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Editorial: Massive Death Toll In Iraq
Joe Quinn
Signs of the Times
11/10/2006
You want to talk conspiracies? Even better, you want to talk "crazy conspiracy" theories? Try this on for size:
A new study has revealed that, during the course of the past three years, while the average American and British citizen was nonchalantly dithering over whether or not the invasion of Iraq by their government and military is ultimately a good thing, if Iraqis are "better off" without Saddam, if American and British "freedom and democracy" should be imposed on the Iraqi people, 655,000 Iraqis have been killed as a direct result of the American and British invasion.
Just to put that in perspective: relatively speaking, if the American people had suffered the same death toll, almost 7.5 million American citizens would be dead, and the names of 1.5 million Britons would have been struck from the register, for ever. That makes the illegal Iraq invasion of Iraq by the Bush and Blair governments (with strong moral and tactical support from the Zionists) one of the biggest war crimes in recent times and an event which undoubtedly qualifies for an honorable mention in the ignoble roll call of historical acts of genocide against an innocent people.
Numbers shown are in 1000s
Click here for the actual study (pdf)
'Huge rise' in Iraqi death tolls
An estimated 655,000 Iraqis have died since 2003 who might still be alive but for the US-led invasion, according to a survey by a US university.
The research compares mortality rates before and after the invasion from 47 randomly chosen areas in Iraq.
The figure is considerably higher than estimates by official sources or the number of deaths reported in the media. [...]
Dr Gilbert Burnham of the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Heath, based in Baltimore, says this method is more reliable, given the dangers of conducting thorough research in strife-torn Iraq.
The estimated death toll is equal to about 2.5% of Iraq's population, and averages out at more than 500 additional deaths a day since the start of the invasion.
Sharp rise
Researchers spoke to nearly 1,850 families, comprising more than 12,800 people in dozens of 40-household clusters around the country.
Of the 629 deaths they recorded among these families, 13% took place in the 14 months before the invasion and 87% in the 40 months afterwards.
Such a trend repeated nationwide would indicate a rise in annual death rates from 5.5 per 1,000 to 13.3 per 1,000.
The researchers say that in nearly 80% of the individual cases, family members produced death certificates to support their answers.
As you are probably aware, the blame for the shocking, almost daily, death tolls in Iraq over the past two years has been laid, by the Bush government, at the door of shadowy "death squads". But who are these people, what is their agenda in murdering their own people, and who controls them? As I wrote previously:
Concerning the sectarian killings in Iraq that the US government and media try hard to attribute to "al-Qaeda":
It has already been exposed that the killings and bombings are the work of "death squads" working out of the Iraqi interior ministry, which itself is entirely controlled by the CIA. Let me reiterate that in every war waged by the US government against a foreign nation, a counter-insurgency operation has immediately been implemented. Counter-insurgency operations are required in such circumstances because when a country is invaded, an insurgency of some form invariably arises to defend the country. Such insurgents are very difficult for an invading army to defeat given the extensive support and collaboration they enjoy from the general population.
Essentially, an invading army finds itself at war with the population of the country they are invading rather than a separate and independent insurgency. Strategies developed over the years to deal with such situations has come to be known as "counter-insurgency", and include attempts to identify divisions within the society, usually religious, political or ethnic, however insignificant, and to then attempt to provoke these divisions. Of course, in the scenario where a country has been invaded by a foreign military force, such internal divisions become almost nonexistent as the population unites to oppose the invaders, as is the case in Iraq. For this reason, counter-insurgency tactics designed to sow discord must be fabricated and generally involve the creation of a fake insurgency by the military intelligence apparatus of the invading force.
This fake insurgency is made up of groups of armed militia who are paid by the invading force to target and murder distinct groups among the population, again, along religious, ethnic or political lines. In the case of Iraq, we see militia 'death squad' attacks on both Sunni and Shia members of the Iraq population which are blamed on the real insurgency or al-qaeda in Iraq. The hoped-for benefits of such brutal tactics are to demoralise and confuse the real insurgency and the population that supports them, to embroil the real insurgency in an internecine conflict, and, in the specific case of Iraq, to promote the US government's claim that al-Qaeda is still active and poses a deadly threat to civlised societies everywhere. The above scenario is EXACTLY what we are seeing in Iraq with the fake counter-insurgency death squads being controlled, financed and run by the CIA out of the Iraqi interior ministry, or rather, the US government's interior ministry in Iraq. A recent article serves well to prove the assertion that "al-Qaeda" in Iraq is indeed a creation of the US forces that are currently controlling the Iraqi conflict.
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Editorial: Thom Hartmann's New Book Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class
by Stephen Lendman
11 October 2006
Thom Hartmann is a multifaceted man. He's a well-known host of three nationally syndicated radio talk shows and a Project Censored award winner for his writing on the issue of corporate personhood. He also began seven companies, worked in international relief, founded schools and hospitals on four continents, and has expertise in childhood psychological disorders. Along the way he found time to write 19 books including his newest one just out in early September dramatically titled Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class. It's an account of how our government lost its moorings and is acting against the interests of the people it was elected to serve. The results are disturbing as the book shows how the US middle class is shrinking, democracy is ebbing, and both are on life support and threatened with extinction by an omnipotent corporatocracy wanting to destroy the system of government on which the nation was founded and is codified in the letter and spirit of the Constitution.
Those in power today want to destroy what the Founding Fathers believed in, created, and handed down for all those who followed them to preserve. In its place, the current ruling class wants to replace that vision with an imperial presidency supported by a submissive Congress and compliant courts that's no different than the repressive monarchy and aristocracy the American Revolution overthrew in the first place. The nation's Founders no longer wanted to be ruled by an exploitive foreign monarch and instead had in mind an experimental system of government never tried before in any form in the West outside of Athens in ancient Greece under their system of "demokratia" or rule by the entire body of Athenian citizens (or at least the non-slave adult male portion of it). It blossomed under Pericles around 460 BC and stood for equality of justice and opportunity secured by a jury system even though Athens was a slave-owning city-state, women couldn't participate in government and those who ruled ended up being the aristoi (or aristocrats) for a few decades before the whole idea was destroyed in the war between Athens and the oligarchs and militarists of Sparta who believed, like George Bush and the neocons, that war is good, except, of course, for the ones on its losing end and soldiers in the ranks who have to fight them.
Hartmann is a knowledgeable and astute observer and critic of US history and more recent policies gone awry under 25 years of this kind of government, beginning with the Reagan presidency. It's been corrupted by the notion that what serves the interests of business elites in corporate boardrooms benefit ordinary people as well. It never has, never will, and, despite the slick rhetoric, isn't intended to. If it did, it would prevent the new US corporate aristocracy from getting richer and more powerful which it only can do at the expense of the public and especially the middle class it wants to destroy.
Hartmann takes the reader on a journey of discovery in his book divided into three parts and his conclusion on how to fight back and reclaim what these forces of darkness are taking from us. This review will try to cover as much of the flavor and substance of the book as space allows, but make no mistake, this book is important reading. It documents how our system of democracy and way of life are being destroyed by greedy and ruthless corporatist oligarchs allied with the government they installed in Washington to serve their interests at our expense. The only way to save our precious system is first learn what they're doing, understand how its harming us, and then follow the ideas laid out in the final chapter to act in our own self-interest. Unless we do and soon, it won't be long before the precious liberties and way of life we take for granted are lost because we weren't paying attention and now it's too late to act.
Part I: A Middle Class Requires Democracy - It won't survive without it.
Hartmann begins by recalling a past time many of us grew up in when working people earned a living wage, had good health insurance, defined-benefit pensions secure at retirement, were protected by unions and needed only one family wage-earner to get by on a single job. Those days ended when Ronald Reagan was elected president with about one-quarter of the nation's eligible voters, hardly a groundswell of support in an election that could have gone the other way had events preceding it turned out differently. The public lost out because they didn't.
The America of the past is now fast disappearing. Today giant corporations literally run everything. They control what we eat and drink, where we live, what we wear, how we get most of our essential services like health care, and the information fed us that influences how we think including our view of them, our government and the world. They even now own patents on our genetic code, the most basic elements of human life, and want to manipulate and control them like any other commodity to exploit for profit in their brave new world.
The corporate goliaths also decide who governs, for whose interest, and at whose expense. They control the political process from the White House to the Congress to who gets to sit on the nation's courts. They thus have effective control over what laws are written and how they're interpreted by friendly judges up to the High Court. It's called democracy but it's one in name only serving the elite few. It's a corruption of the letter and spirit of a true democracy that influences an unequal and unjust distribution of the nation's resources to benefit an elite minority able to control the political process to their advantage. It operates behind a facade of fairness while working to destroy the very things it claims to represent. It's a system of government described by investigative journalist Greg Palast in his 2003 published book - The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Those who can pay can play, but those who can't have no say or sway.
It amounts to a system under which the political game is rigged by the incestuous relationship between big business and the government it empowers to serve it. The only choice voters now have at the polls is what Ralph Nader calls "the evil of two lessers (or) government for General Motors, by Dupont and for Exxon Mobil." The corporate giants today are so huge that if the 50 largest ones were nations, they'd rank among the 100 largest sovereign states in the world. They take full advantage of their size and clout to thrown their weight around and get their way on most everything they want - again at the expense of the public interest.
The result of this concentrated corporate power and a government in league with it has taken its toll on the working public. Adjusted for inflation, workers today earn less than 30 years ago, the federal minimum wage at $5.15 an hour hasn't been raised since 1997, and it's now at its lowest point relative to average wages since 1949. It also means those earning it fall well below the poverty line, and they still have to pay a growing portion of their health insurance cost if they have an employer giving them any at all. In addition, companies are eliminating defined-benefit pension plans and government is sharply reducing essential social services. At the same time, average inflation-adjusted CEO pay rose dramatically to $9,600,000 in 2004 even without including how much more these top executives get in lucrative stock options and many other perks including the extraordinary benefit they receive from so-called Supplemental Executive Retirement Plans called SERPs which pay them millions of dollars a year when they become eligible. Another measure of how inequality has widened since Ronald Reagan was elected shows in the ratio of CEO pay to the average working person. It rose from 42 times in 1980 to 85 times in 1990 and 431 times in 2004.
Hartmann contrasts what now exists to the most ancient form of democracy that characterized the societies of most indigenous peoples for his estimate of over 150,000 years. Others, including eminent biologist Ernst Mayr, believe humans have been around for about 100,000 years. Over those many millennia there were no rich and poor, and everyone was middle class. There was also little hierarchy and the concept of "chief" didn't exist in America because Native nations were ruled by concensus. Benjamin Franklin studied the Iroquois Confederacy and was so impressed with it he got the Founders to model much of our Constitution after their system of governance. They did it on the basis of government of, for and by the people based on the notion that everyone has the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
Unlike the aristocracy of Europe they sought to be free from, they also wanted the new nation to have a middle class. They understood that no democracy can survive without one. They also knew a middle class depends on a public that's educated, secure and well-informed and that the greatest danger to its survival is an empowered economic aristocracy that would polarize society and eventually destroy the democracy they were trying to create. Today those opposed to this notion are people Hartmann calls "cons." They call themselves conservatives or neoconservatives, but they violate the core conservative principles they claim to represent. They only want to "conserve" their privileged status, and they prove it in how they govern by "conning" the public. Hartmann explains that the battle people face today in the country isn't between liberals and conservatives or Democrats and Republicans. It's between those who want to protect our democratic heritage and those "cons" who want to create an elitist privileged society based on corporate power and inherited wealth.
We've had this kind of society before during the Reconstruction era after the Civil War leading to the age of the "robber barons," many of whose names are well-known today and held up as models in a nation that lionizes its business titans. It lasted on and off until the Wall Street crash in 1929 that ushered in the "Golden Age of the middle class" with the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. In his 1933 inaugural address, FDR said he wouldn't stand by and watch the Depression deepen and asked Congress for the power to combat it. He got it because 25% of the working public was unemployed and demanded help out of their desperate situation. Roosevelt was a wealthy patrician but one smart enough to know he had to act forcefully in a state of emergency. He also got a number of wise corporate leaders to go along as they and the President knew only strong enough measures could save capitalism and prevent a possible worker revolt that could be as extreme as the one in Russia in 1917 when the Czar was toppled in a violent revolution that in 10 days shook the world.
FDR's remedy was his New Deal, and it was unlike anything that ever preceded or succeeded it. It was wonderfully radical in ways unimaginable today. He liberated labor with the Wagner Act guaranteeing workers the right to bargain collectively, regulated financial and other markets, and insured bank deposits with FDIC insurance. He put people back to work with government funded programs spent on jobs to build vital infrastructure instead of on weaponry and a strong military like today. Most important was his broad array of social programs, the centerpiece of which was the Social Security Act that to this day is the single most important piece of social legislation in our history and the one most responsible for keeping a vast number of the elderly out of poverty plus providing other services and benefits for those in need. The Golden Age ran through the 1970s and included Lyndon Johnson's Great Society civil and voting rights legislation and, second to Social Security in importance, the Medicare and Medicaid programs begun in 1965.
But that was then and this is now. With the election of Ronald Reagan, the Golden Age was transformed into a Dark Age of government of, for and by the special interests that mainly are corporate ones and the rich overall. Reagan used the false rhetoric of "morning in America," a "shining city on a hill," and the ability of even a former grade B actor to read his lines. The senior Bush after him then spoke of "the new world order" but didn't explain it was based on imperial expansion and fealty to the rich and powerful. Then Bill Clinton (a stealth Republican) began with the slogan "it's the economy, stupid," then told us how he felt our pain and went on to dissemble on almost everything from his mangled "managed competition" notion of health care to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and WTO that destroy the lives of working people everywhere under their one-sided trade rules favoring the corporate giants. He also enacted so-called welfare reform that threatens to impoverish the needy any time the economy weakens enough to throw enough people out of work and in the same year the 1996 Telecommunications Act that promised consumers a world of benefits and only ended up removing competition in the giant communications industry to create media and telecom monopolies destroying any chance for an open market place of ideas and an informed electorate.
Then came the age of George W. Bush that's the closest thing to the apotheosis what of corporate America wanted since the time of the original robber barons. For the ravenous war-profiteers, it's an age of a permanent "long war" against terrorist and "Islamo-fascist" threats that don't exist and outrageous levels of expenditures on military and "homeland security" to do it. Overall for the corporatocracy, it's big tax cuts for the rich and corporate giants at the expense of the public welfare, a crackdown on civil liberties at home to control dissent, a contempt for the need to protect the environment's ability to sustain life, and big cuts in social services in an all out war against the New Deal and Great Society programs including the bedrock Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid ones.
And now in a contemptuously defiant pre-election act of infamy and indifference to constitutional law and all the Founders stood for, the Bush-controlled 109th Congress just passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 defiling the letter and spirit of their landmark achievements.
-- This act annuls the Magna Carta and sacred habeas corpus fundamental principle in it and in Article 1, Section 9 of the US Constitution guaranteeing everyone the right of judicial appeal of arrest and detention. It effectively strips US citizens of this right as well as everyone everywhere may now be designated an "unlawful combatant" at the whim of an out-of-control president. In enacting this unconstitutional law, the Greek chorus on Capitol Hill posing as a Congress annulled 800 years of what that sacred doctrine represents and took away our constitutionally protected right. It did it in a pathetic act of fealty to a depraved president any legitimate legislative body acting on principle long ago would have impeached and removed from office.
-- It also legalizes torture as an interrogation technique for those held in detention placing this country alongside Israel as the only two nations in the world to have legalized this practice as confirmed by Amnesty International. The legislation passed also granted US officials, including CIA operatives and others, retroactive immunity from prosecution for having authorized the use of torture or committed acts of it.
-- In a final outrageous pre-election act, the House of Representatives also annulled our right to privacy and the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures by authorizing warrantless wiretaps.
At the close of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Benjamin Franklin reportedly said in answer to whether the nation now had a republic or a monarchy: "A republic, if you can keep it." Prescient words from an extraordinary man, and we hardly need wonder what he'd say now. Unlike the Founders, this shameless Congress shares the guilt of a morally depraved president who believes no one has the right to challenge him, champions the use of torture and the denial of habeas and due process rights to anyone on his say alone, now (law or no law) authorizes wiretaps and illegal surveillance on anyone, and calls dissent an act of terrorism in direct contradiction to what Thomas Jefferson believed when he said: "All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." Having now made a mockery of constitutional law, this Congress and president have moved the nation to within an "eyelash" of a full-blown national security fascist police state. It's given the president the right to act solely on his own authority as a virtual dictator to do whatever he pleases in the name of national security as he defines it. It simply means the rule of law has been abolished and ordinary people no longer have constitutionally protected rights.
Is it any wonder George Bush is so abhorred worldwide he's met by large (sometimes huge) protest demonstrations everywhere he goes and has to be protected by an unprecedented amount of security to keep him safe. With two years left in his presidency, this shameless man has already embroiled the country in two unwinnable wars of illegal aggression that's destroyed the credibility of the nation and made the US a moral pariah in the eyes of the world. Yet, in open defiance he's contemptuously planning new ones and continues running up massive budget and current account deficits to finance his failed agenda. The result of his disastrous six years in office is a nation's economy on such shaky financial footing any shock severe enough could push it over the edge triggering a global crash that will be the death knell of the middle class, impoverishment of the people and the end of democracy that would be sacrificed on the alter of martial law needed to quell dissent and possible rebellion.
If it happens, it will end the Founders' dream of what they fought a liberating revolution for - to create a liberal democracy and system of government to "promote the general welfare." Hartmann shows that FDR governed by that principle and created what became a vibrant middle class the corporatists and "cons" today want to destroy and are doing a pretty good job of it. Instead of using government resources to invest in essential infrastructure vital to a thriving democracy like good education, quality health care for all and a full array of social services, the Bush administration defrauded the public by its militarism and one-sided service to the interests of capital.
It did it at the expense of the public welfare and viability of the middle class that's always been the bedrock of the nation. If it's destroyed it will fulfill the con's dream to turn the country into a nation of serfs run by corporatists treating people like commodities no different than any other kind of production input used to grow profits and then discarded when no longer of use. No one will have rights or security, and everyone but the elite few will be at the mercy of a wealthy ruling class in league with government serving them alone. Hartmann explains if we want a healthy and vibrant middle class and a strong democracy we have to work for it. We must "define it, desire it, and work both to create and keep it." It can only happen when government participates in the market place as a counter-force to corporate power. Hartmann lists three ways to do it:
-- by creating and regulating the rules under which business must operate
-- by growing and protecting jobs at home with fair trade policies and ending the practice of job destruction through outsourcing to cheap labor markets
-- by providing a full array of essential social services including education, health care and a safety net for those most in need
-- and by a fourth one mentioned elsewhere in the book - with a progressive tax system requiring corporations and those most well-off to pay their fair share according to their income level as well as providing tax relief for those least able to afford it
Hartmann explains unless "we the people" take control and act in our own self-interest, the nation is heading for the kind of society an early 20th century tyrant advocated and created when he was in power. It was "a system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership with belligerent nationalism." The tyrant was Mussolini, and he called it fascism. Today in the US we're perilously close to that model as democracy and people rights are threatened by a corporate-run state that's destroying civil society and everything the nation claims to stand for.
Part II - Democracy Requires a Middle Class - It can't exist without one
The Founders and Framers of the Constitution wanted to create a society with a vibrant middle class different from the aristocratic European one they rebelled against that was "of, by, and for the rich." In doing it they believed they were changing the course of European history that never had this kind of government other than what once existed imperfectly in ancient Athens. Their goal was to combine the European tradition of civilization they knew with the Iroquois nation model of democracy they studied and wanted to emulate. In this way, they hoped to create a better world than had ever before existed. It was a noble revolutionary experiment that depended on a strong middle class unhindered by corporate power like the British East India Company exercised in league with the Crown to impose unfair taxes for an advantage to help crush competition and then exploit people for profit.
A lot of credit for what happened then goes to Thomas Paine, a man we now know about but only because Thomas Edison discovered him in the 1920s and believed he was our most important political thinker. Edison was able to convince the nation's mainstream educational system to include Paine's writings and teach what he had to say. In Paine's The Rights of Man and other works, he supported the notion of a strong middle class and a democratic system of government. Hartmann believes his writings were so important and influential in his day, there might never have been a revolution liberating the nation from the Crown without them.
His thinking was profound and included the notion that only people have rights, not governments or corporations, and everyone should be taxed proportionally to income. He also believed inherited wealth needed to be curbed to avoid creating a new feudalism. Otherwise, it would corrupt government because heirs could create dynasties with the power to co-opt a ruling body to use for their own purposes, hurting ordinary people. He felt the best way to build a strong democracy was to provide financial aid for young families with the expense of raising children. In addition, he proposed food and housing assistance for the poor and retirement pensions for people in old age. Further, he was a strong anti-militarist wanting all nations to reduce their armaments by 90% to ensure world peace. Tom Paine was a great and enlightened thinker and a man most educated people know of and respect. He had such great influence in his day we can only wish for someone of his stature to emerge now when the need for it is greater than ever.
Hartmann also briefly mentions what he covered in some detail in his earlier book Unequal Protection. There he explained a little known event in our history that might have changed everything had Thomas Jefferson and James Madison prevailed over Alexander Hamilton and John Adams. Jefferson and Madison were able to add the first 10 amendments to the Constitution we know as The Bill of Rights but wanted two others as well Hamilton and Adams opposed. One was the "freedom from monopolies in commerce" (what are now giant corporations) and the other was the "freedom from a permanent military" or standing armies. Try to imagine how different the country might be today if Jefferson and Madison had prevailed.
Hartmann devoted much more time on a crucial Supreme Court Decision he covered in great detail in Unequal Protection. It concerned the issue of corporate personhood that came out of the defining 1886 Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railway case. It was a simple tax dispute case that ended up changing the direction of the country. The Court settled the tax issue no one remembers or cares about now, and the Justices said nothing in their decision about corporate personhood. It was left to the Court's reporter J.C. Bancroft Davis who, in effect as it turned out, decided it in his accompanying "headnotes" which the Court did nothing to refute, likely by intent.
The result was corporations got what they long coveted - the same constitutional rights as people, but because of their limited liability status, their shareholders were protected from the obligations of their debts, other obligations, and many of the responsibilities individuals legally have. With this new status, corporations could now win many other favorable court decisions they weren't entitled to before. They also got much regulatory relief, favorable legislation, and all the while, were and are still protected by their limited liability status. More than any other High Court decision, this one gave corporations the ability to increase their power and grow to their present size and dominance.
Think of it. Corporations aren't human, they can live forever, change their identity, reside in many places simultaneously in many countries, but can't be imprisoned for wrongdoing and can change themselves into new persons at will for any reason. Under the Constitution, they have the same rights as people but not the responsibilities. And they got all this because a court reporter gave it to them in his "headnotes," after the fact, in a Court decision having nothing to do with corporate personhood. The result today is that corporations have the right to operate freely and virtually be able to do whatever they choose with impunity. Even when they're caught breaking the law, most every time (with rare exceptions) their executives get off scot-free and the penalty assessed is a small fine that amounts to chump change.
Hartmann then goes on to discuss the business of war and notes what James Madison believed compared to most modern-day presidents. War is big business and a permanent state of it is much bigger, which is why waging many of them is so appealing to those in power today. It's also usually a winning political issue as wartime presidents are more likely to be reelected, and they also have more power than those serving in peacetime. George Orwell knew that democracy was weakest in a state of war, and Hitler used that to his advantage to seize total power after scaring the German people with threats that didn't exist to give him enough of it in the first place. This is what James Madison warned against when he wrote: "Of all the enemies to public safety war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other." He added that "No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual war." Benjamin Franklin also spoke out against war and said "There never was a good war or a bad peace." And notable US General Smedley Butler, who was awarded two Congressional Medals of Honor (the nation's highest military honor) for his service and at one time was one of the nation's most distinguished military leaders, later wrote a book called War Is a Racket in which he denounced it in a polemic we can't even imagine from anyone in government service today.
Hartmann, too, sounds the alarm about the dangers of war and where it may lead the nation. It drove Nazi Germany to fascism and all the horrors from it. Today we're at the same dangerous juncture with the nation at war, fascism rising, and doing it behind the facade of "compassionate conservatisim" and an invented "Islamo-fascist" terrorist threat used to scare the public to go along with a rogue president's "long war" without end to combat it. Hartmann tells us we face a clear and present threat to our freedom today and "It's up to us - to We the People - to sound the alarm (to combat it)."
Part III - Governing for We the People - It's a government of, for and by the people and not one serving big corporations and inherited wealth
Throughout the book, Hartmann repeatedly stresses the critical point about whether we want the kind of nation the Founders gave us serving the people or will we allow the cons to get a government in service to the "elite of a corporatocracy" and inherited wealth. A large part of what the cons want is what Hartmann calls "a religion of privatization." In their view, whatever government can do, private business can do better including controlling all elements of the commons that comprise our most essential services like health care, education, parts of the military, prisons and even the electoral system. It's all part of their fraudulent notion of "faith-based economics" that doesn't work. Nonetheless, with government in league with business, it's happening to the detriment of the public welfare.
Most people would be amazed to learn the second largest army in Iraq comes from none of the other nations supplying forces. It's the 30,000 private contractors the Bush administration hired at an enormous cost that's far higher than what we pay those in the military. Why do it this way and spend more? It's another way to transfer billions of dollars from the people to big corporations to enrich them at our expense. Prisons are also being privatized and now are at a level of about 5% of their capacity in about 100 facilities in 27 states and growing. But since private prisons are a business, there's an incentive to fill beds and keep them filled with longer sentences while minimizing services to keep costs low. It makes harsh prison life far more grim for those interned.
Most insidious of all is the privatizing of elections. Hartmann calls this the "ultimate crime." He cites that in 2004 more than 80% of the US vote was counted on electronic voting machines owned, programmed and operated by three large private corporations. So instead of having paper ballots counted by hand by civil servants monitored by party faithful and independent observers, we now have a secretive process that's unverifiable and all controlled by large companies with everything to gain if the candidates they support win. It puts the ugly taint of fraud over the whole process and makes a sham out of the notion of free, fair and open elections. That's impossible if they're run by self-serving private corporations as they now are. Unless this practice is stopped, we've lost what Tom Paine said at the nation's founding: "The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which all other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery."
Besides being able to elect their own representatives, the electorate must also be well-informed. Hartmann quotes Thomas Jefferson who said "Our liberty depends upon the freedom of the press (which starts with a literate citizenry, something we're far short of today)." The data on the ability of the public to read varies, but it shows a common pattern. The US Department of Education reports about 20% of the public to be functionally illiterate which means they can't read or write well enough to do such essential things as read a newspaper, understand written instructions, fill out a job application or do basic computational tasks, let alone be able to operate a computer. Hartmann uses other data from the National Center of Education Statistics that breaks the literacy problem into different skill-level categories, but any way it's looked at it shows a nation inadequately able to function the way citizens must be able to do in a modern society.
The quality of education today, particularly in urban schools, has deteriorated so much because of the rise in prominence of service-related industries, many of which require little formal education. There's no incentive to correct the problem, and George Bush's No Child Left Behind Act and stealth plan to privatize public education (along with everything else in the commons that never should be) will only make things worse. The Bush agenda includes so-called school vouchers that mask an intent to end the separation of church and state by allowing vouchers to go mostly to schools where the central mission is (Christian) religious education or training. The fraudulent rationale for doing it is the same one the cons always fall back on - that marketplace competition improves performance. It's not so as in all other areas where private business replaced government-run programs the public ended up getting less and paying more for it. That's how it is with education that's not a commodity for sale and never should be put in the hands of for-profit companies that need to minimize costs to keep their bottom line high.
The same is true for health care that should be a basic right and not a privilege available only to those who can afford the cost. But that's not how it is in the US. This is the only country among the 36 fully industrialized democracies in the world that treats health care as a marketplace commodity. The result is that while the country spends far more on health care than any other one (about $2 trillion in 2005 or about one-sixth of the nation's GDP) it delivers a quality of care mediocre enough for the World Health Organization (WTO) to rank us 37th in the world in "overall health performance" and 54th in the fairness of health care. No one should be denied the right to good medical care, but today nearly 47 million people in the country have no health insurance and millions more are underinsured, thus denying them the essential care they deserve to have, especially when they need it most.
So today with more companies reducing the amount of health insurance coverage they provide employees combined with stagnant wages rising less than the rate of inflation, increasing numbers of people can't afford to buy protection for the most important need they can't afford to do without. It's created a state of social inequality seen in the Economic Policy Institute 2004 report on the State of Working America. It showed the top 1% controls more than one-third of the nation's wealth while the bottom 80% has 16%. Even worse, the top 20% holds 84% of all wealth while the poorest 20% are in debt and owe more than they own. Just released Internal Revenue Service data shows the same imbalance. The IRS reported the share of all income earned by the top 1% of taxpayers rose to 19% in 2004 from 16.8% in 2003 and just below the 20.8% high it hit in 2000 helped by capital gains from the stock market boom of the 1990s. All this shows how unbalanced wealth and income distribution are under an economic model favoring the rich and leaving all others behind. To rectify this, the nation needs a new model that distributes the nation's wealth more equitably and that begins with its tax code. It also needs to provide health care for all its citizens which it already does for its senior ones - a single-payer system administered by the government and allowing people to choose their own providers. But even seniors are in trouble today as the Bush administration wants to move retirees on Medicare into private for-profit plans and thus kill off a system that effectively serves the public. The private operators need to cut costs to grow their profits, but when they do it people most in need are hurt the most.
All this paints a scenario of a dying middle class heading for extinction. Good jobs are disappearing, wages are stagnant or falling making becoming middle class today, in Hartmann's words "like scaling a cliff." Those who are middle class now are hanging on for dear life but losing their grip, and those aspiring to get there find it increasingly harder to do. It can't be done on the minimum wage or even well above it in a job that pays at the Walmart level. And it surely can't be done without the protection unions once could provide before the Reagan war on labor began reducing their power, or in a nation that once had a strong base of high-paying manufacturing and other jobs now being lost to cheap labor markets abroad. The result in Hartmann's words: "America is regressing (and) Middle-class income has stopped growing." The problem isn't the economy. It's the unlevel playing field where union protection is weak, corporations are in control in league with government supporting their interests, and workplaces are "run more like kingdoms" with workers heading toward becoming serfs with no rights.
Hartmann says the cons are winning the battle to weaken democracy "by screwing over the middle class," and he offers a prescription to fight back by reclaiming the government-run programs that created a strong middle class in the first place:
-- let the public again have the right to own the military (without the high-priced private contractors), prisons, and the electoral system.
-- keep private for-profit companies out of education and have government run it free without phony programs that don't work like No Child Left Behind.
-- demand a national single-payer health care system for everyone based on how Medicare is run.
-- demand private companies keep their hand off Social Security and keep it as a government-run retirement program and safety net for the disabled.
-- demand a progressive tax system reinstating a meaningful 35% rate on corporations and a 70% rate on the richest 5% of Americans. Use the extra revenue received to repay the Social Security system and fund an economic investment program.
-- demand a living wage and the right of labor to organize again unhindered by laws or business-friendly government policies restricting its ability to be treated fairly.
-- demand a national energy program that "puts people and the planet - not Big Oil - first."
If America rebuilds its middle class, democracy will follow. But if middle-America withers, democracy will as well. Hartmann sounds the alarm - "We've been conned for long enough. It's time to take back America."
Conclusion - The Road to Victory - We must get on it now
Hartmann stresses the situation is dire and the need for change is urgent. He directs his message to everyone of all political party affiliations and says "It's time We the People took back control of our government. He offers his prescription on how to do it.
-- Take back the Democrat party - the party is in crisis having bought on to the agenda of the far-right Republicans. Hartmann says the solution is for progressives to join together to take back the Democrat party just like the cons took control of the Republican party with the election of Ronald Reagan.
-- A third party is not the answer because of our corrupted "winner take all" system under which whoever gets the most votes "gets all of the pie." We're structured this way because it's written into our Constitution which was a huge mistake by the Founders. That's not how it is in a system of proportional representation that most other democracies have under which a party getting 30% of the votes gets the same percentage of seats in the legislature.
-- Republicans also need to re-capture their party from the cons who stole it from the moderates. Today the party is run by the "Ayn Rand utopians, Pat Robertson fundamentalists, and the largest and dirtiest of America's corporate elite." They rejected the values of Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Eisenhower, exploited working people and looted the nation's treasury for their own self-interest leaving it for those who follow them to clean up the mess it could take a whole generation to recover from or longer.
-- Change happens, sometimes slowly, and people need to band together to work actively for it which means more than "just showing up for a peace (or other kind of) rally."
-- Other activist tools include the most fundamental one of all - communication. Hartmann explains without two simple forms of it, the American Revolution wouldn't have been possible. There were the two commonly used ones then - letters to editors of newspapers who published them and pamphlets like the kind Tom Paine wrote. Today the dominant media are corrupted by their corporate control that suppresses real information in favor of only what's friendly to the state and the corporate giants. Fortunately though, alternatives exist and must be used effectively.
The internet may be the most important one as long as it remains free and open and not under the threat of corporate control which may happen if S. 2686/H.R.5252 known as the Advanced Telecommunications and Opportunities Reform Act passes that would along with other harmful provisions in it end so-called "network neutrality" meaning the internet freedom we now have. This bill, if passed, will be a major victory for the cable and telecom giants transforming them into gatekeepers of internet content and allowing them to charge varying rates to customers based on whatever set of rules they decide to establish. In a word, it will destroy the internet as it now is. As such, it's crucial every effort be made to prevent this from happening.
-- Don't ignore the obvious influence we can have by communicating with our elected leaders. They pay attention, and it guides their policy-making.
-- Joining a union or getting active in the union movement is crucially important to rebuilding the nation's middle class. It's essential unions be re-empowered through favorable legislation, and voters need to petition their legislators to work for this.
-- Finally Hartmann sends a message everyone should take to heart - never lose hope and never give up the fight. He ends his book by quoting what Winston Churchill said at a boy's school during Britain's darkest hour in WW II: "Never give in. Never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."
Today the enemy of all working people has overwhelming but not invulnerable might. Gandhi taught us that "A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history." And he inspired us saying "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." He did, and so can we. Thom Hartmann would agree that We the People can indeed win if we do enough even though it's never easy, and the cons will fight us every step of the way with every dirty trick they know. It's up to us to fight the better fight because we can't afford to lose. Take heart from Thomas Jefferson and what he once said: "Every generation needs a new Revolution." Today he'd likely say we never needed one more than now.
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: As Jobs Leave America's Shores... The New Face of Class War
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
October 1, 2006
The attacks on middle-class jobs are lending new meaning to the phrase "class war". The ladders of upward mobility are being dismantled. America, the land of opportunity, is giving way to ever deepening polarization between rich and poor.
The assault on jobs predates the Bush regime. However, the loss of middle-class jobs has become particularly intense in the 21st century, and, like other pressing problems, has been ignored by President Bush, who is focused on waging war in the Middle East and building a police state at home.
The lives and careers that are being lost to the carnage of a gratuitous war in Iraq are paralleled by the economic destruction of careers, families, and communities in the U.S.A. Since the days of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s, the U.S. government has sought to protect employment of its citizens. Bush has turned his back on this responsibility. He has given his support to the offshoring of American jobs that is eroding the living standards of Americans. It is another example of his betrayal of the public trust.
"Free trade" and "globalization" are the guises behind which class war is being conducted against the middle class by both political parties. Patrick J. Buchanan, a three-time contender for the presidential nomination, put it well when he wrote1 that NAFTA and the various so-called trade agreements were never trade deals. The agreements were enabling acts that enabled U.S. corporations to dump their American workers, avoid Social Security taxes, health care and pensions, and move their factories offshore to locations where labor is cheap.
The offshore outsourcing of American jobs has nothing to do with free trade based on comparative advantage. Offshoring is labor arbitrage. First world capital and technology are not seeking comparative advantage at home in order to compete abroad. They are seeking absolute advantage abroad in cheap labor.
Two recent developments made possible the supremacy of absolute over comparative advantage: the high speed Internet and the collapse of world socialism, which opened China's and India's vast under-utilized labor resources to first world capital.
In times past, first world workers had nothing to fear from cheap labor abroad. Americans worked with superior capital, technology and business organization. This made Americans far more productive than Indians and Chinese, and, as it was not possible for U.S. firms to substitute cheaper foreign labor for U.S. labor, American jobs and living standards were not threatened by low wages abroad or by the products that these low wages produced.
The advent of offshoring has made it possible for U.S. firms using first world capital and technology to produce goods and services for the U.S. market with foreign labor. The result is to separate Americans' incomes from the production of the goods and services that they consume. This new development, often called "globalization," allows cheap foreign labor to work with the same capital, technology and business know-how as U.S. workers. The foreign workers are now as productive as Americans, with the difference being that the large excess supply of labor that overhangs labor markets in China and India keeps wages in these countries low. Labor that is equally productive but paid a fraction of the wage is a magnet for Western capital and technology.
Although a new development, offshoring is destroying entire industries, occupations and communities in the United States. The devastation of U.S. manufacturing employment was waved away with promises that a "new economy" based on high-tech knowledge jobs would take its place. Education and retraining were touted as the answer.
In testimony before the U.S.-China Commission,2 I explained that offshoring is the replacement of U.S. labor with foreign labor in U.S. production functions over a wide range of tradable goods and services. (Tradable goods and services are those that can be exported or that are competitive with imports. Nontradable goods and services are those that only have domestic markets and no import competition. For example, barbers and dentists offer nontradable services. Examples of nontradable goods are perishable, locally produced fruits and vegetables and specially fabricated parts of local machine shops.) As the production of most tradable goods and services can be moved offshore, there are no replacement occupations for which to train except in domestic "hands on" services such as barbers, manicurists, and hospital orderlies. No country benefits from trading its professional jobs, such as engineering, for domestic service jobs.
At a Brookings Institution conference in Washington, D.C., in January 2004, I predicted that if the pace of jobs outsourcing and occupational destruction continued, the U.S. would be a third world country in 20 years. Despite my regular updates on the poor performance of U.S. job growth in the 21st century, economists have insisted that offshoring is a manifestation of free trade and can only have positive benefits overall for Americans.
Reality has contradicted the glib economists. The new high-tech knowledge jobs are being outsourced abroad even faster than the old manufacturing jobs. Establishment economists are beginning to see the light. Writing in Foreign Affairs (March/April 2006), Princeton economist and former Federal Reserve vice chairman Alan Blinder concludes that economists who insist that offshore outsourcing is merely a routine extension of international trade are overlooking a major transformation with significant consequences. Blinder estimates that 42-56 million American service sector jobs are susceptible to offshore outsourcing.3 Whether all these jobs leave, U.S. salaries will be forced down by the willingness of foreigners to do the work for less.
Software engineers and information technology workers have been especially hard hit. Jobs offshoring, which began with call centers and back-office operations, is rapidly moving up the value chain. Business Week's Michael Mandel4 compared starting salaries in 2005 with those in 2001. He found a 12.7 per cent decline in computer science pay, a 12 per cent decline in computer engineering pay, and a 10.2 per cent decline in electrical engineering pay. Marketing salaries experienced a 6.5 per cent decline, and business administration salaries fell 5.7 per cent. Despite a make-work law for accountants known by the names of its congressional sponsors, Sarbanes-Oxley, even accounting majors, were offered 2.3 per cent less.
Using the same sources as the Business Week article (salary data from the National Association of Colleges and Employers and Bureau of Labor Statistics data for inflation adjustment), professor Norm Matloff at the University of California, Davis, made the same comparison for master's degree graduates. He found that between 2001 and 2005 starting pay for master's degrees in computer science, computer engineering, and electrical engineering fell 6.6 per cent, 13.7 per cent, and 9.4 per cent respectively.
On February 22, 2006, CNNMoney.com staff writer Shaheen Pasha5 reported that America's large financial institutions are moving "large portions of their investment banking operations abroad." Offshoring is now killing American jobs in research and analytic operations, foreign exchange trades, and highly complicated credit derivatives contracts. Deal-making responsibility itself may eventually move abroad. Deloitte Touche says that the financial services industry will move 20 per cent of its total costs base offshore by the end of 2010. As the costs are lower in India, the move will represent more than 20 per cent of the business. A job on Wall Street is a declining option for bright young persons with high stress tolerance as America's last remaining advantage is outsourced.
According to Norm Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed Martin, even McDonald jobs are on the way offshore. Augustine reports that McDonald is experimenting with replacing error-prone order takers with a system that transmits orders via satellite to a central location and from there to the person preparing the order. The technology lets the orders be taken in India or China at costs below the U.S. minimum wage and without the liabilities of U.S. employees.
American economists, some from incompetence and some from being bought and paid for, described globalization as a "win-win" development. It was supposed to work like this: The U.S. would lose market share in tradable manufactured goods and make up the job and economic loss with highly educated knowledge workers. The win for America would be lower-priced manufactured goods and a white-collar work force. The win for China would be manufacturing jobs that would bring economic development to that country.
It did not work out this way, as Morgan Stanley's Stephen Roach, formerly a cheerleader for globalization, recently admitted. It has become apparent that job creation and real wages in the developed economies are seriously lagging behind their historical norms as offshore outsourcing displaces the "new economy" jobs in "software programming, engineering, design, and the medical profession, as well as a broad array of professionals in the legal, accounting, actuarial, consulting, and financial services industries".6 The real state of the U.S. job market is revealed by a Chicago Sun-Times report on January 26, 2006, that 25,000 people applied for 325 jobs at a new Chicago Wal-Mart.
According to the BLS payroll jobs data,7 over the past half-decade (January 2001 - January 2006, the data series available at time of writing) the U.S. economy created 1,050,000 net new private sector jobs and 1,009,000 net new government jobs for a total five-year figure of 2,059,000. That is seven million jobs short of keeping up with population growth, definitely a serious job shortfall.
The BLS payroll jobs data contradict the hype from business organizations, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, that offshore outsourcing is good for America. Large corporations, which have individually dismissed thousands of their U.S. employees and replaced them with foreigners, claim that jobs outsourcing allows them to save money that can be used to hire more Americans. The corporations and the business organizations are very successful in placing this disinformation in the media. The lie is repeated everywhere and has become a mantra among no-think economists and politicians. However, no sign of these jobs can be found in the payroll jobs data. But there is abundant evidence of the lost American jobs.
During the past five years (January 01 - January 06), the information sector of the U.S. economy lost 644,000 jobs, or 17.4 per cent of its work force. Computer systems design and related work lost 105,000 jobs, or 8.5 per cent of its work force. Clearly, jobs offshoring is not creating jobs in computers and information technology. Indeed, jobs offshoring is not even creating jobs in related fields.
U.S. manufacturing lost 2.9 million jobs, almost 17 per cent of the manufacturing work force. The wipeout is across the board. Not a single manufacturing payroll classification created a single new job.
The declines in some manufacturing sectors have more in common with a country undergoing saturation bombing during war than with a "supereconomy" that is "the envy of the world." In five years, communications equipment lost 42 per cent of its work force. Semiconductors and electronic components lost 37 per cent of its work force . The work force in computers and electronic products declined 30 per cent. Electrical equipment and appliances lost 25 per cent of its employees. The work force in motor vehicles and parts declined 12 per cent. Furniture and related products lost 17 per cent of its jobs. Apparel manufacturers lost almost half of the work force. Employment in textile mills declined 43 per cent. Paper and paper products lost one-fifth of its jobs. The work force in plastics and rubber products declined by 15 per cent.
For the five-year period, U.S. job growth was limited to four areas: education and health services, state and local government, leisure and hospitality, and financial services. There was no U.S. job growth outside these four areas of domestic nontradable services.
Oracle, for example, which has been handing out thousands of pink slips, has recently announced two thousand more jobs being moved to India.8 How is Oracle's move of U.S. jobs to India creating American jobs in nontradable services such as waitresses and bartenders, hospital orderlies, state and local government, and credit agencies?
Engineering jobs in general are in decline, because the manufacturing sectors that employ engineers are in decline. During the last five years, the U.S. work force lost 1.2 million jobs in the manufacture of machinery, computers, electronics, semiconductors, communication equipment, electrical equipment, motor vehicles, and transportation equipment. The BLS payroll jobs numbers show a total of 69,000 jobs created in all fields of architecture and engineering, including clerical personnel, over the past five years. That comes to a mere 14,000 jobs per year (including clerical workers). What is the annual graduating class in engineering and architecture? How is there a shortage of engineers when more graduate than can be employed?
Of course, many new graduates take jobs opened by retirements. We would have to know the retirement rates to get a solid handle on the fate of new graduates. But this fate cannot be very pleasant , with declining employment in the manufacturing sectors that employ engineers and a minimum of 65,000 H-1B work visas annually for foreigners plus an indeterminate number of L-1 work visas.
It is not only the Bush regime that bases its policies on lies. Not content with moving Americans' jobs abroad, corporations want to fill the jobs remaining in America with foreigners on work visas. Business organizations allege shortages of engineers, scientists and even nurses. Business organizations have successfully used pubic relations firms and bought-and-paid-for "economic studies" to convince policymakers that American business cannot function without H-1B visas that permit the importation of indentured employees from abroad who are paid less than the going U.S. salaries. The so-called shortage is, in fact, a replacement of American employees with foreign employees, with the soon-to-be-discharged American employee first required to train his replacement.
It is amazing to see free-market economists rush to the defense of H-1B visas. The visas are nothing but a subsidy to U.S. companies at the expense of U.S. citizens. Keep in mind this H-1B subsidy to U.S. corporations for employing foreign workers in place of Americans as we examine the Labor Department's job projections over the 2004-2014 decade.
All of the occupations with the largest projected employment growth (in terms of the number of jobs) over the next decade are in nontradable domestic services. The top ten sources of the most jobs in "superpower" America are: retail salespersons, registered nurses, postsecondary teachers, customer service representatives, janitors and cleaners, waiters and waitresses, food preparation (includes fast food), home health aides, nursing aides, orderlies and attendants, general and operations managers.9 Note than none of this projected employment growth will contribute one nickel toward producing goods and services that could be exported to help close the huge U.S. trade deficit. Note, also, that few of these job classifications require a college education.
Among the fastest growing occupations (in terms of rate of growth), seven of the ten are in health care and social assistance. The three remaining fields are: network systems and data analysis with 126,000 jobs projected, or 12,600 per year; computer software engineering applications with 222,000 jobs projected, or 22,200 per year; and computer software engineering systems software with 146,000 jobs projected, or 14,600 per year.10
Assuming these projections are realized, how many of the computer engineering and network systems jobs will go to Americans? Not many, considering the 65,000 H-1B visas each year (bills have been introduced in Congress to raise the number) and the loss during the past five years of 761,000 jobs in the information sector and computer systems design and related sectors.
Judging from its ten-year jobs projections, the U.S. Department of Labor does not expect to see any significant high-tech job growth in the U.S.The knowledge jobs are being outsourced even more rapidly than the manufacturing jobs. The so-called "new economy" was just another hoax perpetrated on the American people.
If outsourcing jobs offshore is good for U.S. employment, why won't the U.S. Department of Commerce release the 200-page, $335,000 study of the impact of the offshoring of U.S. high-tech jobs? Republican political appointees reduced the 200-page report to 12 pages of public relations hype and refuse to allow the Technology Administration experts who wrote the report to testify before Congress. Democrats on the House Science Committee are unable to pry the study out of the hands of Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez. On March 29, 2006, Republicans on the House Science Committee voted down a resolution (H.Res. designed to force the Commerce Department to release the study to Congress. Obviously, the facts don't fit the Bush regime's globalization hype.
The BLS payroll data that we have been examining tracks employment by industry classification. This is not the same thing as occupational classification. For example, companies in almost every industry and area of business employ people in computer-related occupations. A recent study from the Association for Computing Machinery claims, "Despite all the publicity in the United States about jobs being lost to India and China, the size of the IT employment market in the United States today is higher than it was at the height of the dot.com boom. Information technology appears as though it will be a growth area at least for the coming decade."
We can check this claim by turning to the BLS Occupational Employment Statistics.11 We will look at "computer and mathematical employment"12 and "architecture and engineering employment".13
Computer and mathematical employment includes such fields as "software engineers applications," "software engineers systems software," "computer programmers," "network systems and data communications," and "mathematicians." Has this occupation been a source of job growth? In November of 2000 this occupation employed 2,932,810 people.14 In November of 2004 (the latest data available), this occupation employed 2,932,790, or 20 people fewer. Employment in this field has been stagnant for four years.
During these four years, there have been employment shifts within the various fields of this occupation. For example, employment of computer programmers declined by 134,630, while employment of software engineers applications rose by 65,080, and employment of software engineers systems software rose by 59,600. (These shifts probably merely reflect change in job title from programmer to software engineer.)
These figures do not tell us whether any gain in software engineering jobs went to Americans. According to professor Norm Matloff, in 2002 there were 463,000 computer-related H-1B visa holders in the U.S. Similarly, the 134,630 lost computer programming jobs (if not merely a job title change) may have been outsourced offshore to foreign affiliates.
Architecture and engineering employment includes all the architecture and engineering fields except software engineering. The total employment of architects and engineers in the U.S. declined by 120,700 between November 1999 and November 2004. Employment declined by 189,940 between November 2000 and November 2004, and by 103,390 between November 2001 and November 2004.
There are variations among fields. Between November 2000 and November 2004, for example, U.S. employment of electrical engineers fell by 15,280. Employment of computer hardware engineers rose by 15,990 (possibly these are job title reclassifications). Overall, however, over 100,000 engineering jobs were lost. We do not know how many of the lost jobs were outsourced offshore to foreign affiliates or how many American engineers were dismissed and replaced by foreign holders of H-1B or L-1 visas.
Clearly, engineering and computer-related employment in the U.S.A. has not been growing, whether measured by industry or by occupation. Moreover, with a half million or more foreigners in the U.S. on work visas, the overall employment numbers do not represent employment of Americans.
American employees have been abandoned by American corporations and by their representatives in Congress. America remains a land of opportunity but for foreigners not for the native born. A country whose work force is concentrated in domestic nontradable services has no need for scientists and engineers and no need for universities. Even the projected jobs in nursing and school teaching can be filled by foreigners on H-1B visas.
The myth has been firmly established here that the jobs the U.S. is outsourcing offshore are being replaced with better jobs. There is no sign of these jobs in the payroll jobs data or in the occupational employment statistics. When a country loses entry-level jobs, it has no one to promote to senior level jobs. When manufacturing leaves, so does engineering, design, research and development, and innovation itself.
On February 16, 2006, the New York Times reported on a new study presented to the National Academies that concludes that outsourcing is climbing the skills ladder.15 A survey of 200 multinational corporations representing 15 industries in the U.S.and Europe found that 38 per cent planned to change substantially the worldwide distribution of their research and development work, sending it to India and China. According to the New York Times, "More companies in the survey said they planned to decrease research and development employment in the United States and Europe than planned to increase employment."
The study and the discussion it provoked came to untenable remedies. Many believe that a primary reason for the shift of R&D to India and China is the erosion of scientific prowess in the U.S. due to lack of math and science proficiency of American students and their reluctance to pursue careers in science and engineering. This belief begs the question why students would chase after careers that are being outsourced abroad.
The main author of the study, Georgia Tech professor Marie Thursby, believes that American science and engineering depend on having "an environment that fosters the development of a high-quality work force and productive collaboration between corporations and universities." The dean of Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, thinks the answer is to recruit the top people in China and India and bring them to Berkeley. No one seems to understand that research, development, design, and innovation take place in countries where things are made. The loss of manufacturing means ultimately the loss of engineering and science. The newest plants embody the latest technology. If these plants are abroad, that is where the cutting edge resides.
The denial of jobs reality has become an art form for economists, libertarians, the Bush regime, and journalists. Except for CNN's Lou Dobbs, no accurate reporting is available in the "mainstream media."
Economists have failed to examine the incompatibility of offshoring with free trade. Economists are so accustomed to shouting down protectionists that they dismiss any complaint about globalization's impact on domestic jobs as the ignorant voice of a protectionist seeking to preserve the buggy whip industry. Matthew J. Slaughter, a Dartmouth economics professor rewarded for his service to offshoring with appointment to President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, suffered no harm to his reputation when he wrote, "For every one job that U.S. multinationals created abroad in their foreign affiliates, they created nearly two U.S. jobs in their parent operations." In other words, Slaughter claims that offshoring is creating more American jobs than foreign ones.
How did Slaughter arrive at this conclusion? Not by consulting the BLS payroll jobs data or the BLS Occupational Employment Statistics. Instead, Slaughter measured the growth of U.S. multinational employment and failed to take into account the two reasons for the increase in multinational employment: (1) Multinationals acquired many existing smaller firms, thus raising multinational employment but not overall employment, and (2) many U.S. firms established foreign operations for the first time and thereby became multinationals, thus adding their existing employment to Slaughter's number for multinational employment.
ABC News' John Stossel, a libertarian hero, recently made a similar error. In debunking Lou Dobbs' concern with U.S. jobs lost to offshore outsourcing, Stossel invoked the California-based company, Collabnet. He quotes the CEO's claim that outsourcing saves his company money and lets him hire more Americans. Turning to Collabnet's webpage, it is very instructive to see the employment opportunities that the company posts for the United States and for India.
In India, Collabnet has openings (at time of writing) for eight engineers, a sales engineer, a technical writer, and a telemarketing representative. In the U.S. Collabnet has openings for one engineer, a receptionist/office assistant, and positions in marketing, sales, services and operations. Collabnet is a perfect example of what Lou Dobbs and I report: the engineering and design jobs move abroad, and Americans are employed to sell and market the foreign-made products.
Other forms of deception are widely practiced. For example, Matthew Spiegleman, a Conference Board economist, claims that manufacturing jobs are only slightly higher paid than domestic service jobs, so there is no meaningful loss in income to Americans from offshoring. He reaches this conclusion by comparing only hourly pay and leaving out the longer manufacturing workweek and the associated benefits, such as health care and pensions.
Occasionally, however, real information escapes the spin machine. In February 2006 the National Association of Manufacturers, one of offshoring's greatest boosters, released a report, "U.S. Manufacturing Innovation at Risk," by economists Joel Popkin and Kathryn Kobe.16 The economists find that U.S. industry's investment in research and development is not languishing after all. It just appears to be languishing, because it is rapidly being shifted overseas: "Funds provided for foreign-performed R&D have grown by almost 73 per cent between 1999 and 2003, with a 36 per cent increase in the number of firms funding foreign R&D."
U.S. industry is still investing in R&D after all; it is just not hiring Americans to do the research and development. U.S. manufacturers still make things, only less and less in America with American labor. U.S. manufacturers still hire engineers, only they are foreign ones, not American ones.
In other words, everything is fine for U.S. manufacturers. It is just their former American work force that is in the doldrums. As these Americans happen to be customers for U.S. manufacturers, U.S. brand names will gradually lose their U.S. market. U.S. household median income has fallen for the past five years. Consumer demand has been kept alive by consumers' spending their savings and home equity and going deeper into debt. It is not possible for debt to forever rise faster than income.
The United States is the first country in history to destroy the prospects and living standards of its labor force. It is amazing to watch freedom-loving libertarians and free-market economists serve as apologists for the dismantling of the ladders of upward mobility that made the America of old an opportunity society.
America is seeing a widening polarization into rich and poor. The resulting political instability and social strife will be terrible.
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Al-Qaida escapee from U.S. prison urges followers in new video to go nuclear
AP
Oct 10, 2006
CAIRO, Egypt - An al-Qaida member who escaped from a U.S. prison in Afghanistan urged his followers in a new video aired Tuesday to acquire nuclear technology.
Abu Yahia al-Libi, who broke out of prison in July 2005, appeared in a video broadcast by the pan-Arab Al-Arabiya TV, telling his followers "to get prepared by starting with exercise...then learn technology until you are capable of nuclear weapons," he said.
In the video, al-Libi, who appears to be talking with a group of fighters has a beard and is wearing a long grey robe. The video was the third purported featuring al-Libi since he escaped from prison.
Al-Arabiya showed two minutes of what it said was an hour-long video exclusively obtained by the satellite channel. It also showed footage of what appeared to be a group of Arab fighters training.
The authenticity of the tape could not immediately be independently verified but Al-Arabiya reported it was produced by the media arm of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Attempts to reach Al-Arabiya by telephone Tuesday evening went unanswered.
Al-Arabiya said another part of the video showed al-Libi praising Taliban leader Mullah Omar. It did not broadcast that segment.
Last October, Al-Arabiya broadcast a video by al-Libi in which he recounted how he and three other al-Qaida members escaped from a U.S. prison at Bagram Air Base, which is north of the capital Kabul, last year.
The second video, which was posted in May on a website used by Islamist militants, suggested al-Libi, who appeared alone, was still alive earlier this year during the controversy over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed that peaked in January and February.
Afghan police said at the time of the escape Abu Yahia al-Libi's actual name was Abulbakar Mohammed Hassan and he is Libyan.
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Experts question North Korea's test claim
Tuesday Oct 10
MSN
Amid global outrage over North Korea's declared nuclear test, officials and experts were Tuesday debating whether it was as successful as Pyongyang claimed, with some even questioning whether the regime detonated an atom bomb at all.
Russia and South Korea both say they believe there was a genuine atom bomb test, and the furious reaction from around the world to Monday's announcement by Pyongyang indicated other leaders think so too.
Even China, North Korea's closest ally, denounced what it called a "brazen" act of defiance against the international community.
However, scientists said only careful analysis of data returned by seismic or atmospheric sensors will determine whether the blast was a success.
Some officials refused to rule out the possibility -- however remote -- that North Korea faked its entry into the nuclear club by blowing up a huge stock of conventional explosives.
"I don't think you can rule out the possibility that he's faking out the world," a US defense official said on condition of anonymity, referring to the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
North Korea said on Monday that it had successfully tested a nuclear device, which would make it only the eighth declared nuclear power in the world.
South Korean officials say they believe the claim is genuine, but cautioned it would take two weeks to verify whether the test was a success.
"The government believes North Korea actually conducted a nuclear test," said Unification Minister Lee Jong-Seok, who added that it was premature to acknowledge the communist state as a nuclear state.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said that his officials recorded an underground nuclear explosion and that "the power of the test was between five and 15 kilotonnes."
In Washington, the White House said it may not know for "a couple of days" whether North Korea truly tested a nuclear device.
A senior US intelligence official said an explosion of less than one kilotonne in magnitude had been detected but it was not immediately possible to determine whether it was nuclear.
The official, who asked not to be identified, said first-time nuclear tests historically have been in the several kilotonne range.
One theoretical possibility is that North Korea stashed a huge amount of TNT dynamite underground and blew it up.
But James Acton of Vertic, an independent non-governmental organisation (NGO) in London that specialises in verification research, cautioned that to detonate a huge quantity of TNT to simulate a nuclear blast was in itself quite difficult.
This is because it entails digging a large cavity underground -- which would be visible to spy satellites -- and requires detonators to be triggered all at the same time.
"It is possible to tell the difference between a conventional explosion and a nuclear test," said Acton. "The differences are very fine and subtle, and you need time to analyse the signatures."
Norwegian monitors said their readings indicated an explosion of between one and 10 kilotonnes, while Russian experts said they had detected an underground explosion of between five and 15 kilotonnes.
Earlier in Seoul the head of the Korea Earthquake Research Centre gave a more modest estimate of the size of the blast, saying the activity measured 3.6 on the Richter scale, which could be caused by the explosion of the equivalent of 800 tonnes of dynamite.
By comparison, "Little Boy," the US atomic bomb which destroyed Hiroshima at the end of World War II, released the equivalent of around 12,500 tonnes of TNT.
Acton said a 15-kilotonne yield was "the natural size" for a country trying to test a nuclear weapon.
"If it turns out to be less than a kilotonne, it could look very much like a fizzle," a bomb that failed to detonate properly and achieve a full chain reaction, Acton told AFP.
Comment: "I don't think you can rule out the possibility that he's faking out the world." Indeed, but in this case we must also suspect that the rest of the world is in on the fake, and the targets of this ruse are the masses of ordinary people.
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Korean nuclear test: real or fake?
Richard Ingham
Agençe France-Presse
10/10/2006
Scientists are taking a wait-and-see attitude after North Korea said it had successfully conducted a nuclear test.
Only careful analysis of data returned by seismic or atmospheric sensors will say whether the blast was a success or a damp squib, they say.
Nor could they rule out the possibility of a scam, in which North Korea blew up a huge stock of conventional explosives to bolster its claim to have joined the nuclear club.
James Acton of Vertic, an independent non-governmental organisation in London that specialises in verification research, notes enormous discrepancies in the estimated size of the blast.
The Korea Earthquake Research Centre in South Korea says there was a 3.58-magnitude tremor from North Korea's North Hamgyong province that translated into the equivalent of 800 tonnes of TNT.
But Russian defence minister Sergei Ivanov, quoted by the ITAR-TASS news agency, says the strength was 5-15 kilotonnes.
By comparison, the US atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima during World War II released the equivalent of about 12,500 tonnes of TNT.
"I've heard from three different sources that [the North Korean blast] was less than one kilotonne," says Acton, a nuclear physicist by training.
"This [Russian figure] is not a difference of 10-20% [in the yield]. It's huge. We should wait to see if that Russian statement is confirmed," he says.
Acton says that going for a 15 kilotonne yield was "the natural size" for a country trying to test a nuclear weapon.
Paradoxically, it is easier to make and test a Hiroshima-sized weapon of this size rather than to make a smaller one, which requires mastery of miniaturisation techniques.
"If it turns out to be less than a kilotonne, it could look very much like a fizzle," a bomb that failed to detonate properly and achieve a full chain reaction, Acton says.
Could it be a fake?
Another theoretical possibility is that North Korea stashed lots of TNT underground and blew it up.
"It is possible to tell the difference between a conventional explosion and a nuclear test," says Acton. "The differences are very fine and subtle, and you need time to analyse the signatures."
Bruno Seignier, in charge of the analysis and monitoring department at France's Atomic Energy Commission, says a nuclear explosion "has a more instant shockwave than a chemical one".
He says that "in a small [seismic] event", picking out such differences would take time.
"The analysis is complicated because the energy that radiates out is weak compared with the subterranean background noise picked up by detectors. You really have to make a very detailed analysis when you look into such an event."
To stage a hoax
As for the scenario of a hoax, Acton cautions that to detonate a huge quantity of TNT to simulate a nuclear blast is in itself quite difficult.
It would entail digging a large cavity underground, which would be visible to spy satellites, and requires detonators to be triggered at the same time.
In addition to seismic sensors run by national governments, the UN's Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization in Vienna also has a network of 189 seismic and hydroacoustic monitoring stations designed to detect nuclear tests.
The body is not qualified to make public statements on the nature of the incidents registered by its monitoring systems, and therefore has not confirmed whether or not a nuclear explosion had taken place as claimed by North Korea.
But the raw data has been passed on to the organisation's 176 member states and to 770 institutions around the world.
Telltale signs
Radioactive particles and gases that can vent from an underground nuclear blast are also telltale signs, providing clues as to the type of material (uranium or plutonium) that was used and to the size of the weapon.
Sniffer planes and ground sensors can be used to monitor this airborne evidence. In the case of a totally sealed site, nothing may emerge, though.
A third monitoring technique is to use satellites with ground-scanning radars, which record the topography of a test site before and after an event.
Movement or subsidence of the soil would be the sign of a big blast.
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North Korean nuclear test announcement is no bluff - expert
Interfax
Oct 10 2006
MOSCOW - The nuclear test in North Korea is no bluff but an accomplished fact, said Maj. Gen. Vladimir Dvorkin, former head of a Russian Defense Ministry research center.
"Defense Ministry technical means registered the nuclear explosion and a mistake here is impossible. A nuclear explosion can be accurately distinguished from a conventional explosion, say the explosion of one hundred tonnes of conventional explosives," he told Interfax-AVN on Tuesday.
"The parameters of explosions of nuclear and conventional installations differ in the shock wave, in duration, in the reverse front, so it's difficult to make a mistake," Dvorkin said.
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North Korea says U.S. pressure will be seen as act of war
Last Updated: Wednesday, October 11, 2006 | 7:24 AM ET
CBC News
North Korea said Wednesday that any increase in pressure from the United States against the communist country would be viewed as an act of war.
North Korea's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that North Korea would respond with "physical measures" if the U.S. applies pressure on the regime for testing a nuclear weapon on Monday. It also said the nuclear test, conducted underground, was a success.
"If the U.S. keeps pestering us and increases pressure, we will regard it as a declaration of war and will take a series of physical corresponding measures," the ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
"We were compelled to conduct a nuclear test because of the U.S. nuclear threat and pressure of sanctions," the ministry said. "We are ready for both dialogue and confrontation."
The statement was the first formal comment from the North Korean government since the test was conducted.
"Even though we conducted the nuclear test because of the U.S., we still remain committed to realizing the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula through dialogue and negotiations," the ministry said.
It also claimed that North Korea did not break an agreement reached at international arms talks in September, when the country said it would abandon its nuclear program in exchange for aid and guarantees of security.
North Korea also vowed on Wednesday to carry out more nuclear tests in response to what it calls U.S. hostility.
Kim Yong Nam, second in command to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il as president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, said in an interview in Pyongyang with Japan's Kyodo News agency that the communist country will proceed with its plans depending on U.S. actions.
"The issue of future nuclear tests is linked to U.S. policy toward our country," Kim said.
"If the United States continues to take a hostile attitude and apply pressure on us in various forms, we will have no choice but to take physical steps to deal with that," he said.
South Korea, meanwhile, said it plans to bolster its arsenal of conventional weapons if North Korea is confirmed to have nuclear bombs.
And in a rare direct criticism of North Korea, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun said he believes that North Korea may be exaggerating its need for security in order to justify its nuclear program.
"The security threat North Korea speaks of either does not exist in reality, or is very exaggerated," Roh said in a report by Yonhap news agency.
South Korean Defence Minister Yoon Kwang-ung said South Korea will take steps to protect itself as North Korea issues threats and conducts alleged nuclear tests.
"If North Korea really has the (nuclear) capabilities, we will improve and enlarge the number of conventional weapons as long as it doesn't violate the principle of denuclearization," Yoon told parliament.
"We will supplement (our ability) to conduct precision strikes against storage facilities and intercept delivery means, while also improving the system of having military units and individuals defend themselves," he said.
North Korea announced on Monday that it had carried out a nuclear test. Leaders around the world condemned the move and it provoked a strong reaction from China, traditionally an ally of the regime.
U.S. intelligence officials, however, said they have doubts whether the test was actually conducted and they plan to conduct tests of their own to determine its validity.
North Korea made no mention of a second test, but Japan officials said Tuesday that they feared a second test had taken place when Japan's meteorological agency reported an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.0 had struck at 8:58 a.m. off the coast of Fukushima, located about 100 kilometres northeast of Tokyo.
Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters on Tuesday that he had no information to confirm the test and the initial suspicions seemed to be related to the earthquake.
In other developments, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Tuesday that the United Nations should take action against North Korea after it conducted its first alleged nuclear test this week.
He said North Korea is trying "to be a threat" and its actions are unacceptable to Canada. Harper said he supports the idea of sanctions against the communist country.
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Quake Raises Fears of 2nd N. Korea Test
By CARL FREIRE
AP
Oct 10, 2006
TOKYO - A strong earthquake in northern Japan on Wednesday may have led the Tokyo government to suspect that North Korea had conducted a second nuclear test.
In Washington, White House spokesman Blair Jones said U.S. officials had not detected any evidence of additional North Korea testing.
"Japanese officials are now saying that this occurrence may be related to an earthquake in northern Japan," Jones said.
The earthquake came at a time when the Japanese government and other countries in Asia were jittery about reports that North Korea planned a second nuclear test.
"We have very real concerns that they may conduct another nuclear test and that they may do so very soon," Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told reporters on Wednesday, a day after he met with North Korean Ambassador Chon Jae-hong to condemn the atomic program.
The scare began when Japanese media reported the government had detected tremors in North Korea, leading it to suspect Pyongyang had conducted a second nuclear test.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's spokesman confirmed the government was checking whether the North had tested another nuclear device.
Around the same time, the Japanese meteorological agency said a strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.0 shook northern Japan Wednesday morning. The quake, which struck at 8:58 a.m., was centered off the coast of Fukushima, 149 miles northeast of Tokyo. The agency said that the tremor was a genuine quake and had nothing to do North Korean nuclear testing.
Then Abe said he had no information to confirm North Korea had conducted a second nuclear test.
"I have had not received information about any indications ... that a test has take place," Abe said at a parliamentary budget meeting.
U.S. and South Korean monitors said they detected no new seismic activity Wednesday in North Korea.
The U.S. Geological Survey said it had detected an earthquake in Japan but not in North Korea.
"There has been no activity in the last two hours," official Rafael Abreu told AP just after 9 a.m. in Korea. The agency can detect most tremors if they are above magnitude-3.5, he said.
The head of South Korean seismic monitoring station said no activity has been detected in North Korea that could indicate a possible second North Korea nuclear test.
"There's no signal from North Korea, even no small event," Chi Heon-cheol, director of the South's Korea Earthquake Research Center, told The Associated Press.
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Iran's Khamenei pledges to continue nuclear program
www.chinaview.cn 2006-10-11 04:14:14
TEHRAN, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reiterated on Tuesday that his country would continue its nuclear program and wouldn't retreat under international pressure, the state-run television reported.
"I believe our policy is clear progress proposing transparent logic and insisting on the nation's rights without retreat," Khamenei was quoted as saying in a meeting with Iran's top officials.
The supreme leader recalled that it had been right for Iran to temporarily suspend uranium enrichment under a previous agreement with European countries, even though Tehran has now resumed the controversial nuclear activity.
Iran has agreed to suspend uranium enrichment during talks with Britain, France and Germany in November 2003. But it resumed the process after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office as president in 2005.
"We ablins have blamed ourselves if we hadn't experienced that (suspension), and we might have asked ourselves 'why we had not try that?'" said Khamenei.
"Now, we push forward with full confidence, no one could find a good reason that the nuclear path is wrong for Iran," he added.
Meanwhile, Iranian President Ahmadinejad also vowed that the country would press on with the nuclear program.
"The Iranian nation will continue its path of dignity based on resistance, wisdom and without fear," he was quoted as saying.
In less than two weeks, Iran's top officials, especially president Ahmadinejad, have reiterated many times that Iran would not step back on its legal nuclear rights, warning the West not to imagine that the country would suspend uranium enrichment for even one day.
The UN Security Council adopted a resolution in late July, urging Tehran to suspend by Aug. 31 all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development, or face prospect of sanctions.
It was reported that the five UN Security Council permanent members -- China, Britain, France, Russia, and the United States --plus Germany, would start to discuss this week a resolution imposing sanctions on Iran if it does not suspend its nuclear program.
Despite Tehran's failure to meet the UN demand, EU foreign ministers decided in September to maintain serious talks with Tehran in efforts to solve Iran's nuclear issue through diplomacy.
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Japan decides to impose new N.Korea sanctions: NHK
Reuters
October 11, 2006
TOKYO - Japan's government has decided to impose fresh sanctions on North Korea in response to its reported nuclear test earlier this week, public broadcaster NHK reported.
The decision is expected to be formalized at a meeting of Japan's National Security Council later on Wednesday, it said.
Cabinet ministers had gathered at the prime minister's office but declined to comment on whether they had decided on new sanctions in addition to those imposed after North Korea fired a salvo of missiles in early July.
Japan has joined with the United States in calling for tough sanctions by the U.N. Security Council to pressure Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear program, and Tokyo has also said it could impose measures of its own.
Government officials have said sanctions could include barring all North Korean ships from entering Japanese ports and banning all trade between Japan and North Korea.
Economists said the effect on North Korea of banning trade would be more symbolic than real unless Pyongyang's key trading partners such as China and Russia joined in.
"The impact from sanctions by the Japanese alone would be very small. But Japan cannot do nothing, because it faces the biggest threat, and sanctions would have a political meaning," said Mitsuhiko Kimura, an economics professor at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo.
Japan's total trade with North Korea amounted to about $180 million in 2005, about half the figure in 2002, and trade is thinning further this year, according to Finance Ministry data.
Coal and matsutake mushrooms top the list of Japan's imports from North Korea, while cars, trucks and buses account for a big chunk of Japan's exports to the impoverished country.
Sanctions imposed in July included a ban on visits of the Mangyongbong-92, a North Korean ferry, for six months.
The ferry, the only regular direct link between Japan and North Korea, had long been suspected to have been involved in transporting parts for North Korea's missile program.
In September, Japan approved new financial sanctions to effectively freeze remittances and the transfer of funds from Japan by groups suspected of having links to North Korea's missile and weapons of mass destruction programs.
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Powers pursue Iran sanctions amid N Korean crisis: official
AFP
October 11, 2006
WASHINGTON - Major powers will press ahead with plans to impose UN sanctions on Iran over its uranium enrichment program even as the world body grapples with the reality of a newly nuclear North Korea.
Senior diplomats from the six nations confronting Iran over its nuclear program -- Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States -- will hold a videoconference Wednesday to discuss an initial list of sanctions to use against Tehran, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
The six nations' UN ambassadors in New York will then begin drafting a sanctions resolution, he said.
Foreign Ministers from the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany decided at a meeting Friday in London to hit Iran with sanctions for ignoring UN demands that it suspend the uranium enrichment activities.
But plans to draw up a sanctions resolution at the UN this week were overtaken by North Korea's announcement Monday that it had carried out its first nuclear test explosion.
The move unleashed a torrent of international condemnation and diplomats at the world body have since been scrambling to agree on punitive measures to draw the isolationist regime in Pyongyang back from the nuclear brink.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in a series of US television interviews, said that despite the dramatic developments in northeast Asia, parallel moves to draw up a sanctions resolution against Iran were still on track.
"The United States is quite capable of taking care of several problems simultaneously," she said, voicing confidence that "we're going to have a Security Council resolution under Chapter 7, Article 41" against Iran.
Article 41 contains the strongest language of the UN Charter, allowing for mandatory sanctions against a member nation which is deemed a "threat to international peace and security".
Rice acknowledged that the pace of discussions on a sanctions resolution against Iran will be slower than the fast-tracked deliberations on the more immediate threat posed by North Korea.
"The urgency on North Korea is extraordinary," she said. "There's no doubt that I've rarely, maybe never seen that kind of response from the international community."
China and Russia, however, remain only weakly committed to taking punitive measures against Iran, with which both states have close economic ties.
Rice has called for a progressive series of sanctions that will gradually ratchet up the pressure on Tehran to suspend its enrichment program and enter into negotiations with the six powers on a package of economic and political rewards -- including the first direct contacts with Washington in nearly 30 years.
The first sanctions resolution is expected to focus narrowly on freezing assets and barring some trade linked to Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
If Iran still refuses to comply, Washington will seek broader measures affecting Tehran's economy and government.
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, reaffirmed Tuesday that his government would not "back down" in the confrontation.
"Our policy is clear progress proposing transparent logic and insisting on the nation's rights without backing down," a news anchor on state television quoted Khamenei as telling a meeting with top officials.
He said Iran had been right to temporarily suspend uranium enrichment as part of a previous agreement with European countries even though it has now resumed the sensitive nuclear work.
"If we had not experienced that (a suspension) we might have blamed ourselves and said 'why did we not try that'?" Khamenei went on.
"But now with steady heart and full confidence we press ahead and nobody can give a good reason that the nuclear path is wrong for the country."
Iran insists its nascent uranium enrichment program is designed only to provide fuel for civilian nuclear power stations, and thus is allowed under the nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty to which Tehran is a signatory.
But the United States and others fear the program will be subverted to provide fissile material for nuclear weapons, although analysts agree this eventuality is years away at least.
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Money Talks
Small farms miss out on grant dollars
By LIBBY QUAID
AP Food and Farm Writer
Tue Oct 10, 2006
WASHINGTON - Small- and medium-sized farms are missing out on the largest share of federal research and grant dollars for agriculture, says a study released Tuesday.
Of $500 million spent on four Agriculture Department research and grant programs, only about 5 percent went to farmers with small- or medium-sized operations or beginning farmers, the Nebraska-based Center for Rural Affairs said.
Many projects that got funding "were essentially research and development initiatives for large food companies," the report concluded. Analysts looked at funding in 2001 and 2002.
In a statement, the Agriculture Department responded that two of the programs don't specifically focus on small producers; in fact, one is for public or nonprofit groups, not farmers.
And in one program, $1.5 million was set aside for smaller producers this year, the department said. The agency also created a $1.47 million grant program for small minority producers.
The nonprofit group argues the programs are crucial to traditional, independent family farms and ranches, which are disappearing across America.
In Iowa alone, the number of mid-sized farms, those with sales between $100,000 and $499,999, dropped 19 percent from 1997 to 2002, the center said. Nationwide, the average age of farmers has seen an annual rise of one year since 1997.
"Given the demographics of agriculture in America ... the inability of major USDA research and grant programs to address the topic of beginning farmers and ranchers is disappointing," said the center's Kim Leval, an author of the report.
The group called on the government to target family farmers and rural communities in awarding federal money and said each program should set aside money for beginning farmers and ranchers.
The programs are the Rural Business Enterprise Grant program, the National Research Initiative, the Initiative for Future Agriculture and Food Systems and the Value-Added Producer Grant Program.
Funding for ethanol and other biofuels is causing tension within the value-added program, the report said.
"Whatever benefits flow from ethanol and biofuel production will not generally flow to small- and medium-sized farmers as large-scale energy production will be dependent on large-scale grain production and will increasingly become corporatized," the report said.
The Lyons, Neb.-based center is funded by private foundations, national church programs, government sources and individual donations.
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Nevada casinos have record August, win $1.06 billion
By BRENDAN RILEY
ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 10, 2006
CARSON CITY, Nev. - Nevada casinos won $1.06 billion in August, a record for the month, the state Gaming Control Board reported Tuesday.
Frank Streshley, senior research analyst for the board, said the August win was up 7.5 percent compared with the same month a year earlier.
Streshley said the Las Vegas Strip had a big month, with a gain of 14.3 percent, due in part to strong table game action that favored the resorts. He noted the casinos' take from baccarat games was more than double what it was in August 2005.
Other factors included convention activity and the Hasim Rahman-Oleg Maskaev heavweight fight in Las Vegas.
While the Strip was up, downtown Las Vegas was down 14.3 percent, the third straight monthly decline. Streshley said factors included the closure of the Lady Luck hotel-casino for remodeling.
Other markets that showed declines included Reno, down 2.3 percent, and clubs on Lake Tahoe's south shore, down 12.8 percent. However, casinos in Sparks posted a gain of 7.6 percent.
Streshley said clubs on Tahoe's south shore were hard hit by lucky dice players. He said craps revenue in August was down more than 100 percent compared with the take in August 2005.
The statewide win was the amount left in casino coffers after gamblers wagered $14 billion during August. That included $11.3 billion bet in slot machine games, and the rest on table games.
The state collected $67 million in percentage fees on gambling winnings, based on the August win. That was up 8.3 percent compared with the fees collected for the same month in 2005, and the total is about $5.4 million higher than what the state Economic Forum had predicted earlier.
"Win" is a gross figure, with no operating costs or other expenses deducted. It represents casino revenue only - not hotel, restaurant or bar revenues.
A breakdown of the win showed that slots accounted for about $726.1 million of the total. That included $307 million won by multidenomination slots, up 19 percent. Penny slots were second with a win of $118 million, up 37 percent.
The board said live games, including poker, accounted for the $337 million balance of total. That included $105.5 million won on blackjack tables, up 7.7 percent; $33.7 million on craps tables, up 13.6 percent; $29 million on roulette, up 10.9 percent; and $3.5 million on sports pools, down 42 percent. Poker games won $13.8 million, up 17.7 percent.
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BAE Wins Billion-Dollar US Defence Contracts
AFP
Oct 10, 2006
London - British group BAE Systems announced on Tuesday that it has won a clutch of US government defence contracts potentially worth 1.2 billion dollars (957 million euros) in value. The group said it received a 450-million-dollar contract from the US government to provide "performance-based solutions to reengineer and remanufacture obsolete aircraft parts for the US Navy and other government agencies".
Work on the new contract would begin immediately and will be performed by BAE Systems operations around the world.
BAE also said it has won a 132-million-dollar Concepts and Operations for Space and Missile Defense Integration Capabilities (COSMIC) contract from the US Army.
Under the COSMIC contract, BAE will provide engineering, maintenance and support services to the US Army Space and Missile Defense Future Warfare Center.
The total cumulative value of the 10-year COSMIC contract could reach 482 million dollars if all options were exercised, BAE said.
The defence group added that it has also received a 87-million-dollar ship repair contract from the US Navy.
But the total worth of the multi-ship multi-option contract could reach 270 million dollars.
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Raytheon Awarded US Army Contract For Wireless Precision Assault Missiles
SPX
Oct 11, 2006
Tucson, AZ - Raytheon has received a contract with five one-year options that has an initial value of $163.2 million to provide heavy anti-tank, precision assault missiles for the U.S. military. Under this contract, Raytheon will deliver the new wireless version of TOW missiles that receives commands from the gunner through a wireless data link, eliminating the wire connection that the system has used since it was introduced more than 30 years ago.
Because the wireless system is built into the missile and the missile case, wireless TOW works with existing launch platforms -- including the Improved Target Acquisition System, Improved Bradley Acquisition Subsystem, TOW 2 Subsystem and M220 Ground TOW. The system performs exactly as the wire-guided version, enabling soldiers to continue using the proven weapon without changing tactics or incurring additional training.
"The wireless TOW provides the soldier and Marine with the next logical step in the evolution of this proven weapon system," said Jim Riley, vice president of Raytheon Missile Systems' Land Combat product line. "This increases the tactical superiority and versatility of a system that continues to prove itself in ongoing combat operations."
TOW remains the Army and Marine Corps' primary heavy anti-tank and precision assault weapon deployed on more than 4,000 TOW launch platforms including the Army "Stryker," Bradley Fighting Vehicle System and High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle.
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Army Boost May Herald Bigger DOD Budget
by Pamela Hess
UPI Pentagon Correspondent
Oct 09, 2006
Washington - The U.S. Army is seeking a significant boost to its budget in 2008 and beyond to pay major bills associated with modernizing the force and restoring equipment broken, worn out and destroyed in the war. But they seem to be fighting for a boost to the Pentagon's overall budget -- about $420 billion this year -- rather than "horse trading" within the services to get the Army a bigger share of defense dollars.
"I am on the Joint Chiefs, and I don't want to see the other services disadvantaged as a result of having a proper Army," said Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker at a press conference Monday in Washington.
The Pentagon budget is usually a zero-sum game for the military services. The "topline" for the next year's budget is handed down from the White House in the spring, and the services jockey for extra dollars within those constraints.
But 2008 may be different.
In a virtually unprecedented move, the Army leadership in August declined to submit a 2008 budget to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, citing a major and irreconcilable "mismatch" between Army strategy, wartime needs, and the $114 billion budget it had been offered for 2008.
Harvey said the Army made its case to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who has agreed to allow the service to seek more money from the Office of Management and Budget, which is responsible for coordinating budgets across the federal government.
Army Secretary Francis Harvey refused to say exactly how much extra the Army is seeking, but the Los Angeles Times has reported it wants $138 billion, approximately $26 billion more than it got for fiscal year 2007.
"We felt we had a challenge we couldn't overcome in '08-'13 program," Schoomaker said.
Both Harvey and Schoomaker insist that the amount is affordable, given the strength of the U.S. economy.
It's a refrain they picked up from Rumsfeld, who has been laying the groundwork for a much larger defense budget for the last year. The rationale is that as a percentage of gross domestic product -- less than 4 percent -- the United States spends less now than it has historically, and can afford much more.
"We're at historic lows, and the American people have to make their minds up if that's what they want at a time of great uncertainty," said Harvey.
"Ultimately this is an issue of priority. This is not an issue of affordability to our nation," Schoomaker said.
In real dollars, even adjusted for inflation, the defense budget is as large now as it was during the Reagan build-up years, if the $300 billion in supplemental appropriations made for the Iraq and Afghan wars are added to it.
Schoomaker rejects that calculus, pointing out that supplementals are spent to replenish "consumables" in the war -- destroyed equipment and ammunition, for instance. The Army budget is for modernization of its forces -- developing and buying new weapons and training soldiers.
That's not precisely true -- billions in the supplemental have been spent accelerating the Army's already planned reorganization and modernization program to overhaul forces headed to Iraq and Afghanistan.
But Schoomaker's concern about supplementals has at least as much to do with timing as it does constraints on how the money can be spent. The fiscal year 2006 supplemental, meant to pay war costs between October 2005 and September 2006, was not submitted to Congress until February 2006 and was not approved until the end of June, just two months prior to the end of the spending year.
Where the money will come from is unclear. The White House has cut taxes and shows no willingness to raise them; much of the federal budget is obligated to domestic "entitlement" programs like Medicare and Social Security that are difficult to cut.
And it is the White House that has set the budget for the Army and the Pentagon for the last six years.
Harvey was careful to credit the White House for the 10 percent increase in the Army budget for the last two years.
"So far the Army is getting the resources it needs to execute. So far this headed in the right direction," Harvey said.
"The dilemma here is we can't get well on supplemental funding," added Schoomaker.
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America's dirty secret: India becomes the gasoline gusher
October 11, 2006
The Guardian
Subcontinent to fill the petrol production gap in the United States and Europe
Sitting on the edge of the water in the Gulf of Kutch on India's western shore is one of America's dirty secrets. A mass of steel pipes and concrete boxes stretches across 13 square miles (33sq km) - a third of the area of Manhattan - which will eventually become the world's largest petrochemical refinery.
The products from the Jamnagar complex are for foreign consumption. When complete, the facility will be able to refine 1.24m barrels of crude a day. Two-fifths of this gasoline will be sent 9,000 miles (15,000km) by sea to America.
India's biggest private company, Reliance Industries, with a market capitalisation of $33bn (£17.8bn), runs the plant. Controlled by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, whose father Dhirubhai founded the company, Reliance towers over its industry rivals, contributing 8% of India's exports.
The company's ambitions in Jamnagar have helped India move from being a net importer to an exporter of refined petroleum products. "We want to make a statement that India can be an industrial giant. Jamnagar is a refinery for the world, based out of India," said Hital Meswani, executive director of Reliance Industries. "In the mid-90s when this project was conceived, no one believed it would work. We were told there was too much capacity, returns were not great and every management consultant we hired told us don't bother."
In the dizzy days of the 90s internet boom, distilling crude into diesel, gasoline, home-heating oil and aviation fuel was considered a dinosaur business, with low margins and large outlays. Oil refining was yesterday's business, not tomorrow's.
A hi-tech gamble
But Reliance says it gambled on a "paradigm shift" in the economics of the refinery business. The company, which began as a textile trader but moved into producing polyester, had noticed that India was importing millions of tonnes of refined hydrocarbons a year. Its managers projected prices creeping upwards largely due to three global oil trends.
First the oil being produced from the world's hydrocarbon reservoirs was increasingly "sour", or heavy, full of sulphur and other impurities that older refineries could not cope with.
Second was that no new capacity was being built around the world. Environmental concerns and the rising costs of infrastructure projects discouraged the oil majors from putting up refineries in Europe and America. No new oil refinery has been built in the US since the 1980s as environmental legislation has tightened.
Third was Reliance's belief that Asian economies would become dynamos of world growth - inevitably increasing demand for petro-products. It also saw that many European countries wanted cleaner petroleum, which required complex refining techniques. According to its strategists, commercial logic dictated that new, hi-tech refineries would be needed - and soon. Reliance, Mr Meswani says, decided to build big.
Work started in 1996 on a dry, sandy stretch in Jamnagar, about 500 miles north of Mumbai in the Gulf of Kutch with almost 100,000 workers toiling around the clock. Although the area was off the beaten track and served by just one small airstrip, supertankers could deliver by sea.
The first stage was to build a refinery that could process 660,000 barrels a day. Mr Meswani and Mr Ambani lived for months on site in shipping containers to make sure the project ran smoothly. A five-star complex with villas for 2,400 families, a golf course and swimming pools were built for foreign workers.
In many ways Jamnagar was a turning point for Reliance, silencing critics who claimed its talents lay with manipulating government policy to its advantage rather than creating wealth through project management skills. It also made Mr Ambani's reputation as able to fill his father's shoes - which he traded on when a family feud led to his younger brother Anil walking away with Reliance's businesses in telecoms and fund management. Mukesh, or MDA as he is known, was left with the bulk of Reliance, essentially its cash-rich petrochemical arm.
Ahead of the game
Having built from scratch the world's third-largest refinery complex, stage two in the Reliance plan is to double capacity by 2008. Other companies and nations have woken up to the potential of refining. Saudi Arabia's national oil company, Saudi Aramco, is planning a 400,000-barrel-a-day refinery. Mexico, alarmed by how much crude oil it exports and gasoline it imports, is also planning a refinery capable of processing 250,000 barrels of crude a day.
Reliance has made the most of the shortfall in refining capacity. This year it spun off Reliance Petroleum to complete the $6bn stage two of the project, which will add 580,000 barrels a day. Reliance Petroleum went to the markets with a share issue, raising $600m through a pre-float placement with banks and the same amount through retail investors on the Bombay stock exchange. Considered a magic brand by many in India, Reliance's offer was 52 times oversubscribed. Perhaps the biggest endorsement was the news that Chevron, the world's fourth-largest oil company, agreed to buy 5% of Reliance Petroleum for $300m, with an option to increase the stake to 29%. Experts say that Reliance's strategy is modelled on one developed east of India. "Singapore taught us about offshore refining," said Santanu Saikia, editor of Indianpetro.com. "They showed how use of high technology and low labour costs would attract such large-scale investments."
Others worry that alternative fuels such as ethanol could slow the growth in demand for gasoline. Chandra Tripathy, who until last year was India's petroleum secretary, its top oil official, said the impact would be limited. "I think we are looking really at just a few countries like Brazil where this would be an important factor," he said. However, India's laws were changing to reflect concerns about climate change, he said. "There will be tighter environmental laws for us too so that we will have to make sure our savings in terms of labour and expertise will outweigh the cost of importing the crude. It is a fast-closing window that India, not just Reliance, needs to exploit."
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In Iraq, contractor deaths near 650, legal fog thickens
By Bernd Debusmann
Reuters
Tue Oct 10, 2006
WASHINGTON - The war in Iraq has killed at least 647 civilian contractors to date, according to official figures that provide a stark reminder of the huge role of civilians in supporting the U.S. military.
The contractor death toll is tracked by the U.S. Department of Labor on the basis of claims under an insurance policy, the Defense Base Act, that all U.S. government contractors and subcontractors working outside the United States must take out for their civilian employees.
In response to questions from Reuters, a Labor Department spokesman said there had been 647 claims for death benefits between March 1, 2003, and September 30, 2006. The Defense Base Act covers both Americans and foreigners, and there is no breakdown of the nationalities of those killed. The
Pentagon does not monitor civilian contractor casualties.
The death toll of civilians working alongside U.S. forces in Iraq compares with more than 2,700 military dead and, experts say, underscores the risks of outsourcing war to private military contractors.
Their number in Iraq is estimated at up to 100,000, from highly-trained former special forces soldiers to drivers, cooks, mechanics, plumbers, translators, electricians and laundry workers and other support personnel.
A trend toward "privatizing war" has been accelerating steadily since the end of the Cold War, when the United States and its former adversaries began cutting back professional armies. U.S. armed forces shrank from 2.1 million when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 to 1.4 million today.
"At its present size, the U.S. military could not function without civilian contractors," said Jeffrey Addicott, an expert at St. Mary's University in San Antonio. "The problem is that the civilians operate in a legal gray zone. There has been little effort at regulation, oversight, standardized training and a uniform code of conduct. It's the Wild West out there."
FOG OF LAW
Two court cases slowly making their way through the U.S. legal system have opened a window on the legal fog hanging over civilians who work alongside the military and have become an everyday presence in conflict zones.
The legal cases involve Blackwater Security and Halliburton which field hundreds of civilians in Iraq. The two companies are part of a global industry estimated to bring in up to $100 billion annually.
The suit against Blackwater, the first of its kind in the United States, was brought 19 months ago by the families of four civilian contractors who were shot in March 2004 by insurgents who burned their bodies and hung the charred remains of two from the girders of a bridge in the city of Falluja.
Television images of the gruesome scene, with jubilant Iraqis shaking their fists, were beamed around the world and shocked the United States. Some military experts view the Falluja incident, which prompted a massive U.S. retaliatory assault on Falluja, as a turning point in the war.
The suit, for fraud and wrongful death, alleges that Blackwater broke explicit terms of its contract with the men -- Stephen (Scott) Helveston, Mike Teague, Jerko Zovko and Wesley Batalona -- by sending them to escort a food convoy in unarmored cars, without heavy machine guns and in teams that lacked even a map.
The suit against Halliburton stems from the April 2004 ambush of a convoy of fuel trucks near Abu Ghraib in which six drivers working for a company subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root were killed and 11 injured. In September, a federal judge in Houston threw out the suit, saying his court had no jurisdiction because the decision to send the convoy had been "interwoven with Army decisions."
"The effect of this ruling is ... a legal gray zone in which Halliburton and KBR can act in any manner they chose," said T. Scott Allen, attorney for the families. "We will appeal."
A few days after the Houston decision, a U.S. appeals court in Raleigh, North Carolina, rejected a Blackwater petition for a rehearing of an appeal to have the case moved from a state court in Moycock where the company is based, and have it adjudicated by the Department of Labor, which decides Defense Base Act claims in the first place.
"The decision was clear: jurisdiction of this case rests with the state court," said Dan Callahan, one of the attorneys for the families of the four killed in Falluja. "This paves the way for holding Blackwater liable and establish guidelines and accountability for contracting firms operating abroad."
Where the case comes to be heard has enormous monetary implications: There is no cap on punitive damages in a state court and past judgments have reached staggering heights. Callahan, for example, won a $934 million jury verdict in a 2003 corporate litigation in California.
The Base Defense Act provides for maximum death benefits of $4,123.12 a month.
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Ukraine Seeks Missile Alliance With Israel
UPI
Oct 11, 2006
Kiev - Pro-Western Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko wants to forge what could be a dramatic and strategically far-reaching missile defense alliance with Israel. Israel Today reported Oct. 4 that Yushchenko "met with Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres and offered strategic cooperation in the area of ballistic missile defense systems and satellite control systems."
Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine's military industries were a central component in supplying the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces. Yushchenko has previously revealed that under his predecessor, President Leonid Kuchma, Ukrainian corporations secretly sold a dozen nuclear-capable cruise missiles to Iran.
Ukraine and Israel have the potential to offer each other a lot in joint ballistic missile and ballistic missile defense cooperation. Ukraine has an enormous and widely dispersed industrial base that Israel lacks, especially in the Donbas, on Don Basin. Israel is exceptionally advanced in its electronic high-tech sector, an area where Ukraine lags. The Ukrainians also lack Israel's massive web of connections and credibility with defense ministries and corporations around the world from the United States and Taiwan to India.
"We will be very glad to cooperate with Israeli scientists and developers in the area of missiles and satellites. Development of advanced technological weaponry could be the basis for further strategic cooperation between the two countries," Yushchenko told Peres according to the Israel Today report.
Peres is a lifelong high tech enthusiast and he was the director of Israel's fledgling nuclear program at Dimona back in the mid-1950s. According to the report, he also suggested during his talks with Yushchenko that Ukraine and Israel could work together to create a new generation of anti-terror weapons and security devices based on nano-technology, another area where Israel is a world leader.
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Venezuela's Chavez says he is banning beer trucks from sales on the street
02:00:10 EDT Oct 11, 2006
Canadian Press
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Venezuela's president has a new public enemy: beer trucks.
President Hugo Chavez said Tuesday he is fed up with seeing beer trucks sell alcohol directly on the streets of poor neighbourhoods. "It's the degeneration of society. It's one of the causes of public drunkenness in the slums," he said as he declared he was putting a ban on the beer runs. "As of today, I want the National Guard to stop the beer trucks and take them to the nearest command post. No more trucks," he said in a televised speech.
Chavez was speaking before participants in a state program aimed at helping alcoholics, the homeless and street children. The crowd had cheered him enthusiastically earlier in his speech, but his beer decree was met with a lukewarm response and scattered applause.
Chavez assured his audience he was not banning the consumption of alcohol.
The leader's order apparently was aimed at trucks that sell beer directly on the streets of poor neighbourhoods, rather than those delivering to liquor stores or other established businesses. Selling alcohol requires a licence.
Although drinking alcohol in public areas is illegal in Venezuela, bottles of beer are often downed on street corners, and it's a preferred thirst-quencher at public rallies - including during some of Chavez's long-running speeches.
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Iraq: The Dirty Little Secret
Study: 655,000 Iraqis Died Due to War
By MALCOLM RITTER
AP Science Writer
Oct 10, 2006
NEW YORK - A controversial new study contends nearly 655,000 Iraqis have died because of the war, suggesting a far higher death toll than other estimates.
The timing of the survey's release, just a few weeks before the U.S. congressional elections, led one expert to call it "politics."
In the new study, researchers attempt to calculate how many more Iraqis have died since March 2003 than one would expect without the war. Their conclusion, based on interviews of households and not a body count, is that about 600,000 died from violence, mostly gunfire. They also found a small increase in deaths from other causes like heart disease and cancer.
"Deaths are occurring in Iraq now at a rate more than three times that from before the invasion of March 2003," Dr. Gilbert Burnham, lead author of the study, said in a statement.
The study by Burnham, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and others is to be published Thursday on the Web site of The Lancet, a medical journal.
An accurate count of Iraqi deaths has been difficult to obtain, but one respected group puts its rough estimate at closer to 50,000. And at least one expert was skeptical of the new findings.
"They're almost certainly way too high," said Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington. He criticized the way the estimate was derived and noted that the results were released shortly before the Nov. 7 election.
"This is not analysis, this is politics," Cordesman said.
The work updates an earlier Johns Hopkins study - that one was released just before the November 2005 presidential election. At the time, the lead researcher, Les Roberts of Hopkins, said the timing was deliberate. Many of the same researchers were involved in the latest estimate.
Speaking of the new study, Burnham said the estimate was much higher than others because it was derived from a house-to-house survey rather than approaches that depend on body counts or media reports.
A private group called Iraqi Body Count, for example, says it has recorded about 44,000 to 49,000 civilian Iraqi deaths. But it notes that those totals are based on media reports, which it says probably overlook "many if not most civilian casualties."
For Burnham's study, researchers gathered data from a sample of 1,849 Iraqi households with a total of 12,801 residents from late May to early July. That sample was used to extrapolate the total figure. The estimate deals with deaths up to July.
The survey participants attributed about 31 percent of violent deaths to coalition forces.
Accurate death tolls have been difficult to obtain ever since the Iraq conflict began in March 2003. When top Iraqi political officials cite death numbers, they often refuse to say where the numbers came from.
The Health Ministry, which tallies civilian deaths, relies on reports from government hospitals and morgues. The Interior Ministry compiles its figures from police stations, while the Defense Ministry reports deaths only among army soldiers and insurgents killed in combat.
The United Nations keeps its own count, based largely on reports from the Baghdad morgue and the Health Ministry.
The major funder of the new study was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Fire erupts in U.S. arms depot in Baghdad
www.chinaview.cn 2006-10-11 08:12:17
BEIJING, Oct. 11 (Xinhuanet) -- A U.S. ammunition depot at a base in southern Baghdad caught fire Tuesday night, causing a series of explosions that jolted the capital, media reports said Wednesday.
"The explosions are from ammunition 'cooking off'," the military said, adding that there was no immediate reports of U.S. casualties.
It was still unclear whether the depot at Forward Operating Base Falcon was hit by an attack. The cause of the fire was not immediately known, Lt. Col. Christopher C. Garver, a U.S. military spokesman, said.
Explosions from detonating tank and artillery ordnance and small-arms ammunition stored at the site went off for hours after the fire erupted.
Large flames and smoke rose from the region, and flashes from the blasts and showers of sparks were visible on the horizon from several miles away in central Baghdad. The blasts came at times sporadically, at times in rapid succession, lasting into the night.
A spokesman at the base said the blaze broke out in an ammunition holding area, where material was kept temporarily.
Iraqi Interior Ministry Jawad al-Bolani said the blasts had shaken three neighborhoods close to the base but the situation was "under control."
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107 bullet-riddled bodies found around Baghdad
www.chinaview.cn 2006-10-11 07:52:24
BEIJING, Oct. 11 (Xinhuanet) -- The Iraqi police have found 107 unidentified bodies in the past two days, most of them believed to be the latest victims of sectarian violence, according to media reports Wednesday.
Baghdad police said 57 bullet-riddled bodies were found around Baghdad between Monday morning and Tuesday morning.
"The number of the unidentified bodies found by police patrols rose to 57 until this morning in different Baghdad neighborhoods," an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua Tuesday.
Most of the bodies were blindfolded and showed signs of torture with bullet holes in different parts.
CNN reported another 50 were found later in the day Tuesday.
The almost daily gruesome body findings, assassinations and explosions in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities are seen as a major setback for the Iraqi government's efforts to stem violence and achieve national reconciliation.
The UN and Iraqi officials estimate that more than 100 Iraqis are killed everyday in insurgent attacks and fighting between Sunniand Shiite factions.
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3 U.S. Marines, 2 soldiers die in Iraq
AP
Tue Oct 10, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Three U.S. Marines and two soldiers were killed in fighting in Iraq, the U.S. command said Wednesday. The Marines, assigned to 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division, died Monday from enemy action in Iraq's western Anbar province, the military said in a statement. It did not provide further details.
Also Monday, a U.S. soldier was killed when his patrol was attacked by insurgents in an eastern part of Baghdad, the military said.
The second soldier, attached to the 25th Combat Aviation Brigade, died of wounds from an explosion during a vehicle patrol Sunday north of the city of Tikrit.
No further details were available, and the soldiers' names were being withheld pending notification of family.
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Baquba: An Unknown City Erupts
By Ali Al-Fadhily & Dahr Jamail
11 October, 2006
Inter Press Service
BAQUBA, Oct 9 (IPS) - The little known city of Baquba is emerging as one of the hotbeds of resistance in Iraq, with clashes breaking out every day.
The violence in this city 50km northeast of Baghdad is also now spreading elsewhere around Diyala province.
"The new waves of terror are now forming a variety that we predicted long ago," a political leader in the city told IPS. "The Iraqi people have complained to everyone, but naturally no one will do anything about it. We know who is in charge and who is responsible and eventually who is to be dammed. It is the government of the United States of America."
The local leader, speaking from his home in Baquba, said the situation in the area was becoming dire in the face of the recent violence.
"The worst is the direct participation of the national security forces in criminal acts, and the U.S. Army's sudden disappearance from the scene as soon as those murderers show up," he said. Many have been killed, and hundreds arrested in the province, he said.
The al-Tawafuq Sunni party has demanded a full investigation into the violence in Baquba, and immediate release of the detained civilians. "We are sure the arrests were made under sectarian flags and those detainees are innocent farmers captured in their own plantations," the group said in a statement.
An Iraqi army colonel told reporters in Diyala last week that that U.S. troops had arrested 10 Iraqi soldiers suspected of sectarian killings. There was no official U.S. comment.
Iraqi MP Muhammad al-Dayni appeared on al-Jazeera television to say that Brigadier al-Kaabi, leader of the fifth division in charge of Diyala province security, had led the arrest of 400 civilians. Hundreds of houses had been looted, he said. Al-Dayni accused the parties in power of supporting such acts, referring to the Shia parties in parliament.
The fighting has intensified now, but Baquba has long been a city of fierce resistance to the occupation. Resistance groups have often frustrated the efforts of the Multi-National Forces (MNF) and Iraqi security forces to bring the city under their control.
Residents of Baquba told IPS that an Iraqi police brigadier-general had used loudspeakers to announce dire warnings to residents.
"We were used to hearing our own government calling us terrorists, Saddamists and Zarqawis before, but this man added new words to the vocabulary like bastards and expressions of that sort," Abu Omar, a law student at Diyala University told IPS. "Yet we were not surprised because we know he was just repeating what his green zone masters have always said."
Mazin al-Zaidy, a resident of Baquba, told IPS that the situation in Diyala province could be the worst in Iraq because people of many ethnicities live in the area. "The MNF and militias concentrate on clearing it of the Arab Sunnis prior to any federalism plan."
Al-Zaidy said "there are Kurds, Shias and Sunnis who share the province, and that has to be altered for the benefit of the first two groups." Al-Zaidy was referring to the towns Mendily, Jalowlaa and surrounding areas that are marked Kurdish on the Kurdistan map.
The influence of each group changes often. "Each day I wake up I don't know who is in control of my city," said a religious sheikh in Baquba who asked to be referred to as Sheikh Ahmed. "One day it is the Americans, the next day a militia, the next day a resistance group."
Diyala province gets little media attention "because of the journalists' fear of going in," said al-Zaidy.
The new violence has ripped apart old traditions, he said. "The people of the province do not understand how these powers could turn it into a sectarian city from a wonderful 1,400 years of community peace and intermarriages."
The U.S. military has announced meanwhile that bomb attacks in Baghdad have hit an all-time high. The number of U.S. soldiers killed is now approaching the 3,000 mark.
The number of Iraqi casualties runs into hundreds of thousands.
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GOP senator wants Iraq war policy change
By ANNE PLUMMER FLAHERTY
Associated Press
Tue Oct 10, 2006
WASHINGTON - Sen. Olympia Snowe joined a growing list of Republicans calling for a change of course in Iraq, a position that could undermine President Bush's election-year assertion that the nation shouldn't set a timetable for troops to come home.
Snowe, a moderate who often bucks the Republican Party line, said in a statement Tuesday more should be done to pressure the Iraqis to take control of their country and make clear U.S. support is not unlimited.
Her remarks echoed those of Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., who last week said Congress should reconsider its options if the security situation - which he described as dire - does not improve in the next couple of months.
Warner is not up for re-election, while Snowe is, although she is considered a shoo-in.
As the Nov. 7 elections inch closer, more and more Republicans have grown louder in expressing their opposition to the White House's handling of the war, which remains unpopular with voters and a thorn in the side of Republicans struggling to maintain control of Congress.
Among those voicing their disappointment with the war are Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, along with Reps. Christopher Shays of Connecticut and Walter Jones of North Carolina.
"As conditions in Iraq continue to worsen, there must be no question among the administration, the Congress and the Iraqi unity government that staying the course is neither an option nor a plan," Snowe said Tuesday.
Last year, the Senate overwhelmingly passed a measure championed by Warner that labeled 2006 the year of transition in Iraq. But a spike in U.S. casualties and ethnic violence kept troop numbers high with no chance troops will return home in large numbers by the time voters head to the poll.
Comment: Here's an idea: get out of Iraq and actually allow Iraqis to control their own country!
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Al-Qaida suspect arrested in Germany
www.chinaview.cn 2006-10-11 02:04:14
BERLIN, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- A 36-year-old Iraqi man has been arrested near the central German city of Osnabrueck on charges of distributing al-Qaida videos on the Internet, police said Tuesday.
Police arrested the suspect, who was identified as Ibrahim R., in his apartment early on Tuesday. It is the first time an al-Qaida suspect was arrested on German soil specifically for spreading terror messages.
Police searched the man's apartment and confiscated a laptop and a number of computer discs. Prosecutors accused him of posting video and audio messages from Osama bin Laden and other major al-Qaida leaders on the Internet.
The Federal Prosecutor's Office has declined to give further details, saying the case was still ongoing.
The arrest comes as Germany is stepping up measures aimed at preventing people from using the Internet to promote terrorism.
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Appeasement: What is it, really?
The Bush Hitler Thing
t r u t h o u t | Reader Submission
Friday 09 January 2004
Dear Sir,
My family was one of Hitler's victims. We lost a lot under the Nazi occupation, including an uncle who died in the camps and a cousin killed by a booby trap. I was terrified when my father went ballistic after finding my brother and me playing with a hand grenade. (I was only 12 at the time, and my brother insisted the grenade was safe.) I remember the rubble and the hardships of 'austerity' - and the bomb craters from Allied bombs. As late as the 1980s, I had to take detours while bombs were being removed - they litter the countryside, buried under parking lots,buildings, and in the canals and rivers to this day. Believe me, I learned a lot about Hitler while I was growing up, both in Europe and here in the US - both my parents were in the war and talked about it constantly, unlike most American families. I spent my earliest years with the second-hand fear that trickled down from their PTSD - undiagnosed and untreated in those days.
I'm no expert on WWII - but I learned a lot about what happened in Germany - and Europe - back in those days. I always wondered how the wonderful German people - so honest, decent, hard-working, friendly, and generous - could ever allow such a thing to happen. (There were camps near my family's home - they still talk about them only in hushed conspiratorial whispers.) I asked a lot of questions - we were only a few kilometers from the German border - and no one ever denied me. My relatives had obviously spent a lot of time thinking about the war - they still haven't forgotten - I don't think anyone can forget such a horrible nightmare. Among the questions I asked:
Why didn't you do anything about the people in the camps?
Everyone was terrified. People 'disappeared' into those camps. Sometimes the Nazis came and lined everyone up, walking behind them - even school children - with a cocked pistol. You never knew when they would just shoot someone in the back of the head. Everyone was terrified. Everyone was disarmed - guns were registered, so all the Nazis had to do was go from house to house and demand the guns.
Didn't you see what was happening?
We saw. There was nothing we could do. Our military had no modern weapons. The Nazis had technology and resources - they just invaded and took over - we were overwhelmed by their air power. They had spies everywhere - people spying on each other, just to have an 'ace in the hole' in case they were accused - and anyone who had a grudge against you could accuse you of something - just an accusation meant you'd disappear. Nobody dared ask where you had gone - anyone who returned was considered suspicious - what had they said, and who did they implicate? It was a climate of fear - there's nothing anyone can do when the government uses fear and imprisonment to intimidate people. The government was above the law - even in Germany, it became 'every man for himself'. Advancement was possible by exposing 'traitors' - anyone who questioned the government. It didn't matter if the people you accused were guilty or not - just the accusation was enough.
Did anyone know what was going on?
We all knew. We imagined the worst because the Nazis made 'examples' of a few people in every town and village. Public torture and execution. The most unspeakable atrocities were committed in full view of everyone. If this is what happened in public, can you imagine what might be going on in the camps? Nobody wanted to know.
Why didn't the German people stop the Nazis?
Life was better, at first, under the Nazis. The war machine invigorated the economy - men had jobs again, and enough money to take care of their family. New building projects were everywhere. The shops were full again - and people could afford good food, culture, and luxuries. Women could stay home in comfort. Crime was reduced. Health care improved. It was a rosy scenario - Hitler brought order and prosperity. His policies won widespread approval because life was better for most Germans, after the misery of reparations and inflation. The people liked the idea of removing the worst elements of society - the gypsies, the homosexuals, the petty criminals - it was easy to elicit support for prosecuting the corrupt 'evil'people poisoning society. Every family was proud of their hometown heroes - the sharply-dressed soldiers they contributed to his program - they were, after all,defending the Fatherland. Continuing a proud tradition that had been defeated and shamed after WWI, the soldiers gave the feeling of power and success to the proud families that showered them with praise and support. Their early victories were reason to celebrate - in spite of the fact that they faced poorly armed inferior forces - further proof that what they were doing was right, and the best thing for the country. The news was full of stories about their bravery and accomplishments against a vile enemy. They were 'liberating' these countries from their corrupt governments.
These are some of the answers I gleaned over the years. As a child, I was fascinated with the Nazis. I thought the German soldiers were really something - that's how strong an impression they made, even after the war. After all, they weren't the ones committing war crimes - they were the pride of their families and communities. It was just the SS and Gestapo that were 'bad'. Now I know better -but that pride in the military was a strong factor for many years, only adding to the mystique of military power - after all, my father had been a soldier too, but in the American army. It took a while to figure out the truth.
Every time I've gone back to Europe, someone has taken me to the 'gardens of stone' - the Allied cemeteries that dot the countryside. With great sadness, my relatives would stand in abject misery, remembering the nightmare, and asking 'Why?'. Maybe that's why they wouldn't support the US invasion of Iraq. They knew war. They knew occupation. And they knew resistance. I saw the building where British flyers hid on their way back to England - smuggled out by brave families that risked the lives of everyone to help the Allies. As a child, I had played in a basement, where the cow lived under the house, as is common there. The same place those flyers hid.
So why, now, when I hear GWB's speeches, do I think of Hitler? Why have I drawn a parallel between the Nazis and the present administration? Just one small reason -the phrase 'Never forget'. Never let this happen again. It is better to question our government - because it really can happen here - than to ignore the possibility.
So far, I've seen nothing to eliminate the possibility that Bush is on the same course as Hitler. And I've seen far too many analogies to dismiss the possibility. The propaganda. The lies. The rhetoric. The nationalism. The flag waving. The pretext of 'preventive war'. The flaunting of international law and international standards of justice. The disappearances of 'undesirable' aliens. The threats against protesters. The invasion of a non-threatening sovereign nation. The occupation of a hostile country. The promises of prosperity and security. The spying on ordinary citizens. The incitement to spy on one's neighbors - and report them to the government. The arrogant triumphant pride in military conquest. The honoring of soldiers. The tributes to 'fallen warriors. The diversion of money to the military. The demonization of government appointed 'enemies'. The establishment of 'Homeland Security'. The dehumanization of 'foreigners'. The total lack of interest in the victims of government policy. The incarceration of the poor and mentally ill. The growing prosperity from military ventures. The illusion of 'goodness' and primacy. The new einsatzgrupen forces. Assassination teams. Closed extralegal internment camps. The militarization of domestic police. Media blackout of non-approved issues. Blacklisting of protesters - including the no-fly lists and photographing dissenters at rallies.
There isn't much doubt in my mind - anyone who compares the history of Hitler's rise to power and the progression of recent events in the US cannot avoid the parallels. It's incontrovertible. Is Bush another Hitler? Maybe not, but with each incriminating event, the parallel grows -it certainly cannot be dismissed. There's too much evidence already. Just as Hitler used American tactics to plan and execute his reign, it looks as if Karl Rove is reading Hitler's playbook to plan world domination - and that is the stated intent of both. From the Reichstag fire to the landing at Nuremberg to the motto of "Gott Mit Uns" to the unprovoked invasion and occupation of Iraq to the insistence that peace was the ultimate goal, the line is unbroken and unwavering.
I'm afraid now, that what may still come to pass is a reign far more savage and barbaric than that of the Nazis. Already, appeasement has been fruitless - it only encourages the brazen to escalate their arrogance and braggadocio. Americans support Bush - by a generous majority - and mass media sings his praises while indicting his detractors - or silencing their opinions completely. The American people seem to care only about the domestic economic situation - and even in that, they are in complete denial. They don't want to hear about Iraq, and Afghanistan is already forgotten. Even the Democratic opposition supports the occupation of Iraq. Everyone seems to agree that Saddam Hussein deserves to be executed -with or without a trial. 'Visitors' are fingerprinted. Guilty until proven innocent. Snipers are on New York City rooftops. When do the Stryker teams start appearing on American streets? They're perfectly suited for 'Homeland Security' - and they've had a trial run in Iraq. The Constitution has been suspended - until further notice. Dick Cheney just mentioned it may be for decades - even a generation, as Rice asserts as well. Is this the start of the 1000 year reign of this new collection of thugs? So it would seem.
I can only hope that in the coming year there will be some sign - some hint - that we are not becoming that which we abhor. The Theory of the Grotesque fares all too well these days. It may not be Nazi Germany - it might be a lot worse.
SL | Wisconsin
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Rumsfeld's Misuse Of History
John Prados
August 31, 2006
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, said the philosopher George Santayana a century ago. Knowing the facts of history is crucial to much of what we do as a nation and a people, but so is how it is used. And the Bush administration's use of history-and specifically its use of "appeasement"-requires comment because it is both dangerous and misleading.
In the past week Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has twice invoked the historical analogy to appeasement-referring to the years just before World War II, culminating in the Munich conference of September 1938-to frame the globe's current struggle with terrorism in apocalyptic terms. Vice President Dick Cheney has used the same analogy, without even gracing it with a name, to defend what he calls the "battle for the future of civilization."
Both sought friendly audiences, confident they would not be challenged. Rumsfeld, most recently, spoke before the American Legion (interesting, isn't it, how the Legion and the VFW have been treated to so many key public manipulations in the past few years) and Cheney at Offut Air Force Base in Nebraska, famous as the home of the Strategic Air Command and today the center of the United States Strategic Command.
Cheney's line, which he has used before also, was that today's jihadists are "not an enemy that can be ignored, or negotiated with, or appeased." Cheney speaks of the enemy as a "totalitarian empire," Rummy refers to it as "the rising threat of a new type of fascism."
At least Rumsfeld acknowledges his resort to historical analogy, recounting his little portion of the Munich story and adding that "once again, we face similar challenges." His history is directly tied to Munich, where Britain and France negotiated with Adolf Hitler a "settlement" that skewered Czechoslovakia but succeeded only in gaining the Allies a few months before Hitler invaded Poland, igniting global conflict.
The Bushies clearly intend to evoke an atmosphere of shattering events, but their history is fractured and misleading, and their use of this analogy is a throwback to the methods that led America into Vietnam, among the nation's greatest errors of the last century. In invoking Munich, Secretary Rumsfeld claims that the Western approach was based upon "a sentiment that took root that contended that if only the growing threats . . . could be accommodated, then the carnage . . . could be avoided." He further presents this as "cynicism and moral confusion" and "a strange innocence" about the world.
None of this is true. There was no mass political movement demanding appeasement of Germany. Rather there was a specific policy choice-made primarily by Sir Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister of the time-to mollify Hitler and gain time for rearmament. In fact, the French wanted to stand on their alliance with the Czechs and fight Hitler, but were persuaded to back down. The British might even have been right within a certain narrow framework: For years they had restricted defense spending and were just starting to correct that, while Hitler's promises-both to his military and his Italian allies-envisioned no war before 1942, which could have enabled an allied military buildup to bear fruit. The widely accepted charge that the Allies were wrong to "appease" Hitler stemmed in part from Neville Chamberlain's extravagant declaration that Munich had brought "peace for our time"-when only a short time later World War II broke out.
That was the lesson of Munich, at least until Vietnam. There the Munich analogy was used repeatedly to justify intervention and escalation. Here is President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1954, writing to Sir Winston Churchill: "We failed to halt . . . Hitler by not acting in unity and in time . . . the beginning of many years of stark tragedy and desperate peril." Eisenhower wanted support to jump into the Vietnam War at the time of Dien Bien Phu. Ironically, Churchill, whom Rummy today makes the hero of his Munich triptych, turned Ike down.
In February 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson invoked Munich in his reasoning for responding to a terrorist incident in the Central Highlands by beginning the bombing of North Vietnam. That summer, when LBJ sent U.S. armies to fight in Vietnam, he invoked Munich again. As Johnson's secretary of state, Dean Rusk repeatedly mentioned the dangers of appeasement. It was the effort to avoid another Munich that led to years of stark tragedy and desperate peril in Vietnam.
The correct lesson to be drawn from Munich today is that when presidents and their administrations raise its specter, it is a sure sign they want to pursue extravagant policies, usually of violence, based on narrow grounds with shaky public support. Today the Munich analogy functions as a provocation, a red flag before a bull. It is dangerous because it claims that the only solution to any situation is to fight-Cheney's point exactly. Having done nothing beyond silly propaganda-despite its own claims-to undermine the jihadists by eliminating the economic and political oppression that form the basis of jihadist appeal, the Bush people counsel that the fight is everything and that talking is "appeasement." We have seen in Lebanon lately just how misguided is that approach.
Bush administration history is like their reality-faith-based. President Bush himself, along with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, characterized those who saw and spoke the truth about the run-up to the Iraq war as "revisionists"-historians who try to change the conventional wisdom about the past. Cheney not long ago declared it was "inexcusable" to repeat that truth. The same speeches that contain the Munich claims portray the Iraqi and Afghan people as "awakening to a future of hope and freedom" (Cheney) and say the U.S. strategy in Iraq "has not changed" (Rumsfeld).
The faith is that if you repeat falsehoods enough times the public will believe them. There is another historical analogy there-a real one-to Adolf Hitler's henchman, Josef Goebbels. He called it the "Big Lie." No wonder the administration's flacks need friendly audiences.
John Prados is a senior analyst with the National Security Archive in Washington, DC. His forthcoming book is Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA (Ivan Dee Publisher).
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Appeasing the Dictators
by Troy Skeels
Volume 6, #17 April 10, 2002
Eat the State!
Comparisons between the Bush administration and aspects of Nazi Germany are often overblown but they are inevitable. Variations on the theme appear over and over again in the post WWII world. A rapacious Nazi state is probably a possibility in any industrial state. It doesn't seem to be a question of particular national values. No state, including the U.S., is morally immune to fascism. The danger posed by any expansionist authoritarian regime is proportional to its strength, not its espousal of democratic principles.
Hitler, of course, rose to power first with the acquiescence of the German people and especially the congress. He didn't need a lot of support, just resignation. Later the European powers followed their own policies of "appeasement," as he began to force his way upon the world. Had he been opposed early, both within Germany and without, his worse instincts may have been thwarted.
It seems at least that any powerful ambitious nation left unchecked will only grow bolder and more ambitious. The likely outcome has been recorded time and time again.
Germany's European neighbors watched Hitler break international treaties to build up his military. They watched quietly as he used the Spanish Civil war as a testing ground for his new military technology. They acquiesced and even assisted his demand to annex part of Czech territory. His ally Mussolini launched a brutal invasion of Italy's former colony of Ethiopia while the world halfheartedly protested.
The world's most powerful nations didn't do anything because they were mainly concerned with maintaining international trade. And a fascist Germany was seen as good for trade and thereby world peace -- so long as Hitler restricted his conquests to less powerful and more marginalized peoples. By the time Hitler launched his invasion of Poland, it was too late for anything but world war.
More recently, the dangers of appeasing hungry dictators was invoked by the first Bush administration to justify the war on Iraq. Allowing Hussein to keep Kuwait, it was argued, would only encourage him to further adventures.
The same loud alarm about appeasement could be sounded made about the USA's acquiescence to Sharon's bloody excursions in Lebanon and Palestine. But the most relevant example of the dangers of appeasement for us in the U.S. is the activities of the current Bush administration.
The German Congress gave Hitler a temporary yet sweeping security mandate. The courts overlooked various transgressions of the Constitution. Soon after, he that owned the congress. Piece by piece his supporters saw his promises of labor and economic reform betrayed. By the time the real campaign of horror began, by the time there was serious opposition, it was too late.
Britain and France were content to appease Hitler's first moves because he wasn't in principle doing anything they weren't doing. It was when he went for a monopoly that the other governments decided he should be stopped. Until the U.S. entered the war -- two years after the European War began, when Pearl Harbor occurred -- the government suppressed information about the death camps, and U.S. corporations expanded their ventures with German industry.
That's just business. Then and now. And it is history threatening to rewrite itself.
Going along with Bush on his promise to make us safe from terrorism is only useful if he is really going to make us safe from terrorism. That's always been questionable. As time goes on and the Bush administration pursues its unilateral course, it's become quite doubtful.
How much longer can we afford to appease the intolerant hawks in the Bush administration, or to allow our congressmen and senators to continue to appease them?
While the White House plays out their fantasies of neocolonial world domination, it is the people of the U.S. and the world who pay the price.
The American public began paying vastly beginning on September 11. Bush and the National Security Industry got more powers and money after proving themselves incapable of )or uninterested in) protecting us from the predictable blowback from their previous activities.
While the Bush administration is chafing to inflict slaughter and immolation on "Saddam Hussein," it is the Iraqi people who will pay the massive price. As they have already been paying the price, for our ten-year campaign against their renegade leader, who hasn't got a scratch. The Iraqi people are caught in the middle of an ongoing feud between power-mad warlords. I'm sure I have more common interest with the ordinary Iraqi people than I have with George Bush. And it seems that George Bush has more in common with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden than he does with ordinary Americans. They've all got bunkers, for one thing.
Bush, his dad, Cheney Rumsfeld, Aschroft, Wolfowitz et al. don't feel the real repercussions of their actions. They can afford to throw away lives like chessmen for their piece of the action and of history.
And the Congress, the courts, the Democrats, the privileged, while they may disagree with particular policies, none of them protest against a pain they don't feel.
Meanwhile, a relative few corporate insiders loot the world's resources and undertake massive frauds for their own enrichment. A relative few warlords, generals and presidents unleash personal rampages in the name of peace and order.
The George W. Bush White House appears to be working toward World War III without regard for possible repercussions. It isn't there yet, and it may not be where they are gong. But each time they are allowed to go a little farther, take a little more, feel more and more powerful and unstoppable, the world gets a little more dangerous.
And it can be made safer the same way: a little bit at a time. Talking, marching, letters to the editor, letters to elected officials. Maybe Hitler couldn't have been prevented altogether, but even a little more opposition at the beginning might have had a profound effect on what came later.
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Abusing history to make history
BY MATEIN KHALID
Khaleej Times
9 September 2006
THE Pavlovian reflex of recent American Presidents to evoke World War II metaphors during times of conflict stems from the "good war" mythology created by Hollywood and marketed worldwide for three generations. So, Saddam Hussein was an "Arab Hitler", those who oppose the decision to invade Iraq are the voices of appeasement, Bush's enemies are "Islamic fascists" sworn to destroy Mom, apple pie and Hicksville Middle American values.
While the fascist metaphor needlessly insulted the religion of a billion Muslims (who calls Hitler a Christian fascist?), I was intrigued by the eerie similarities between the Middle East in our time and the rise of European fascism in 1920's.
The fascist ethos in Europe was a populist assault against the bankers, politicians and aristocrats who sleepwalked into the horror of the Great War in 1914. The Jews of course, were the most visible symbol of the globalist movement that was the logical endgame of the Industrial Revolution and the age of imperial conquest. Ironically, the macroeconomic horrors of the postwar decade - Weimer Germany's hyperinflation and the collapse of the Reichbank, the Versailles Treaty reparations, trade protectionism, the post Black Tuesday stock market crash and contagion in the banking dominoes of Wall Street and Europe - all reinforced the fascist claim that Jewish traitors had double - crossed Wilhelmine Germany and corrupted its society, proverbial "war profiteers". Shame, defeat, the insecurities of globalisation, besieged cultures, the search for a scapegoat, xenophobia and hatred for a liberal secular elite defined Hitler's Brownshirts and Mussolini's fascisti, as it does Pakistani or Iran politics now. After all, Hitler was elected Chacellor of the Third Reich by a German middle class enamoured by the Fuhrer's revolutionary National Socialist tirades against Bolsheviks, Jewish bankers and "degenerate" cosmopolitan intellectuals, a middle class impoverished by the most pathological inflation experience in modern times, the nightmare of Weimar.
It is all too easy for American ideologues who view the tragedy and pain of the Middle East as a "war of civilisation", the latest East-West existential crusade, to speak in terms of Hitler, appeasement and Munich. As the resurrected Taleban under Mullah Dadullah threatens NATO with an Afghan Diem Bien Phu and the American commitment deepens in Iraq's sectarian nightmare, the neocon high priest of US foreign policy in the White House, the Republican think tanks and defense are even more strident in their "Islamofascist" rhetoric. It is mission critical to dehumanise the enemy, particularly if the freedom loving Darth Vaders, the princes of darkness, are winning the war. Osama's medieval caliphate, Mullah Omar's Taleban thus morphed into our generation's Evil Empire / Nazi Germany, the existential threat to the West that evokes the bitter memories of the past East-West tragedies. So, it must have been when Xerexes's Persian Empire invaded the Greek isles, when Charles Martel faced the Spanish Arab armies outside Poitiers, when the Sultan's Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa besieged Vienna, when the Mediterranean Sea was an Ottoman lake, when Sultan Salahuddin retook Jerusalem from the Frankish knights at Hittin Cross.
As political nemesis finally overtakes George Bush and Tony Blair, they depict America's foes as "fascist", and domestic antiwar opposition as appeasement. Iran's President Ahmedinijad instigates the anti-Muslim hysteria in the Anglo-American chancelleries of power and the conservative media with his callous comments on the Holocaust and Israel's right to existence as a sovereign state. The gutter press in the Middle East hurls anti-Semitic abuse at the Jewish people unfairly making the global diaspora complicit in Israel's war crimes in the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon. Ahmedinijad cannot claim to be the champion of Islamic civilisation and sponsor Holocaust cartoons without being dismissed as an anti-Semite or without wounding the faith he professes to serve. Ironically, Ahmedinijads's outburst helps Bush and Rumsfeld brand challenges to Pax Americana in the killing fields of the Sunni Triangle or Afghanistan as a replay of the 1930's. They help Bush rally an American population horrified by the rising body count in Iraq to bankroll the escalation of his unwinnable wars, help justify budget deficits that threaten to bankrupt the US.
Since so many neocon Republicans are rabid Zionists allied to Israel's hawks, Bush's Nazi / Hitler allusions evoke a visceral resonance at home. Arafat, Gaddafi and Saddam were all once "Hitlers" to the neocon - Zionist Churchills in Washington but now Osama, Dr Zawahari, Sayyid Nasrullah and the new President of Iran are our generation's Uncle Adolf wannabes.
Bush's "Islamofascist" outbursts are not new. To Reagans's hawks, the Nicaragnan Contras were "commie scum", the USSR an "evil empire," critics of Latin American - CIA death squads appeasers, Bolshies and Sandalistas.
The November elections to the US Congress, public disgust and disillusionment with the "war on terror", Israel's failure against Hezbollah, incompetence and battlefield losses in Iraq, the Iranian uranium enrichment programme and the terrorist threat from Al Qaeda all motivate Bush to whitewash his failure, to rant against "Islamofascists". Even secular Syria, Shia Hezbollah, Iraqi Sunni insurgents, Afghan warlords and Hamas nationalists are now members of the "Islamofascist" axis of evil. Like every demagogue since, well, Hitler, President Bush abuses history to make history.
Matein Khalid is a Dubai based investment banker
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Fascists? Look who's talking
By Jim Lobe
Sep 2, 2006
Asia Times
WASHINGTON - The aggressive new campaign by the administration of President George W Bush to depict US foes in the Middle East as "fascists" and its domestic critics as "appeasers" owes a great deal to steadily intensifying efforts by the right-wing press over the past several months to draw the same comparison.
The Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News Network and the Weekly Standard, as well as the Washington Times, which is controlled by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, and the
neo-conservative New York Sun, have consistently and with increasing frequency framed the challenges faced by Washington in the region in the context of the rise of fascism and Nazism in the 1930s, according to a search of the Nexis database.
All of those outlets, as well as two other right-wing US magazines - the National Review and The American Spectator - far outpaced their commercial rivals in the frequency of their use of keywords and names such as "appeasement", "fascism" and "Hitler", particularly with respect to Iran and its controversial president, Mahmud Ahmadinejad.
For example, Nexis cited 56 uses of "Islamofascist" or "Islamofascism" in separate programs or segments aired by Fox News, compared with 24 by CNN, over the past year. Even more striking, the same terms were used in 115 different articles or columns in the Washington Times, compared with only eight in the Washington Post over the same period, according to a breakdown by Nexis.
Similarly, the Washington Times used the words "appease" or "appeasement" - a derogatory reference to efforts by British prime minister Neville Chamberlain to avoid war with Nazi Germany before the latter's invasion of Poland - in 25 different articles or columns that dealt with alleged threats posed by Ahmadinejad, compared with six in the Post and only three in the New York Times.
Israel-centered neo-conservatives and other hawks have long tried to depict foreign challenges to US power as replays of the 1930s in order to rally public opinion behind foreign interventions and high defense budgets and against domestic critics.
During the Cold War, they attacked domestic critics of the Vietnam War and later the Ronald Reagan administration's "Contra war" against Nicaragua - and even Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon - as "isolationists" and "appeasers" who failed to understand that their opposition in effect served the interests of an "evil" Soviet Union whose ambitions for world conquest were every bit as threatening and real as those of the Axis powers in World War II.
Known as "the Good War", the conflict against Germany and Japan remains irresistible as a point of comparison for hawks caught up in more recent conflicts - from the first Gulf War when former president George H W Bush compared Iraq's Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler; to the Balkan wars when neo-conservatives and liberal interventionists alike described Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic in similar terms; to the younger Bush's "global war on terrorism" (GWOT), which he and his supporters have repeatedly tried to depict as the latest in a series of existential struggles against "evil" and "totalitarians" that began with World War II.
Given the growing public disillusionment in the US not only with the Iraq war but with Bush's handling of the larger GWOT as well - not to mention the imminence of the mid-term congressional elections in November and the growing tensions with Ahmadinejad's Iran over its nuclear program - it is hardly surprising that both the administration and its hawkish supporters are trying harder than ever to identify their current struggles, including last month's conflict between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, specifically with the war against "fascism" more than 60 years ago.
As noted by the Associated Press (AP) this week, "fascism" or "Islamic fascism", a phrase used by Bush himself two weeks ago and used to encompass everything from Sunni insurgents, al-Qaeda and Hamas to Shi'ite Hezbollah and Iran to secular Syria, has become the "new buzzword" for Republicans.
In a controversial speech on Tuesday, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld was even more direct, declaring that Washington faced a "new type of fascism" and, in an explicit reference to the failure of Western countries to confront Hitler in the 1930s, assailing critics for neglecting "history's lessons" by "believ(ing) that somehow vicious extremists can be appeased".
But Rumsfeld's remarks, which drew bitter retorts from leading Democrats, followed a well-worn path trod with increasing intensity by the neo-conservative and right-wing media over the past year, according to the Nexis survey. Significantly, it did not include the Wall Street Journal, whose editorial pages have been dominated by neo-conservative opinion, particularly analogies between the rise of fascism and the challenges faced by the US in the Middle East, since September 11, 2001.
Thus the Washington Times published 95 articles and columns that featured the words "fascism" or "fascist" and "Iraq" over the past year, twice as many as appeared in the New York Times during the same period. More than half of the Washington Times' articles were published in just the past three months - three times as many as appeared in the New York Times.
Similarly, the National Review led all magazines and journals with 66 such references over the past year, followed by 48 in The American Spectator and 14 by the Weekly Standard. Together, those three publications accounted for more than half of all articles with those words published by the more than three dozen US periodicals catalogued by Nexis since last September.
The results were similar for "appease" or "appeasement" and "Iraq". Led by the Review, the same three journals accounted for more than half the articles (175) that included those words in some three dozen US magazines over the past year. As for newspapers, the Washington Times led the list with 46 articles, 50% more than the New York Times, which also had fewer articles than its crosstown neo-conservative rival, the much smaller New York Sun.
A search on Nexis for articles and columns that included "Iran" and "fascist" or "fascism" found that the Sun and the Times topped the newspaper list by a substantial margin, as did the Review, the Spectator, and the Standard among the magazines and journals. Nearly one-third of all such references over the past year were published in August, according to the survey.
Nexis, which also surveys the Canadian press, found that newspapers owned by CanWest Global Communications, a group that owns the country's Global Television Network as well as the National Post, the Ottawa Citizen and the Montreal Gazette and several other regional newspapers, were also among the most consistent propagators of the "fascism" paradigm and ranked far ahead of other Canadian outlets in the frequency with which they used keywords such as "appeasement" and "fascist" in connection with Iraq and Iran.
The CanWest Global group is run by members of the Asper family whose foreign-policy views have been linked to prominent hardline neo-conservatives in the US and the right-wing Likud Party in Israel.
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The Gallery of "Bush = Hitler" Allusions
16 June 2005
David R. Hoffman (Legal Editor of PRAVDA)
In "Bush vs Hitler", the Legal Editor of Russia's classiest newspaper doesn't hold back. You half expect the picture editor to chuck in a photo of Bush with a Hitler mustache, and use a swastika as the 's' in his name. Oh, hang on, they do have a picture of Bush with a Hitler mustache and using a swastika as the 's' in his name:
In fact, several disturbing analogies exist between George W. Bush and history's most infamous fascist, Adolph Hitler: Both men assumed power in defiance of the will of the majority; both men used "great lies" to pursue their warmongering agendas; both men preyed upon humanity's basest instincts to disseminate those "great lies"; both men were appeased by the British government, Hitler through Neville Chamberlain and Bush through Tony Blair; both men were willing to use national tragedies to justify the destruction of civil liberties, Hitler through the burning of the Reichstag and Bush through the September 11th terrorist attacks; both men were/are suspected of either participating in, or ignoring warnings about the imminence of, these tragedies in order to enhance their political stature and power; both men [exploit(ed)] a culture of death for political self-aggrandizement, Hitler through his well-publicized genocide campaigns, and Bush who, while governor of Texas, routinely denied DNA tests to death row inmates, even though such tests could prevent wrongful executions; both men were willing to appeal to racism, Hitler through his quest for a "master race," and Bush through his condemnation of affirmative action policies, which primarily benefit racial minorities. [...] both men reveled in war and exploited the military to satiate their personal ambitions and vendettas; both men used war to enrich their political cronies; both men demonstrated contempt for international law and the concerns of the world community; and both men believed they were/are on some holy crusade inspired by a "divine province" that placed them into power. [...]
September 2004 update: he's done it again.
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Health and Nature
Water for millions at risk as glaciers melt away
October 11, 2006
The Guardian
- Crisis threatens parts of South America and Asia
- Decline accelerates as global warming takes hold
The world's glaciers and ice caps are now in terminal decline because of global warming, scientists have discovered. A survey has revealed that the rate of melting across the world has sharply accelerated in recent years, placing even previously stable glaciers in jeopardy. The loss of glaciers in South America and Asia will threaten the water supplies of millions of people within a few decades, the experts warn.
Georg Kaser, a glaciologist at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, who led the research, said: "The glaciers are going to melt and melt until they are all gone. There are not any glaciers getting bigger any more."
Loss of land-based ice is one of the clearest signals of global temperature rise, and the state of glaciers has become a key argument in the debate over climate change. Last year, New Scientist magazine published a letter from the television botanist David Bellamy, a renowned climate sceptic, which claimed that 555 of 625 glaciers measured by the World Glacier Monitoring Service have been growing since 1980. His claim was quickly discredited, but the perception that glaciers are both growing and shrinking remains.
Dr Kaser said that "99.99% of all glaciers" were now shrinking. Increased winter snowfall meant that a few, most notably in New Zealand and Norway, got bigger during the 1990s, he said, but a succession of very warm summers since then had reversed the trend. His team combined different sets of measurements which used stakes and holes drilled into the ice to record the change in mass of more than 300 glaciers since the 1940s. They extrapolated these results to cover thousands of smaller and remote glaciers not directly surveyed.
The results revealed that the world's glaciers and ice caps - defined as all land-based ice except the mighty Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets - began to shrink far more quickly in 2001. On average, the world's glaciers and ice caps lost enough water between 1961 and 1990 to raise global sea levels by 0.35-0.4 mm each year. For 2001-2004, the figure rose to 0.8-1mm each year.
Writing in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the scientists say: "Late 20th century glacier wastage is essentially a response to post-1970 global warming." Dr Kaser said: "There is very, very strong evidence that this is down to human-caused changes in the atmosphere."
Emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide trap heat in the atmosphere, warming the surface. One of the first impacts of glacier melting is likely to be in South America. In August, a report from 20 UK-based environment and development groups warned that Andean glaciers are melting so fast that some are expected to disappear within 15-25 years.
This would deny major cities water supplies and put populations and food supplies at risk in Colombia, Peru, Chile, Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina and Bolivia.
Other countries are noticing the effects. Studies show snow and ice cover in the eastern Himalayas has shrunk by about 30% since the 1970s. Melting glaciers have created lakes in the mountains which could burst and cause widespread flooding. Of 150 glaciers that once stood in Glacier National Park in the northern US, only 27 remain. The US Environmental Protection Agency says the biggest are a third the size they were in 1850. Continued warming could melt them completely by 2030.
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Engineering food at the molecular level
By Barnaby J. Feder
The New York Times
October 10, 2006
The first generation of nanotechnology-based food industry products has entered the market, raising new issues for the Food and Drug Administration.
What if the candy maker Mars could come up with an additive to the coating of its M&Ms and Skittles that would keep them fresher longer and inhibit melting? Or if scientists at Unilever could shrink the fat particles (and thereby the calories) in premium ice cream without sacrificing its taste and feel?
These ideas are still laboratory dreams. The common thread in these research projects and in product development at many other food companies is nanotechnology, the name for a growing number of techniques for manipulating matter in dimensions as small as single molecules.
Food companies remain wary of pushing the technology--which is named for the nanometer, or a billionth of a meter--too far and too fast for safety-conscious consumers. But they are tantalized by nanotechnology's capacity to create valuable and sometimes novel forms of everyday substances, like food ingredients and packaging materials, simply by reducing them to sizes that once seemed unimaginable.
Most of the hoopla and a lot of the promise for nanotechnology lies in other industries, including electronics, energy and medicine. But the first generation of nanotechnology-based food industry products, including synthetic food colorings, frying oil preservatives and packaging coated with antimicrobial agents, has quietly entered the market.
The commercial uses of the technology now add up to a $410 million sliver of the $3 trillion global food market, according to Cientifica, a British market research firm that specializes in nanotechnology coverage. Cientifica forecasts that nanotechnology's share will grow to $5.8 billion by 2012, as other uses for it are developed.
A challenge for regulators
Mindful of the adverse reaction from some consumers over the introduction of genetically engineered crops, the food industry hopes regulators will come up with supportive guidelines that will also allay consumers' fears. That has put a spotlight on the Food and Drug Administration's first public hearing Tuesday on how it should regulate nanotechnology, with a portion of the agenda specifically about food and food additives. No policy changes are expected this year.
"To their credit, the FDA is trying to get a handle on what's out there," said Michael K. Hansen, senior scientist at Consumers Union, one of 30 groups that have signed up to speak at the meeting.
But coping with nanotechnology will be a daunting challenge for the agency, according to a report last week by a former senior FDA official, whose analysis was sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a Washington policy group. Michael R. Taylor, a former deputy commissioner for policy at the agency, said the FDA lacked the resources and, in the case of cosmetics, dietary supplements and food, the full legal authority needed to protect consumers and also foster innovation.
Industry representatives and analysts are worried that nanotechnology will suffer the same fate as genetic engineering, which was quickly embraced as a breakthrough for drug makers but has been fiercely opposed, especially in Europe, when used in crops, fish and livestock.
Many of the same groups fighting genetic engineering in agriculture have been arguing for regulators to clamp down on nanotechnology, in general, and its use in food and cosmetics, in particular, until more safety testing has been completed.
"I'm amazed at how far it's gone already," said Ronnie Cummins, director of the Organic Consumers Group, an advocate for organic products based in Finland, Minn. "Compared to nanotechnology, I think the threat of genetic engineering is tame."
So far, there have been no confirmed reports of public health or environmental problems related to nanotechnology. But troubling laboratory tests suggest some nanoscale particles may pose novel health risks by, for instance, slipping easily past barriers to the brain that keep larger particles out. Thus, the same attributes that could make the technology valuable for delivering drugs could also make it hazardous.
More important, everyone agrees that there have been few rigorous studies of the actual behavior of the newly engineered nanoscale materials in humans and the environment. Those that have been completed fall far short of duplicating the range of conditions the nanoparticles would encounter in general commerce. And few laboratory studies have focused on the fate of particles that are eaten rather than inhaled or injected.
"Lack of evidence of harm should not be a proxy for reasonable certainty of safety," the Consumers Union said in testimony submitted to the FDA for today's meeting. The language was carefully chosen. "Reasonable certainty of safety" is what food companies must demonstrate to the FDA before they can introduce a new food additive.
The Consumers Union and some other groups are suggesting that the agency automatically classify all new nanoscale food ingredients, including those now classified as safe in larger sizes, as new additives. And they want the same standards extended to cover food supplement companies, some of which have been marketing traditional herbal and mineral therapies in what they say are new nanoscale forms that increase their effectiveness. Some are also calling for mandatory labeling of products with synthetic nanoscale ingredients, no matter how small the quantity.
FDA officials said last week that treating every new nanotechnology product that consumers swallow as a food additive might compromise the agency's mandate to foster innovation and might not be within its authority. Such a move would also be hobbled by the lack of agreement on safety testing standards for the wide range of nanoscale innovations in the pipeline. In addition, the agency lacks the staff to handle that scale of oversight.
"That would be a sea change for us," said Laura Tarantino, director of the FDA's Office of Food Additive Safety.
Simply defining nanotechnology may also be a hurdle. BASF has been widely considered a pioneer for products like its synthetic lycopene, an additive that substitutes for the natural lycopene extracted from tomatoes and other fruits. Lycopene, widely used as a food coloring, is increasingly valued for its reported heart and anticancer benefits. But BASF's particles average 200 to 400 nanometers in diameter, about the same as the natural pigment, and well above the 100-nanometer threshold that many experts consider true nanotechnology.
Unilever has never disclosed the dimensions of its shrunken fat particles. Trevor Gorin, a Unilever spokesman in Britain, said in an e-mail message that reports about the project have been misleading.
Given the uncertainty about the risks of consuming new nano products, many analysts expect near-term investment to focus on novel food processing and packaging technology. That is the niche targeted by Sunny Oh, whose start-up company, OilFresh, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., is marketing a novel device to keep frying oil fresh. OilFresh grinds zeolite, a mineral, into tiny beads averaging 20 nanometers across and coats them with an undisclosed material. Packed into a shelf inside the fryer, the beads interfere with chemical processes that break down the oil or form hydrocarbon clusters, Oh says. As a result, restaurants can use oil longer and transfer heat to food at lower temperatures, although they still need traditional filters to remove food waste from the oil.
An aversion to controversey
Oh said OilFresh will move beyond restaurants into food processing by the end of the month, when it delivers a 1,000-ton version of the device to a "midsized potato chip company" that he said did not want to be identified.
The desire to avoid controversy has made even the largest food companies, like Kraft Foods, leery about discussing their interest in nanotechnology. Kraft, the second-largest food processor after Nestle, was considered the industry's nanotechnology pacesetter in 2000. That is when it announced the founding of an international alliance of academic researchers and experts at government labs to pursue basic research in nanotechnology sponsored by Kraft.
The Nanotek Consortium, as Kraft called the group, produced a number of patents for the company, but Kraft pulled back from its high-profile connection with nanotechnology two years ago. Manuel Marquez, the research chemist Kraft appointed to organize the consortium, moved to Philip Morris USA, a sister subsidiary of Altria that now sponsors the consortium under a new name--the Interdisciplinary Network of Emerging Science and Technologies.
Kraft still sends researchers to industry conferences to make what it calls "generic" presentations about the potential uses of nanotechnology in the food industry. But the company declines to specify its use of or plans for the technology.
FDA officials say companies like Kraft are voluntarily but privately providing them with information about their activities. But many independent analysts say the level of disclosure to date falls far short of what will be needed to create public confidence.
"Most of the information is in companies and very little is published," said Jennifer Kuzma, an associate director of the Center for Science, Technology, and Public Policy at the University of Minnesota, who has been tracking reports of nanotechnology use in food and agriculture.
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Cola consumption linked to weaker bones in women
Reuters
Tue Oct 10, 2006
NEW YORK - Women who want to keep their bones strong may want to keep their cola consumption to a minimum, a new study suggests.
In a study of more than 2,500 adults, Dr. Katherine L. Tucker of Tufts University in Boston and colleagues found that women who consumed cola daily had lower bone mineral density (BMD) in their hips than those who drank less than one serving of cola a month.
"Because BMD is strongly linked with fracture risk, and because cola is a popular beverage, this is of considerable public health importance," the authors write in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Studies in teen girls have tied heavy soft drink consumption to fractures and lower BMD, the researchers note, but it is not clear if this is because they're drinking less milk, or if it is due to any harmful effects of soda itself.
To investigate this question in adults, the researchers measured BMD in the spine and at three points on the hips in 1,413 women and 1,125 men participating in a study of the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis.
While there was no association between soft drinks in general and BMD, the researchers found that women who drank the most cola had significantly less dense bones in their hips. The greater their intake, the thinner the bones, and the relationship was seen for diet, regular, and non-caffeinated colas.
Cola consumption had no effect on BMD in men.
Women who drank more cola did not drink less milk, but they did consume less calcium and had lower intakes of phosphorus in relation to calcium. Cola contains phosphoric acid, the researchers note, which impairs calcium absorption and increases excretion of the mineral. Caffeine has also been linked to osteoporosis, they add.
"No evidence exists that occasional use of carbonated beverages, including cola, is detrimental to bone," they note. "However, unless additional evidence rules out an effect, women who are concerned about osteoporosis may want to avoid the regular use of cola beverages."
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Pour on 'maggot juice' to help heal wounds
Andy Coghlan
NewScientist.com
09 October 2006
Bandages containing fluids secreted by maggots could help accelerate the body's healing process, research suggests.
Live maggots are sometimes applied to chronic wounds because they eat dead tissue, but leave healthy tissue alone, boosting healing. But now it has been demonstrated that the fluids produced by maggots also contain enzymes that actually accelerate tissue repair.
Armed with the new findings, researchers in the UK hope to produce wound-dressings impregnated with the active maggot components. The idea is that, as well as protecting the wound, the dressings will speed up healing without the "yuk factor" involved with using live maggots.
"If you can take the active components out, the approach would be much more versatile," say Stephen Britland, who is developing the dressing at the University of Bradford in the UK.
Repair cells
Britland and colleagues established the wound-healing capacity of "maggot juice" by applying extracts of the secretion to layers of cells that mimic skin. When they created artificial, circular "wounds" in the layers, the wounds healed fastest when exposed to the extracts.
They suggest that protease enzymes in the juice enable repair cells to move more swiftly and freely within the wound site. "They all march in unison and fill the hole significantly quicker," says co-team leader, David Pritchard at the University of Nottingham in the UK.
The researchers showed that the holes healed just as quickly whether the juice was applied directly or in a prototype gel which could be developed into a wound dressing.
Britland says delivering precisely the right dose of maggot enzymes is crucial. "Too little and the clinical objectives will not be met, too much could disrupt tissue regeneration," he says. But he adds that suspending the enzymes in the gel allows quantities to be carefully controlled.
A tissue-regenerating dressing incorporating the enzymes is being developed commercially by AGT Sciences in Bradford, UK, a company spun out from the university, but Britland says it will be at least another three years before this is ready to market. The researcher's next step, beginning in November 2006, is to scrutinise in unprecedented detail how maggots heal wounds in real patients.
Journal reference: Biotechnology Progress (DOI: 10.1021/bp0601600)
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Philippine volcano spews ash for second day
Oct 11, 2006, 6:58 GMT
Manila - A restive volcano in the eastern Philippines spewed ash for the second day Wednesday after four months of relative calm, government volcanologists said.
Mount Bulusan in Sorsogon province, 405 kilometres south-east of Manila, blasted a thick column of ash into the sky on Tuesday afternoon and early Wednesday morning.
Renato Solidum, director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS), said several villages in the nearby towns of Irosin and Bulusan were covered by the ash fall.
He said volcanologists were studying whether the volcano was nearing a violent eruption. He added that PHIVOLCS has not yet raised the current alert level, which was at one out of five.
Bulusan volcano has been spewing columns of ash and showing other signs of unrest since March.
The 1,565-metre Bulusan is one of the country's most active volcanoes. It has erupted 15 times, with the most recent recorded in 1994 and 1995.
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In search of meteorites
October 10, 2006
By BILL HETHCOCK THE GAZETTE
Imagine searching for marble-size rocks in a 50-mile strip between Penrose and Ellicott.
That's essentially what meteorite hunter and collector Robert Ward was doing Tuesday.
One of the brightest meteors reported in recent years slow-danced across Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado the night of Oct. 1, possibly dropping meteorites toward the tail end of its trip.
Ward said he has chased fireballs worldwide for 20 years, and this is the most impressive.
"This one traveled amazingly far, amazingly low, and amazingly slowly," he said. "It was a very big, very bright fireball seen by a lot of people."
Jeff and Pam Holmberg are two of those people.
The husband and wife were watching television in their house north of Westcliffe when Jeff looked out the window and saw the fireball soar over the Sangre de Cristo mountain range.
Pam was dozing off after a full day of football watching.
"I started hootin' and hollerin' and she came out of the chair like a shot," Jeff Holmberg said.
He and his wife ran outside in time to see the main fireball break into three or four pieces. Jeff Holmberg scrambled up a ladder to the roof and watched the meteor pieces disappear into the northeast horizon toward Colorado Springs.
"It was a big, bright light with a smoke trail behind it," he said. "It looked like the landing light on a big jet."
The Holmbergs estimated the fireball took 20 seconds to pass from horizon to horizon.
"I was just incredible how close it seemed," Pam Holmberg said. "It was floating across, so bright, it seemed like you could just reach out and touch it."
Eyewitnesses and cameras that capture the whole sky in Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona caught the fireball at 11:16 p.m on Oct. 1, said Chris Peterson, an astronomer and a researcher at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
Witnesses also reported hearing the sonic boom, a sound similar to thunder. The sonic boom is heard several minutes after the fireball is seen because it takes the sound that long to travel to earth from more than 20 miles in the air, Peterson said.
The fireball traveled generally southwest to northeast, beginning northeast of Phoenix, cutting across northwest New Mexico and ending east of Colorado Springs.
It was captured by sky cameras at the Guffey School and at Cloudbait Observatory north of Guffey, which Peterson runs, as well as by sky cameras in New Mexico.
Camera data suggests the full flight lasted at least 45 seconds - an eternity for a meteor, Peterson said.
"It was very, very long," he said. "It was going about as slow as a meteor gets. To see a meteor that goes on for more than half a minute is remarkable."
Witnesses and cameras show the meteor breaking into multiple pieces in a long train extending at least 70 miles from southern Colorado to Colorado Springs, Peterson said. He described the breakup pattern as "extremely unusual." Usually meteors fade out, but videos show this one split into a long string of individual fireballs, Peterson said.
Meteorites may have dropped over the central San Luis Valley, in the Sangre de Cristo mountains, across the Wet Mountain Valley and continuing to Ellicott, 20 miles east of Colorado Springs.
Ward, who is from Arizona, is focusing his hunt for space rocks between between Penrose and Ellicott.
He started by talking to people at fire stations, gas stations and convenience stores and asking if anyone had seen or heard anything unusual.
Ward found Jeff Holmberg at the Wet Mountain Fire Protection District, where Homberg volunteers. Holmberg had told his skeptical fellow firefighters about what he'd seen.
"The boys at the fire station just kind of grinned and shook their heads and asked me about aliens and stuff," he said.
A couple of days later, Ward walked in and asked if anyone had seen a possible meteor. Holmberg invited Ward to his house for breakfast and told him his story over biscuits and gravy.
The men climbed on Holmberg's roof. Ward took compass readings and gathered other information he'll use to estimate the fireball's flight path.
Meteorites are typically black, unusual-looking rocks with rounded surfaces, Ward said. They're usually heavier than other rocks the same size and 90 percent are magnetic.
He finds about 80 meteorites a year, some of them hundreds of years old. It's rare and more scientifically significant to find meteorites that have just fallen.
"This was in space a week ago," Ward said. "It's extremely fresh. It's important to get it into a lab as soon as possible so it can be analyzed."
While Ward concentrates on where meteorites might have ended up, Peterson is more interested in where the space rocks came from.
With good reports from several locations, scientists can estimate the orbit of the meteor before it entered Earth's atmosphere. Then, if meteorites are found, they can be tested to provide scientifically valuable information about the parent body, Peterson said.
They can also be valuable to dealers and collectors, who base their worth on factors such as where the meteorite is from and whether there were witnesses to the meteor fall.
A witnessed, fresh fall that turns out to be from the moon or Mars might be worth more than $1 million. Other meteorites have little monetary value.
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Rare Event: Mercury to Cross the Sun Nov. 8
By Joe Rao
SPACE.com Skywatching Columnist
10 October 2006
In November, the planet Mercury will make a rather feeble attempt to eclipse the Sun.
On Nov. 8, Mercury will pass through inferior conjunction, a point in its orbit where it is directly between Earth and the Sun. Normally the innermost planet is not visible during an inferior conjunction.
But this time the setup will produce a striking celestial phenomenon that can be viewed with small telescopes when Mercury's tiny silhouette slowly crosses in front of the solar disk. Astronomers refer to such an event as a "transit."
Care must be taken to view the event with proper filters to avoid eye damage.
Rare event
A transit is a relatively rare occurrence. As seen from Earth, only transits of Mercury and Venus are possible. This is the second of 14 transits of Mercury that will occur during the 21st century.
The entire transit from start to finish will be visible in its entirety only from the west coast of North America, (including central and southern Alaska), Hawaii, New Zealand and the east coast of Australia. From Australia and New Zealand the transit will occur on the morning of Nov. 9.
From the United States, those situated to the east of a line running from roughly northern Idaho to westernmost Texas will be able to see the beginning stages of the transit, but sunset will intervene before Mercury can move off the Sun's disk.
What to expect
The tiny disk of Mercury will begin moving on to the Sun at 2:12 p.m. EST (11:12 a.m. PST) and will take about 2 minutes to move completely onto the Sun's disk. The planet will be recognizable along the lower left edge of the Sun as a tiny, black, sharp-edged dot, but having only 1/194 the Sun's diameter.
Just under five hours later, Mercury will reach the Sun's right (west) edge. Mercury will take about 2 minutes to move completely off the disk of the Sun, beginning at 4:08 p.m. PST.
In those eastern regions where the Sun will set before the transit ends, a good observing site should have a low horizon to the south of due west. It is a good precaution to check the Sun's setting point a day or two beforehand, to verify that trees or buildings do not block the view.
Safe equipment needed
Unlike a transit of Venus, a transit of Mercury is not visible with the unaided eye. A telescope must be used, magnifying at least 30-power to bring out the "dark dot" of Mercury in silhouette against the Sun's disk.
Eye safety is always a prime concern when dealing with the Sun. Never look directly at the Sun through a telescope! Rather, you should project the enlarged solar image onto a white card or screen or use proper, approved solar filters.
SPACE.com will provide more observing details and information about the transit on Nov. 3.
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Amerika
U.S. air power in east Asia has grown
By ROBERT BURNS
AP Military Writer
October 11, 2006
WASHINGTON - Much of the United States' ground combat might is tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the U.S. is reducing its infantry forces in South Korea.
But American air and sea power in east Asia, a key to almost any imaginable military conflict with North Korea, has grown in numbers and reach.
So on balance it appears the United States has sufficient forces for the more likely military missions to be required in a Korea crisis - perhaps some form of sea and air blockade, officials and analysts say.
If North Korea lashed out by launching a surprise attack on South Korea, the United States would face hard decisions on multiple war fronts. Soldiers and Marines getting ready to rotate into Iraq would have to be diverted to Korea, requiring the troops in Iraq to stay much longer than planned.
These issues arise as the U.N. Security Council considers imposing tougher sanctions on North Korea in response to its announced nuclear test.
Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., a close observer of military issues, said in an interview Tuesday that he worries that should a major military crisis erupt in North Korea, the Army and Marines would be over-stretched.
Skelton said the Army has only two fully ready combat brigades available - one in Germany, the other in Kuwait. The rest are either in Iraq or Afghanistan, are getting ready to deploy there, or have just returned.
The U.S. military has about 140,000 troops in Iraq and about 20,000 in Afghanistan, mainly soldiers and Marines.
One Army combat brigade is based in South Korea as part of a U.S. force numbering 28,000. That force has been pared down from 32,500 over the past few years and is scheduled to drop to 25,000 by 2008.
There are about 50,000 U.S. troops in Japan; of those, about 8,000 Marines are scheduled to move from Okinawa to Guam.
Michael Green, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a private research group, said in an interview Tuesday that short of a total collapse of North Korea, the U.S. military has what it needs to handle the problem.
"The South Korean ground forces are strong enough to handle and deter a North Korean attack on the ground," said Green, who was senior director for Asia on President Bush's National Security Council. "What they need is help with air forces and naval forces, and that is not what we're using in Iraq right now."
He sees no shortage of U.S. air and naval power.
Skelton agrees that "we're in pretty good shape" in terms of air and naval forces available for Korean duty. He added that he does not see an immediate need to send more U.S. ground troops to South Korea.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others argue that even with smaller numbers of U.S. ground troops in South Korea, recent technological advances and improvements in the South Korean army have actually increased the overall level of military power facing North Korea.
The U.S. Air Force has a range of fighter planes, surveillance aircraft and support planes at two major bases in South Korea - Osan and Kunsan - and at three bases in Japan, including Kadena air base on Okinawa. It also has begun in recent years to rotate continuously a fleet of long-range bombers to Anderson Air Force Base on the Pacific island of Guam, well within range of any target on the Korean peninsula.
There are six B-52 bombers on Guam, where B-2 stealth bombers recently did a rotation.
The Air Force also has begun basing C-17 long-range transport planes in Hawaii. As part of a broader strategy for focusing more on Asia, the Navy is considering shifting one of its aircraft carriers from the Atlantic region to the Pacific, possibly to Guam or Hawaii. The Navy has added two Los Angeles-class attack submarines to its forces on Guam.
The Navy also is installing missile-tracking radar and interceptor missiles on 18 Pacific Fleet ships.
Next week Rumsfeld is scheduled to meet at the Pentagon with his South Korean counterpart to discuss progress in reducing U.S. forces in South Korea, consolidating the remaining troops on fewer bases farther from the North Korean border, and shifting more command authority to the South Korean government.
The Pentagon wants to restore wartime control of South Korean forces to the Seoul government as early as 2009, but the South Koreans say they need more time, at least until 2012, to create a new command structure.
Since the end of the Korean War in July 1953, a U.S. commander has had wartime command of South Korean troops. In the proposed arrangement, U.S. troops in Korea would remain under U.S. command.
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Army tones down drill sergeants
By PAULINE JELINEK
Associated Press
Tue Oct 10, 2006
WASHINGTON - Hollywood may have to tone down its portrayal of the military's screaming, in-your-face boot camp drill sergeant. In today's Army, shouting is out and a calmer approach to molding young minds is in, says the head of
Pentagon personnel. The Army says it has reduced by nearly 7 percent the number of recruits who wash out in the first six to 12 months of military life.
"Part of it is changing the nature of how it treats people in basic training," David S. Chu, undersecretary for personnel and readiness, said Tuesday.
That means "less shouting at everyone, in essence, which some of you may remember from an earlier generation as being the modus operandi," he said.
The changes started about a year ago, as defense officials looked for ways to make drillmasters more effective, said Lt. Col. Mike Jones, head of Army National Guard recruiting.
He said the old way was to "talk loud, talk often, get their attention" - shock treatment to teach discipline and mold the newly recruited civilian into a soldier.
But trainers found today's generation responded better to instructors who took "a more counseling" type role, Jones said, using strong tactics when needed but keeping them the exception instead of the rule.
The approach has had two positive results, he said: It has lowered attrition among those who go through training each year and has eased one of the greatest fears of recruits - their fear over whether they can make it through basic training.
Other changes aimed at improving graduation rates include such things as letting recruits with injuries or minor medical problems remain in the service, heal, and then go back to training. Before, an injury would have meant discharge, training officials said.
Numbers differ from service to service and depend on what the recruit is being trained for. Those training to be Navy SEALS or other special forces may wash out at the rate of 70 percent. Those training to be truck drivers may have an 80 percent graduation rate.
But Chu said that across all services, generally, some two-thirds of recruits finish their enlistment period - typically three or four years.
Of the third who don't make it, half bomb out in the first six to 12 months, Chu said, adding that the attrition rate is better than most private sector firms.
Keeping a balance in the number flushed out of the service is important. Too many dropouts and you lose people you really want to keep. Too few dropouts, and you are keeping people you should have let go, Chu said.
Both the military and police academies are moving away from harder-edged approaches to training, he said.
"However much it may be satisfying from the shouter's perspective, it really isn't the best way to shape young people for the future," Chu said.
He made the comments as he announced that all active duty services had met their recruiting goals for the budget year ended Sept. 30. The Marine Corps Reserve met its goal and the Air Force Reserve exceeded its goal, but they were exceptions among guard and reserve forces, some of which have seen "heavy use" due to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Chu said.
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The Galloping Ghostwriter, Dan Senor
By Mark Raven
Oct 10, 2006 -- 04:50:50 PM EST
In 1993, Mr. Senor did an internship with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, considered by many to be the most powerful lobbying force in the world. Mr. Senor's sister, Wendy Senor Singer, now leads the AIPAC office in Jerusalem. Mr. Senor's brother-in-law, noted Conservative Saul Singer, serves as the opinion editor of the Jerusalem Post.
Touching, it truly is, when a man steps forward to defend a woman's honor. This time, the gallant knight is none other than Daniel Senor, while the honor of damsel in distress goes to one of D.C.'s favorite power children, Simone Ledeen.
The Oct. 10 edition of the Washington Post includes a thought-provoking essay by Mr. Senor entitled, "The Realities of Trying to Rebuild Iraq." Mr. Senor targeted Washington Post staffer Rajiv Chandrasekaran's new book, "Imperial Life in the Emerald City." Like National Review Online soldier Ramesh Ponnuru before him, Mr. Senor maintained that the book is biased, skewed against the Bush Administration, and, in particular, offered an inaccurate look at the hiring practices of Jim O'Beirne - husband of valuable National Review property Kate O'Beirne - and the role of the staunchly Neoconservative Heritage Foundation in determining just who landed those resume-building spots on the CPA in Baghdad.
Mr. Senor's position was quite simple:
Bush Administration good.
Clinton Administration bad.
Mr. Senor claimed that the Clinton Administration should be held responsible for George W. Bush's Rumsfeldian Follies in post-Mission Accomplished Iraq. Mr. Senor postulated that the Clinton Administration originally appointed a number of senior CPA officials to their various positions in the federal government. As such, Mr. Senor argued, the valiant Bush Administration had only these Clinton types with whom to work and the entire effort was doomed from the start. While Mr. Senor grudgingly admitted that the CPA staff members, both senior and junior aides, made mistakes, he attributed these gaffes to the Clinton Administration.
Further, Mr. Senor declined to address Mr. Chandrasekaran's claims that Jim O'Beirne had a key role in hiring CPA staffers. Also, Mr. Senor made no mention of Mr. Chandrasekaran's assertion that the Heritage Foundation, one of the most powerful Neoconservative think tanks in Washington, served as a hiring conduit for the CPA. In addition, Mr. Senor never mentioned CPA staff member Simone Ledeen, her prior qualifications as the co-founder of a cooking school, or the powerful position and questionable behavior - during the Iran-Contra affair and, according to Vanity Fair magazine, in Italy leading up to the Iraqi War - of her father, Neoconservative power boss Michael Ledeen.
Understand, of course, that Mr. Senor spent time in Iraq. Mr. Senor, according to his Bush Administration-approved official White House biography, served as senior advisor to then-Coalition Provisional Authority Administrator L. Paul Bremer III. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, Mr. Senor acted as director of the Coalition Information Center at Centcom Headquarters in Qatar. Mr. Senor had been a member of one of the first civilian convoys to enter Iraq following the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Of course, the White House's official biography left out a few items about Mr. Bremer. For example, Mr. Senor's former boss was the man who disbanded the Iraqi Army. In a Jan. 30, 2005 report, Stuart Bowen, special inspector general for Iraqi Reconstruction, alleged that some $9 billion in Iraqi reconstruction aid had disappeared due to fraud, corruption, and other misbehavior under Mr. Bremer's watch.
Away from the White House and its manufactured biographies, one wonders exactly what duties Mr. Senor performed during his stints in Baghdad and Qatar.
Well, Mr. Senor served as sort of the Tony Snow of the CPA in his role as civilian spokesman during press conferences. Mr. Senor often worked in unison with Brig. Gen. Mark T. Kimmitt, military spokesman at CPA briefings and the son of retired Army Col. Joseph "Stan" Kimmitt, partner in the powerful D.C. public relations and lobbying firm of Kimmitt, Senter, Coates & Weinferter.
Mr. Senor also seems to have worked as a ghostwriter for the Bush Administration. In September 2004, the White House directed Mr. Senor to craft speeches and act as something of an oratorical coach for Dr. Iyad Allawi, the CIA-backed Shiite Muslim politician that the Iraqi Governing Council appointed to act as interim prime minister on June 1, 2004. Mr. Senor guided Dr. Allawi on a whirlwind tour of Washington to coincide with the then-ongoing U.S. presidential election. Mr. Bush, of course, retained the White House. Dr. Allawi had far less luck. The purple-thumbed Iraqis apparently had little use for the Bush Administration's boy. On April 7, 2005, Islamic Dawa Party leader Ibrahim al-Jaafari became the newly elected prime minister of the Iraqi National Assembly, thus ending Dr. Allawi's 10-month stint in office.
It also appears that Mr. Senor, column or no column in the Post, brings a rather sharply partisan view to the activities of the Bush Administration and, in particular, to the efforts of the CPA in Iraq.
In 1993, Mr. Senor did an internship with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, considered by many to be the most powerful lobbying force in the world. Mr. Senor's sister, Wendy Senor Singer, now leads the AIPAC office in Jerusalem. Mr. Senor's brother-in-law, noted Conservative Saul Singer, serves as the opinion editor of the Jerusalem Post.
Mr. Senor, after earning his bachelor's degree at the University of Western Ontario and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, worked as a staffer for then-Senator Spencer Abraham, a renowned Conservative from Michigan. Abraham went on to serve as U.S. Secretary of Energy in the Bush Administration from Jan. 20, 2001 until Feb. 1, 2005.
From 1999-2001, Mr. Senor gained his MBA at the Harvard Business School. Like Mr. Senor, Simone Ledeen is a graduate of the Harvard Business School. President Bush holds a Harvard MBA. So, too, does Mr. Bush's classmate, Thomas C. Foley. Mr. Foley headed up the CPA's efforts to privatize state-owned enterprises in Iraq. In his spare time, Mr. Foley is one of the leading donors to the Republican Party.
After Harvard, Mr. Senor worked from 2001-2003 as a senior associate at the Carlyle Group, the highly secretive, Washington, D.C.-based private investment firm with strong ties to the Bush family. For 10 years, George H.W. Bush served as a consultant to the Carlyle Group. In 2004, Le Monde reported that during the elder Bush's presidency, the Carlyle Group found George W. Bush a job in 1990 as administrator of Caterair, a Texas-based firm that specializes in aerial catering. Perhaps our current president trained in how to prepare fresh Maine lobster at 25,000 feet. Maybe that explains the CPA's decision to hire Simone Ledeen, culinary artists stick together and all. Mr. Senor then moved to the Bush Administration, where he briefly served as deputy to then-White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan.
However, since the Dr, Allawi debacle, Mr. Senor seems to be struggling a bit. In 2005, Google announced that Mr. Senor would become a top lobbyist for the high-powered firm. That appointment failed to materialize. In August 2006, Mr. Senor's AIPAC ties seemed to reemerge when the Wall Street Journal quoted Mr. Senor as a representative of Vets for Freedom, a sharply Conservative 527 political group that is among the chief backers of Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman's reelection campaign.
In all, Mr. Senor's resume offers an extensive network of connections, direct and indirect, to the Bush Administration and to the Neoconservative movement. Combine this with Mr. Senor apparent need for employment, and this writer is surprised only that it took Mr. Senor so long to come to the defense of Simone Ledeen, Jim O'Beirne, the Heritage Foundation, and the CPA's struggles in Iraq.
Of course, Mr. Senor is married to NBC news anchor Campbell Brown. Television news, in general, has been extremely slow in its coverage of the debacle that is Iraq.
And, despite record-breaking numbers on the Dow, good help - Neoconservative connections or not - remains especially hard to find.
Writer's Note: Please read BarbinMD's excellent piece, "Dan Senor: WA Post Op-Ed Distorting Reality," at ePluribus Media. Rajiv Chandrasekaran informed me of the piece, which offers further insight into the full backgrounds of the various high-level CPA administrators that Mr. Senor tried to paint as partisan Clinton hacks. With this information, it's easy to see why Mr. Senor struggles to regain his standing in the D.C. community.
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US free speech row grows as author says Jewish complaints stopped launch party
October 11, 2006
The Guardian
The British-based author and former publisher Carmen Callil has become embroiled in a growing dispute over the limits of freedom of speech in America after a party celebrating her new book on Vichy France was cancelled because of the opinion she expresses about the modern state of Israel.
A party in honour of Bad Faith, Callil's account of Louis Darquier, the Vichy official who arranged the deportation of thousands of Jews, was to have taken place at the French embassy in New York last night but was cancelled after the embassy became aware of a paragraph in the postscript of the book. In the postscript Callil says she grew anxious while researching the "helpless terror of the Jews of France" to see "what the Jews of Israel were passing on to the Palestinian people. Like the rest of humanity, the Jews of Israel 'forget' the Palestinians. Everyone forgets."
The embassy said the passage had been brought to its attention after a guest declined the invitation because of it. A spokesman denied allegations from Callil, reported by Reuters, that "fundamentalist Jews" had complained and had the party shut down.
The row over Callil's book is the latest element in a dispute about restrictions on freedom of speech in the US in relation to comments on Israel.
A British-born academic based at New York University has had two speaking engagements called off after criticism of his views. Tony Judt, an American Jew who was brought up in Britain, was due to speak on the subject of the influence of the pro-Israeli lobby on US foreign policy and at a separate location under the title War and Genocide in European Memory Today. The first lecture was cancelled by the Polish consulate in New York, which owned the venue, while Mr Judt pulled out of the second after he was asked by the organisers to refrain from direct references to Israel. In both cases pro-Israeli organisations and individuals had raised objections to Mr Judt's views on Israel.
Mr Judt was one of six people who took part in a debate in New York last month organised by the London Review of Books on the controversy sparked by its article on The Israel Lobby. During that debate Mr Judt argued that pro-Israeli groups acted "to silence debate on the subject", adding that criticism of Israel had come to be thought of as un-American.
His talk last week on a similar theme at a venue owned by the Polish consulate was cancelled by the consul, Krzysztof Kasprzyk, after inquiries from two Jewish organisations. Mr Kasprzyk told the Washington Post that he had been subjected to "delicate pressure".
Abraham Foxman, director of one of the groups, the Anti-Defamation League, denied any pressurising. "All we did was to ask the consulate whether Tony Judt was speaking on its property. The decision to cancel was the Polish consulate's alone." Mr Judt riposted: "If all Mr Foxman was doing was making an inquiry, then he does an awful lot of inquiring. People are frequently being scared off."
Mr Judt said his views had been misrepresented. "The only thing I have ever said is that Israel as it is currently constituted, as a Jewish state with different rights for different groups, is an anachronism in the modern age of democracies."
In the second incident Mr Judt pulled out from a talk on the Holocaust at Manhattan College after a Jewish leader, Rabbi Avi Weiss, warned he would hold a protest of Holocaust survivors outside the event. "This speech would have been a desecration," Rabbi Weiss told the Guardian.
Mr Judt countered that to threaten to stage a protest of survivors was "obscene, close to pornography".
Comment: And who ultimately benefits from all of this? Why the Zionists in control of the Israeli government and people of course! But remember! There is no disproportionate Zionist influence in the political life of America, the UK, France or any other nation. Just keep telling yourself that and you will never understand anything.
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US population hits 300 million, but is it sustainable?
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
The Independent
11 October 2006
The population of the United States will pass 300 million today, or tomorrow. No one knows exactly where, no one know precisely when. It is a milestone for sure but is this a cause for celebration or anxiety?
Some American commentators are already saying the landmark is a chance to note the US is perhaps the only country in the developed world where the economy is being bolstered by a population that is growing at a discernable rate. But many experts say passing the 300 million milestone should be a wake-up call that demands a reappraisal of the extraordinary, unparalleled rate of consumption by the world's largest economy and its third largest by population.
As an economic model for the rest of the world to follow - in particular the rapidly developing economies of China and India - it is unsustainable, they say.
On a global scale the average US citizen uses far more than his or her fair share of the planet's resources - consuming more than four times the worldwide average of energy, almost three times as much water and producing more than twice the average amount of rubbish and five times the amount of carbon dioxide, a major contributor to global warming. The US - with five per cent of the world's population - uses 23 per cent of its energy, 15 per cent of its meat and 28 per cent of its paper. Additional population will mean more people seeking a share of those often-limited resources.
It may be that America's citizen number 300,000,000 will be an undocumented migrant, born to undocumented parents somewhere in the South or the West, where population growth is the fastest. Almost one-third of America's annual population growth of between 0.9 per cent and 1 per cent is the result of immigration - much of it illegal.
"America is the only industrialised nation in the world experiencing significant population growth," Victoria Markham, the director of the Centre for Environment and Population (CEP), says in a new report. "The nation's relatively high rates of population growth, natural resource consumption and pollution combine to create the largest environmental impact, felt both within the nation and around the world." She adds: " The US has become a 'super-size' nation, with lifestyles reflected in super-sized appetites for food, houses, land and resource consumption. 'More of more' seems to characterise modern-day America - more people than any generation before us experienced, more natural resources being utilised to support everyday life and more major impacts on the natural systems that support life on earth."
Some commentators believe this growth has a modest impact on the nation's resources and can bring many benefits. Greg Easterbrook, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based, independent research and policy institute, recently wrote: "What should not worry us about continuing US population growth ... is the question of whether we can handle it - we can," he said.
Lester Brown, the director of the Earth Policy Institute, an environmental group also based in Washington, said: "In times past, reaching such a demographic milestone might have been a cause for celebration - in 2006 it is not. Population growth is the ever-expanding denominator that gives each person a shrinking share of the resource pie. It contributes to water shortages, cropland conversion to non-farm uses, traffic congestion, more garbage, overfishing, crowding in national parks, a growing dependence on imported oil and other conditions that diminish the quality of our daily lives."
Mr Brown said there was also a global perspective to America's rapacious model of consumption. In addition to foreign policy decisions at least influenced by a desire to secure diminishing resources, he said the US was setting an example to the developing world that was unsustainable. "We used to think of the developing countries as places that did not consume very much ... But it is starting to change and they are beginning to behave like us and heading for income levels like us," he said.
If China's economy continued to grow at 8 per cent a year, Mr Brown said, income levels in that country would equal the 2004 US level by 2031, by which time China's population would stand at 1.45 billion.
If current consumption rates were multiplied to take into account its population growth, China's paper consumption would be double the current total world production of paper and its vehicle fleet would be 1.1 billion; the world's current total fleet is 800 million.
"What China is teaching us is that the Western economic model is not going to work for China and if it will not work for China it will not work for India and in the long-term ... it will not work for us as well," he said.
It was in 1915 that the US population reached 100 million. Fifty-two years later, in 1967, it reached 200 million. It has taken just 39 more years for the milestone of 300 million to be achieved.
1915: US population reaches 100 million
The population of America hit the 100-million mark in 1915, two years before President Woodrow Wilson would enter the First World War. Americans were stunned by the sinking of the British liner, 'Lusitania', enthralled by Charlie Chaplin and arguing about immigration. "There is here a great melting pot in which we must compound a precious metal," said Wilson, as a million European immigrants poured into the US each year.
The 'great white hope' Jess Willard beat black boxing champion Jack Johnson in a dubious bout in Havana; Marines were dispatched to Haiti after a mob killed its president and the Ku Klux Klan was reestablished as a 'benevolent' organisation.
1967: US passes 200 million
By 1967, when the US population hit 200m, the US was up to its neck in the Vietnam War, Muhammad Ali was stripped of his world heavyweight title for refusing the draft, dozens were killed in race riots in Detroit, and San Francisco was beguiled by the Summer of Love.
Eugene McCarthy said he would run for president, the 25th Amendment to the Constitution was passed allowing for a transfer of power to the vice-president if the president was incapacitated and three Apollo astronauts burned to death during a simulation at Cape Canaveral. The millionth telephone was installed in the US. Hit films included The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night and Bonnie and Clyde.
Supersize nation: how America is eating the world
300m Expected population of the United States by the end of this week
75 Life expectancy for men in the US. Women are expected to live until 80
63 Life expectancy for men in the developing world. Women are expected to live until 67
395m Projected population of the US by 2050
1,682m3 US annual water consumption per capita
633m3 The world's annual water consumption per capita
545m3 The developing world's annual water withdrawals per capita
5lbs Amount of waste each US resident produces per day. That compares with about 3lbs per person per day in Europe, and about 0.9-1.3lbs per person a day in the developing world
$39,710 US Gross National Income per head, 2004
$8,540 World's GNI per head
$4,450 Developing world's GNI per head
19.8 US carbon dioxide emissions per capita, in metric tonnes
3.9 World's carbon dioxide emissions per head, in tonnes
1.8 Developing world's carbon dioxide emissions per head, in tonnes
58bn Number of burgers consumed by Americans every year
54m Number of Americans who are obese
300,000 Deaths per year related to obesity
678lbs US annual paper consumption per head
115lbs The corresponding figure for the world
44lbs The figure for the developing world
204m number of vehicles on US roads
37% Percentage of the total cars in the world on America's roads
1 in 7 Barrels of world oil supply used by US drivers
24m Number of Americans who drive SUVs
7,921 US energy consumption per capita, 2001, expressed in kilograms of oil
1,631 World's energy consumption per capita, in kilograms of oil
828 Corresponding figure for the developing world
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Around the World
Turkey warns France over Armenian genocide bill
October 11, 2006
The Guardian
The French parliament has been warned it could undermine relations between the EU and Turkey if it passes a law tomorrow making it a crime to deny Armenians suffered genocide at the hands of Ottoman Turks during the first world war.
The draft bill, which is to be debated by the national assembly, was put forward by France's opposition Socialist party, and recommends that anyone who denies the mass-murder of Armenians between 1915 and 1917 was genocide should face a year in prison and a €45,000 (£30,500) fine.
Olli Rehn, the commissioner in charge of Turkey's EU membership negotiations, warned this week the law could have "serious consequences" for EU relations with Turkey. He said it would jeopardise efforts by Turkish intellectuals to develop an open debate on the Armenian question.
Ankara has deemed it ironic that France is preparing to punish those who express a particular view of history at a time when Turkey is under heavy EU pressure to change some of its own laws which are viewed as restricting freedom of expression. The Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, yesterday referred to the proposed law as a "systematic lie machine". Turkey recalled its ambassador to France in May after the Socialist party first presented the bill in parliament.
Turkish politicians have since warned that French-Turkish trade links will suffer if the bill is adopted, and some are discussing possible retaliatory measures, including criminalising the denial of genocide in Algeria which France ruled from 1830 to 1962. One Turkish MP suggested expelling all illegal Armenian immigrants if the bill was passed.
Mr Erdogan said he would not engage in tit-for-tat measures but said France should reexamine its colonial past before pronouncing on history elsewhere. He repeated calls to Armenia to jointly research the killings by opening the historical archives of both countries to historians.
Turkey's official policy is to acknowledge that large numbers of Armenians were killed by Turks, but to reject the overall estimate of 1.5 million deaths as inflated. It maintains that deaths occurred as part of civil unrest during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and thousands of Turks also died. Saying otherwise in Turkey can lead to criminal prosecution.
Yesterday Turkey's foremost Armenian journalist, Hrant Dink, who has been repeatedly tried for "insulting Turkishness" by urging Turkey to come clean on its part in the massacres, said passing the French law would be a mistake. "I will go to France to protest against this madness and violate the [new] law if I see it necessary. And I will commit the crime to be prosecuted there so that these two irrational mentalities can race to put me into jail," he told Reuters. He said the French draft law and the Armenian issue was being exploited by those in France and the EU opposed to Turkey's EU entry.
Other Turkish writers criticised the French bill, including Elif Shafak, who was acquitted last month after she was charged with "insulting Turkishness" over one of her fictitious characters who referred to the Armenian "genocide".
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At least 10 dead after two trains collide in France
AFP
Oct 11, 2006
METZ, France - At least ten people were killed Wednesday in a head-on collision between a passenger train and a goods train near the Luxembourg border in northeast France, railway officials said.
The crash took place late morning at the village of Zoufftgen, which lies one mile (1.6 kilometres) south of the frontier, on a section of track that was undergoing maintenance work.
According to the French state-owned SNCF rail company, "around ten" people on the passenger train died, as well as the drivers of both trains and a person working on the track.
Emergency workers officially confirmed 10 dead, and said some 20 were injured.
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and Transport Minister Dominique Perben were travelling to the scene.
The two trains were a double-decker Luxembourg-operated regional express train travelling from the grand duchy to the French city of Nancy, and a freight train heading for Luxembourg.
"As a result of the work only one track was open instead of two, and trains were supposed to wait their turn to go on it. For reasons that are not clear, these two trains came together head-to-head," an SNCF spokemsn said.
Bertrand Mertz, vice-president of the Lorraine regional council, told France 3 television that railway signallers in Luxembourg were to blame.
The prefect -- or state-appointed governor -- of Moselle department triggered a standing emergency plan, and large numbers of rescue workers from both France and Luxembourg were at the scene.
If the death toll of 13 is confirmed the accident would be the deadliest in France since a collision between a train and an oil tanker on a level crossing killed the same number of people in the southern Dordogne region in September 1997.
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Climbers see Tibetans shot 'like rats'
Jano Gibson
October 11, 2006 - 3:19PM
An Australian mountaineer was among dozens of climbers at a Himalayan base camp who watched in horror as Chinese soldiers shot Tibetan refugees "like rats, dogs [and] rabbits", leaving at least one teenage nun lying dead in the snow.
The incident, witnessed by international climbers and Sherpas at a camp on Mount Cho Oyu - about 20 kilometres west of Mount Everest - occurred on September 30 as a group of refugees, including many children, made their way across the 5700-metre-high Nangpa La Pass from Tibet to Nepal and then on to Dharamsala in India - the home of their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.
Detailed accounts of the attack are beginning to filter through despite what the British newspaper, The Independent, described as an attempt by Chinese authorities to silence the many Western climbers and Sherpas who witnessed the shooting.
A Tibetan monk who managed to reach Nepal was quoted in the paper as saying: "We started walking early through the Nangpa La Pass. Then the soldiers arrived. They started shooting and we ran; there were 15 children from eight to 10; only one escaped arrest.
"I just ran to save my life by praying to His Holiness the Dalai Lama. I think the soldiers fired for 15 minutes."
"They were shouting, but I did not hear them ... I just heard gunshots passing my ears. I don't remember how many people were shot."
Another said: "When the Chinese started shooting, it was terrifying. We could only hear the gunfire and our friends screaming. We tried to take care of the seven-year-old girl with us."
Steve Lawes, a British police officer and mountaineer who was about 300 metres from the soldiers, told The Independent: "One person fell, got up, but then fell again."
An Australian climber, who did not give his name, told Reuters: "I looked through the telescope. I saw two objects - the first one looked like it was a backpack and the second one was definitely a body."
The International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) said a young Tibetan nun was confirmed dead while there were unconfirmed reports that a young refugee boy was killed.
The organisation said it also had fears for the safety of about 10 Tibetan refugee children who were arrested by the Chinese soldiers after fleeing from the gunshots.
Mr Lawes told The Independent that the children were marched single file through the base camp.
"The children were in single file, about six feet away from me. They didn't see us - they weren't looking around the way kids normally would, they were too frightened. By that time, advance base camp was crawling with soldiers. We were doing our best not to do anything that might spark off more violence."
Another climber, Sergiu Matei from Romania, gave his account of the incident at a mountaineering website, MountEverest.net.
"I heard machine-gun bursts - I was having my black tea in the chicken tent," Mr Matei said.
"It was actually the Chinese militias hunting Tibetans on to the glacier ... They were shooting Tibetans like rats, dogs, rabbits - you name it."
He said he gave one refugee boy, who was found hiding in the climbers' base camp toilet, food and clothing before the boy continued on his way across the pass towards Nepal.
Some staff at mountaineering companies operating in the area were reportedly keeping quiet about the incident for fear that commenting might jeopardise their permits to enter the Tibetan region.
"Most of them won't go on record and give their names because they are working for international organisations that want to keep their rights to climb in the region," the executive officer of the Australia Tibet Council, Paul Bourke, told smh.com.au.
Mr Bourke said he was "stunned" by the shootings.
"It's quite common for Tibetans to use this path back and forth and this seems like it wasn't an accident. It seems like they were deliberately fired upon."
At least 43 of the refugees managed to reach Nepal but the whereabouts of about 30 others was not known, the ICT said.
Hundreds of Tibetans cross the Himalayas every year to Nepal, many making their way to Dharamsala, a town in northern India where their exiled leader, the Dalai Lama, has been living since 1959 after an abortive uprising against Chinese rule.
Nepal is home to more than 20,000 Tibetan refugees. But recent arrivals are not allowed to stay in Nepal and must travel to neighbouring India.
Communist troops entered Tibet in 1950 and overthrew the Buddhist theocracy.
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Iran's clerics caught up in blogging craze
October 11, 2006
The Guardian
The craze for blogging in Iran has reached an unlikely set of adherents - the country's conservative Islamic clerics.
Following the example of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, ayatollahs, seminary students and theologians are receiving training in setting up their own weblogs.
Courses run by the newly-established office of religious weblog expansion have begun in the holy city of Qom, the traditional home of Iran's religious establishment. Students more used to poring over the theological nuances of the Qur'an will receive instruction on practical matters such as blog content and technical support. Some 300 clerics, religious students and writers have been signed up.
The arrival of the religious ruling class on Iran's blogosphere is ironic in view of the harsh crackdown launched by the authorities against bloggers who have used it to voice political dissent. Scores of bloggers have been jailed in recent years while many sites have been blocked using US-made filtering technology.
Iran is estimated to have between 75,000 and 100,000 bloggers, most of them avoiding politics to concentrate on matters like social affairs, culture and sex.
The trend began among the political reformist movement in 2001 as a response to the closures of dozens of liberal newspapers and magazines on the orders of religious hardliners. It has since become a phenomenon among the computer-savvy younger generation.
Mr Ahmadinejad jumped on the bandwagon last month when he launched a blog attached to his presidential website. His first entry set out his personal background and political philosophy and asked if the US and Israel were intent on starting a third world war.
Comment: The image of Iranian clerics and students tapping away in the blogosphere is not exactly in keeping with the image of Iran as an extreme fundamentalist regime that the US and Israeli governments are so eager to create for Western citizens.
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From Russia With Love
Russian defense minister blasts NATO plans to build base in Poland
19:47 | 10/ 10/ 2006
MOSCOW, October 10 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's defense minister criticized Tuesday NATO's plans to deploy anti-ballistic missile defense systems in Poland.
The United States has ambitious plans to deploy a network of anti-missile systems across the world to protect itself and its allies from threats from countries such as Iran and North Korea, and there has been speculation they would be based in at least two former Communist-bloc countries, which Russia sees as a threat to its national security.
"The announced purpose [of the deployment] is the interception of Iranian intercontinental ballistic missiles, which have never existed and will not exist in the near future," said Sergei Ivanov, who is also a deputy prime minister.
"I think everyone here understands against whom they [anti-ballistic missile defense systems] can be used," Ivanov said, supposedly referring to Russia.
He said Russia regarded the plans as "a destabilizing element and an attempt to shift the strategic balance."
Ivanov said he was surprised by Poland's interest in the project, but dismissed fears that Poland could become a potential target of Russia's armed forces if such systems are deployed there.
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Putin vows to hunt down Russian reporter's killers
By Douglas Busvine
Reuters
Tue Oct 10, 2006
DRESDEN, Germany - President Vladimir Putin vowed on Tuesday to hunt down the killers of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, saying he had information they wanted to whip up anti-Russian feelings across the world.
Questions about the contract-style killing, which has drawn global condemnation, dominated a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel that also touched on business and energy issues.
Putin did not elaborate on his information about the killers of Politkovskaya, a fierce critic of the president and Russia's war in Chechnya.
"We must be clear that it was a dreadful and unacceptable crime which cannot be allowed to go unpunished," Putin said in his first public remarks on the killing.
"We have information, and it is trustworthy, that there are people hiding from Russian justice and nurturing plans to sacrifice someone as a victim to create a wave of anti-Russian sentiments worldwide," he said through an interpreter.
"(Politkovskaya) had minimal influence on political life in Russia. This murder does much more harm to Russia and Chechnya than any of her publications."
Russian prosecutors have linked Politkovskaya's murder to her work. She won prominence for her defense of human rights and criticism of government policies, particularly the Kremlin's conduct of the war against separatists in Chechnya.
Putin was heckled by a man in the crowd over the murder as he got out of his limousine in the eastern city of Dresden, where he served as a KGB agent in the 1980s.
Waving a banner with "Murderer" on it, the man shouted: "You're a murderer, you're not welcome here."
Politkovskaya, 48, was gunned down in her apartment block on Saturday. Thousands of mourners, including Western ambassadors, attended her funeral in Moscow in Tuesday.
Merkel, a Russian speaker and the first chancellor from formerly communist east Germany, told reporters Putin had assured her everything would be done to clear up the murder.
Putin is seeking to further Russian business interests during his two-day visit to Germany that takes him to the southern city of Munich on Wednesday.
His talks with Merkel come amid German concern about the reliability of Russian oil and gas supplies.
Germany was shaken when Siberian gas supplies were disrupted at the start of the year after Russian gas monopoly Gazprom decided to cut off supplies to Ukraine in a pricing dispute.
Gazprom is building a gas pipeline with Germany's E.ON and BASF companies that will carry Siberian gas to Germany from 2010. Dutch Gasunie will take a 9 percent stake.
Russia has also been pushing for a seat on the board of European aerospace giant EADS, in which it has a 5 percent stake. Given European nervousness about Russia's ambitions to expand its influence, that seems an unlikely prospect.
Putin was quoted by the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper as saying he was in favor of Russia boosting its stake in EADS but that a condition of closer cooperation would be the acceptance of Russia as a real partner in the firm.
He told the news conference Russia had no plans to launch a hostile bid for EADS but Europe and Russia should think about boosting cooperation in the aerospace sector.
"As far as the competitiveness of the European aerospace industry is concerned, we do need to think about whether we can increase our joint efforts," said Putin.
Several business deals were expected during Putin's visit. Germany's Dresdner Bank signed a cooperation deal with Russia's Vnesheconombank on Tuesday on areas including trade financing and public-private partnerships.
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Alrighty Then
Sky dump just dirty birdies
11 October 2006
By CAITLIN McKAY
Birdie, birdie in the sky, dropped some uh-oh in my eye ... Aren't you glad cows don't fly?
A mysterious brown substance covered a house in Jasper Place on Monday night.
The two-story house, which is part of the Fort Knox Self-Storage property, was covered in brown spots of varying sizes on the roof, front windows and back fence.
Resident Karl Blumenthal said rain and hail early Monday morning didn't remove the substance.
"It was pretty smelly in the morning."
He phoned the city council, who investigated yesterday.
It took photos and concluded it was probably caused by a flock of birds.
There had been talk that it may be due to the metal bird in the sky.
However, Palmerston North Airport manager Garry Goodman soon put an end to that theory and said it is "very unlikely" to have come from a commercial aircraft.
"Aircraft are pressurised.
"If it wasn't, this would create an emergency leak, which is a major concern.".
Any problem with an aircraft's pressure system would be picked up in a pre-flight check, Mr Goodman said.
"The chances of the faecal matter coming from a plane is negligible."
City top-dressing pilot Pete Harding said it probably didn't come from a small plane carrying fertiliser either.
"It was too windy to fly on Monday. Most of the fertiliser we drop is white and is used by the time we fly home."
Mr Harding also said top-dressing planes rarely flew over residential areas.
Civil Aviation Authority safety adviser Ross St George agreed and says when stories of planes losing their load surfaced a few years ago, they led to a "spate of reports" around New Zealand.
Faecal matter sprayed on a house in Wellington was tested and found it to contain grass seed.
There was no chemical components that are found in aeroplane toilets, Mr St George said.
"If any was to escape it would freeze to the outside of the plane."
Mr St George said said the great metal bird in the sky can rest easy, while recommending the "poo from the sky" is from a flock of birds and nothing else.
Mystery aside, Mr Blumenthal's dad Rex, has volunteered to wash the muck off with a water blaster later this week.
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Time capsule to be beamed from Mexican pyramid
Tue Oct 10, 2006 7:48am ET166
By Cyntia Barrera Diaz
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's Teotihuacan, once the center of a sprawling pre-Hispanic empire, is set to become the launch pad for an attempt to communicate with extraterrestrial life.
Starting on Tuesday, enthusiasts from around the world will have a chance to submit text, images, video and sounds that reflect human nature to be included in the message.
Those contributions -- part of media company Yahoo's "Time Capsule" project -- will be digitalized and beamed with a laser into space on October 25 from the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, now an archeological site near Mexico City.
Archeologists say a culture centered in Teotihuacan, known as the City of the Gods, dominated Mesoamerica for hundreds of years during the first millennium. It is unclear what led to the society's collapse.
"We have this incredible ancient site and from that site we can project contemporary content," Srinija Srinivasan, Yahoo's editor in chief, told Reuters. "What is new is the ability to capture this information in such scale."
In the 1970s, astronomer Carl Sagan compiled a record with sounds and images, including a mariachi band and greetings in an ancient Sumerian language, to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.
His record was sent out with the Voyager spacecraft in the hope that extraterrestrial life forms would eventually find it.
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