing dog (Canis hallstromi, Troughton 1957). Journal of Zoology 261, 109-118.
- ., Brisbin, I. L. & McIntyre, J. K. 2001. The New Guinea singing dog: a living primitive dog. In Crockford, S. J. (ed). Dogs Through Time: An Archaeological Perspective. BAR International Series 889. Archaeopress (Oxford), pp. 239-247.
Manwell, C. & Baker, C. M. A. 1983. Origin of the dog: from wolf or wild Canis familiaris? Speculations in Science and Technology 6, 213-224.
Morell, V. 1997. The origin of dogs: running with the wolves. Science 276, 1647-1648.
Olsen, S. J. 1985. Origins of the Domestic Dog: The Fossil Record. The University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
Savolainen, P., Zhang, Y.-p., Luo, J., Lundeberg, J. & Leitner, T. 2002. Genetic evidence for an east Asian origin of domestic dogs. Science 298, 1610-1613.
Trut, L. N. 1999. Early canid domestication: the farm-fox experiment. American Scientist 87, 160-169.
Verardi, A., Lucchini, V. & Randi, E. 2006. Detecting introgressive hybridization between free-ranging domestic dogs and wild wolves (Canis lupus) by admixture linkage disequalibrum analysis. Molecular Ecology 15, 2845-2855.
Vilà, C., Savolainen, P., Maldonado, J. E., Amorim, I. R., Rice, J. E., Honeycutt, R. L., Crandall, K. A., Lundeberg, J. & Wayne, R. K. 1997. Multiple and ancient origins of the domestic dog. Science 276, 1687-1689.
Wayne, R. K. 1986. Cranial morphology of domestic and wild canids: the influence of development on morphological change. Journal of Morphology 187, 301-319.
- ., Van Valkenburgh, B. & O'Brien, S. J. 1991. Molecular distance and divergence times in carnivores and primates. Molecular & Biological Evolution 8, 297-319.
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Elephant kills Briton on Africa honeymoon safari
By Matthew Beard
03 October 2006
A British man on a honeymoon safari in Kenya has been trampled to death in front of his wife by a stampeding elephant.
Patrick Smith, 34, from London, was with his wife, Julie, on an early morning walking safari in the Masai Mara game reserve when he was struck by the elephant in what has been described as a "tragic accident".
Mr Smith, an IT worker with the Reuters media group, where his wife also worked, had only been married for a week before his death on Sunday.
The couple were on foot with an escort 300 metres from their camp at the time. Richard's Camp is described as an upmarket encampment on the edge of a forest in an area known for elephant and other wildlife. It is around 106 miles south-west of the capital, Nairobi.
Jake Grieves-Cook, chairman of the Kenya Tourist Board, said he understood a herd of elephants had been startled by something and charged the couple, killing Mr Smith and knocking over the guide.
"No one knows what startled the elephants but the guide was doing everything right," he said. "They were downwind and thought they were at a safe distance. Elephants have very poor eyesight so this was not an attack. It was a tragic accident."
It remained unclear last night whether the animal had indeed been startled or whether it was a "rogue" member of the herd that had struck without any apparent reason.
A Kenya Wildlife Service spokeswoman, Connie Maina, said that efforts would be made to track the animal to determine what had happened. Ms Maina said it was possible that the elephant had been startled. "It is very unusual ... but accidents can happen," she said. "It is very unfortunate. They say it was one elephant - I'm trying to find out whether it was a lone bull."
She added that the KWS would monitor elephants in the area to determine if there was a rogue animal at large. "We will try to monitor to see if we can get any leads, if it is a rogue elephant it may do this again. But we don't have any information on whether it is or not."
She added that the incident had shocked wardens in the reserve. "Everyone is feeling it," she said. "It is terrible. They were on honeymoon. The wife saw what happened. I am told the wife is OK but is shaken up."
A spokesman for Reuters said: "It is a very tragic situation, we are sending our condolences to the family. We are trying to help them practically as best we can."
A Foreign Office spokeswoman confirmed Mr Smith's identity and said that consular assistance was being offered to the family. It is thought that Mr Smith's body had been flown from a nearby landing strip to Nairobi. It is understood that other family members were flying out to be with Mrs Smith.
Although humans are occasionally killed by elephants, it normally occurs where tourists encroach on to land used by them. The group including the honeymoon couple were thought to have taken all sensible precautions. When tourists are taken on walks through the bush, they are accompanied by rangers armed with rifles.
In 2000, another Briton was trampled to death by an elephant in the Masai Mara reserve, when he ventured out of a secure compound to take a photograph of it.
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Remains of Ancient Reptile Are Found
AP
5 Oct 06
OSLO, Norway - Researchers on Thursday announced the discovery of the remains of a short-necked plesiosaur, a prehistoric marine reptile the size of a bus, that they believe is the first complete skeleton ever found.
The 150 million year old remains of the 33-foot ocean going predator were found in August on the remote Svalbard Islands of the Arctic, the University of Oslo announced.
Fragments of plesiosaur have been found elsewhere, including in England, Russia, and Argentina, but researcher Joern Harald Hurum said the partially fossilized Svalbard find appeared to be the first whole example.
"We are quite sure it is complete," he said by telephone about the partially buried fossils. "We have the head, and can see about six meters (20 feet) of vertebrae before it disappears into the ground."
Hurum said the voracious plesiosaurs were like the Tyrannosaurus Rex of the oceans, "expect its head is much bigger. About 2 meters (6.5 feet) long, compared to about 1.6 meters (5.25 feet) for Tyrannosaurus Rex."
The University's Natural History Museum said the reptile was "as long as a bus, with teeth larger than cucumbers ... in a head that could swallow an adult human whole."
Hurum said his team plans return to Svalbard, 300 miles north of Norway's mainland, to continue excavations next year.
Twenty-seven other marine reptiles were also found during a two-week expedition: 21 long-necked plesiosaurs, sea reptiles similar to drawings of the Loch Ness monster, and six ichthyosaurs, reptiles that looked and had fins like fish.
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Scientists to create 'frankenbunny' in big research leap
This is London
5 Oct 06
Scientists are planning to create a "frankenrabbit" by fusing together human cells with a rabbit egg.
It is hoped the "chimeric" embryos, which would be 99.9 per cent human and 0.1 per cent rabbit, could lead to breakthroughs in stem cell research which could one day cure diseases such as Alzheimer's or spinal cord injury.
The embryos will allow scientists to perfect stem cell creation techniques without using human eggs.
"If we learn how to do this with animal eggs, we should be able to have more success with human eggs, and I'd much rather know that if we were going to ask women to donate eggs that we were very likely to get stem cells as a result," said Chris Shaw, at the Institute of Psychiatry.
"We know this is a huge challenge after Dr Hwang in South Korea failed to get stem cells despite having 2,000 human eggs."
Teams in London, Edinburgh and Newcastle are to submit application to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority this month, requesting licences to create embryos that will be 99.9 per cent human and 0.1 per cent rabbit or cow.
The HFEA is encouraging the applications after legal advice. The embryos will be allowed to grow for only 14 days, at which point they will be cells smaller than a pinhead.
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The useful idiots who back Bush
Peter McKay
Daily Mail
2 October 06
Talking yesterday about supporting Government policy on Iraq, Tory leader David Cameron reminded us that he is the leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition. He stressed "loyal".
Is it disloyal to oppose America's invasion of Iraq?
Strictly speaking - as subjects rather than citizens - we owe our loyalty first to the Queen, our head of state, not to HM's Government.
We can disagree with its policies. But if the leader of HM's Opposition deems it disloyal to disagree with the Government over Iraq, shouldn't we bury our concerns and become loyal, too?
Our troops are risking their lives in our names. Won't it harm their morale to think we're deploring their actions? Cameron obviously fears being cast by the Government as a traitor who'd let down "our boys".
Then there's America. The U.S. is our ally. We are said to enjoy a "special relationship" - not that special, as it happens; a news story yesterday said the U.S. intelligence classification NOFORN, meaning "not to be shown to foreigners", also applies to us.
Be that as it may, Cameron is anxious to support America, although he promises he won't be frightened of telling the Yanks what he thinks. He'll supply the candid advice of a friend.
When he was writing speeches for the previous Tory leader, Michael Howard, the Tory position was different.
Although Howard had supported the Iraq invasion, he spoke out against the botched aftermath - to the annoyance of Bush administration officials.
Presumably, Cameron agreed with Howard. Now he toes the line, taking care not to anger Washington. Why so?
The former Tory foreign secretary Peter Carrington, who had the honour to resign after failing to anticipate the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands, says the Iraq War has diminished our standing in the world: "I can't understand why the Conservative Party didn't say "Don't do it". Blair got it wrong, and it's been catastrophic."
How curious it is. In America, the Democratic Party - their Left, if you like - supported Republican George Bush's pre-emptive invasion of Iraq.
Here, the Conservative Party - our Right, so to speak - backs Labour premier Tony Blair's support of Bush.
In both countries, the ruling party has gathered what Lenin called "useful idiots" - in revolutionary Russia the liberals who became apologists for communist extremism after buying into the Marxist fairy tale of a just society.
Today's "useful idiots" buy into Bush's "war on terror", believing he's saving mankind from Islamic domination.
And blanking from their minds the possibility that his opportunistic reaction to 9/11 - using it as an excuse to invade Iraq - has persuaded young Muslims that he intends to dominate their nations.
Historian Tony Judt, excoriating Bush's "useful idiots" in a recent London Review of Books article, recalls the story of two French communists who quarrelled over Joe Stalin.
One, Pierre Courtade, had supported the tyrant's murderous activities; the other, Edgar Morin, deplored them.
Courtade told Morin: "You and your kind were wrong to be right; we were right to be wrong."
So it is with David Cameron and the Tories. They think they're right to be wrong about Iraq because of other considerations - the need to keep in with America, anxiety about being branded unpatriotic by the Government, and the difficulty of admitting they made a bad decision which, for reasons of appearance, they've now got to maintain.
In this respect, Cameron's worse than Blair. The Prime Minister's motives for joining Bush in Iraq might have been ignoble - history is sure to flush out the true reason - but he's careful always to say he respects those who disagree with him. He doesn't query their loyalty or patriotism.
Only one party has spoken for those who dissent on Iraq: the Liberal Democrats.
Their idea of being members of a "loyal" Opposition - expressing the doubts and misgivings most voters feel about Iraq - is less dubious than David Cameron's phony pledges to be a candid friend of the U.S. A little real candour from him this week would be appreciated.
Useful idiots can also be seen as useless idiots.
Sting in the tale
Popular historian Andrew Roberts says he was once saved from being attacked by a shoal of "giant" jellyfish off Miramar, in the south of France.
Apparently, his holiday pal, David Cameron, then 29, dived into the sea and threw him a pair of goggles so he could see to swim his way around his poisonous tormentors.
"I would probably have been hospitalised - it would certainly have ruined my holiday," says Roberts, a diehard Tory.
Might this be part of the ongoing Tory campaign to bracket Cameron with the young JFK, who was cast into the shark-infested Pacific during World War II when the motor torpedo boat he commanded, PT109, collided in the night with a Japanese destroyer and sank, drowning two of his men and injuring three others?
Well-connected Kennedy got a medal for heroism and that was later emphasised in his presidential campaign. An inquiry ultimately held him responsible for the incident but by then no one cared.
As for Roberts, he says he was stung once and it hurt for two days. We're not told how the jellyfish fared.
We've been here before
Shadow chancellor George Osborne says he and his political soulmate David Cameron can't be compared to Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. Why not?
Osborne claims he was happy for Cameron to go for the leadership. Unlike Blair and Brown, there was no restaurant deal in which Cameron promised to stand aside for Osborne after he'd been Prime Minister for a decent period.
But I keep reading that Osborne is cleverer and has more depth than Cameron. The same was said about Brown. That Cameron is a New Tory while Osborne would like to be a traditional tax-cutting one.
The truth is few politicians enter the fray content to be number two. Especially not those who set their sights on becoming Chancellor. We may be sure Cameron and Osborne won't remain lovely-dovey for long if they get into power.
Even if their personal relations remain amicable, we may be sure their pals - ie those who want jobs from them - will poison the well.
Suddenly, the mask slips from nice-guy Clinton
Did you see the American TV interview with former President Bill Clinton, who is lionised these days by celebrity-loving business creeps and politicians wishing to pick up tips on how best to deceive those who trust them?
Fangs bared, he snarled at mild-mannered Fox News interviewer Chris Wallace for daring to suggest he had been lax in pursuing Osama Bin Laden, spitting: "I got closer to killing Bin Laden than anyone else."
His face tight with anger, he raged at Wallace for smirking during his intemperate outburst.
What could have tipped everyone's friend Bill over the edge?
His ambitious wife, Senator Hillary Clinton, is positioning herself to run for the presidential candidacy of the Democratic Party in 2008.
She is honing her oh-so-carefully-calibrated criticism of the Bush administration's "war on terror". You can see the problem.
An opponent inquiring publicly: "Why didn't your husband deal with Bin Laden before 9/11 after being warned he was planning a terrorist outrage?"
Americans know he was absorbed in trying to avoid the consequences of sharing a cigar lubriciously with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Hence his great fury when confronted by the smirking Wallace.
Only on one previous occasion have we seen a furious Clinton on TV. That was when he was asked if he had slept with Miss Lewinsky and lied: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman."
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Yeah, Right!
Swiss report possible terrorist threat against U.N. in Geneva
Reuters
5 Oct 06
GENEVA - Swiss authorities have informed the United Nations of a "possible terrorist attack" against its European headquarters in Geneva, its biggest premises outside of New York, the world body said in a letter to staff on Thursday.
The attack could take place between October 5 and October 10., the letter said, without giving further details.
The letter encouraged staff to "increase the level of alertness and to take special protection measures."
Security and checks were stepped up at the sprawling Palais des Nations, the original League of Nations, but work and meetings continued, U.N. spokeswoman Elena Ponomareva said.
The letter, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, went further than a U.N. statement which referred merely to a "possible threat" against the organization.
"...the Swiss authorities have contacted us to inform of a possible terrorist attack against United Nations' premises in Geneva," said the letter.
"This attack would take place between 5th of October and the 10th of October: No information has been provided about the possible authors or the means to be used and no specific target has been mentioned," it said.
Eric Grandjean, a Geneva police spokesman, said that police were helping with patrols and checks at U.N. entrances at the request of U.N. security. He declined to give the numbers deployed, but said they were "adequate preventive measures."
It is the second time in a year that the U.N. in Geneva has been put on high alert.
The previous occasion coincided with a visit by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan almost a year ago when a "credible security threat" was received via an unidentified U.N. member country.
Some 1,600 people work in the 1930s building, where the U.N. Human Rights Council is currently holding a three-week session to examine alleged violations -- including counter-terrorism measures taken in the wake of the Sept 11, 2001, attacks.
Annan had been due to be in Geneva this week but did not come as a planned summit in the Swiss city between the leaders of Gabon and Equatorial Guinea was canceled.
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Muslims are waging civil war against us, claims French police union
By David Rennie, Europe Correspondent
Telegraph
5 Oct 06
Radical Muslims in France's housing estates are waging an undeclared "intifada" against the police, with violent clashes injuring an average of 14 officers each day.
As the interior ministry said that nearly 2,500 officers had been wounded this year, a police union declared that its members were "in a state of civil war" with Muslims in the most depressed "banlieue" estates which are heavily populated by unemployed youths of north African origin.
It said the situation was so grave that it had asked the government to provide police with armoured cars to protect officers in the estates, which are becoming no-go zones.
The number of attacks has risen by a third in two years. Police representatives told the newspaper Le Figaro that the "taboo" of attacking officers on patrol has been broken.
Instead, officers - especially those patrolling in pairs or small groups - faced attacks as soon as they tried to arrest locals.
Senior officers insisted that the problem was essentially criminal in nature, with crime bosses on the estates fighting back against tough tactics.
The interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, who is also the leading centre-Right candidate for the presidency, has sent heavily equipped units into areas with orders to regain control from drug smuggling gangs and other organised crime rings. Such aggressive raids were "disrupting the underground economy in the estates", one senior official told Le Figaro.
However, not all officers on the ground accept that essentially secular interpretation. Michel Thoomis, the secretary general of the hardline Action Police trade union, has written to Mr Sarkozy warning of an "intifada" on the estates and demanding that officers be given armoured cars in the most dangerous areas.
He said yesterday: "We are in a state of civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists. This is not a question of urban violence any more, it is an intifada, with stones and Molotov cocktails. You no longer see two or three youths confronting police, you see whole tower blocks emptying into the streets to set their 'comrades' free when they are arrested."
He added: "We need armoured vehicles and water cannon. They are the only things that can disperse crowds of hundreds of people who are trying to kill police and burn their vehicles."
However, Gerard Demarcq, of the largest police unions, Alliance, dismissed talk of an "intifada" as representing the views of only a minority.
Mr Demarcq said that the increased attacks on officers were proof that the policy of "retaking territory" from criminal gangs was working.
Mayors in the worst affected suburbs, which saw weeks of riots and car-burning a year ago, have expressed fears of a vicious circle, as attacks by locals lead the police to harden their tactics, further increasing resentment.
As if to prove that point, there were angry reactions in the western Paris suburb of Les Mureaux following dawn raids in search of youths who attacked a police unit on Sunday. The raids led to one arrest. They followed clashes on Sunday night when scores of youths attacked seven officers who had tried to arrest a man for not wearing his seat belt while driving. That driver refused to stop, and later rammed a police car trying to block his path.
The mayor of Les Mureaux, Francois Garay, criticised aggressive police tactics that afterwards left "the people on the ground to pick up the pieces".
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The Pope's Divisions
Tunis Hebdo, Tunisia- The 'Anti-Islam Axis' of the Papacy, Israel and 'Madman Bush'
By M'Hamed Ben Youssef
Translated By Mike Goeden
September 25 – October 1 Issue
Despite various vagaries of the moment, above all the defeatism of some of their leaders, Muslims have never been so aware of their own power. Have they not, these past few years, defeated the West in Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq and, just recently, Lebanon?
And the biggest slap in the face, the most consequential clout, remains the unsuccessful attempt by the American-Zionist axis to break the defensive lines of the Hezbullah militia in southern Lebanon. After 33 days of atrocious war during which they pursued a scorched-earth policy that concentrated on bombing Lebanon's urban centers and infrastructure, the Israelis were forced to accept the bitter fact that this time they'd bitten into a bone that ended up breaking their teeth.
The defeat of Tsahal [the Israeli armed forces], despite American logistical support, is rightly considered by experts to be a crucial, strategic turning point in more than one respect for the Middle East. It has enabled and will continue to enable Arab-Muslims everywhere to lift their heads high and take new confidence in their future.
There's more! Muslims in general, increasingly savvy with regard to high technology, are now keen to take their revenge on all those who have so outrageously sought to humiliate them in the past.
Besides, healthy reactions like this were to be expected after the scandal sparked by the Danish newspaper daring to publish the profane drawings caricaturing the Prophet Mohammed, a sacrilege that provoked a worldwide outcry among Muslims. Since then, their revolt has only intensified, despite the subordination of their leaders to the unpredictable cowboy from Texas.
It's hardly surprising that the new Pope, Benedict XVI, should in his own way commit a second such offense, considering his conservative background and, what's more, his apparently having served in the Hitler Youth. We should have expected such reactionary behavior on his part. However, the connivance of His Holiness with the conservative American right, in attempting to lambast Islam following in the footsteps of Jean Paul II - even by occupying Muslim countries and clipping Islam's wings so as to limit its expansion or even make it subordinate to Christianity - denotes the existence and execution of a Machiavellian, anti-Muslim plan, the modern version of yet another crusade.
[Editor's Note: During a speech in Germany on faith and reason on Sept. 10, Pope Benedict XVI quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor, and said in part, "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached].
To our knowledge - and this has never before been divulged - Pope Benedict XVI was only named to this high office to stifle Islam, a "fascist" force according to the madman Bush. In addition, this German is looking to distinguish himself and go down in history by doing just as much if not more than the Pope John Paul II, who, thanks to Solidarity during the time of his collaborator Lech Walesa, managed to bring down the Berlin Wall and communism along with it. This was soon followed by the breakup of the Soviet Union. Since then, this unexpected victory on the part of the West made the United States the sole hyperpower and the universe's only policeman. This imbalance of power, in the absence of any effective counterweight to the United States, has become quite worrying. This state of affairs has worked against, among others, the small Third-World countries, in particular those of the Arab world. Neutral countries have not since been able to benefit from the geopolitical situation, by playing upon secular rivalries between East and West.
As, for some ten years, after the disintegration of the once-formidable Red Army, the Pentagon found itself without a suitable rival or enemy to pit itself against, a replacement had to be found. The two choices were China and the Arab-Muslim world. The Middle Kingdom, however, has displayed an ever-growing appetite for the "delights" of Uncle Sam-style consumerism - therefore representing an especially profitable potential market coveted by American multinationals. And as the heirs of Mao have both a large, organized army and, above all, a nuclear arsenal, the alliance, made up of implacable, evangelical hawks, the leading lights of the Zionist movement and the Roman Catholic Church has unhesitatingly - indeed, enthusiastically - set its sights on Islam and the Muslims, whose societies are still convalescing despite their immense oil wealth.
There exists a Washington-Vatican-Tel-Aviv axis, to which must now be added, due to blind conformity, the Paris of moron Sarkozy, a favorite candidate for the presidency. Together, they will continue to do everything in their power to fight us. Besides, we're beginning to reap the consequences of the clash of civilizations, although this is only the beginning. The worse is yet to come, however, if the Western establishment unwisely refuses to adopt a less-ardent outlook and behave less aggressively toward us. For the state of affairs has been completely transformed by the legendary bravery of the Muslims. The bearded men of the Maginot Line in France during the First World War and later, in 1944, those of Cassino, Italy - who spilled blood twice to save European liberty - have left a great many descendants, who are just as brave and who, most importantly, have no fear of death.
Hundreds of thousands of young Muslims from all over the world continue to compete to be the first to die as martyrs for the Holy Cause and in defense of Islam.
And that's the difference between a Muslim and a non-Muslim.
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Yemen Times: Outmaneuvering Bush's Pope
By Dr. Abdulaziz Al-Maqaleh
Yemen Times
September 28 - October 1 Issue
It is regrettable that President Bush is no longer alone amongst Western leaders in offending Islam and Muslims. Now the Pope in the Vatican has joined him in what in contemporary Christian history is a rare concordance between the leading worldly authority and the Papacy. There is great danger in this bilateral accord, not only to Muslims and Islam, but to the entire world, which is why we must admonish people to stand back from this agreement and the reactions it is likely to create in both Islamic and Christian worlds.
[Editor's Note: During a speech in Germany on faith and reason, Pope Benedict XVI quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor, and said in part, "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.]
The campaigners against Islam that deny altogether that such an agreement exists and attribute it merely to chance, are either mistaken or deluded. And those looking for reasons for the deal don't need to look far, because the causes are so obvious that those who deny such an agreement exists can't hide them. The agreement between the political pole in Washington and the religious pole in the Vatican seems comprehensive and complete. The Pope's talk concerning Islam and the Prophet of Islam was neither a slip of the tongue nor a result of a lack of understanding of Islam. Nor were his comments made without knowing the wave of anger and denunciation that would sweep across the Muslim world.
The dissonance between [Western] rulers and those that they rule has made politicians and religious men careless when it comes to discussing Islam. With an Islamic world drowning in conflict, comments are made without fear or concern. And this conflict in the Muslim world makes it appear to those that are hostile to Islam that such blows and slaps will not unite Muslims, but rather cause them to fragment further.
Clearly, the Pope's belittling of the Islamic world was a frank and open expression if his views and it shows the consequences of the gulf between Muslim rulers and their own people.
Those who accuse the Pope of ignorance about Islam forget that he doesn't lack an understanding of those who represent a third of the world's population. Rather, he is assured that Muslim weakness is so deep that all they can do is respond with denunciation and demonstrations, with the breaking of street lamps and the windows of cars.
The comments of the Pope are almost identical to those of George Bush's, in regard to his Crusader war and the supposed fascism of Islam. While the phraseology is different, the goal and the purpose remains the same. The new extremists who govern the United States and influence policies around the world have accredited partners in the Vatican, which has transformed from an abode of spiritual care into an institution that interferes with global affairs without hesitation.
There is no doubt that the present Pope has been chosen for the purposes of implementing an irreligious and non-spiritual plan. From the moment of his installation, he has issued alarming messages that were noticed by some, but neglected by others. If the previous Pope succeeded to a degree in developing Islamic-Christian relations, his successor has destroyed what that wise pontiff had realized.
This is confirmed by the fact that the present Pope's comments about Islam and the Prophet of Islam where part of a well-prepared lecture. It was an unscripted address that wouldn't contain mistakes or be dominated by enthusiasm.
This behavior should prompt Muslims to agree on a plan to unify their stands and restore to them their lost prestige. By becoming a more integrated force, the adversaries of Islam and those that represent their religion will take notice.
Dr. Abdulaziz Al-Maqaleh is prominent Yemenite poet and intellectual. He is the director of the Yemeni Studies Center.
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Money Troubles
Russia plans tighter banking, immigration controls on Georgia
by Dario Thuburn
AFP
October 5, 2006
MOSCOW - Russia plans to tighten banking and immigration controls on its southern neighbour Georgia, officials have said, as a diplomatic crisis between the two countries deepened.
The head of Russia's migration service, Mikhail Tyurkin, signalled a sweeping clamp-down on Georgian workers in Russia, although the details had yet to emerge.
"We have taken the decision today that there will no longer be residency or work quotas for citizens of Georgia," Tyurkin said in comments broadcast on NTV television.
Tyurkin said the decision was adopted "taking into account the population of the Russian Federation, what vacancies there are and who can occupy those vacancies."
Russian parliamentary leaders were also quoted in newspapers as saying they were considering special laws to give President Vladimir Putin authority to impose banking controls on countries such as Georgia.
"We are talking about legislation that would allow the president ... to create a special regime for countries that follow anti-Russian policies," Sergei Baburin, deputy speaker of the Russian parliament, told the Gazeta.ru daily.
"The United States has the same law and they use it against Belarus," Baburin said after a meeting with Putin in the Kremlin on Wednesday for a meeting devoted to the situation in Georgia.
Amid a continuing war of words, Putin warned Georgia on Wednesday not to use "provocation" and "blackmail" and Russia's parliament adopted a resolution threatening "tougher measures" against Tbilisi.
The crisis erupted last week when four Russian officers were detained in Georgia on charges of spying. Russia evacuated embassy staff and severed all transport and postal links with Georgia.
The officers were released and returned to Russia on Monday but Russian officials have dismissed Western calls for the sanctions to be lifted and have rejected any role for outside powers in the crisis.
"Normal contacts should be restored between Russia and Georgia based on mutual respect," Karel De Gucht, head of Europe's security body, the OSCE, wrote in the International Herald Tribune on Thursday.
"We cannot simply return to the situation as it was before the crisis. The speed with which tensions escalated shows how dangerous and fragile the situation was," De Gucht said.
Analysts have linked the crisis to Georgia's aspirations to join NATO, which received a boost after Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili came to power in the former Soviet bloc country after a 2003 popular revolt.
NATO is due to discuss intensified dialogue with Georgia -- a step that could bring the impoverished Caucasus mountains state closer to membership -- at a summit in the Latvian capital Riga next month.
Putin has accused Georgia's leadership of engaging in "state terrorism" and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has linked Georgia's actions to influence from the United States and NATO.
Meanwhile, Russian police have launched a crackdown on Georgian immigrants and businesses in Moscow, and dozens of Georgian children have been barred from attending three schools in Georgia run by the Russian defence ministry.
Protests are being held outside the Russian embassy in Tbilisi, with many locals complaining they are no longer receiving remittances from friends and family in Russia because of the sanctions.
According to official statistics, 350 million dollars were transferred from Russia to Georgia in 2005, while the real figure may be closer to one billion dollars, Russian parliament speaker Boris Gryzlov said earlier.
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Gold nervously steady as funds shift to stocks
By Atul Prakash
Reuters
October 5, 2006
LONDON - Gold traded in a tight range above the previous day's 15-week low and platinum touched its lowest in nearly six months on Thursday, as investors were hesitant to make big moves because of general nervousness in the market.
Many investors shunned energy futures and metals this week to chase stocks after the Dow Jones industrial average rose to record levels and dealers said the bearish sentiment was expected to continue in the near term.
"The fundamentals are reasonably good. We are in a seasonally strong period of demand. Prices are low so demand is high because gold is price-elastic," said Stephen Briggs, economist at SG Corporate and Investment Banking.
"But the simple plain fact of the matter is, as demonstrated in the last few days, if investors do not buy in the paper market, the price falls because a bull market is largely speculative."
The recent drop in gold was mainly because of weak oil prices and there was a clear risk that the metal might drop again, he added.
Gold was quoted at $568.00/569.00 an ounce by 1015 GMT, compared with $566.00/567.00 in late New York on Wednesday, when it fell as low as $559.40, the lowest level since mid-June.
"Short-term funds are liquidating and pulling out their money from gold and shifting them into bullish U.S. stocks," said a senior trader at a Japanese trading house.
"Technicals look weak, but we are also seeing a lot physical buying, especially after gold dipped below $600," the trader said. "The long-term trend still looks bullish."
OIL PRICES WATCHED
Traders said oil will continue to set direction for gold.
Oil steadied above $59 a barrel, supported by signs that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries may make larger cuts in output to prop up prices. On Wednesday, prices fell to an eight-month low of $57.75.
Gold is generally seen as a hedge against inflation. The metal is also influenced by the dollar and often moves in the opposite direction of the U.S. currency.
The euro sat in tight ranges against the dollar and yen as investors positioned themselves for a widely-expected interest rate increase by the European Central Bank later in the session.
"Potentially, support in the $535-$542 area should hold firm technically, but with talk of hedge funds reallocating their investment portfolios from commodities into record breaking stock markets, gold could be subjected to moves lower," Standard Bank said in a daily report.
Physical buying picked in several parts of the world. Gold demand in India, the world's largest gold consumer, continued to gain momentum, supported by low prices and the festival season.
In other precious metals, platinum fell to $1,072 an ounce, the lowest since mid-April, and was later quoted at New York's level of $1,075/1,080.
Silver was at $10.85/10.90, versus $10.78/10.85 an ounce, while palladium was up at $297/301 an ounce from $289/294 in the U.S. market.
In industry news, StreetTRACKS Gold Shares, the world's largest gold exchange-traded fund, would be cross-listed in Singapore next week in a move to capitalize on Asia's growing fondness for bullion.
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Fear and Loathing in the US of A
General: U.S. Army in danger
By Dick Foster, Rocky Mountain News
October 4, 2006
COLORADO SPRINGS - The Iraq war has left the U.S. military in critical condition, stretched beyond its limits in manpower and equipment and in danger of "breaking," retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey said Tuesday.
"The United States Army is stumbling toward the edge of a cliff. It's starting to unravel," McCaffrey told the Rocky Mountain News, prior to addressing the Homeland Defense Symposium at the Broadmoor Hotel.
"It has $61 billion in equipment shortages. It has a $50 billion shortfall in the vital equipment and parts you need to run a war," said the former commander-in-chief of the U.S. Southern Command. "I hope there's new thinking and new debate because the course we're on now won't sustain us for the next 24 months."
The 14 Army brigades now deployed in Iraq have their full complement of troops and "extremely competent" leadership, said McCaffrey, but "the other two-thirds of the Army's combat brigades are not ready to fight."
That's because many brigades leave their equipment in Iraq for their replacements when they return home and are rapidly depleted of manpower as returning soldiers complete their service and leave, McCaffrey said.
Any new emergency, he said, such as heightened tensions in Korea or Taiwan, a domestic terrorism attack or natural disaster, could push the Army beyond its limits.
"If the other shoe drops, we are breaking the U.S. Army," he said.
McCaffrey said the Army has been fighting "on a World War II footing" since 9/11, exhausting its capacity.
"I think it's irresponsible. I think we put the nation in the position of strategic peril," he said.
Col. Lee Packnett, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to discuss the specifics of McCaffrey's statements Tuesday, but said "that is the opinion of a retired general officer, and he is not speaking for the Army."
But the Army's own chief of staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, refused to submit a required 2008 budget plan in August to protest what he considered inadequate funding proposed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Los Angeles Times reported last month.
Money for equipment and operations is not the only dangerous deficit for the Army, McCaffrey said. Manpower standards are falling in order to meet enlistment quotas, he said, citing the Army's own announcements.
As a result, he said, the enlistment age has been raised to 42, more recruits are being accepted from the lowest category of aptitude scores, and more morals waivers are being granted for recruits with arrest records.
McCaffrey assailed both the Bush administration and Congress for failing to mobilize the country to support its military.
But McCaffrey also cautioned that leaving Iraq or Afghanistan in the midst of turmoil would unleash civil war and instability.
He urged major new efforts to rebuild both countries' economies and initiate diplomatic efforts with neighboring countries to achieve stability.
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2 women plead guilty in UW ecoterrorism
By CURT WOODWARD
Associated Press
Wed Oct 4, 2006
TACOMA, Wash. - Two women pleaded guilty Wednesday to conspiracy, arson and bomb charges in the 2001 firebombing of the University of Washington's horticulture center, one of the Northwest's most notorious acts of ecoterrorism.
Jennifer Kolar, 33, and Lacey Phillabaum, 31, were released without bail after entering the pleas in U.S. District Court in Tacoma. Authorities said the two turned themselves in and have cooperated with ongoing investigations.
Under their plea agreements, prosecutors will ask U.S. District Judge Franklin Burgess to waive mandatory minimum sentences on the charges of arson, attempted arson and use of a destructive device. That bomb charge alone would otherwise carry a statutory minimum of 30 years, and a maximum term of life.
The plea deals instead will ask that Kolar serve five to seven years and Phillabaum face a recommended sentence of three to five years. Sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 5.
Neither woman commented to reporters after leaving the courtroom.
After the hearings, U.S. Attorney John McKay said the women had "the misguided belief that they would influence public policy. They have not."
"These violent acts of destruction are not a valid form of political speech," he said, calling the arson an act of domestic terrorism.
The fire on May 21, 2001, severely damaged the building, which was rebuilt at a cost of about $7 million. The center had done work on fast-growing hybrid poplars in hopes of limiting the amount of natural forests that timber companies log.
The Earth Liberation Front, a shadowy collection of environmental activists, claimed responsibility and issued a statement saying the poplars pose "an ecological nightmare" for the diversity of native forests.
Kolar also pleaded guilty Wednesday to an attempted arson charge for a failed 1998 firebombing that damaged a Colorado gun club that organized a multistate turkey shoot.
At least three others were involved in the UW firebombing, court documents allege.
Briana Waters of Berkeley, Calif., has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled for trial in May. William Rodgers of Prescott, Ariz., committed suicide in jail after being charged with other acts of ecoterrorism.
A fifth suspect, Justin Solondz, formerly of Jefferson County, Wash., remains at large.
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Bride's parents charged with kidnapping
By DEBBIE HUMMEL
Associated Press
Wed Oct 4, 2006
SALT LAKE CITY - A pre-wedding shopping trip for a 21-year-old bride ended with felony charges against her parents, who she says kidnapped her and drove her 240 miles to Colorado, trying to talk her out of the nuptials along the way and holding her until she missed the ceremony.
"I've never had a case quite like this," Utah County Attorney Kay Bryson said Tuesday after charging Lemuel and Julia Redd with second-degree felony kidnapping.
Bryson said he met with the couple's daughter, Julianna, and her now-husband, Perry Myers, before charging the parents. "It is strange that parents would go to that extent to keep an adult daughter from marrying the man that she had chosen to marry," he said.
The Redds told their daughter they were taking her on a shopping trip Aug. 4 and then drove from Provo to Grand Junction, Colo., according to Provo police Capt. Rick Healey. Myers, 23, called police when his bride didn't attend a pre-wedding dinner with his parents that night.
The Redds spent the night in Colorado and drove back to Provo, about 40 miles south of Salt Lake City, the next day, Healey said. They arrived after the young couple was supposed to have been married in a ceremony that day at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Temple in Salt Lake City.
"I was totally confused and manipulated," Julianna Myers told KTVX-TV in Salt Lake City. She said she supports the charges and hopes her parents get help.
"They had their concerns, their reasoning," she said. "Honestly I don't understand. It had nothing to do with Perry."
Bryson said after reviewing the police investigation it was clear a crime was committed.
The couple, both students at Brigham Young University, were married in the temple on Aug. 8, Myers said. They are expecting their first child in May.
"We were just glad the way it ended and she just came back and she was OK," Myers said. "We've gone forward since then.
Lemuel Redd, 59, and Julia Redd, 56, were charged Friday and are scheduled to make an initial court appearance Oct. 26. If convicted, they could face one to 15 years in prison.
A call to a listing for Lemuel H. Redd at the address in Monticello, Utah, listed in court documents went unanswered Tuesday. No attorney for the Redds is listed in court documents.
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Financial Times Deutschland: Fearing Voters, American Lawmakers Fan Voter Fears
By Washington Correspondent Thomas Klau
Translated by Bob Skinner
September 28, 2006
For both parties, the approaching Congressional elections are dominated by the fear of terror ... and fear of the voters.
In less than six weeks America selects a new Congress, and once again fear marks the campaign strategies of both parties.
The administration feeds the fear of terrorism by comparing Osama bin Laden with Hitler and Stalin. The White House argues that only the President and his Republicans are tough enough for such a dangerous fight. It is implied that the fantasy of a new caliphate under bin Laden, a Saudi billionaire's son, is on an equal footing with the threats from powers like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
The Democratic opposition counters by likewise inciting the fears of the citizenry, but by arguing that George W. Bush and his party have encouraged terrorism with the war in the Iraq, and have worsened American security. But while Republicans create a more favorable rhetorical and ideological dynamic for themselves by encouraging the fear of terror, Democrats see themselves more hindered than helped by doing so. That fear, along with the fear of losing the elections, explains the timidity of their resistance to the excesses of the administration in the anti-terror fight. The effect of the presidential election campaign of 2004 remains strong, when the Vietnam avoider George W. Bush portrayed Vietnam veteran John Kerry as a poor soldier.
BUSH THREATENED BY EXPOSURE
In addition to these openly displayed strategies of fear, the competitors have their own hidden fears. In the White House, the concern is that if the Republican majorities in the House or the Senate are lost, cabinet members and others would be held accountable under oath before Congressional committees for the Iraq war, a disaster for an administration whose failures in the planning and execution of the war would be relentlessly exposed.
But even among Democrats, there are strategists who get queasy at the thought of a possible election victory in November. Among the circle of Democratic presidential candidates, fear circulates that if they are successful this year, their party would be burdened by the wreckage of Bush's policies, with the possible result that the party's chances in the 2008 presidential election would be reduced.
Times of fear are not new in U.S. history, and often have not been good for American democracy. The tradition of overreacting to actual or alleged enemies was begun in 1798 by the second U.S. President, the otherwise intelligent John Adams, who signed the Alien and Sedition Acts. Even at that time the law, which limited free speech and gave Presidents wide powers to deport foreigners, was strongly criticized as destructive to American constitutional government. [The Alien Act expired in 1800, and the Sedition Act in 1801 RealVideo].
This sad chapter was updated in the 20th century by the internment of U.S. citizens of Japanese descent during the Second World War and the hysterical hunt for communists during the early 1950's.
Some historians have noted a particular tendency in the U.S. to react to threats with measures that, in hindsight, seem ill-considered and extreme. One reason may be the founding history of the United States, when a fragile group of colonies fought a war of survival against the superpower Great Britain. And perhaps a giant country protected by oceans that derives its identity from offering prosperity and refuge to immigrants from all over the world would take it particularly badly, when an enemy threatens the security of this refuge and the promise of the American dream.
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It can also be said that since September 11, America has reacted to the threat of Jihadi terrorism in a way that makes this one of the darker phases of its history. The elections on November 7 are a test of whether the voters will initiate a new policy tied to the better traditions of American constitutional government and American foreign relations. The strategists in the White House don't share this view: They're betting that the fear of terror will prevail on Election Day, and that voters will approve a policy that sacrifices the lives of non-Americans who the U.S. classifies as terror suspects to the absolute despotism of the President.
BRUTAL FIGHT FOR VOTES
Five years after September 11, the Congressional elections will show whether this dark vision of American sensitivities, and so feebly opposed by the Democrats, really corresponds to the facts. Election researchers today argue whether the opinion surveys suggest only a small shift in the balance of power, which will leave the Republicans a majority in the Senate and perhaps even in the House of Representatives, or whether Democrats will win in a landslide. The fact that for years, America's political landscape has been divided into two more or less equal and apparently firmly entrenched camps, would suggest that the first assumption is true. Favoring the second outcome is the extraordinary unpopularity of the Republican-led Congress - fewer than 30 percent of U.S. citizens are satisfied with its work, according to the polls - and the poor reputation of the President.
Accordingly, the election battle is being conducted with great bitterness; in TV commercials, the sharpness of the attacks on integrity of opponents exceeds the brutality of past competitions, according to experienced election operatives. This election of the entire House of Representatives and a third of the Senate on November 7 is no ordinary Election Day in regard to American history. It is a test of whether America's voters understand that the policy of this government has cost its country friends around the world, and that without these friends, even the great power of the United States cannot survive in the long term.
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The Non Existent Lobby
Poland Abruptly Cancels a Speech By Local Critic of the Jewish State
BY IRA STOLL - Staff Reporter of the Sun
October 4, 2006
The government of Poland, moving to avoid getting embroiled in anti-Israel politics, last night abruptly canceled a scheduled speech by a professor at New York University who has become hostile to the Jewish state, just hours before the event was to have taken place at Poland's consulate here in New York.
The decision to cancel the speech, which was billed as being about "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," is a signal of the quickening entente between free Poland and Israel, a relationship that is all the more remarkable for the fact that among the founders of Israel were Jews fleeing anti-Semitism in Poland. A Polish diplomat told The New York Sun that the speech, by the NYU professor Tony Judt, would have been inappropriate for the Polish consulate.
"It is a diplomatic post. Whatever is organized here should be in compliance with Poland's foreign policy," the deputy consul general of Poland in New York, Marek Skulimowski, said. "The consulate is not a Hyde Park, it's not a discussion club, it's a consulate." Mr. Skulimowski said that Mr. Judt had been "very critical" of Israel, while the president of Poland had just made a warm visit to Israel a few weeks ago.
The Polish decision was hailed by one of the leading Jewish defense organizations. "Bravo to them for doing the right thing," said the executive director of the American Jewish Committee, David Harris. "Tony Judt's message is the polar opposite of the remarkable surge in bilateral relations between Poland and Israel and between Poland and world Jewry."
The speech was to have been at the consulate, but it was actually sponsored by an outside group called Network 20/20, which describes itself as an apolitical educational organization. The group's president and founder, Patricia Huntington, yesterday blamed one Jewish organization, the Anti-Defamation League, for the cancellation of the speech. "Apparently the Anti-Defamation League tracks Tony Judt's talks on the Internet and tries to get the talks canceled," Ms. Huntington said. "This is censorship, which is of concern to Americans who believe in free speech." She accused the Anti-Defamation League of having "forced," "threatened," and exerted "pressure" on the Polish consulate to cancel the talk.
Mr. Skulimowski of the Polish consulate disputed that account. "I completely disagree with all of her accusations against us," he said. He said the consulate had received phone calls expressing concerns from "a couple of Jewish groups" but also from "representatives of American diplomacy and intelligentsia."
The national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, said that after the League received a phone call and e-mail inquiring about the scheduled talk, it looked into it. When the consulate explained that it was not the sponsor of the talk but was merely renting space to an outside group, Mr. Foxman said he had no objection.
"We said 'Fine,'" Mr. Foxman said. "We had nothing to do with the cancellation." Mr. Foxman said he was surprised to learn of the cancellation. "That was their decision," he said. "We didn't ask for it."
The canceled speaker himself, Mr. Judt, who is director of the Remarque Institute at NYU and a professor of European studies and of history, blamed the Anti-Defamation League and Mr. Foxman for the cancellation. "The pressure was brought by the ADL," Mr. Judt said. "They had no choice. Foxman had been leaning on the consulate all afternoon."
Mr. Judt said he was happy to have an unexpected free evening, but "sad at what this means for the country." He said he had planned to speak for about 30 minutes, and then to answer questions, about the paper on the influence of the "Israel Lobby" that was authored by professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. That paper described what it alleged to be a vast Israel lobby that included the editors of the New York Times, "neoconservative gentiles," the Brookings Institution, and students at Columbia. The ""Lobby," the paper said, had the "ability to manipulate the American political system," "a stranglehold on the U.S. Congress," and was actively "manipulating the media."
Mr. Judt said he is a Jew who lived in Israel in the 1960s and volunteered for "a number of weeks" as a member of the Israel Defense Force auxiliary after the 1967 war. In a 2003 Los Angeles Times article adapted from a longer and much-discussed article in the New York Review of Books, he called Israel a dysfunctional anachronism and suggested that "a single, integrated, binational state of Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians" might be preferable.
Ms. Huntington said she planned to reschedule the event at some other venue. "We are going to hear him anyway," she said. In the meantime, she was trying to telephone and e-mail the 100 or so members who had planned to attend the event, letting them know of the cancellation.
Mr. Foxman said the idea that he was to blame for the cancellation is "the conspiratorial nonsense that Mearsheimer and Walt are spinning with the support of Tony Judt."
"The Polish government made up its own mind," Mr. Harris said, dismissing other explanations for the cancellation as irresponsible fearmongering. "Tony Judt can try and frame this however he wants for his own marketing purposes," Mr. Harris said. "No one is stopping the event from being held elsewhere."
Messrs. Walt, Mearsheimer, and Judt have claimed that debate on the U.S.-Israel relationship is squelched by false accusations of anti-Semitism. Mr. Judt and Mr. Mearsheimer participated in a debate last week at Cooper Union in New York, and Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt spoke recently at the National Press Club. The Forward recently reported that Messrs. Walt and Mearsheimer had signed a deal with the New York-based publisher Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, owned by the German publisher Holtzbrinck, to write a book about the influence of the "Israel lobby."
The Network 2020 Web site lists another speaker for next month: M. Javad Zarif, the ambassador of Iran to the United Nations. He is scheduled to speak on "Iran's Role in Regional Security."
Comment from Jeff Blankfort: This is how the Zionist NY Sun reported the story. What is clear is that the Jewish establishment/lobby has veto power over not only the US political system on every issue that affects Israel or Jews (which is considerable) but on foreign countries, as well. This situation exists not because of any witchcraft or inherent trickery on the part of the members of the Jewish establishment whose dedication to Israel exceeds any concern for the welfare of their fellow non-Jewish citizens, but because those who pretend to be the guardians of our liberties are not only in denial regarding the lobby's power but they have joined the lobby in its efforts to marginalize those who tell the truth about what has become a veritable Fifth Column undermining what little remains of democracy in America.
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Tony Judt Speech Shut Down by ADL
Wednesday, October 4th, 2006 in News by Matt Barganier|
[UPDATE: Apparently, the Judt speech will go on, but on Oct. 16. But see this from the New York Sun.]
Historian Tony Judt, a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and director of the Remarque Institute at NYU, writes,
I was due to speak this evening, in Manhattan, to a group called Network 20/20 comprising young business leaders, NGO, academics, etc, from the US and many countries. Topic: the Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy. The meetings are always held at the Polish Consulate in Manhattan.
I just received a call from the President of Network 20/20. The talk was cancelled because the Polish Consulate had been threatened by the Anti-Defamation League. Serial phone calls from ADL President Abe Foxman warned them off hosting anything involving Tony Judt. If they persisted, he warned, he would smear the charge of Polish collaboration with anti-Israeli anti-Semites (= me) all over the front page of every daily paper in the city (an indirect quote). They caved and Network 20/20 were forced to cancel.
Whatever your views on the Middle East I hope you find this as serious and frightening as I do. This is, or used to be, the United States of America.
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The Cooper Union "Israel Lobby" Debate
By Terry Walz, CNI Staff
October 3, 2006
Last week the London Review of Books did a great service to free speech in this country by enabling Prof. John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago to have a debate on the Israel Lobby that he thought would never take place. The event was titled "The Israel Lobby - Does it Have Too Much Influence on U.S. Foreign Policy?" and its main purpose was to debate the pros and cons of a paper Mearsheimer wrote with Prof. Stephen Walt of Harvard University called "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy." It was a perfect opportunity for the much criticized national media to report on a key issue in our foreign policy.
The debate took place in the famous hall of the Peter Cooper Union in New York City - the very hall where Abraham Lincoln effectively launched his presidency in 1860 by bravely speaking out against the extension of slavery in the U.S. The debaters included two well-known Israel proponents, Martin Indyk and Dennis Ross, an Israeli former cabinet minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, and two supporters of Mearsheimer's stance (if not views), Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University and Tony Judt of New York University. If anyone had any question about whether the Israel Lobby existed or not, the debate did much to establish its effectiveness if not define its character.
The moderator, Anne Marie Slaughter of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson Center, sought to set the stage for the evening's agenda by suggesting that what America needed to hear was a debate on U.S. policy toward Israel, Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, and U.S. policy toward the Middle East in general. None of these subjects is discussed freely in the national media or in the halls of power in Washington, DC. These are the questions for debate that the Israel Lobby has effectively muzzled over the years.
Martin Indyk predictably led the attack against Mearsheimer by charging that a "Jewish cabal" that aimed to "bend" and "distort" the U.S. national interests to those of Israel did not exist, and that Mearsheimer's use of words and meanings were "tendentious" and "anti-Semitic." At the very least, he said, the argument for an "Israel Lobby" fed anti-Semitism. Both he and Ben-Ami worked hard the entire evening show that the paper on the Israeli Lobby written by Mearsheimer and Walt was a work of "shoddy scholarship" - and presumably on those grounds alone could be discarded.
But it was Tony Judt who fought them off by resurrecting the words of Arthur Koestler who once said it wasn't his fault "if idiots and bigots share my opinions" but it didn't make the opinion wrong. The Israel Lobby has too often grouped criticism of Israel and U.S. policy toward Israel under the rubric of "anti-Semitism."
Mearsheimer defended himself forcefully, though perhaps sticking too closely to his written word - as if published meant it bore greater truth - and at one point he turned almost dramatically to his two colleagues, Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk - the ultimate pro-Israel insiders - and told them, "you are in fact the core of the Israel Lobby."
The debate on foreign policy and national interest may have been too narrowly focused on the Israel Lobby, argued Rashid Khalidi, who said that on certain national issues, such as abortion, gun control and Israel, there was no debate at all. On Israel, why is that so? He wondered: Does it have anything to do with long-term American attitudes toward the Middle East, toward Islam? And was President Bush's abrupt turn after 9/11 to war against the Middle East, Arabs, and Islam merely feeding into the general anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Middle East paranoia?
Certainly the Israel Lobby warmly supported the move toward war in Iraq. Was this because Israel wanted the U.S. to deal with its "No. 1" enemy? No, the Israel Lobbyist debaters argued, because the No. 1 enemy has always been considered in Israel to be Iran. Dennis Ross said that it was President Bush's decision to make, not the Israel Lobby's - and view generally seconded by Ben-Ami - and added "if Gore were president, the war might not have happened."
Yet no one denied the fact that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee - the epitome of the Lobby - was one of the most powerful forces on Capitol Hill. Khalidi reminded the audience of the framing of the debate it does in Congress, from the resolutions it drafts, to the congressmen it harasses, to the candidates for public office that it vets. It works tirelessly to demonstrate that U.S. and Israeli interests are exactly the same.
Judt, who is Jewish himself, commented that most Jews saw no daylight between Israeli and the U.S. policies. And this is a result of the effectiveness of the Lobby. It has been easy to persuade Jews to think that any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic by nature.
But to what extent is the current administration typical of U.S. government - Israel Lobby relations? Is the close collaboration between the Bush administration and Sharon-Olmert government typical of the relationship? Indyk believed that the current AIPAC leadership "straight-jackets" American policy toward the Palestinians, whereas in Israel, there is more of a willingness to negotiate. But can, in fact, the American government demand that Israel follow a particular policy it is opposed to? Indyk and Ross said no, but Judt argued that it was because the American government was unwilling to do to Israel what it has done in the past to any number of European states when it has objected to their policies.
The packed audience in the hall was often partisan, cheering for particular sides in this debate, but it seemed largely supportive of Prof. Mearsheimer and was kept in balance by the able hand of Dr. Slaughter. It was a travesty of news coverage that it was not televised, not even by C-Span, and no major media covered the event, including the major newspapers. Was this the Israel Lobby at work? There seems little possibility that this extraordinary event will ever be repeated, given the distaste of the Israel lobbyists of Walt and Mearsheimer, but it is badly needed in every major community in the country.
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French academic again convicted for Holocaust denial
03/Oct/2006 23:32
European Jewish Press
PARIS (EJP)--- Retired literature professor Robert Faurisson has been convicted for Holocaust denial by a Paris court on Tuesday over remarks he made on Iranian television.
Faurisson, 77, well known for his revisionist views, was given a three month suspended prison term and also fined 7,500 euros.
Speaking on the Sahar 1 Iranian satellite channel in February 2005, Faurisson said "there was never" a single execution gas chamber under the Germans.... So all those millions of tourists who visit Auschwitz are seeing a lie, a falsification."
Faurisson was found guilty of "complicity in contesting the existence of a crime against humanity."
It is the fifth time that Faurisson is condemned for the same offence.
Patrick Gaubert, president of LICRA, the French league against racism and anti-Semitism, welcomed the court decision. "This gives proof that he says lies.But I am not satisfied with the three months suspended prison term as he is a recidivist," he added.
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Unfinished Business
Japan, US push divided UN to punish North Korea
AFP
Thu Oct 5, 2006
TOKYO - Japan has called on a divided UN Security Council to impose tough sanctions on North Korea if it tests an atom bomb, but Pyongyang warned it would not back down unless the United States compromises.
Stoking regional jitters, the United States said it had detected possible preparations for a nuclear test and a leading South Korean newspaper predicted the communist regime could detonate a bomb as early as next week.
Amid divisions at the UN Security Council, a senior Japanese official on a visit to Washington said the allies supported invoking a chapter of the UN Charter authorizing far-reaching sanctions or theoretically military action.
"In the event that North Korea conducts a nuclear test, it would inevitably be necessary to seek a resolution with Chapter VII at the UN Security Council," vice foreign minister Shotaro Yachi said.
New Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, well known for his hard line on Pyongyang, is set on Sunday to visit China and
South Korea which have warned against further isolating their communist neighbor.
"A good discussion has to take place at the
United Nations to make the North realize that if the country continues taking such actions it would be in an even more severe situation," Abe told parliament.
North Korea on Tuesday dramatically raised the stakes in the long-running standoff over its nuclear programme by announcing it would test a bomb at an unspecified date.
Chosun Sinbo, a newspaper published by ethnic Koreans in Japan and seen as representing Pyongyang's view, warned Thursday that a test was "unavoidable" unless the United States adopted a more conciliatory stance.
"The DPRK (North Korea) statement on a nuclear test is not empty talk but clearly premised on action," the newspaper said in a dispatch from Pyongyang, according to its Korean-language website.
Japan and the United States already have imposed most of the sanctions at their disposal against the impoverished nation, which conducts the bulk of its trade with China and South Korea.
The North, which last year declared itself nuclear-armed, has boycotted six-nation disarmament talks since November to protest one set of US sanctions aimed at blocking it from money laundering and counterfeiting.
But even after Tuesday's statement there was no sign of unanimity at the Security Council, which rebutted Japanese and US attempts to invoke Chapter VII after North Korea test-fired seven missiles in July.
US ambassador John Bolton spoke of "division" within the body, saying the regime's "protectors" -- implying veto-wielding Moscow and Beijing -- opposed a tough line.
His Chinese counterpart Wang Guangya took exception, urging "less mistrust" between Washington and Pyongyang.
"We are all concerned about the North Korean announcement. On this issue, everybody is unanimous," Wang said. "No one is going to protect them."
The Security Council's 15 ambassadors were due to meet again on Thursday to study a Japanese draft "presidential statement," which is non-binding.
Japan is willing to downgrade it even to a simple press statement so it can be passed as quickly as possible before any test, chief government spokesman Yasuhisa Shiozaki said in Tokyo.
A US intelligence official said unusual movement had been detected at one of several suspected test sites in North Korea.
The official, who spoke to AFP in Washington on condition of anonymity, said it was difficult to discern how advanced North Korea's test preparations might be.
"The bottom line is they could conduct it with little or no warning."
South Korean daily Dong-a Ilbo put two dates on the watchlist for a test -- Sunday, October 8, marking leader Kim Jong-Il taking leadership in the ruling Workers Party, and October 10, marking the party's birthday.
The newspaper predicted the North Koreans could also pick October 9, when Abe is due to make his maiden visit to South Korea as prime minister.
It said the North Koreans had timed the planned test ahead of November 7 US midterm elections in which the Republican party of
President George W. Bush -- who branded Pyongyang part of an "axis of evil" -- is predicted to lose seats.
Christopher Hill, the US lead negotiator to stalled six-party talks, said Washington had warned the North Koreans against a test via their mission at the United Nations.
"I am not prepared at this point to say what we are going to do, but I am prepared to say we are not going to wait for a nuclear North Korea. We are not going to accept it," Hill said.
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N.Korea Announces Future Nuclear Test
chosun.com
3 Oct 06
North Korea's Foreign Ministry said in a statement Tuesday that "the field of scientific research" in the North will conduct a nuclear test in the future "under conditions where safety is firmly guaranteed."
The statement was published simultaneously via Korean Central Television Station, the North's only nationwide TV network, the official Korean Central News Agency and Korean Central Broadcasting Station at 6 p.m. The ministry said the present situation, "in which the U.S. moves to isolate and stifle" North Korea has reached a stage "beyond extremity," with the result that the North "can no longer remain an onlooker to the developments." The statement says the U.S.' "extreme threat of a nuclear war and sanctions and pressure compel [the North] to conduct a nuclear test, an essential process for bolstering its nuclear deterrent, as a corresponding measure for defense."
It stresses several times that North Korea was compelled to conduct a nuclear test because of the pressures and sanctions from the U.S. but makes no mention of when and how. Some experts here say the statement could be a bargaining chip to urge the U.S. and others to lift their financial sanctions, rather than an announcement of an imminent test. They feel the announcement came out of consideration of the situation in general, including more sanctions against the North from the U.S. and Japan, the proposed Seoul-Tokyo and Seoul-Beijing summits, and a "common and comprehensive approach" by Seoul and Washington to the North Korean nuclear and missile issues. They expect that if the U.S. does not come forward to conduct negotiations, it will increase chances of Pyongyang actually carrying out the threat.
The statement vows the North "will never use nuclear weapons first but strictly prohibit any threat of nuclear weapons and nuclear transfer" and "do its utmost to realize the denuclearization of the Peninsula and give impetus to worldwide nuclear disarmament and the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons." It recalls that the North officially announced it has modern nuclear weapons last year, and claims the announcement was based on a nuclear test.
The statement says the North's ultimate goal is not denuclearization that would lead to one-sided disarmament on the peninsula but one that will improve the hostile relationship between the North and the U.S. and fundamentally remove all the nuclear threats on the Korean Peninsula and in surrounding areas. It adds there is no change in its intent to realize the denuclearization of the peninsula "through dialogue and negotiation." North Korea used the same sentence when it declared it has nuclear arms in February last year, indicating that it does not rule out negotiations to address the situation.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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'No future' for nuclear Nth Korea: US
Peter Alford, Tokyo correspondent
The Australian
October 06, 2006
WASHINGTON'S senior envoy dealing with Kim Jong-il's regime has warned the US would "not live with a nuclear North Korea" under any circumstances, amid fresh signs of an imminent atomic test.
"(North Korea) can have a future or it can have these weapons," Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill told a Washington thinktank yesterday. "It cannot have both."
Mr Hill's words are likely to be taken in Pyongyang as a threat of military action.
He laid down the ultimatum, though without hint of what further measures the Americans might take against the regime, as unnamed US officials told several news outlets that new signs of activity had been detected at a potential explosion site.
The most likely site for North Korea's first nuclear explosive test is understood to be near the Punggye-yok underground facility in Kilchu county of North Hamgyong province. Punggye-yok was the focus of unrealised test scares in 2004 and last year.
Satellite surveillance is said to have detected vehicles, people and the movement of materials at nearby Mount Mantap, into which South Korean intelligence officials say a tunnel and horizontal shafts have been driven.
A South Korean congressman who sits on a national assembly security committee, Song Young-sun, said yesterday eight sites in the north and west of the country were under surveillance.
Punggye-yok is about 35km northwest of Musudan-ri, the base from which Pyongyang launched its unsuccessful Taepodong-2 long-range ballistic missile on July 5.
One US official told the AFP news agency the North Koreans' test preparations might be a bluff but "the bottom line is they could conduct it with little or no warning". There is speculation the North Koreans could explode their bomb - they are generally thought to have at least six relatively crude devices - as early as Sunday, when Japan's new Prime Minister will be in Beijing for a summit with President Hu Jintao.
Possible pre-test activities have been detected for more than six weeks but on Tuesday North Korea's Foreign Ministry said, for the first time definitely, the regime would explode a nuclear weapon, justified by the alleged threat of US invasion and further heavy sanctions.
China, North Korea's vital ally, toughened its posture yesterday with the state-run Xinhua news agency reporting that Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing had told North Korea's ambassador to convey to Pyongyang's leadership that "serious consequences" would follow a nuclear explosion.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also announced Moscow was "holding direct talks with the leaders of North Korea" in the hope of persuading Pyongyang not to carry out a test.
Mr Hill attacked the idea that seems to be central to current Pyongyang thinking: eventually after a test the US would have to accept and deal with nuclear North Korea, as it has done with India and Pakistan.
But Mr Hill characterised the Kim regime as a unique threat to the stability of northeast Asia and to US allies Japan and South Korea. "We are not going to live with a nuclear North Korea, we are not going to accept it," Mr Hill said.
"We have responsibilities throughout Asia, throughout the world (and) we will honour those responsibilities.
"We will honour our alliance relationships, especially in the Republic of Korea and in Japan.
"(North Korea) will realise at some point in the future that they had a very bad day when they made that choice."
Agreement on a UN Security Council statement demanding North Korea withdraw its test threat appeared to be closer yesterday when Japan, the current council president, offered a compromise to China.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki said yesterday in Tokyo that Japan was prepared to have the UN Security Council warning issued as a press statement, rather than the weightier presidential statement.
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Iran and North Korea defy nuclear warnings
By Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor
04 October 2006
The West's dispute with Iran and North Korea over their nuclear capability has taken a dangerous turn following the failure of talks on the Iranian programme and Pyongyang's pledge to conduct its first nuclear test.
The reclusive Communist state drew a strong response from the US, Japan and Europe yesterday when it issued a statement announcing that because of the American "threat of nuclear war and sanctions" it would carry out a nuclear test.
The statement from the North Korean Foreign Ministry said that the test would be conducted "in the future" and "under the condition where safety is firmly guaranteed". Although North Korea claims to have produced nuclear weapons, it has never carried out a nuclear test.
Also yesterday, hopes that Iran could be coaxed into curbing its nuclear programme faded after the European official who had been holding discreet talks with the chief Iranian negotiator informed European ministers and the US that they had failed.
As a result, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - Britain, the US, France, Russia and China - have agreed to discuss economic sanctions against Tehran "in the coming week or so" at the United Nations, a senior British official said.
Russia, which has resisted possible sanctions aimed at forcing the Iranian leadership to agree to a suspension of uranium enrichment before negotiations on a package of incentives, continued to insist yesterday that the issue should be resolved through negotiations.
The British official recognised that "on the details there are differences", but that all the UN big powers agreed on "incremental" coercive measures. As a first step, these are expected to target exports to Iran which could be used for its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.
Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, who is currently on a Middle East tour, may discuss Iran in London with other European partners later this week. Speaking in Cairo last night, she said that "the only choice for the international community is to live up to the terms" of the UN resolution that ordered Iran to freeze its uranium enrichment programme or face consequences. "And that is to bring sanctions," she said.
Western experts believe that although Iran and North Korea are not co-ordinating their strategy, they are carefully watching how each other's actions are playing out.
The Lebanon war, in which Iran's proxy militia survived a month-long pounding by the Israeli military, is considered to be a factor in the Iranian leadership's resolve to reject the UN demands to curb its programme, which is not as far advanced as that of North Korea. US military strikes against Iran are now seen by Tehran as unlikely because of Hizbollah's proclaimed "victory" in Lebanon.
Iran says that its nuclear programme is peaceful, but the US and Europe believe that its civilian programme could be a cover for building a weapon.
The long-running dispute with both countries is now entering an unpredictable phase, with uncertainty over how Iran may react to possible UN sanctions.
Tehran may be tempted to carry out its threat of using oil as a weapon, or even pull out of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, as North Korea did in 2002.
But although the White House and State Department warned that a "provocative" and "reckless" test would only lead to further isolation for Pyongyang, Washington signalled its preference to resolve the dispute through diplomatic channels. The US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, urged Security Council members to discuss the next steps.
In an early sign of the tough line being taken by the new government headed by Shinzo Abe in Japan, the Foreign Minister, Taro Aso, called the North's nuclear test plans "totally unforgivable," and said Tokyo would react "sternly" if the North conducted a test.
North Korea is being urged to return to six-party talks - involving both Koreas, the US, China, Russia and Japan - which it has boycotted for the past year.
Iran is a year away from mastering the enrichment technology that could lead to production of a bomb, according to British officials.
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Quiet South Korean minister set to succeed Annan at UN
By David Usborne in New York
04 October 2006
Just as the race to succeed the secretary general of the United Nations has been discreet and mostly free of public drama, so a front-runner has emerged who is known for his mild manner and absence of showmanship. Ban Ki Moon, the self-effacing Foreign Minister of South Korea, has risen to the top of a field of seven candidates for arguably the toughest civil service job in the world thanks to his reputation as a skilled behind-the-scenes mediator and resolute manager.
His victory was all but assured late on Monday after a final informal poll among the 15 envoys on the Security Council. Mr Ban, who is 62 and a graduate of Harvard, won 14 "encourage" votes and only one "no opinion". Most importantly, he won nods from all of the veto-wielding permanent members.
Final congratulations will likely come next Monday, when the Security Council is set formally to ask Mr Ban to lead a body with 9,000 workers, a $2bn (£1.1bn) budget and the scars of recent scandals, notably in the now defunct Iraqi oil-for-food programme. His appointment for a first five-year term will then be handed to the General Assembly for its approval, which is seen as a mere formality.
Among those disappointed is Shashi Tharoor, who has served with Kofi Annan as an assistant secretary general. Championed by his native India, Mr Tharoor, 50, withdrew after Monday's poll, acknowledging that Mr Ban's position was unassailable. "It is a great honour and a huge responsibility to be secretary general," he said in a brief statement, "and I wish Mr Ban every success in that task."
Although one of the late entrants to the race was the President of Latvia, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, there has long been a tacit understanding in the Security Council that the eighth secretary general of the UN would come from Asia. The last Asian to lead the body was U Thant of Burma, who left office in 1971.
For South Korea, the selection of Mr Ban holds some historical satisfaction. The country, after all, owes its existence to the UN, which established its border in 1948 and provided blue-helmet troops to defend it during the Korean War. "We Koreans have quite literally risen from the ashes of war," he said recently.
Mr Ban, who was born in the rural town of Chungju in central South Korea in 1944 and is married to a childhood sweetheart, has nurtured ambitions to be a global diplomat since his teens.
At the age of 18 he found himself selected by the International Red Cross to travel to the United States, where he was taken to the White House and introduced to President John F Kennedy. Already he knew his calling, and later studied international relations at Seoul University, before attending the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
His career has been threaded with connections both to the US and the United Nations. Before becoming Foreign Minister in 2004, he served as chief aide to the president of the UN's General Assembly, also from South Korea, for one year after September 2001. Among their first challenges was crafting the UN's response to the 9/11 terror attacks in New York.
That Mr Ban is considered a close ally of Washington is no secret, and he enjoyed the firm backing during the polling process of the US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton. "The United States is very pleased with the outcome," Mr Bolton acknowledged on Monday night. Closeness to the US can bring peril to a secretary general, however, and Mr Ban can be expected to downplay its significance.
In London, the Foreign Office is also expressing quiet approval. "We are very happy with him coming through," a senior British official said. Less certain is the ardour of France, which normally insists that a secretary general speaks fluent French. Mr Ban is reportedly taking lessons.
The charisma deficit may yet prove a problem for a man whose job includes being a voice for peace on the world stage. Insiders say that when he speaks publicly, Mr Ban can be halting, and relies on prepared notes. Yet he has publicly insisted in recent days that his external demeanour can be deceiving. "I may look soft from the outside, but I have inner strength when it's really necessary," he commented. "I have always been very decisive."
He signalled yesterday, that pressing forward with UN reform and streamlining its bureaucracy would be a first priority.
"I will try to change the whole mindset of the United Nations Secretariat," he warned, adding that he would work first to "restore the confidence of the United Nations".
Is Ban the right man for the job?
Critics Say: Ban lacks a key ingredient for the post of world spokesman for peace and development: charisma.
He Says: It's the Asian way. Behind the low-key exterior lies a man of passion and persuasion.
Critics Say: South Korea in effect bought the job by recently announcing large aid packages to developing countries, particularly in Africa.
He Says: Reports were a "smear campaign" against him and that aid deals were agreed by Seoul long before he launched his candidacy.
Critics Say: Ban may not have the steel to deal with world crises in Middle East and elsewhere.
He Says: He has experience confronting the worst problems, keeping the peace on the Korean peninsula and confronting North Korea on its nuclear ambitions.
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People as Targets
Jailed for 8½ years: ringleader of human traffickers who thought they were invincible
Rosie Cowan, crime correspondent
Thursday October 5, 2006
The Guardian
A ringleader of one of Europe's biggest people-smuggling rackets, which is thought to have brought thousands of illegal immigrants into the UK, was jailed yesterday for 8½ years.
Ramazan Zorlu, 43, played a key role in a huge network which earned its organisers millions of pounds. Men, women and children were smuggled on lengthy journeys across Europe, using planes, trains, lorries and even light aircraft - often in appalling conditions, hidden in tiny secret compartments, sometimes going without food and water for days.
Some were Iraqi, although most were Turkish, and they usually headed for north-east London, where they were quickly absorbed into the large Turkish community. The smugglers used a large variety of routes and transport, and each immigrant paid up to £14,000 for the journey from Turkey, and in some cases up to £3,000 to cross the Channel.
The British end of the network was uncovered by a huge undercover police operation codenamed Bluesky. The 10 main players in the UK, including Zorlu, were arrested in a series of dawn raids on October 11 last year. All admitted their parts in the people smuggling operation and seven have already received between 17 months and six years in jail. Another two men, including the other ringleader, Ali Riza Gun, 47, will be sentenced next week. Ercan Gunlu, 37, a Turkish lorry driver, was jailed for 3½ years.
Police found £71,450 in cash at Zorlu's home in Welling, Kent, when it was raided and discovered he had sent another £69,000 in money transfers to Europe.
Officers discovered 16 stolen passports hidden in a stuffed toy in a room at an internet cafe belonging to Gun, a failed asylum seeker with two previous convictions for people smuggling, one in Britain and one in France. The police investigation to crack the smuggling ring involved the UK and 21 other countries across Europe and led to 60 arrests.
Detective Chief Superintendent Maxine De Brunner of Scotland Yard said it was the most significant human smuggling ring ever investigated and prosecuted in the UK. British police intercepted more than 400 illegal immigrants during the investigation but believe that thousands more may have succeeded in evading detection. She said: "Human smuggling is an appalling crime. The criminal networks have no regard for the safety of those being smuggled.
"The smuggling of humans often involves them being transported for days or long periods of time without food or water in dangerous concealed compartments on the undercarriage of a lorry. If the compartment broke, the people would most likely be killed as they would fall under the wheels of the lorry." Croydon crown court heard examples of people being smuggled in terrible conditions. Twenty-one immigrants, including four children, were found in a van in Cherbourg in August 2004 suffering suffocation and dehydration. In September 2005, four people were discovered on a lorry at a Hertfordshire service station, crouched in tiny cage-like compartments after three days without food and a day without water.
Judge Nicholas Ainley, sentencing Zorlu, said: "I find it hard to conceive of a more serious case of this type of offence coming before the courts." The judge said the smuggling ring was a sophisticated commercial enterprise which was in no way entered into through misplaced family loyalty or sympathy towards the illegal immigrants. "You must have been considering these people more as commodities than individuals to be cared for," he told Zorlu. While the police had intercepted a number of failed attempts to get into the UK, the number of successes was "unknown and unknowable".
The judge recommended Zorlu, who is Turkish, be deported on release from prison. Supt De Brunner said: "This investigation was designed to smash a serious and organised network of criminals who thought they were untouchable. Operation Bluesky involved the removal of an entire criminal network from top to bottom." This included the convictions of the three masterminds, Zorlu, Gun and Hassan Eroglu, who was jailed for six years.
Supt De Brunner said these three men saw themselves as above the law and they used 39 mobile phones to avoid detection. The court yesterday heard bugged conversations between Zorlu and Gun and other conspirators in mainland Europe.
Hilary Bradfield, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said: "Intercept material from Belgium, Italy and Austria provided clear evidence of the conspiracy and played a part in encouraging the defendants to plead guilty. "These intercepts are only admissible in evidence because they were obtained by foreign law enforcement agencies as part of their own investigation."
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Journalist death rate highest ever in 2006
Stephen Brook
Thursday October 5, 2006
MediaGuardian.co.uk
This year is the deadliest on record for journalists and media workers, with 75 deaths to date, the World Association of Newspapers said today.
This was already three more than the 72 journalists killed during the whold of 2004, WAN said.
Journalists continue to be targeted and murdered in Iraq, with 26 dying in the conflict there.
"Journalists in Iraq are not only facing the danger that comes with working in a war zone, they are being hunted down and assassinated simply because they are suspected of cooperating with western news agencies, because of their religious or political affiliation, or because their murderers believe that killing journalists will advance their aims," said the WAN chief executive, Timothy Balding.
"Journalism today is more dangerous than ever," he said. "More than 500 journalists have been killed in the past decade, often for simply doing their jobs.
"These murders are a direct attack not only on individuals, but also on society as a whole. Yet few of the killers are ever brought to justice."
Eight journalists died in the Philippines - where criminal gangs and corrupt politicians target investigative journalists without fear of prosecution - while six died in Guyana.
Paris-based WAN, the global newspaper industry organisation, began keeping records of journalist murders in 1997 and bases figures on all media workers killed in the line of duty or targeted because of their work.
WAN also records cases where the motive for the killing is unsure or where investigations are incomplete.
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Framing Iran
World powers to meet in London for Iran talks
AFP
Thu Oct 5, 2006
MOSCOW - Foreign ministers of the six major powers seeking a compromise deal over Iran's nuclear programme are to meet in London on Friday, a Russian foreign ministry spokesman said.
"A meeting of foreign ministers of the six will be held on Friday in London," Mikhail Kamynin was quoted by Interfax as saying during a visit to Poland.
The so-called P5-plus-1 group is made up of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council -- Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States -- and Germany.
The six powers agreed to set a new deadline this week for Iran to comply with a UN resolution demanding it freeze its uranium enrichment programme, which Washington and others believe is a cover for developing nuclear weapons.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is pressing for sanctions on Iran, warned this week that the credibility of the international community is on the line and time is "running out."
Iran insists its nuclear programme is solely for peaceful energy needs and has vowed it will not suspend uranium enrichment, defying warnings of sanctions from world powers.
Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana have staged four rounds of talks on Iran's nuclear programme but have failed to make a breakthrough.
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Ahmadinejad Says Great Powers 'Failed the World'
IRNA
September 28, 2006
According to this news account from Iran's state-run Islamic Republic News Agency, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has told Iranians that the world's major powers should admit to their failure to properly manage global affairs.
Karaj, Tehran Province: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Thursday said that the policies of the world's great powers in terms of managing the global economy, culture and security have completely failed.
The Chief Executive made these remarks while speaking to people in the city of Karaj, located to west of Tehran. This is the president's 20th provincial visit.
"Today, instead of peace and security, the nations of the world are instead confronted with war and tyranny, the President said.
According to the President, the bullying powers launch wars across the globe while holding up the banner of peace, and he pointed to Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and Afghanistan as obvious examples.
"While carrying the banner of human rights, they take the lives of innocent citizens in these countries, and force others to leave their homelands. They themselves support terrorists in Iraq and Palestine, but claim to campaign against terrorism," he said.
Ahmadinejad said that despite the chemical and biological weapons stockpiled by the big powers, they continue to express concern over the progress of other nations and their access to the nuclear fuel cycle.
"Meanwhile, these powers pollute the world with these programs, but chant slogans in support of environment.
"Instead of being prepared to annihilate the earth over and over again to secure the interests of capitalists, they should face their failure to properly manage world affairs" he said.
The president added that today, Iran is officially recognized as a model country by all of the world's nations.
After his speech, Ahmadinejad departed for Tehran.
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The Daily Star, Lebanon: U.S. and Iran Hardliners 'Sharpen Their Knives'
EDITORIAL
September 26, 2006
Although both U.S. President George W. Bush and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have in recent days shown a greater willingness to pursue the path of negotiation, the potential for a showdown between the two states remains as high as ever. Animosity and mistrust between Iran and the United States runs deep, and Tehran's apprehensions became even more pronounced after the Bush Administration branded Iran part of an "axis of evil." Iranians are understandably worried about the Bush Administration's intentions, especially in light of its doctrine of pre-emptive war, the deadly and destabilizing effects of which they have witnessed in neighboring Afghanistan and Iraq.
But behind the outward expressions of accommodation of the two leaders in regard to Iran's nuclear program, there remain powerful and influential individuals on both sides who are sharpening their knives and arming their missiles. Regardless of developments on the negotiation track, these individuals are likely to remain wedded to their distorted ideological world views. Just as some Iranian officials will always consider America the "Great Satan," some U.S. officials will refuse to see Iran as anything other than an "evil" regime. For these individuals, the current show of moderation is only a necessary formality that must be pursued in order to later demonstrate that they have exhausted all other options.
Hard-line views on both sides threaten to drag Iran and the United States into war, despite the fact that neither side could possibly achieve any of its end goals through conflict. It's unreasonable to expect that Iran would endure a "surgical" strike on one of its nuclear facilities without responding by way of its tentacles spread across the globe. Any attack is likely to escalate into an ugly asymmetric war that dramatically alters life as we know it - and not for the better.
War is still avoidable if the voices of moderation prevail. At the center of the dispute over Iran's nuclear program is the issue of mutual recognition. Iran has an interest in asserting its role as a regional power, just as the U.S. is trying to assert its power in the region. The two states could easily form a mutual understanding based upon shared interests. Both sides would need to show a willingness to be more accommodating on a wide range of political issues.
The United States, for example, can't expect to gain Iran's cooperation and recognition without a substantive change in its regional policy, particularly on the issues of unqualified support for Israel and reluctance to press for the creation of a Palestinian state. Likewise, Iran can't expect to gain American recognition without abandoning its aggressive stance toward Israel.
Any agreement between Iran and the United States would necessarily involve a considerable amount of compromise. Given the choice - between mutual recognition and mutual destruction - such an effort would be well worth it.
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Gambling on the Future
Two rockets found near Pakistani parliament
By Arshad Sharif
Reuters
October 25, 2006
ISLAMABAD - Pakistani police defused two rockets attached to mobile phones near Parliament in the capital Islamabad on Thursday, the morning after a blast in a park close to President Pervez Musharraf's residence in nearby Rawalpindi.
The rockets were found in a patch of green across a six-lane road from parliament and main government buildings.
"We have recovered two rockets along with launchers," a police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The rockets have been defused."
An intelligence official said the rockets were attached to wires and mobile phones and were pointed toward the main government buildings.
Just behind the parliament are the official residences of the president and prime minister. However, it was immediately not clear whether President Pervez Musharraf or Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz were present there.
The parliament is not in session.
Police and the army cordoned off roads leading to parliament house and investigations have started, a senior police official said.
As police recovered rockets, the state-run Pakistan Television showed Musharraf appearing in a conference on the reconstruction of northern parts of the country following a devastating earthquake a year ago.
"We have detained a few people for questioning," the senior police official said.
Witnesses saw police taking away in buses scores of laborers working at a nearby construction site.
On Wednesday night a small explosive device exploded in a park near Musharraf's army residence in the garrison town of Rawalpindi, adjoining Islamabad.
Musharraf stays in Rawalapindi and seldom uses the presidential residence in Islamabad.
The military said the blast in the Rawalpindi park was unrelated to Musharraf or his military residence, Army House.
Musharraf, whose cooperation with the United States in its war against terrorism has put him at the top of an al Qaeda hit list, survived two assassination attempts in December 2003.
The Pakistani leader returned at the weekend from a three-week overseas trip, during which he launched his memoir "In the Line of Fire" and held talks with President George W. Bush.
Musharraf has held onto his role as army chief since coming to power in a bloodless military coup seven years ago, and was snubbed by major democracies round the world until he was propelled to the front of the world stage in 2001 by the September 11 attacks on the United States.
Bush persuaded Musharraf to help a U.S.-led invasion force topple the ruling Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan for harboring al Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden.
Comment: It seems like someone may be trying to send Musharraf some warnings. Wonder who it could be...
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The deck is stacked
Nils Pratley
Wednesday October 4, 2006
The Guardian
The US crackdown on online gaming is not motivated by morality, but protectionism
First, a confession. I have been aiding and abetting these dastardly online gambling companies in their mission to corrupt American society. I have played poker online. It started innocently, a chance and revelatory encounter with a late-night TV poker programme. Poker wasn't a game of chance or luck. It was about respecting odds, making bluffs, and taking calculated risks. There were parallels with bridge, even chess, but with the possibility of profit. It was the Cadillac of card games, as Doyle Brunson, one of the poker greats, called it.
Brunson now finds himself out of tune with his country's senators. By 409 votes to two, they have approved a measure to ban internet gambling by making it impossible for the websites to process transactions. The rhetoric from some senators is worth quoting without parody. Jim Leach, a Republican from Iowa, says online betting is like injecting drugs without needlemarks. "You just click on the mouse and lose your house," he says.
That is not the experience of most of us. Yes, addiction and under-age gambling is a problem, and deserves more attention, but the vast majority of gamblers would regard what they do as a pastime. It will be profitable for some, unprofitable for most, but we are consenting adults.
It is hard to believe Leach represents mainstream American opinion. Walk into a bar in California and the television is as likely to be showing a game of celebrity poker as a game of baseball. Poker is a great American pastime, born in the days of the wild west and played by presidents. Truman used to fleece the White House press corps; Nixon reputedly financed his first congressional campaign from his poker winnings as a serviceman.
So what is going on, and is this the end of online gambling? Presbyterian America, as represented by Leach, clearly has the upper hand over those who see themselves as part of the frontier tradition; but there is more to this. The clue lies in the bill to which the anti-gambling legislation was attached: the ports security bill, which seeks to confine ownership of US ports to interests perceived to be friendly to America. In other words, it's a protectionist measure. So is the anti-gambling law. America is seeking to protect its gambling interests.
The big Vegas casinos have been nervous about online gambling for obvious reasons. Established US sports betting interests did not like the idea that upstart British companies, paying little tax from their Gibraltar hideouts, could offer better odds on the Superbowl. Unsurprisingly, the powerful US horse racing lobbying has escaped reform, securing a "carve-out" from the new rules.
At one level, the legislation will be effective. The likes of PartyGaming, as a member of the FTSE 100 and the dominant player in online poker in America, simply cannot flout the law. It will stop taking bets from America, depriving it of more than two-thirds of its revenue at a stroke. Its investors are stunned, but they shouldn't be. The US department of justice has consistently warned operators that what they were doing was illegal. It was odds-on that protectionist politicians would go further.
It is unrealistic to think all PartyGaming's clientele in America will simply give up gambling. Many might, but the internet, as one of Leach's spokesmen admitted, is "too vast and too adaptive" to police effectively. It is relatively easy for the unscrupulous to cheat the system. For credit card transactions, an offshore gambling website could register as, say, an insurance company. It won't work every time, but when it does it might take six months for the authorities to notice.
America has not learned the lesson of prohibition, but the rest of the world, by and large, is more sensible. In Britain we take it as given that we can put a tenner on the 4.30 at Plumpton by telephone or internet. In France, even the state national lottery offers online poker, a fact that should ensure Brussels stamps on recent protectionist twitchings there.
Regulation must be the way forward, because the human instinct to gamble will not be reversed and it is too late to turn off the internet. Regulation means forcing the operators to come onshore, where they pay tax on profits and can be humbled into contributing to the cost of clearing up lives wrecked by addiction. That's how we treat Ladbrokes, William Hill, Gala bingo and our casino owners. By and large, it works.
The poker fad is fading, but the modern version of the game has been around for 200 years. It will survive the Senate.
nils.pratley@guardian.co.uk
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Al-Ahram, Egypt: Leading by hubris - Wolfowitz at the World Bank is a travesty
Mohamed Hakki
Al-Ahram Weekly
28 September - 4 October 2006
Issue No. 814
As the saying goes, "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach." The Bush administration is "teaching" the rest of the world about democracy and freedom while rejecting democratically elected governments in the West Bank and Gaza and Iran and suppressing free speech and ignoring the rule of law at home. Under the cloak of the "war on terror," Bush has managed to grab for himself covert powers that even the most despotic regimes would envy. Luckily, the US public and, indeed, Bush's own party seem to have finally noticed. It should make for interesting mid-term congressional elections come November.
But Bush is not alone in wanting to teach a thing or two to the rest of the world. He has placed one of his closest advisors -- the mild-mannered and professorial Paul Wolfowitz -- at the head of the World Bank. Having "taught" the Iraqis about the wonders of democracy and freedom, the former deputy secretary of defense is now teaching the rest of the world about good governance and ending corruption. Unfortunately, these are subjects he appears to know precious little about.
In the run-up to the World Bank and IMF annual meetings being held this week in Singapore, member governments have openly questioned Wolfowitz's anti-corruption agenda as a thinly veiled attempt to limit the reach of World Bank funding to countries favoured by the Bush administration. Under former President Wolfensohn, the bank managed to maintain its politically neutral status. Under Wolfowitz, all pretences are gone. Following the coming to power of the new Hamas-led Palestinian government, the World Bank's programme in the West Bank and Gaza ground to a standstill. Wolfowitz has similarly blocked loans to Uzbekistan and Kenya -- along with trying to block debt relief to the Democratic Republic of Congo -- citing corruption concerns.
Interestingly, Transparency International (a big fan of Wolfowitz) gives the same high corruption score to Iraq and Indonesia as it does to these three countries. Despite its low rating for combating corruption, Wolfowitz praised Indonesia's progress against corruption in his first major policy speech before the bank's spring meetings -- perhaps not surprising since his stint as US ambassador to Indonesia, 1986-89, is his only significant experience in a developing country and the one to which he alludes constantly in attempting to make credible his dubious development credentials, much to the amusement of the highly-experienced international staff of the bank. Also unsurprising, Wolfowitz is attempting to strengthen the bank's presence and operations in Iraq though little but a miracle could undo the devastation his ill-conceived war has wrought.
Wolfowitz has made the fight against corruption the cornerstone of his World Bank presidency. However, the way in which he has gone about it exposed a breach between his words and his actions that has made shareholders, clients and staff all wonder what he is really up to. In keeping with the Bush administration's preference for loyalty over expertise, Wolfowitz seems to suspect everyone except his small coterie of advisors. It is the same attitude that led to Paul Bremer heading up the provisional authority in Baghdad, and we all know what a disaster that was. Those he has brought with him are all Republicans, and mostly friends from the Department of Defense.
As for new hires, many are old acquaintances from the "coalition of the willing", including former Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs Ana Palacio and former Salvadoran Finance Minister Juan Jose Daboub. A year ago, he named Suzanne Folsom, an ethics lawyer with no experience in investigations and certainly no international experience, but nonetheless wife of a prominent Republican, as chief of the bank's anti-corruption unit. Since that time, very little has come out of the "Department of Institutional Integrity" except allegations of corruption against bank staff. Staff liken the atmosphere to that of a Stalinist regime: no one knows who will be denounced next, or when, for some real or imagined transgression. Wolfowitz has recently upgraded the Bank "Whistleblower Protection Policy", to make it easier for staff to report one another for suspected corruption. Very little protects staff from false accusations.
But what really has insiders steamed is the lack of "good governance" within the bank. While preaching to others the need for "transparency, accountability and [the] rule of law," Wolfowitz happily ignores all these strictures within the Bank. He and his advisors refuse to share information to the point that staff, the Board of Directors, and even borrower countries themselves, learn about decisions from the press before learning about them from Wolfowitz.
In a famous case, The Washington Post ran an editorial about Wolfowitz's intention to block debt relief to the Democratic Republic of Congo on the morning of the day he was to discuss it with the Board of Directors, causing directors to wonder how the Post was able to articulate Wolfowitz's position so clearly before he had shared it with anyone inside the bank. Further, Wolfowitz has managed to hire former cronies with barely a nod towards the bank's stringent procurement and recruitment guidelines. Their qualifications and functions largely remain a mystery. The Staff Association protested against the recruitment of Folsom, noting that, at the very least, the Bank's anti-corruption chief should be hired in a transparent and competitive manner befitting the position. One staff member complained, "It is difficult for us to tell a minister that he cannot hire his cronies on Bank projects when our own president does so with impunity." The Staff Association and the Board of Directors have also questioned the role of Wolfowitz's closest advisor, Robin Cleveland. Wolfowitz's pointed refusal to answer inquiries has further increased suspicion.
As for "accountability," many inside and outside the bank are wondering when Wolfowitz will take responsibility for the mess he made in Iraq. As is now widely reported in the American press, his rationale for going to war and his predictions about its aftermath were not only wrong, but were deliberately so. His chief spokesman, Kevin Kellems (former spokesman for Dick Cheney) is on record as having said that Saddam Hussein was sponsoring terrorist organisations, including Al-Qaeda, a "fact" that was known by the Bush government to be false well before the war. Cleveland is known as the mind behind Wolfowitz's assertion that Iraqi oil revenues would pay for the country's reconstruction. She has now turned her attention to the bank's internal budget, castigating staff for their "fat-cat salaries" and luxury travel. Never mind the fact that Cleveland is quite happy with her quarter of a million dollar annual salary and had her boss get an exception for the bank's travel policy so that she could fly to the annual meetings in first class.
From many quarters it is to be hoped that the bank's shareholders will take a close look at the man installed at the head of their institution and determine whether he really is right for the job. So far, he has shown himself reluctant to practice what he preaches.
The writer is a political analyst resident in Washington.
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