Sections on today's Signs Page:
Signs Editorials
Editorial: The BBC and Israeli Propaganda
Jonathan Cook
12/10/2006
Is the Israeli government using Shalev, wittingly or not, and is he in turn using the BBC, to spread Israeli propaganda? Propaganda that may soon propel us towards the "clash of civilisations".
The Middle East, and possibly the world, stands on the brink of a terrible conflagration as Israel and the United States prepare to deal with Iran's alleged ambition to acquire nuclear weapons. Israel, it becomes clearer by the day, wants to use its air force to deliver a knock-out blow against Tehran. It is not known whether it will use conventional weapons or a nuclear warhead in such a strike.
At this potentially cataclysmic moment in global politics, it is good to see that one of the world's leading broadcasters, the BBC, decided this week that it should air a documentary entitled "Will Israel bomb Iran?". It is the question on everyone's lips and doubtless, with the imprimatur of the BBC, the programme will sell around the world.
The good news ends there, however. Because the programme addresses none of the important issues raised by Israel's increasingly belligerent posture towards Tehran.
It does not explain that, without a United Nations resolution, a military strike on Iran to destroy its nuclear research programme would be a gross violation of international law.
It does not clarify that Israel's own large nuclear arsenal was secretly developed and is entirely unmonitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, or that it is perceived as a threat by its neighbours and may be fuelling a Middle East arms race.
Nor does the programme detail the consequences of an Israeli strike on instability and violence across the Middle East, including in Iraq, where British and American troops are stationed as an occupying force.
And there is no consideration of how in the longer term unilateral action by Israel, with implicit sanction by the international community, is certain to provoke a steep rise in global jihad against the West.
Instead the programme dedicates 40 minutes to footage of Top Gun heroics by the Israeli air force, and the recollections of pilots who carried out a similar, "daring" attack on Iraq's nuclear reactor in the early 1980s; menacing long shots of Iran's nuclear research facilities; and interviews with three former Israeli prime ministers, a former Israeli military chief of staff, various officials in Israeli military intelligence and a professor who designs Israel's military arsenal.
All of them speak with one voice: Israel, they claim, is about to be "wiped out" by Iranian nuclear weapons and must defend itself "whatever the consequences".
They are given plenty of airtime to repeat unchallenged well-worn propaganda Israel has been peddling through its own media, and which has been credulously amplified by the international media: that Iran is led by a fanatical anti-Semite who, like Adolf Hitler, believes he can commit genocide against the Jewish people, this time through a nuclear holocaust.
Other Israeli misinformation, none of it believed by serious analysts, is also uncritically spread by the film-makers: that Hizbullah in Lebanon is a puppet of Iran, waiting to aid its master in Israel's destruction; that Iran is only months away from creating nuclear weapons, a "point of no return", as the programme warns; and that a "fragile" Israel is under constant threat of annihilation from all its Arab neighbours.
But the programme's unequivocal main theme -- echoing precisely Israel's own agenda -- is that Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is hellbent on destroying Israel. The film-makers treat seriously, bordering on reverentially, preposterous comments from Israel's leaders about this threat.
Shimon Peres, the Israeli government's veteran roving ambassador, claims, for example, that Iran has made "a call for genocide" against Israel, compares an Iranian nuclear bomb to a "flying concentration camp", and warns that "no one would like to see a comeback to the times of the Nazis".
Cabinet minister Avi Dichter, a former head of the Shin Bet domestic security service, believes Israel faces "an existential threat" from Iran. And Zvi Stauber, a former senior figure in military intelligence, compares Israel's situation to a man whose neighbour "has a gun and he declares every day he is going to kill you".
But pride of place goes to Binyamin Netanyahu, a former prime minister and the current leader of the opposition. He claims repeatedly that the only possible reason Iran and its president could want a nuclear arsenal is for Israel's "extermination". "If he can get away with it, he'll do it." "Ayatollahs with atombic bombs are a powerful threat to all of us." A nuclear Iran "is a threat unlike anything we have seen before. It's beyond politics" -- apparently worse than the nuclear states of North Korea and Pakistan, the latter a military dictatorship and friend of the US barely containing within its borders some of the most fanatical jihadist movements in the world.
Apart from a brief appearance by an Iranian diplomat, no countervailing opinions are entertained in the BBC programme; only Israel's military and political leadership is allowed to speak.
The documentary gives added credence to the views of Israel's security establishment by making great play of a speech by Ahmadinejad -- one with which the Israeli authorities and their allies in Washington have made endless mischief -- in which the Iranian president repeats a statement by Iran's late spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, that went unnoticed when first uttered.
In the BBC programme, Ahmadenijad is quoted as saying: "The regime occupying Jerusalem should be eliminated from the page of history". This is at least an improvement on the original translation, much repeated in the programme by Netanyahu and others, that "Israel must be wiped off the map".
But for some strange reason, the programme makers infer from their more accurate translation the same diabolical intent on Ahmadinejad's part as suggested by Netanyahu's fabricated version. Iran's nuclear weapons, we are told by the programme as if they are already in existence, have "presented Israel's leaders with a new order of threat". In making his speech, the BBC film argues, Ahmadinejad "issued a death sentence against Israel".
But, as has now been pointed out on numerous occasions (though clearly not often enough for the BBC to have noticed), Khomeini and Ahmadinejad were referring to the need for regime change, the ending of the regime occupying the Palestinians in violation of international law. They were not talking, as Netanyahu and co claim, about the destruction of the state of Israel or the Jewish people. The implication of the speech is that the current Israeli regime will end because occupying powers are illegitimate and unsustainable, not because Iran plans to fire nuclear missiles at the Jewish state or commit genocide.
Overlooked by the programme makers is the fact that "fragile" Israel is currently the only country in the Middle East armed with nuclear warheads, several hundred of them, as well as one of the most powerful armies in the world, which presumably make most of its neighbours feel "fragile" too, with far more reason.
And, as we are being persuaded how "fragile" Israel really is, another former prime minister, Ehud Barak, is interviewed. "Ultimately we are standing alone," he says, in apparent justification for an illegal, unilateral strike. Iran's nuclear reasearch facilities, Barak warns, are hidden deep underground, so deep that "no conventional weapon can penetrate", leaving us to infer that in such circumstances Israel will have no choice but use a tactical nuclear strike in its "self-defence". And, getting into his stride, Barak adds that some facilities are in crowded urban areas "where any attack could end up in civilian collateral damage".
But despite the terrifying scenario laid out by Israel's leaders, the BBC website cheerleads for Israel in the same manner as the programme-makers, suggesting that Israel has the right to engineer a clash of civilisations: "With America unlikely to take military action, the pressure is growing on Israel's leaders to launch a raid."
As should be clear by now, the Israeli government's fingerprints are all over this BBC "documentary". And that is hardly surprising because the man behind this "independent" production is Israel's leading film-maker: Noam Shalev.
Shalev, a graduate of a New York film school, has been making a spate of documentaries through his production company Highlight Films, based in Herzliya, near Tel Aviv, that have been lapped up by the BBC and other foreign broadcasters. With the BBC's stamp of approval, it is easy for Shalev to sell his films around the world.
Shalev, who claims that he doesn't "espouse a political view", started his career by making documentaries on less controversial subjects. He has produced films on Ethiopian immigrants arriving in Israel, and on the Zaka organisation, Jewish religious fundamentalists who arrive at the scene of suicide attacks quite literally to pick up the pieces, of human remains.
In the past his films managed to bypass the reticence of broadcasters like the BBC to broach the combustible subject of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict outside their news programmes by touching on the topic obliquely. Importantly, however, Shalev's films always humanise his Israeli subjects, showing them as complex, emotional and caring beings, while largely ignoring the millions of Palestinians the Israeli government and army are oppressing.
According to a profile of Shalev published in the Israeli media in 2004, his success derives from the fact that he has developed a "soft-sell approach", showing Israel in a good light without "the straightforward 'hasbara' [propaganda] efforts which explain Israel's case that Israel's Foreign Ministry is required to disseminate to European and American news outlets."
In the words of an Israeli public relations executive, Shalev has a skill in telling Israel's story in ways that international broadcasters appreciate: "[Shalev] also shows the Israeli side, he is not one of those traitors who sell their ideology for money. He has the skill to market it in such a way that overseas they want to see it, and this is very important."
But recently Shalev has grown more confident to try the hard sell for Israel, apparently sure that the BBC and other foreign broadcasters will still buy his films. And that is because Shalev offers them something that other film-makers cannot: intimate access to Israel's security forces, an area off-limits to his rivals.
Before the disengagement from Gaza last year, for example, Shalev made a sympathetic documentary, shown by the BBC, about a day in the life of one Israeli soldier serving there. The film largely concealed the context that might have alerted viewers to the fact that the soldier was enforcing a four-decade illegal occupation of Gaza, or that the Strip is an open-air prison in which thousands of Palestinian have been killed by the Israeli army and in which a majority of Gazans live in abject poverty.
Interviewed about the documentary, Shalev observed: "The army really is very, very careful. There is no indiscriminate firing. I saw, and this was not a show put on just for us, that before any shot is fired there is confirmation that there is nobody behind or in front of the objective. The army is very sensitive to non-deliberate fire."
In other words, Shalev's film for the BBC shed no light on why Israel's "deliberate" fire has killed hundreds of Palestinian children during the second intifada or why a large number of civilians have died from Israeli gunfire and missile strikes inside the Gaza Strip.
Earlier this year Shalev made another film for the BBC, "The Hunt for Black October", to coincide with the release of Stephen Spielberg's movie Munich. "The BBC gains exclusive access to the undercover Mossad agents assigned to track down the Palestinian group responsible for the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics," the BBC was able to glow in its promotional material.
Shalev's latest film, "Will Israel bomb Iran?", follows this well-trodden path. Arabs and Muslims are again deprived of a voice, as are non-Israeli experts.
So why did the BBC buy this blatant piece of propaganda?
Here are a few clues. Shalev's film includes:
* footage taken from inside Hizbullah bunkers under the supervision of the Israeli army as it occupied south Lebanon.
* a "rare view" of the inside of the Israeli army's satellite control room, which spies on Israel's Arab neighbours and Iran and which, according to programme, is "incredibly guarded about its security arrangements".
* an exclusive appearance by Israel's former military chief of staff, Moshe Yaalon, who we are told is "rarely interviewed".
* a glimpse inside a Rafael weapons factory, which the programme tells us is "rarely filmed".
In other words, the BBC, and the other broadcasters who will air this "documentary" in the coming weeks and months, has been dazzled by Shalev's ability to show us the secret world of the Israeli army. So dazzled, it seems, that it has forgotten to check -- or worse, simply doesn't care -- what message Shalev is inserting between his exclusive footage.
It might have occurred to someone at the BBC to wonder why Shalev gets these chances to show things no one else is allowed to. Could it be that the "hasbara" division of the Israeli Foreign Ministry has got far more sophisticated than it once was?
Is the Israeli government using Shalev, wittingly or not, and is he in turn using the BBC, to spread Israeli propaganda? Propaganda that may soon propel us towards the "clash of civilisations" so longed for by Israel's leadership.
-Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. He is the author of the forthcoming "Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State" published by Pluto Press, and available in the United States from the University of Michigan Press. His website is www.jkcook.net
Original
Comment on this Editorial
Editorial: Busy fondling their self-esteem
By John Pilger
10/12/06
Information Clearing House
As the news reveals a study that puts civilian deaths in Iraq at 655,000, John Pilger recalls the words of a song by the great Chilean balladeer, Victor Jara, to describe those who see themselves as rational and liberal are, in fact, complicit in an unrecognised crime.
The great Chilean balladeer Victor Jara, who was tortured to death by the regime of General Pinochet 33 years ago, wrote a song that mocks those who see themselves as rational and liberal, yet so often retreat into the arms of authority, no matter its dishonesty and brutality to others. He sang:
Come on over here
where the sun is nice and warm.
Yes, you, who have the habit
of jumping from one side to the other...
[Over there] you're nothing at all,
Neither fish nor fowl,
You're too busy fondling...
Your own self-esteem.
The past few weeks have seen a fiesta of these rational, liberal people who dominate British mainstream politics. For them, the most basic forms of morality and shame, the kind you learn as a child, have no place in public life. On 27 September, the Guardian published a front-page photograph of Tony Blair, a prima facie war criminal, his arms outstretched, his grin fixed. Beside this was a headline, "Charm and eloquence. But a missed chance". Beneath this, Polly Toynbee wrote: "There were some damp eyes dabbed with hankies and men blowing noses. 'Don't go,' someone said."
Consider such vomit against the facts of Blair's actual crime - the unprovoked invasion of a defenceless country, justified by lies now voluminously documented, and causing the violent deaths of tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children. The word "crime" is verboten among those about whom Victor Jara sang. To spell out the truth would illuminate the collusion of an entire political class.
Instead, the shameless neither-fish-nor-fowl tribunes speak and write incessantly of a "mistake", a "blunder", even a Shakespearean tragedy (for the war criminal, not his victims). From their studios and editorial offices, they declare the mendacious and dishonest banalities of their unclad emperor "brilliant". Al-Qaeda, said Blair in his speech to the Labour party conference, "killed 3,000 people including over 60 British on the streets of New York before war in Afghanistan or Iraq was even thought of". The breath is swept away by this one statement. Half a million infants lie dead, according to Unicef, as a result of the Anglo-American siege of Iraq during the 1990s. For Blair and his rational, liberal, neither-fish-nor-fowl court, these children never lived and never died. Clearly, the Emperor Tony was a leader for his time and, above all, clubbable, whatever the "mistakes" he had made in Iraq.
A parallel world of truth and lies, morality and immorality dominates how the crime in Iraq is presented to us. In recent months, the invaders have vanished. The US, having murdered and cluster-bombed and napalmed and phosphorus-bombed, is now a wise referee between, even a protector of, "warring tribes". The buzzword is "sectarianism", blurring the truth that most of the attacks by the resistance are against the foreign military occupiers: on average, one every 15 minutes. That the majority of Iraqis, Sunni and Shia, are united in their demand that US and British forces get out of their country now is of no interest. Has journalism ever been so voluntarily appropriated by black propaganda?
The confidence in the Blair regime that this propaganda will see them right (if not re-elected) is expressed in striking ways. The former Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, the epitome of neither-fish-nor-fowl, who supported a piratical attack on a Muslim country, now aims his liberal, rational remarks at the most vulnerable community in Britain, fully aware that the racist subtext of his words will be understood in "Middle England" and hopefully further what is left of his contemptible career. It was Straw who let Pinochet escape justice for fraudulent reasons of ill-health. Victor Jara's song is an ode to Straw, and to the authoritarian, twice "retired" David Blunkett, now elevated by the Guardian as "one of the most brilliant, natural politicians", on a mission to ensure that a higher form of corruption, mass murder, does not blight "Tony's legacy".
The Tory leader, David Cameron, the former public relations man for the asset-stripper Michael Green, will follow this legacy, should he become prime minister. Standing on the Bournemouth seafront with his family, including three young children, he emphasised his support for the crime against the Iraqi people, whose children, says Unicef, are now dying faster under Blair and Bush than under Saddam Hussein.
Comment on this Editorial
Editorial: The Assassins of Truth
By Charles Sullivan
Information Clearing House
10/12/06
It is evident to me that the United States government believes that any individual or group of people that works to prevent it from implementing its agenda are terrorists. Furthermore, I contend that the government's plan is not the people's agenda; but some of us will be required to sacrifice our lives in order to help them execute their will, and all of us will be required to sacrifice our freedoms.
I also contend that the government overwhelmingly represents the interests of wealth and power; that its strength is derived from corporate bribes, rather than from grass roots populist support; that it exists to execute a Plutocratic agenda of world domination, while neglecting the needs of the overwhelming majority of the people.
I charge that the government is engaged in immoral and criminal conduct on a global scale. That it does not conform to the norms of civil society; that it is sociopathic, and flagrantly violates domestic and international law. The form of government that we have does not serve the citizenry-it preys upon them. It is not a government of the people, for the people. It is government of the corporations, for the corporations, by the corporations-a corporate Plutocracy.
The sole purpose of Plutocratic government is to spread the gospel of free market economics and privatized wealth, and to extend the hegemony of capitalism to every corner of the earth. Its god is the almighty dollar. Championed by right wing extremists, it is equally endorsed by cowering neo-liberals in Congress. Its funding is derived from corporate sources and extorted tax contributions from the citizenry.
I contend that the government routinely breaches the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that it was sworn to uphold; and that it circumvents domestic law through the frequent use of presidential signing statements that effectively render civil law null and void. The recent passage of the Military Commissions Acts that resulted in the suspension of habeas corpus, passed into law with the aide of fourteen Democrats, is beyond onerous-it is morally vacuous and criminal.
The executive branch of the government, in particular, has run amok; it disdains the daily struggles of ordinary citizens, and is engaged in class warfare against its own, and the world's working people. It conducts terrorist attacks on its own citizens, and against civilians abroad.
It is widely known abroad that the U.S. government is practicing extraordinary rendition in order to torture, maim, and kill its suspected enemies; it imprisons innocent people all over the world indefinitely, without due process and without charging them with any crime.
We bear witness to the crimes of a rogue government that invades sovereign nations, bombs their cities into piles of rubble, murders with impunity, imposes harsh economic sanctions, denies women and children life saving medical treatment, and steals their oil and mineral wealth. Hypocritically, it calls those who resist occupation, terrorists.
I further contend that the government is engaged in a campaign of unlawfully monitoring the communications of its citizens, including the infiltration of Quaker religious orders that preach doctrines of peace over those of war, and is increasingly stifling free speech and the right of peaceful assembly. Our hard won civil liberties are giving way to an emerging police state. The prying eyes of paranoid government are everywhere.
Thus we are left with an illicit government that routinely commits crimes against humanity under the pretense of executing a war on terror. To its eternal shame, it has unleashed the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Pentagon upon its own citizens without just cause. These agencies are monitoring our computers, tapping our phones, and tracking our movements not to protect America from terrorists, but to protect the Plutocracy from those who would expose it.
What does it say about a government when those who uphold the Constitution and the rule of law are targeted as enemies of the state or as terrorists? Is this what Thomas Jefferson and the framers of the constitution intended?
The assassins of truth have the audacity to feign faith in god while daily committing unholy acts of terror against peace loving people at home and abroad. With the deftness of a public relations firm, they are using religion as a weapon against a guileless flock that blithely follows its every command, even as it leads them to the slaughter of an Armageddon of its own creation.
By these acts and worse, the U.S. government defines Democracy. It has been empowered to do so by Republicans and Democrats alike.
I hereby assert that the hidden purpose of the U.S. government is not to serve the needs of the people or to make the world free and democratic, as it so boldly claims; it is to accrue ever more wealth to the obscenely rich, the global elite. Its intent is to do to the U.S. what it has done to Iraq; to revoke the Constitution and the rule of law; to bankrupt the federal treasury and to privatize everything that is publicly owned. Ultimately its objective is to pursue the religion of unregulated free market capitalism, and to establish global corporate rule.
It seems to me that any government that does not serve the people and treats those who uphold the Constitution as terrorists is not a Democracy; and we should refrain from calling it by that name. Governmental power that is not derived from, and subservient to the people, is illegitimate-a form of authoritarian dictatorship as vile as Communism.
When an institution that was purportedly created to serve the needs of the people is no longer accountable to the people, and operates in secrecy, we can be sure that sinister powers are in motion. Those responsible are not only obscuring truth and revising history; they are knowingly and willfully assassinating truth, and mocking the very idea of Democracy.
Government that is controlled by capital, rather than a moral imperative to serve the public good, is a danger to the world. Such government is not only misguided and inherently unjust; it is hostile to Democracy and opposed to peace.
A government of the people would have a very different agenda than a Plutocratic regime. It would provide no cost health care to its citizens, free higher education to anyone who wants it; and it would not squander the federal treasury on unprovoked war that will not end in our lifetimes. Such a government would not overthrow democratically elected governments abroad. Nor would it throw its support behind terrorist states like Israel, and it would not finance brutal dictatorships like Saddam Hussein and Augusto Pinochet, as has been the history of the American government.
Democracies do not betray its citizens by outsourcing jobs to sweat shops in other parts of the world in order to maximize corporate profits and to drive down wages. They do not wage war on sovereign nations based upon lies and innuendo; they do not occupy other countries, and they do not plan additional wars and occupations at the behest of corporate lobbyists against nations that pose no threat to them.
Democracies do not sentence their youth to fight and die under false pretenses in order to open sovereign nations to corporate plunder and capitalism.
Plutocracy, I contend, is the outgrowth of the capitalist system that values private profits above all else. Under this sickly paradigm people are dehumanized; reduced to mere commodities on a par with a lump of coal or a pool of oil. It is a system that knows the price of everything but the value of nothing; and it is driven by insatiable greed.
Democracies derive their power from the people, all people being equal, and the distribution of wealth being equal. Plutocracies derive their power from the private ownership of immense wealth and property that represents a small percentage of the aggregate population. In the capitalist system, only those with wealth and property have legal standing and representation in government. All others are second class citizens with second class rights and subservient to the Plutocracy. It is about time that we learn the difference.
Charles Sullivan is a photographer, free lance writer and social activist residing in the hinterland of West Virginia. He welcomes your comments at csullivan@phreego.com.
Comment on this Editorial
Editorial: While you were sleeping
Anonymous
13/10/2006
While you were sleeping
you saw evil all around and did not recognize it
you heard deception yet did not seek truth
you smelled the stench of death and did not mourn
you proclaimed "I am proud to be an american"
you were told we must fight evil
you were told we must defeat those who would harm us
you were told these things and more
from the mouths of liars who speak those words of themselves
you were told we are the greatest nation on earth
the most righteous, the chosen, the Light of the World
God bless america you proclaimed
but your ignorance has blinded you
your apathy has hidden from you
that which america has become
and now is
And many will realize but too late
that america is changed forever
changed from what the founders envisioned
the great opportunity to create a nation
principled in the knowledge of the truth
that each individual
has supremely endowed rights
that cannot be subjugated
by men or groups of men
changed to the naked truth that is now revealed
that america is but another worldly empire
intent on destruction
principled on greed
principled on hatred
principled on lust
principled on deceit
clothed in the deceptive cloak of righteousness
while rotting from within
holding hostage the willing and unwilling
extorting, deceiving those from whom it is made
punishing, ostracizing those among the many who remain vigilant
america the whore, america, the ruthless beast of darkness
as the sheep are led to slaughter
so you will be among their numbers
a hundred, thousand, million, and more
one of the flock of those who like you
were lulled to sleep by the empty promise of gratification
and by the false promise of riches and comfort
incited by visions of far-away conquerors
ignoring the cries of the vanquished
fearful of suffering and without dignity
fostering indifference and intolerance
told lies many in number
by those whom you believe are righteous
you who are content to sleep in comfort
and dream of possibilities of profit and entertainment
you accept lies as truth
injustice as justice
wealth as prosperity
slavery as freedom
you slumber in your righteousness
not remembering nor caring what is freedom
not knowing justice
not knowing truth
death is your mantra
your eyes have been blinded
your ears have been deafened
your heart has been hardened
you cannot see your own tomorrow
even for the sake of the ones that will come after you
The fruit has fallen away
and spoiled with decay
and now the tree bears no fruit
for as the caretakers sleep
the tree withers and becomes lifeless
and with the passing of time
your children will awaken
and when their suffering becomes too great to bear
then they will cry out
I see the evil
I hear the deception
I smell the stench of death
I seek the truth
I seek justice
I seek freedom
and for them the struggle to escape from the bondage
you have willfully left as their inheritance
will be their struggle
faint memories and haunting ghosts of Freedom
will be of no consequence
for it is to be their struggle
to regain that which was lost
by the complacency of their forefathers
and perhaps they will know in their hearts
that they are worthy of the Freedom
that many before them had denied and forgotten
that they are more than what they have been born into
and so it came to pass
while you were sleeping
Anonymous
Comment on this Editorial
Iraqis Under the Gun
Gunmen Storm Iraqi TV Station, Kill 11
October 12, 2006
AP
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Gunmen, some of them in police uniforms, stormed the downtown Baghdad headquarters of a new satellite television station Thursday, killing the board chairman and 10 others in the second attack on an Iraqi station in the capital in as many weeks.
The motive for the attack was not clear, though there were signs it was carried out by Shiite militiamen. Sunnis say the militias often have help from police and in its few short broadcasts, the station played nationalist music against the U.S. occupation, perhaps prompting militiamen to assume it sympathized with Sunni insurgents.
Sunni insurgents are also said to sometimes disguise themselves as police when they carry out attacks. The station had a mixed staff, and the slain chairman was a Shiite who had been jailed under Saddam Hussein.
Journalists have frequently been targeted in both the insurgency and the spiral of sectarian killings in Iraq.
After the attack, blood stained the polished floors of the Shaabiya station building, which housed its studio and offices, and bullet casings lay scattered around.
The station was founded in July and was working around the clock to get ready to start broadcasting after the end of Ramadan in about two weeks, so a lot of people were in the office even though the attack came at 7 a.m., executive director Hassan Kamil said. He added that some of those killed had been sleeping.
Around two dozen gunmen, some in police uniforms, drove up to the building in six civilian cars, stormed in and "eliminated most of those present," he said.
Kamil said that even though there was evidence some 100 shots were fired, nobody heard the gunfire, and also no windows were damaged, indicating the attackers may have used silenced pistols and killed their victims at close range.
Comment: Interesting. A station that clearly opposed the US occupation and supports Iraqi sovereignty is attacked. Who benefits? More importantly, who is responsible?
Click here for the answer.
Comment on this Article
British army chief says Iraq pullout needed soon
Last Updated: Thursday, October 12, 2006 | 9:22 PM ET
CBC News
The head of the British army has called Prime Minister Tony Blair's Iraq policies "naive" and said the country's troops must get out of the war soon, according to a published interview.
Gen. Sir Richard Dannatt, chief of the general staff, said the British military presence is exacerbating the security problems in Iraq, according to an interview with the Daily Mail published on their website Thursday.
"The military campaign we fought in 2003 effectively kicked the door in," said Gannett. "Whatever consent we may have had in the first place may have turned to tolerance and has largely turned to intolerance."
"I think history will show that the planning for what happened after the initial successful war fighting phase was poor, probably based more on optimism than sound planning," he added.
The public criticism from a serving military official is certain to cause a stir.
Several British media outlets are reporting that Defence Secretary Des Browne has summoned Dannatt for a meeting on Friday.
Dannatt, who just took over the post in August, said he was concerned about the implications in Britain. He said a "moral and spiritual vacuum in this country" has been exploited by Muslim extremists.
Dannatt, 55, has been deployed in Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Kosovo and Germany.
He was commissioned at Sandhurst military academy, where Prince William is an officer cadet and Prince Harry recently graduated.
According to the paper, Dannatt said he understands why William and Harry are eager to serve abroad but has not yet decided whether they will be allowed to fight in Afghanistan.
Comment on this Article
ITN reporter unlawfully killed, inquest rules
Chris Tryhorn
Friday October 13, 2006
MediaGuardian.co.uk
ITN reporter Terry Lloyd was unlawfully killed when he came under fire from American troops in Iraq, a coroner ruled today.
Andrew Walker, the assistant deputy coroner of Oxfordshire, said he would take steps to see if the soldiers responsible could be brought to justice.
"Having carefully taken into account all the evidence I am satisfied so that I am sure that had this killing taken place under English Law it would have constituted an unlawful homicide," Mr Walker said, making his ruling after a six-day inquest in Oxford.
"I shall write to the attorney general and the director of public prosecutions with a view to considering the appropriate steps to bring the persons involved in this incident to justice."
Mr Walker said he was recording a verdict of unlawful killing because Lloyd had been fatally wounded when he was being rescued by a civilian minibus in full view of American tanks.
There was no justification of self defence, he said, as there would have been earlier when the Americans were firing against Iraqi forces. It was only after the minibus stopped to pick up the wounded, including Lloyd, that the Americans opened fire, the coroner added.
Lloyd and three ITN colleagues were caught in crossfire between Iraqi and American forces as they drove towards Basra on March 22 2003, soon after the US-led invasion of Iraq.
Cameraman Daniel Demoustier was the only member of the team to survive, after throwing himself from the car he was sharing with Lloyd.
The inquest heard evidence that Lloyd was shot in the back by the Iraqis and then fatally wounded in the head by fire from a US tank as a civilian vehicle attempted to rescue him.
The other members of the team, translator Hussein Osman and cameraman Fred Nerac went missing in the gunfight. Osman's remains were later traced to the scene, while Nerac's body was never found, though the inquest heard it was likely he had died in the incident.
Summing up the inquest, the coroner said: "It is only now that the sequence of events that led to this tragedy can be discovered, for a tragedy it is when the lives of innocent civilians are lost.
"I am certain that the world is a lesser place following their sad death. Their professionalism and dedication in the face of danger is and can only be admired by those they left behind.
"Preparations were detailed and thorough and began many months before the deployment.
"In my view, on the evidence I have heard, those preparations, from the initial setting of Independent Television News, through their training of staff and equipment, was of the highest possible standard."
David Mannion, the editor-in-chief of ITN, said the company would fully support Lloyd's family to "bring those responsible for Terry's death to account before a court of law".
Speaking after the inquest, Mr Mannion said: "All of us want and need to know the truth. Terry Lloyd was killed in an unlawful act by a US marine who fired directly at the civilian minibus in which Terry, already badly injured, lay helpless.
"But we do not know the identity of the marine who shot him. ITN therefore fully supports the Lloyd family in their pursuit of justice and we welcome the coroner's decision to write to the attorney general and the DPP in an effort to bring those responsible for Terry's death to account before a court of law.
"I would also like to say something that I know Terry would have wished me to say. Independent, unilateral reporting, free from official strictures, is crucial; not simply to us as journalists but to the role we play in a free and democratic society.
"The loss of Terry, Fred and Hussein in pursuit of that aim has had a devastating and permanent effect upon ITN.
"In tribute to Terry, Fred and Hussein, ITN can do no better than quote the words of the coroner himself when he described them as 'men of the highest calibre'.
"Finally, ITN would like to pay particular tribute to our cameraman, Daniel Demoustier, whose evidence underlines how close he came to being killed and whose only thoughts in the immediate aftermath of this terrible tragedy were not for his own safety but for that of his colleagues."
The NUJ general secretary, Jeremy Dear, said: "We welcome the coroner's decision to report his finding to the attorney general and the DPP and believe they should immediately commence proceedings to bring the perpetrators of what is nothing short of a war crime, to justice.
"The killing of journalists with impunity must never, ever go unpunished. Any attempt to silence journalists in this way must never succeed.
"We would also like to again express our deepest sympathy to the family for their tragic loss. The inquest verdict has confirmed what we always suspected: that Terry's death was not an accident in the theatre of war but a callous act of murder."
Comment on this Article
UK minister urged Aljazeera bombing
al-Jazeerah.net
12/10/2006
David Blunkett, the UK's former home secretary, has said that during the 2003 invasion of Iraq he suggested to Tony Blair that Britain's military should bomb Aljazeera's television transmitter in Baghdad.
Aljazeera television said on Thursday that Blunkett's claims - made in an interview with Britain's Channel 4 television to be aired on Monday - support its belief that the US and Britain deliberately bombed its Baghdad offices during the war.
Ahmed al-Sheikh, editor-in-chief of Aljazeera's Arabic channel, said; "This adds to the growing number of evidences that will one day prove that the attack on Aljazeera was premeditated ... at the highest levels.
"Aljazeera was being targeted at the time because the people who were waging war on Iraq didn't like what it was showing.
"We talk about terrorism, this is pure terrorism."
Al-Sheikh also said that Aljazeera will ask for an official British statement on Blunkett's claims.
"In the past, we got in touch with the Americans and asked them to apologise or to hold an investigation. But we haven't heard anything from them.
"This time, we will also complain," he said, adding that an official statement would be released later.
Blunkett's claims
During his interview with Channel 4, Blunkett, who is promoting a new book, said that he had told Tony Blair, the British prime minister, that Aljazeera television transmitting equipment should be targeted because it was broadcasting "propaganda".
"There wasn't a worry from me because I believed that this was a war and in a war you wouldn't allow the broadcast to continue taking place," Blunkett said.
"I don't think for a minute in previous wars we'd have thought twice about ensuring that a propaganda mechanism on the soil of the country you were invading would actually continue being able to propagandise against you."
The US has previously accused Aljazeera of aiding its enemies
Two weeks after Blunkett pressed the prime minister to attack Aljazeera, the American military bombed the station's Baghdad offices, killing journalist Tareq Ayoub.
Blunkett, however, said that although the British government considered targeting Aljazeera's transmission equipment, it considered that journalists were not a legitimate target.
"I think there's a big difference between taking out the transmission and taking out journalists - even if you don't agree with them," he said.
"I don't know whether it was a mistake or not, but I wouldn't call it legitimacy," he added, referring to the US bombing.
Media deaths
Since April 2003, the Committee to Protect Journalists estimates that at least 80 journalists and 22 media support workers have died in the Iraq conflict - the overwhelming majority killed by members of Iraqi groups.
In addition to that tally, 11 employees of Shaabiya, an Iraqi television channel, were killed when their offices were attacked during the night by masked gunmen early on Thursday morning.
"We came in this morning and we saw the massacre," Hassan Kamil, executive manager of Shaabiya satellite channel, said.
"All were killed. We think gunmen broke into the house and killed them."
Comment on this Article
U.K. troops in Iraq said hurt situation
AP
October 12, 2006
LONDON - The head of the British Army said British troops in
Iraq are making the situation worse and must leave the country soon, according to a newspaper interview published Thursday.
The British military should "get ourselves out sometime soon because our presence exacerbates the security problems," Gen. Sir Richard Dannatt told the Daily Mail in the interview released on the tabloid's Web site.
"We are in a Muslim country and Muslims' views of foreigners in their country are quite clear," he added. "As a foreigner, you can be welcomed by being invited in a country, but we weren't invited certainly by those in Iraq at the time."
Dannat's comments are certain to infuriate Prime Minister
Tony Blair who is President Bush's key ally in the war in Iraq. He described Blair's policy toward Iraq as "naive."
It is highly unusual for a sitting military commander to publicly criticize the government's foreign policy.
"Whatever consent we may have had in the first place" from the Iraqi people "has largely turned to intolerance," he said.
Comment on this Article
U.S. seen retreating from democracy push
By David Morgan
Reuters
Thu Oct 12, 2006
WASHINGTON - The United States has quietly retreated from its high-profile push for democracy in the Muslim world, since the Hamas election stunned the Bush administration by bringing a violent militant group to power.
Despite President George W. Bush's continued public focus on democratization, analysts say U.S. policy-makers saw the Hamas victory in the Palestinian territories as part of a potentially dangerous trend following democratic gains for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
In each instance, elections were seen to boost adversaries of U.S. ally Israel, and in the case of Hamas and Hezbollah, groups labeled as terrorist organizations by Washington.
The experience in Iraq, which U.S. officials once envisioned as the catalyst for democratic change in Arab countries, has emerged instead as a disturbing symbol of sectarian strife.
"Frankly, the administration has retreated even from a passive push for democracy," said Michael Rubin, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.
Washington is now largely silent about actions taken by Middle East regimes to suppress political opposition.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who made an impassioned speech about democracy in Cairo last year, did not publicly criticize Egypt's repressive tactics during her recent visit.
"A lot of regimes are detecting a green light to go back to the past," Rubin said. "It's undercut any kind of credibility the United States has, not just now but well into the future, in any calls for reform."
Policy analysts have warned that eroding U.S. credibility on democratization jeopardizes American efforts to use reform as a weapon against growing Islamist militancy and al Qaeda propaganda.
They say the United States faces a generational struggle in the Muslim world, where deep-seated suspicion about American motives is exacerbated by the repressive and corrupt practices of governments allied with Washington.
"Greater pluralism and more responsive political systems in Muslim-majority nations would alleviate some of the grievances jihadists exploit," according to a recently declassified intelligence report on global terrorism trends.
'PERCEPTION OF HYPOCRISY'
The credibility problem is complicated by Bush's use of the democracy theme in speeches. Before the U.N. General Assembly, he portrayed the United States as a friend of freedom but cited autocratic regimes, including Saudi Arabia, as reformers.
"People in the region know about the Saudi government. They're not naive," said Thomas Carothers, head of the Democracy and Rule of Law Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
"The perception of hypocrisy is extremely high," he said.
Ellen Laipson, former vice chairwoman of the National Intelligence Council, a leading government think tank, suggested the White House may have now adopted a more pragmatic, longer term approach to reform.
"It is not something that they're going to be able to say they completed on their watch, or that they even know it is going to work on their watch," said Laipson, now head of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a public policy institute.
The Bush administration has supported democratization through programs such the Middle East Partnership Initiative, which has allocated almost $300 million over four years to reform, education and economic development.
But according to Rubin and former intelligence officials, democratization was never fully embraced by rank-and-file officials including diplomats, partly because the National Security Council failed to establish it as a priority.
Pro-democracy groups in Arab countries have become increasingly pessimistic about the prospects for meaningful reform. This year, Saudi liberals said they had abandoned hope the United States would pressure the government, even privately, to reform the absolute monarchy.
Even in Afghanistan, which Washington showcases as a democratic success story, observers cite a lack of follow-through on last year's elections for parliament and provincial councils.
"We are particularly concerned that there appears to be no effort going into helping build political parties ... as well as no talk of the district and municipal elections that are supposed to be held under the constitution," said Joanna Nathan, a Kabul-based analyst for International Crisis Group.
Comment on this Article
Shays: Abu Ghraib abuses were sex ring
AP
October 13, 2006
HARTFORD, Conn. - Republican Rep. Christopher Shays says the Abu Ghraib prison abuses weren't torture but instead involved a "sex ring" of National Guard troops.
"Now I've seen what happened in Abu Ghraib, and Abu Ghraib was not torture," Shays said at a debate Wednesday.
"It was outrageous, outrageous involvement of National Guard troops from (Maryland) who were involved in a sex ring and they took pictures of soldiers who were naked," added Shays. "And they did other things that were just outrageous. But it wasn't torture."
The lawmaker's comments were in a transcript of the debate provided by his opponent, Diane Farrell. Shays' campaign, contacted Friday, did not dispute the comments.
The congressman had been asked what the government should do to restore the nation's moral image in the wake of torture accusations at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay.
Shays is waging a bruising re-election fight against Farrell, who had no immediate comment Friday on her opponent's remarks.
Shays stirred controversy recently when he defended House Speaker Dennis Hastert's handling of a congressional page scandal, saying no one died like at Chappaquiddick in 1969 when Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy was involved.
Abu Ghraib is the Baghdad prison where abuse of prisoners by U.S. soldiers led to an international scandal.
Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib were brutalized and sexually humiliated by military police and intelligence agents in the fall of 2003. At least 11 U.S. soldiers have been convicted in the scandal.
Comment: What about rendition? You know, the secret CIA flights that stopped in several European countries on their way to various countries known to torture prisoners? What about the Military Commissions Act that basically gave a rubber stamp to kangaroo courts and evidence obtained through the use of what the rest of the world calls torture?
Is this all just part of the same "National Guard sex ring"???
Comment on this Article
Zionists Mad with Hate
British Government's Human Rights Report Omits Attacks On Lebanon
October 13, 2006
The Guardian
The Foreign Office came under fire yesterday after omitting any criticism of Israel's attack on Lebanon in its annual human rights report.
Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary, told a press conference the omission was because the timing was "a little bit tight" for publication. She said she anticipated the war being dealt with more fully in next year's report.
But the authors did find sufficient time to include criticism of the Lebanese-based guerrilla group Hizbullah, and one of its backers, Syria, over attacks on Israel and to provide a figure for Israeli, but not Lebanese, casualties.
Although Mrs Beckett said timing was a problem, the report includes a colour photograph of a Lebanese woman amid the rubble of Beirut, and refers to the ceasefire that ended the 34-day war on August 14, and a speech by the Syrian president, Bashar Assad, two days later.
The omission row overshadowed publication of the 356-page report, which lists countries the British government views as being of major concern with regard to human rights, including Burma, North Korea, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe and Israel, although only in the occupied territories, not in Lebanon. Israel was accused of various abuses for attacking civilian areas, including the use of cluster bombs. Well over 1,000 Lebanese civilians died in the conflict.
At the time, Tony Blair and the US were suspected of bias towards Israel by refusing to call for an immediate ceasefire. The report's omission will raise further suspicions in the Arab world.
But a Foreign Office source said yesterday that, having spoken to one of the report's authors, the omission was an oversight. He said the British embassy in Damascus had sent information on Syria and Hizbullah for inclusion in the report but there was no such communication from the British embassy in Israel.
Tim Hancock, UK campaigns director of Amnesty International, said the organisation welcomed the report as a valuable tool for tracking human rights, but was concerned that key issues were omitted.
He said: "It is absolutely right that the government strongly criticise Hizbullah's rocket attacks, but deeply worrying that this report makes no specific mention of Israel's illegal targeting of Lebanese infrastructure - anything from roads, bridges, supermarkets and petrol stations, to water and fuel storage plants.
"Soon after the Israel-Hizbullah conflict, Amnesty International published reports on possible war crimes committed by both sides - and it's surely right that the UK government should be equally even-handed in assessing all human rights issues."
Tom Porteous, a spokesman for Human Rights Watch, said the war was "one of the biggest human rights stories of the year".
He added: "I think the omission is very serious and is going to undermine what is quite a strong report. I think the Foreign Office attempt to say it is because of a publication deadline is quite possibly true ... [but] how did they include the stuff on Hizbullah and casualty figures in Israel? I am prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt that it could be a mistake but it will play very badly in the Muslim world."
By contrast with the absence of Israel's conduct in Lebanon, the report says: "We remain deeply concerned by Syria's ongoing support for Hizbullah. Hizbullah's role in the major outbreak of violence this year with Israel included abducting and detaining two Israeli soldiers and firing unguided rockets into Israeli towns and cities. In total, Hizbullah fired nearly 4,000 rockets into Israeli territory."
It also noted that the rocket attacks had killed about 40 Israeli civilians.
At the press conference, Mrs Beckett delivered the clearest denunciation yet of Guantánamo Bay, describing detention without trial as "unacceptable in terms of human rights" and "ineffective in terms of counter-terrorism".
Comment on this Article
Report: 290 killed in the Gaza Strip since June 25th, among them 135 children and 25 women
IMEMC
12/10/2006
The death toll, given in the report, since the beginning of the operation has reached 290 civilians, amongst them 135 children and 35 women. The number of injured is 4,350, out of these 750 are left permanently disabled, 117 injuries were to the upper body, 54 burns were sustained and 53 severe burns. 1700 injuries out of 4350 were to children.
Comment on this Article
Rights group: Shin Bet denies vital treatment to Palestinians
Haaretz
12/10/2006
The Shin Bet security service is systematically preventing Palestinians who need medical treatment unavailable in the territories from entering Israel... According to the organization, in many cases, patients have been denied urgent, life-saving treatment. The report says that the Shin Bet automatically refuses entry permits, and reconsiders its decisions only if legal action is begun.
Comment on this Article
Seven Palestinians Murdered by Israeli Fire in Gaza
Reuters
12/10/2006
Five of those killed belonged to the same family -- bystanders 13-year-old Suheib Iqdah, his 40-year-old father Adel and three militants from the armed wing of ruling Islamist movement Hamas, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades. They died after an Israeli aircraft fired a missile into a group of people in Abassan, near the southern town of Khan Yunis, medical and security sources said.
Comment on this Article
9 killed as Israel escalates military actions in Gaza
www.chinaview.cn 2006-10-13 06:45:52
GAZA, Oct. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Israeli army escalated on Thursday and Friday its military air and ground actions against the Gaza Strip, leaving nine Palestinians dead, including two children.
Palestinian security sources and eyewitnesses said that Israeli helicopters destroyed by two missiles a house, owned by the family of a female militant of the governing Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in Gaza City.
The sources said the house belongs to Salleh Reyashi, the father of Reem Reyashi, the mother of two children that was killed in a suicide bombing attack two years ago into Erez Crossing on the borders between Gaza Strip and Israel.
Reyashi owns a factory that produces cars batteries. The factory and the house had been hit and destroyed one and a half year ago. Reyashi rebuilt the house, recently, but it was attacked again on Thursday night.
Comment on this Article
Israel may prepare for large-scale operation into Gaza
www.chinaview.cn 2006-10-13 18:58:07
GAZA, Oct. 13 (Xinhua) -- Senior Palestinian security officials on Friday expressed concerns that the current Israeli army escalation, which began on Thursday, could be a test operation apparently aimed at reoccupying the Gaza Strip.
"We received information that Israel is studying the idea of storming the Gaza Strip, but so far we have not known when exactly the operation would start," a high-ranking security official told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
Israeli TV Channel 10 reported earlier that an Israeli military invasion of the Gaza Strip is approaching.
The report said that the invasion would have many goals, including putting an end to rocket attacks on Israel and solving the issue of captive soldier Gilad Shalit held in Gaza since June 25.
The report quoted army officials as saying that the aim of the operation was to stop weapons smuggling and weaken Palestinian militant factions and their infrastructure.
Israeli military analysts said that the Gaza Strip is acquiring more weapons and, in the opinion of Israeli generals and analysts, this means that the area should be reoccupied.
The Israeli army has been carrying out ground military operations into Palestinian-controlled territories only close to the borders between the Gaza Strip and Israel.
In addition to the small-scale ground operations, Israeli air forces intensify airstrikes on Palestinian militants who fire rockets, and destroy Palestinian houses, which Israel says are used as weapon warehouse by militants.
Since Thursday morning, the Israeli army has carried out three airstrikes on southern and northern Gaza Strip, while tanks and armored vehicles rolled into the two areas.
Joma'a al-Aqaa, chief of emergency at Shiffa Hospital, said that within the last 24 hours, the Israeli army killed 13 Palestinians -- six militants and seven civilians.
On Friday morning, three Hamas militants, members of the al-Qassam Brigades, were killed in an Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza Strip, medics and security sources said.
Meanwhile, a 29-year-old Palestinian woman was killed by Israeli troops east of Abbassan village in southern Gaza Strip.
The escalation of violence between Israel and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip coincided with internal Palestinian fighting and dispute over the formation of a national unity government instead of the current Hamas-led one.
Palestinian analysts said that any Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip "would save the neck of the Hamas movement which has been put in a real predicament and is facing political and financial problems."
If Israel reoccupies the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians "would be busier with defending Gaza than sinking into internal conflicts and a civil war," said Ashraf al-Ajrami, a Palestinian analyst from Gaza.
Comment on this Article
Israel steps up offensive in Gaza, leaving four Palestinians dead
05:34:01 EDT Oct 13, 2006
Canadian Press: IBRAHIM BARZAK
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - Israel pressed forward with a stepped-up offensive in the Gaza Strip on Friday, killing at least four people in a pair of attacks in the coastal area.
The fighting brought the death toll in the offensive to 13 Palestinians, including a young girl, over the past two days. The army has been operating throughout Gaza since June, when militants linked to the ruling Hamas militant group tunnelled into Israel and captured an Israeli soldier. The soldier remains in captivity.
fter a recent lull, the fighting has picked up in recent days. Israel TV said the current operation in Gaza was the largest there in weeks.
In Friday's fighting, an Israeli aircraft attacked a car in the northern Gaza Strip, killing three Hamas militants, including a local commander, the group said. Witnesses said the force of the blast ripped the white sedan into two. The army confirmed it had carried out the strike.
In the southern Gaza Strip, Israeli troops shot a 29-year-old woman outside her house in the village of Abassan, Palestinian hospital officials said.
The army said it had no information about a woman being shot. It reported killing an armed militant and wounding another in the same area around the same time.
The latest Israeli activity has been focused in the Abassan area, near the southern city of Khan Younis. An Israeli air strike on Thursday killed six people, including two teenage civilians.
Meanwhile, a separate air strike targeting the house of a Hamas commander in Gaza City killed three people Thursday night, including a girl of about 10 years old.
Seven people were wounded, including children, doctors said. The Israeli military said the owner of the house, Ashraf Farawana, is a Hamas leader who was involved in attacks against Israel and supplying weapons to Hamas militants.
The army often warns home occupants to evacuate ahead of air strikes. But Palestinians said the warning wasn't delivered this time.
During the offensive, Israel has carried out a series of air strikes on suspected weapons storage facilities after ordering the occupants out of the buildings. Israel says the warnings are meant to avoid civilian casualties.
Shortly after that strike, Palestinian militants fired a rocket from Gaza at the Israeli town of Sderot, a town just outside the border fence that has been a frequent target of Palestinian rockets fired from Gaza. The rocket struck an electricity pylon, blacking out parts of the town and slightly injuring two people. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.
In the West Bank, Palestinians trying to enter Jerusalem for Friday prayers clashed with police and soldiers at five Israeli checkpoints around the city. The protesters had hoped to attend weekly prayers at the Al-Aqsa mosque, Islam's third-holiest site, during the Ramadan holy month.
Israel does not allow Palestinian men under 40 to attend the Ramadan prayers, citing security concerns. Younger men angry about not being allowed into the city threw stones at troops, Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said.
Paramilitary border policemen made six arrests and dispersed crowds with stun grenades, tear gas and rubber bullets, Ben-Ruby said. No injuries were reported.
Comment on this Article
Ex-Mossad chief says Hezbollah lost war
By Christopher True
Thursday 05 October 2006, 20:27 Makka Time, 17:27 GMT
Efraim Halevy was head of the Mossad, Israel's intelligence and special operations agency, from 1998 to 2002. On leaving he assumed the role of national security adviser to Ariel Sharon, Israel's former prime minister, resigning a year later.
He played a significant role in negotiating Israel's peace deal with King Hussein of Jordan, the bringing of Ethiopian Jews to Israel and Israel's response to the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
In the first of a two-part interview he discusses failures in Israel's preparedness for the country's invasion of Lebanon earlier this year and how he believes Hezbollah lost the subsequent war. Next week Aljazeera.net will publish Mr Halevy's views on Palestine, the Middle East road map and Iran's nuclear programme.
Halevy is currently head of the Centre for Strategic and Policy Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His book Man in the Shadows: Inside the Middle East Crisis with a Man who led the Mossad was published in March 2006.
Aljazeera.net: Was Israel defeated by Hezbollah during the war?
Efraim Halevy: I do not think that Israel was defeated by Hezbollah during the war. I believe that Israel did not achieve all of its objectives. In my view, the following are the indications that Israel did succeed in seriously damaging Hezbollah in Lebanon and limiting its freedom of action:
i) Hassan Nasrallah has publicly stated that he misjudged Israeli reaction to his incursion across the international border on July 12 when his forces killed eight Israeli soldiers and kidnapped two soldiers from within Israel territory. He has publicly stated that had he had the faintest indication as to how Israel would react, he would not have mounted the operation.
ii) From almost day one of the Lebanese war of summer 2006 Hezbollah and Iran and Syria, its mentors, daily appealed for a ceasefire. A winning force does not appeal for a ceasefire but accedes to requests of others.
iii) Initially, Hezbollah strongly objected to the entry of an international force into Lebanon with the mission of aiding the regular Lebanese army to deploy along the UN recognised Lebanese-Israeli international border. It also objected to Lebanon accepting the other provisions and stipulations of UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution 1701 which lays the blame on Hezbollah for starting the recent conflict. This resolution was unanimously approved by the UNSC and Iran and Syria are obligated to honour it.
iv) Nasrallah has been forced to order his remaining men in the south not to parade openly with their weapons and for the moment is respecting the letter of the ceasefire.
v) UNSC resolution 1701 calls for the total disarming of the Hezbollah. Nasrallah and his forces are defiant in their refusal to abide by this decision and, as a result, are flouting the wishes and demands of the entire international community, including the major states in the Middle East and the Arab world.
vi ) Hezbollah is now engaged in an intense internal struggle inside Lebanon. It has labeled Fuad Siniora, the Lebanese prime minister, a traitor and is calling for the replacement of his government with a national unity government. This demand has been rejected.
The result of the war is, therefore, a unique one. Israel may not have won the war as it hoped, but Hezbollah clearly lost it by its own testimony.
One of the strongest themes of your book Man in the Shadows is responsibility at the top of any organisation. Do you think Prime Minister Olmert should resign?
I strongly believe that responsibility originates at the top. In the Israeli system of government judicial commissions are appointed to determine the facts and to propose ways and means of preventing future failures. Such a commission has been set up in Israel and I think that we should all reserve judgment until the findings are published. I am wondering if Hassan Nasrallah will step down in the light of his self-admitted strategic mistakes.
What were the main failings of Israeli intelligence before the war in Lebanon?
On the basis of published accounts of the conduct of the war, I think that there was insufficient regard given to several aspects of the ground operations. However, it now transpires that at a very early stage of the hostilities much effort was invested in forging a diplomatic exit strategy, the culmination of which was UNSC resolution 1701. At the crucial stages of the war, the diplomatic success was seemingly greater than the military one. Israel was quick to enter into intensive negotiations on the international scene almost after day four of the war and Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister, toiled round the clock to promote a viable exit opportunity.
Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported: "Eyewitness accounts by Israel's citizen-soldiers (reservists) spoke of critical supply shortages, leadership failures and disarray on the battlefield." How did a country renowned for its military prowess find itself in this situation?
The shortcomings of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) logistics and related functions were an Achilles heel of the war from the Israeli aspect and are now the subject of in-depth interrogation. Sadly, in every war that Israel has fought, we have experienced shortcomings and disorder. However, let it be clear that war is not usually a precision clockwork operation. War is never conducted "by the book" and it will never be so. All wars are laced not only with glorious campaigns and victories but, alas, also by failed operations, sad incidents of death through "friendly fire" and the like. I am confident that the lessons of our failures will be digested before we are put to the test once again.
When you resigned as director of the National Security Service in 2003 you said of the Sharon administration: "A situation has emerged in which decisions are not being made in an orderly way. There is an intolerable sense of offhandedness in Israel today in making fateful conditions." Do you believe this situation continued and contributed to Israel's strategy in Lebanon?
The conduct of the war, as already mentioned, is now being reviewed in Israel by a judicial inquiry commission and I do not wish to second guess its findings. The state controller is conducting a parallel investigation which, so I understand, will also cover the decision-making process.
A couple of days ago he published a report which was severely critical of the manner in which the National Security Council that I headed for one year was sidelined by successive prime ministers.
If the process where we "slid" into war will be exposed as faulty, this will become public knowledge.
I cannot avoid a thought concerning the "decision-making" process that led Hassan Nasrallah to launch the opening gambit of the Lebanese war of 2006 with such disastrous results for Hezbollah and the Lebanese nation.
How did he reach the decision? Who, in his ruling Shura council participated in the discussions prior to the attack? Were the Iranian representatives on the council active participants in the decision? I wish a method could be devised to help us all find out how this all came about.
Comment on this Article
U.S. Teacher Freed in West Bank
LA Times
12/10/2006
Michael Phillips, 24, who teaches English in Palestinian refugee camps in Nablus, was unharmed, said Samah Atout, a manager for the nonprofit group for which the Louisiana resident has volunteered. "He's totally OK, and he doesn't want to leave Nablus," Atout said by telephone shortly after Phillips' release.
Comment on this Article
The worst of all curses is the inability to recognize injustice
Aviad Kleinberg
Published: 10.12.06, 09:26
I have noticed that over the years I have become impervious to the scenes and words coming from "over there," from the moral twilight zone we have been calling the "Territories" for the past 40 years. As with experienced athletes, our heartbeats quickly return to normal and we go on as usual.
The other day it hit me again for a moment while watching Channel 1 TV: In wake of the prolonged Israeli blockade, which has led to near destitution, Palestinians and left-wing activists were filmed trying to transfer crates of grapes grown by Palestinian farmers.
It wasn't a particularly brutal scene: The violence wasn't anything irregular; on the contrary, it was predictable and standard: The grapes were thrown on the road, protestors were beaten, and nonsensical excuses regarding Israel's security were sounded.
The threat to our existence was lifted, thank God. The Palestinian grape growers were refused entry. Next we saw news anchor Haim Yavin raise an eyebrow and go onto the next item.
Israeli leftists also shot at
The 15 seconds of air time given to the incident was only due to Israeli involvement. Israeli left-wing activists are not fireproof, as demonstrated in the shooting incident of an Israeli demonstrator at Masha, a Palestinian village south of the West Bank city of Qalqilya in 2004.
When Israelis cross the line, namely the Green Line, the IDF doesn't hesitate to open fire on protestors (not to mention the foreign left-wing activists - God have mercy on them).
In such an instance the IDF is careful to clear perpetrators of any guilt and suffices with reviewing "the rules of engagement." However, the presence of Israelis, even leftists, warrant documentation. Without it this little bit of injustice would have gone unnoticed and would have quickly been suppressed.
Far more lethal conflicts take place everyday, but not a word is heard. With complete honesty, how many of you remember when IDF soldiers fired towards unarmed protestors demonstrating against the fence in front of the TV cameras, and how many remember that one of them was seriously wounded and almost lost his life? How many of you remember how quickly the IDF covered up the incident? I'm willing to bet, not many. We have become accustomed to such events.
But habits are powerful. They enable us to turn cries into noise and to turn injustices to deviations from protocol. They enable us to keep a clean and moral self image, even when the stench emanating from the piles of injustices cover us from head to toe.
The most shocking aspect of the event the other day wasn't the use of force. I do not advocate turning a cheek, and am not among believers of proportionality (it enables the attacker to dictate the intensity of the conflict). I believe that a life-loving country has the right for self defense even when it calls fro preemptive strikes. I am of the opinion that violence is the only language that all parties understand.
However, what we witnessed the other day wasn't violence aimed at achieving an objective - because what type of threat could the crate of grapes possibly pose to state security? It was outright violence, foolish evil that demonstrates our brutality and the loss of any basic human capability for empathy towards man - let alone the enemy.
Worse, I realized that the mind has to muster energies the heart is unable to produce to actually feel shocked.
The prophet Isaiah described this process in one of his most chilling prophesies: "Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed."
The inability to recognize injustice, to see and hear morality, and to comprehend it, is the worst of all curses. I recognize the symptoms in myself; I recognize them within my society, but not to worry, it'll be gone in an instant and we can resume our routine.
Comment on this Article
Our Poor Planet
Europe's power supply on brink
Mark Milner
Friday October 13, 2006
The Guardian
Europe's security of electricity supply is facing a growing threat, with generating capacity ahead of rising demand by the lowest ever level, according to a report published today.
The average margin between supply and demand fell to 4.8% last year, a percentage point below the previous year's, said consulting group, Cap Gemini. "This low power margin is a wake-up call to the energy industry, government and regulators that security of supply in Europe is now under severe pressure."
Britain is among countries that have done most to tackle the problem. It raised generating capacity by 13% to increase the margin by one percentage point. The margin this winter will be 22% compared with 21% last winter, according to UK figures.
Despite Britain's relatively strong position, industry experts underline the need for continued investment to replace coal fired plant that does not meet new European regulations and ageing nuclear reactors. "In this country we are looking at £20bn worth of investment in power stations this side of 2020," said David Porter, chief executive of the Association of Electricity Producers.
This week Powergen parent E.ON UK said it had applied to build two units at its coal-fired station at Kingsnorth, Kent, which the company says would represent a £1bn investment. Yesterday RWE, which owns npower, said it was bringing another 500megawatt unit at its oil-fired Fawley plant in Hampshire back into service after being mothballed for more than a decade.
"Many of the country's older power stations are coming up to retirement age," said npower managing director of generation and renewables, Kevin Akhurst. "While new forms of power generation are considered, Fawley will continue to play a vital role in balancing supply and demand."
Comment on this Article
Japan approves additional sanctions against DPRK
www.chinaview.cn 2006-10-13 09:11:40
TOKYO, Oct. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Japanese government approved early Friday an additional set of economic sanctions against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), including a total ban on all imports from the country, which will be effective for six months beginning on Saturday, Kyodo News reported.
The cabinet also decided to ban the DPRK ships from entering Japanese ports, and to block DPRK nationals from entering Japan.
The move was the toughest response so far by any country to the DPRK's first nuclear test on Monday.
Tokyo may consider more options for economic sanctions against the DPRK depending on its response, Kyodo News said, quoting government officials.
With the sanctions imposed, the DPRK vessels in Japan have to leave Japanese ports by the end of Saturday.
About 22 DPRK ships were in four Japanese ports by Thursday evening, according to the Transport Ministry.
Japan mainly imports shellfish, sea urchins, crabs and other seafood, as well as coal and mushroom from the DPRK, the value of which stood at 14.4 billion yen (about 121 million U.S. dollars) in 2005.
Comment on this Article
France seeks to calm uproar over genocide bill passage
PARIS, Oct 12, 2006 (AFP)
France sought Thursday to calm an uproar in Turkey and in the European Union after the French parliament approved a bill that would make it a crime to deny that the 1915-17 massacres of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks constituted genocide.
The French foreign ministry insisted that Paris was still "very keen" on dialogue with Turkey and wanted its "strong ties" with that country to continue.
But a furious Ankara - which strongly contests the use of the term genocide - was in no mood to listen, saying that France had dealt "a heavy blow" to longstanding bilateral relations.
Turkish parliamentary speaker Bulent Arinc called the vote "shameful" and said it reflected a "hostile attitude".
The European Commission also criticised the French bill, saying it would hinder efforts to heal the wounds caused by the Armenian carnage nine decades ago.
The sharp reactions came after France's lower house of parliament, the 577-seat National Assembly, approved the bill by 106 votes to 19. It now goes to the upper house, the Senate, for another vote.
If voted into law, it would become a crime in France to deny that the killings of the Armenians were genocide. Those violating the law would face up to one year in prison and a fine of up to EUR 45,000.
Although introduced by the opposition Socialist Party, President Jacques Chirac's ruling centre-right UMP party did not use its parliamentary majority to block the bill. Some UMP parliamentarians voted in favour of it but most were simply absent for the vote.
The clash over the bill highlighted broader tensions between France and Turkey over the latter's bid to join the European Union.
While Chirac has championed Ankara's ambition, he has had to soften his support somewhat in the face of domestic opposition even within his own party.
The French government has done what it can to put distance between itself and the bill.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei said: "We are very keen on dialogue with Turkey, as well as on the strong ties of friendship and cooperation which link us to that country."
But the spat dividing them has been festering since 2001, when France adopted a law officially calling the Armenian massacres a genocide.
The new bill seeks to build on that by criminalising those who disagree, much in the same manner as a French law that outlaws revisionism concerning the Holocaust of World War II.
Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their ancestors were slaughtered in orchestrated killings that can only be seen as genocide.
Turkey angrily rejects the notion that its Ottoman predecessor was responsible for such a gross violation of human rights.
It admits 300,000 Armenians died when the Ottoman Empire fell apart during World War I. But it but says at least as many Turks did too, as civil strife raged and the Armenians took up arms for independence alongside invading Russian troops.
An association representing the Armenian disapora in Europe, the Brussels-based Euro-Armenian Federation, hailed the French parliamentary vote as a "historic step forward".
Around 400,000 people of Armenian origin are estimated to live in France, the most famous being singer Charles Aznavour, born Chahnour Varinag Aznavourian to immigrant parents.
Turkey has cast the French bill as a restriction on freedom of expression.
It has threatened economic reprisals against France if the bill becomes law, warning that French firms could be excluded from public tenders and a boycott of French goods might be imposed.
The European Commission, the European Union's executive arm, was also unsettled by the draft law.
"Should this law indeed enter into force, it would prohibit the debate and the dialogue which is necessary for reconciliation on this issue," said Krisztina Nagy, the commission's spokeswoman on enlargement.
"It is very important to see that there is an opening in Turkey to conduct debate on that issue," she said, adding that the French bill, if it became law, "could have a negative affect on that debate".
Comment on this Article
EU tells France to change foreign takeover law
BRUSSELS, Oct 12, 2006 (AFP)
The European Commission ordered France on Thursday to change a law that steps up protection against company takeovers from abroad because of concerns it may block investors from other EU countries.
"The commission is concerned that some of the provisions of this decree could discourage investment from other member states, in contradiction with EU ... rules on the free movement of capital and the right of establishment," it said in a statement.
If Paris fails to satisfy Brussels within two months, the commission said that it could open a case against the French government at the European Court of Justice.
In August 2005, the French government drew sharp criticism in France and abroad for drawing up a list of "strategic" sectors in which it could block hostile takeovers of a French firm by a foreign company.
The law requires special authorization for foreign takeovers in particularly sensitive sectors such as casinos, private security firms, antidotes makers, equipment for intercepting communications and some computer security systems.
It went into effect last December but has not yet been used in action.
France has made clear it prefers so-called "national champions" with big foreign interests to emerge out of big French groups in sensitive areas of the economy, rather than trans-national groups resulting from foreign takeovers.
Hostile takeover bids are often portrayed in France as an unwelcome and aggressive feature of so-called "Anglo-Saxon" capitalism.
Comment on this Article
UK, Ireland prepare proposals on N.Irish deal
By Katherine Baldwin
Reuters
Friday, October 13, 2006; 7:32 AM
ST. ANDREWS (Reuters) - Britain and Ireland put the final touches on Friday to their own plans for reviving Northern Ireland's assembly after three days of talks were set to end without a deal between pro-British and pro-Irish parties.
Hardliners are deadlocked over who should compromise first to get the power-sharing administration back up and running.
"I think in the end there will be a document that the governments will publish today," British Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokesman told reporters from the talks at a hotel on Scotland's east coast.
"The last few hours are critical."
Negotiators from the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and pro-Irish Sinn Fein are standing their ground over two issues: the DUP's refusal to share power with Sinn Fein and Sinn Fein's reluctance to fully endorse a local police force.
As the province's two biggest parties, their buy-in is crucial if a deal is to be done before a November deadline.
SHARING POWER
Britain and Ireland have said the parties must agree on how to restore the Belfast assembly by November 24. If they cannot, London will shut it, stop members' salaries and continue running the province from Westminster, with input from Dublin.
Northern Ireland's assembly was set up under the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that largely ended 30 years of violence between majority Protestants committed to ties with Britain and a Roman Catholic minority in favor of a united Ireland.
Under the terms of the agreement, the locally-elected assembly is run by an executive in which Irish nationalists and British unionists share power.
However, a failure by Irish Republican Army guerrillas to disarm, the deep-seated mistrust that is the legacy of decades of conflict, and the rise in power of hardline parties on both sides mean the assembly has never really got off the ground.
It was suspended in 2002 amid a row over spying by the IRA, who waged a bloody campaign against British rule during which some 3,600 people were killed.
Repeated attempts since then to revive the assembly have failed but the UK and Ireland were optimistic a pledge by the IRA last year to end violence, to which the province's ceasefire watchdog says it is adhering, would provide the spur to a deal.
DUP leader Ian Paisley is adamant Sinn Fein, the political ally of the IRA, must pledge full support to the province's police force before he agrees to sit in government with it.
Sinn Fein says it will not move on the policing issue until Paisley commits to sharing power.
Negotiations in the Northern Ireland peace process often run beyond planned deadlines. Friday's talks are expected to finish around lunchtime, in part because the infamously intransigent Paisley, 80, celebrates his 50th wedding anniversary on Friday and wants to get home for the party.
Comment on this Article
Chavez denies being anti-US
Wednesday 04 October 2006, 21:45 Makka Time, 18:45 GMT
Hugo Rafael Chavez Frías, the 53rd president of Venezuela, was born on July 28 1954. He came to power in 1998, promising to help Venezuela's poor majority, and was re-elected in 2000. He survived a coup in 2002 and faces a presidential election in December.
Since becoming president he has followed a policy of democratic socialism, Latin American integration and anti-imperialism.
His reforms have created much controversy in Venezuela and abroad. Most Venezuelans are split between those who say he has empowered the poor and stimulated economic growth, and those who say he is autocratic and has badly managed the economy.
Some foreign governments view Chavez as a threat to world oil prices and regional stability, while others welcome his bilateral trade and reciprocal aid agreements.
Chavez recently described George Bush, the US president, as "the devil" and says Bush has plans to assassinate him and invade Venezuela. He recently talked to Aljazeera about his relationship with the US, the Venezuelan army and why he gets only a few hours' sleep a night.
Aljazeera.net: You are strengthening ties with countries that are dissatisfied with Washington, countries such as Iran, Bolivia and Cuba. What is the end game of such an alliance?
Hugo Chavez: We are not against the US people, where there are children, women, intellectuals and students. We have investments in the US, we have eight refineries there, we have 14,000 gas stations. I have many friends there, I have played baseball there, I even have a nephew there.
What we are against is the imperial elite and that is very different. This is not a game. Do you think Iraq is a game, the aggression against Latin America for a century is a game, the toppling of Allende, the invasions of Grenada, Haiti, Panama, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, is that a game?
If that's a game, then my goodness that would be awful. This is an aggression and every day more and more people are against this hegemony and trying to save the world. Look at Lebanon, the aggression against the Palestinian people, why do they do that? Because the Israelis are supported by the elite of the US. We are against that.
Some would say in order for such an alliance to stop these events and counter the power of Washington that you refer to, regional powers such as China and Russia would need to back it. You hold talks with the leaders of these countries, are they ready to come on board for such an alliance?
You insist on something that is out of my main focus. I have never said we want to build an alliance against the US, so your question is not really focused.
If you take Moscow, Iran, Vietnam, China, Malaysia, what we are doing is getting closer through integration, through energy, oil, gas, trade and respect for international law.
We are today on a campaign around the world asking for support for Venezuela to become part of the Security Council as a non-permanent member. The US is in a terrible campaign to prevent us being elected. We are defending our interests but we are not proposing an alliance against anyone, much less the people of the United States. So your question is out of focus.
In May 2005, you called for an alliance between Latin America and the Arab world. How far has that initiative gone?
Not only me, Lula [Brazil's president] has been outspoken in calling for the coming together of Latin America and the Arab countries.
In Brasilia in May we had the first ever Arab-South American summit. It was a very important meeting.
In the past, only Venezuela had strong relations with the Arab world through Opec and through links with other non-Opec countries such as Egypt.
But now Lula is convening these meetings, he is coming to the Arab world. Not long ago in Venezuela we held a meeting between senior ministers in charge of education and social matters in both Latin America and the Arab world. We have made serious progress. It is not just an individual proposal of Hugo Chavez, it is a proposal of leaders like Muammar al-Qadhafi and the amir of Qatar. As well as Lula and Eva Morales [Bolivia's president]. And we want to get our two regions together.
You have started an ambitious programme to rebuild your military, you are buying new weapons, you are trying to raise, I think, the largest standing army in the Americas. If everything goes to plan, you will have two million reserve troops. What has prompted this military build up?
Let me tell you something. I hardly have time to sleep a few hours a day, but I don't care because I've decided to devote my life to taking my people out of poverty and misery.
To make a great effort for all Venezuelans to have access to education, health, housing, to life. When we were elected, poverty in Venezuela was over 55 per cent based on UN figures, it is now between 30 per cent and 40 per cent.
We are building a system of Bolivarian schools where children can have breakfast, lunch and dinner, gain internet access and take part in sports activities.
I devote a tiny part of my time to being commander-in-chief of the Venezuelan army. The imperialists have threatened to invade Venezuela, they have already conducted a coup d'etat four years ago. Recently they conducted manoeuvres in the Caribbean. We have even captured US soldiers taking pictures of military installations and we have expelled them.
We have much evidence, proof and documents that show there is a plan to invade Venezuela. What do you want us to do? That I forget my task of minimum defence of the country?
We had old rifles, they were 60-years old. We depended almost totally on US supplies. The F16 fighters we bought 20 years ago, they refused to give us spare parts, and they were stranded on the ground. So I have bought better planes and Kalashnikovs from Moscow. We have a vast border with Colombia, we have a huge coastal line along the Caribbean. We have to defend this country. We are not going to be aggressors.
Do you feel you are still being targeted and threatened by the US? We know that some people in the US have spoken in the past about assassinating you. Do you still feel personally targeted by the US?
Yes indeed. People have publicly called for my assassination and that is a crime. However, this person is not in jail, he is a close friend of the US president.
Venezuelan terrorists who left for the US after the 2002 coup, who killed people in Venezuela, are today living in the US. The US will not extradite them. Some of them are organising actions against myself and Venezuela.
The US is protecting terrorism. They are applying state terror. President Bush has left a measure taken by a former president that authorises the CIA, like 007, with a permit to kill whoever, whenever and however. They have a green light. President Carter banned that practice and the current president has just reinstated it. I am one of the targets, no doubt about it.
If the opposition parties do take part in the forthcoming Venezuelan presidential elections will you make a move towards presidency for life?
There is no way I can adopt such a provision. We have a constitution and it is only the people who might change the constitution in this direction or any other direction. They have the power to hold a referendum to remove the power given to me. The people can collect and gather signatures to ask for a referendum to recall a government official and that is totally democratic.
Comment on this Article
Brazil Runoff Campaign Underway
Rio de Janeiro, Oct 13 (Prensa Latina)
The Brazilian electoral campaign continues Friday with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at10 percent more votes than social-democrat Geraldo Alckmin.
However, most refrain from opinion because results may still change two weeks before the elections on October 29.
Televised electoral campaigning has begun and may influence some by the way in which both candidates and their messages are presented.
Moreover, two more electoral debates in coming days could also impact the voters, as well as the conclusions of the police investigation on the alleged purchase of reports by individuals linked to the ruling Workers Party to damage opposition politicians.
Likewise, vote intention may vary due to the behaviors and mistakes by runners or their supportive commands during the campaigning.
Comment on this Article
New TB Strain Frets S Africa
Johannesburg, Oct 13 (Prensa Latina)
South Africa has invited experts of the World health Organization (WHO) to brainstorm on a virulent strain of tuberculosis that has claimed 70 lives, local media inform Friday.
Such encounter, scheduled Tuesday and Wednesday on Johannesburg, aims at finding a formula to fight multi-drug resistant (MDR) and the extremely-drug resistant (XDR) tuberculosis.
The African nation expects the gathering helps to review current plans and project others to reduce effects of that scourge.
South Africa registers 330,000 tuberculosis cases, from them 6,000 with the MDR variety.
The disease has been discovered in several provinces in the country, including KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng, Free State, with the Northern Cape and North West the latest to confirm its existence over the past few days.
Comment on this Article
Update Iran
Iran Offers Russia and America a Package Deal
Kommersant
12/10/2006
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is suggesting that the countries of the West take a wholly new look at their relations with Teheran. In his opinion, the West should not impose sanctions against Teheran but should rather seek to befriend Iran.
According to information obtained by Kommersant, the Iranian leadership has worked out its own plan to come to a peaceful accord with the West. Teheran has made offers to Russia and the United States that would not only allow the Islamic Republic to keep its nuclear program but also to take control of the entire Near East.
Yesterday Mr. Ahmadinejad gave a strange speech at a rally in the city of Shakhriyare. The Iranian president, who is well known for his threatening stance towards the West, unexpectedly changed his tone and called on the United States and Europe to embrace friendly relations with Iran. "Is it really possible that your frowning and anger towards us over the course of the last 27 years has been of any use to you?" asked President Ahmadinejad. "Doesn't it seem to you that it is time to change your relations with us and to become friendly towards the Iranian nation?"
In making his argument for why Iran and the West would do better not to quarrel, Mr. Ahmadinejad said, "the Iranian nation is becoming more powerful, stronger, and more steadfast by the day, while you are becoming ever weaker and more isolated."
Fairly conciliatory statements have been issuing more and more often recently from the mouths of the Iranian leadership. Mr. Ahmadinejad celebrated the first anniversary of his election as president not long ago, and during that first year he built a reputation as a hardheaded radical with whom it was almost impossible to negotiate and who was incapable of making any kind of concession. However, as the first year of his presidency drew to a close, the Iranian leader suddenly began to attempt to burnish his image. For starters, Mr. Ahmadinejad stepped forward like some kind of dove of peace in response to the scandal that flared up around the contradictory statements made by Pope Benedict XVI concerning the Prophet Muhammad. In that moment, when the majority of the leaders of the Muslim world was demanding immediate apologies from the pontiff, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that he considered the conflict settled: he was satisfied with the Pope's statement that he "regrets his words."
Then Iran reacted in a carefully thought-out manner to North Korea's nuclear test. Teheran stated that it does not consider nuclear weapons acceptable, that it is not seeking to develop them, and that Iran dreams of a world free of nuclear weapons.
Such behavior appears to be the new distinguishing feature of Iranian politics. After carrying out a year of "shock therapy," Mr. Ahmadinejad has decided to alter his means of engagement with the West by offering Iran's cooperation in exchange for concessions. Judging by recent comments from Iranian politicians, Teheran intends to concentrate its energies on normalizing relations with both its most consistent defenders and its most sworn enemies. Since all of its possible talks with the EU, in the person of senior foreign affairs representative Javier Solana, have failed, and given that China has recently shown little interest in the Iranian question, preferring instead to bide its time, Teheran is planning to focus its attention on working with Russia and the United States. According to information obtained by Kommersant, this was the topic being discussed during recent talks between Russia and Iran during Russian Security Council Secretary Igor Ivanov's visit to Iran.
As Iranian Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani told his Russian counterpart, Teheran is prepared to offer Moscow a new form of partnership that will turn Russia into a key player in the Near East. Specifically, using its ties in the Muslim world, Teheran has promised to install Moscow in the role of intermediary in all important negotiations in the region, such as those in Lebanon and Palestine. What is more, Mr. Larijani promised Mr. Ivanov economic benefits as well. For example, according to Teheran's plans, Russian and Iranian companies could start actively establishing themselves in Iraq's oil fields, thanks to the fact that America's control in the country is weakening as Iran's influence increases. Russian firms could also begin to revitalize oil terminals in southern Iraq, while Iran, through its contacts with local Shiite groups, would guarantee the safety of the Russian specialists working at these installations.
Finally, according to Mr. Larijani, Teheran is prepared to facilitate the resolution of less ambitious but more vital problems for Russia. First, using its own channels, the Iranian authorities could help Russian special forces track down the killers of several Russian diplomats in Iraq. Secondly, Teheran is offering to negotiate with Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah for a guarantee of the safety of a Russian engineering battalion that was recently deployed to Lebanon.
Understanding that the question does not lie only in Moscow's hands, Iran is also beginning to take tentative steps in its relations with the United States. According to information from Kommersant's sources, Ali Larijani informed Igor Ivanov of a package deal that Teheran intends to offer to Washington. The key issue in the scheme thought up by Iran is the stabilization of the situation in the whole of the Near East. Washington has long believed that it is precisely the Iranian regime that is the destabilizing factor in the region, since Teheran is believed to support all of the region's anti-American forces. Iran's offer is built around Teheran's readiness to cease this practice. In addition Iran, which basically controls Iraq's Shiites, is prepared to do everything necessary to calm the situation in the country and to concern itself with the safety of American troops. Finally, the authorities in Teheran are promising to use their influence over Hezbollah and Hamas, which are closely affiliated with the Shiite Iranian regime, to achieve general stabilization throughout the region.
The payment that Iran is demanding in exchange for such work is an agreement from the West that it can continue with the development of its nuclear program and uranium enrichment. During negotiations with the EU's Javier Solana, Mr. Larijani attempted to show that the current process of enrichment in Iran cannot be considered production - two cascades of a centrifuge, claims Teheran, are the only objectives of its scientific research. According to Mr. Larijani, Iran is prepared to renounce the possibility of industrial uranium enrichment, on the condition that the country is allowed to keep all of the technology that it currently possesses. Teheran considers this offer to be a colossal concession.
It is difficult to judge how the United States will react to Iran's new ideas. Most likely, Washington will not be overly enthusiastic, since if the plan is realized, Washington will end up being held hostage by Iran. If the US does accept Iran's help, it will then be wholly dependent on Iran - and in that case, Teheran will become the virtual master of the Near East. And for that Iran will not even need to develop its own nuclear weapons.
Late last night representatives of the foreign ministries of the "group of six" countries (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany) were scheduled to have a teleconference to determine the date for the upcoming discussion of the Iranian question in the Security Council. However, it is possible that the discussion of the Iranian question in the UN, which the members of the Security Council had apparently finally agreed upon at the end of September, is now in doubt. Iran's offer may turn out to be extremely tempting for the Russian diplomat.
Comment: Sadly, it is not difficult to judge the response of the US and Israel to this very reasonable and generous offer from Iran. They will ignore it or dismiss it as 'fakery'. The problem, of course, is that neither the US nor Israel actually want a stable Middle East as it is presently configured. Their entire plan is built around forcibly reshaping the Middle East along lines that would leave Israel and the US as uncontested top dogs in the region. Such a goal can only be achieved through massive force, war and bloodshed, and both the Israel and American political elite appear to be quite prepared to make that particular sacrifice - hundreds of thousands, if not millions of innocent lives.
Comment on this Article
Ahmadinejad: One More Step to Complete Nuclear Technology
Fars News Agency
12/10/2006
TEHRAN - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that his country has only one more step to reach the tops in the domain of nuclear technology.
Addressing a fervent congregation of the public in the town of Shahryar near Tehran on Wednesday, the President reiterated that bullying powers are seeking to block the progress of nations through propaganda in a bid to loot their resources, and added, "You can readily observe that although they do not have any clues or proofs, they are insistent to boldly prevent Iranian nation from gaining full access to peaceful nuclear energy."
Reminding the historical background of the nuclear case, he said when Iran suspended its nuclear activities and closed down its facilities, Iranians imagined that they would finally be allowed to freely conduct nuclear activities in their country, "but the West refrained from fulfilling its pledges."
"Yet, that stage came to its end following Iran's presidential campaign last year because we found out that they intended to close down Iran's activities in all different fields of technology under the pretext of the nuclear issue," Ahmadinejad continued.
He further described resumption of the country's nuclear activities as a second important stage in the nuclear case, adding, "At this stage, we decided to insist on our rights through insightful and in-depth plans and policies and we took several steps ahead at this phase."
The chief executive official termed resumption of activities at Isfahan UCF plant and Natanz Enrichment facility as two crucially important constituents of the second stage, reminding, "When we started low (3 to 5 percent) enrichment at Natanz facility, big powers started threatening us, but the Iranian nation stood up and finally joined the very limited number of the countries which own full nuclear fuel production cycle.
He also noted Iran's full preparedness to attend talks with the west, and stated, "It is now five months that we were engaged in negotiations, but they still insist on the suspension of uranium enrichment activities as a prerequisite to talks."
Ahmadinejad further asked the western states if possession of the nuclear fuel production cycle is considered as a threat, then how is it that only Iran should suspend its nuclear fuel production cycle, and questioned, "Are your nuclear fuel production cycles not dangerous?"
The President described Iran as the only country whose nuclear activities are in full compliance with the international rules and regulations, and went on to say, "Iran declared its readiness to attend talks in response to the proposal they had offered to Tehran, but they make varying decisions on a daily basis."
"After 27 years that you moved heaven and earth to blockade Iran's progress, hasn't the time arrived for starting cordial relations with Iran," he asked the western countries.
Ahmadinejad criticized the heads of states and other officials of the bullying powers for the increasing world problems and described them as isolated leaders who do not represent even their own populations.
He said even if the British Premier and the US President ever dare to go among the public, they won't be received by the people at all.
The chairman of the Supreme National Security Council said that a majority of the world nations and governments, including the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the D-8 and Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) member states, are earnest supporters of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its nuclear rights.
"Enemies are completely paralyzed and can in no way confront the Iranian nation, and if our people safeguard their unity and solidarity, they should await a giant victory as there is just one more step ahead before reaching the tops of the nuclear technology," President Ahmadinejad underlined.
Comment on this Article
Business as Usual at the UN
New UN chief slated for formal appointment on Friday
www.chinaview.cn 2006-10-13 11:07:31
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon is expected to be elected by acclamation as next Secretary-General of the United Nations at a General Assembly on its Friday session to formally appoint the successor to Kofi Annan.
The Secretary-General designate will not take the oath of office immediately, but at a later date in December. This arrangement would allow him to finish some of his current duty as his country's foreign minister. His five-year term as the new UN Secretary-General will start on Jan. 1 2007.
On the procedure of the appointment, General Assembly spokesperson Gail Bindley-Taylor Sainte said Assembly President Sheikha Haya Al Khalifa of Bahrain will first invite Japanese Ambassador Kenzo Oshima, Security Council President for October, to report on the Council's recommendation.
The Assembly will then take action either by acclamation, as is usually the practice, or by vote, if some member state asks for it, but she said such a scenario is "unlikely."
That will be followed by statements by Sheikha Haya, Annan, the regional group chairpersons, the representative of host country the United States and the Secretary-General designate himself.
Comment on this Article
UN Near Compromise on N.Korea Sanctions As Russia, U.S. Agree on Georgia
Created: 13.10.2006 10:18 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 10:18 MSK
MosNews
The U.N. Security Council moved closer Thursday night to agreement on a resolution that would impose an arms embargo and broad financial sanctions on North Korea in response to its claimed nuclear test, according to senior U.S. and European diplomats, The Washington Post reported.
Council diplomats said Russia softened its opposition after Rice agreed in a phone conversation with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to drop U.S. opposition to a Russian-backed resolution criticizing its neighbor Georgia, which recently detained seven Russian soldiers who were accused of spying.
The council's five major powers -- the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France -- and Japan hammered out a compromise text that was to be sent to capitals Thursday night for approval, diplomats said. The preliminary deal was struck after the United States, acting at the request of China, included assurances that the resolution could not be used as a pretext for future military action against North Korea.
"I don't want to say we've reached agreement, but many, many of the significant differences have been closed," John R. Bolton, the U.S. ambassador, said after the meeting. "But I'm very pleased with the progress we've made, and I think it's close to the point where we will have an agreement."
"It was a good meeting," added French Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere. "We will now send the outcome of this meeting to our capitals. We are close to an agreement."
The diplomatic movement came hours after President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met in Washington with China's state councilor, Tang Jiaxuan.
Bush and Rice pressed Tang to support a series of tough measures designed to compel North Korea to halt its nuclear activities and resume multiparty talks aimed at eliminating Pyongyang's nuclear weapons.
A U.S.-backed draft resolution presented to the council earlier Thursday would impose an arms embargo on North Korea, ban all trade linked to its programs for ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, and permit international inspections of North Korean cargo.
The U.S. text would also prohibit North Korean trade in luxury goods, and would ban travel and freeze assets of individuals involved in the country's prohibited weapons programs. North Korea would be given 30 days to halt its nuclear activities or face additional international penalties.
China has resisted the U.S. approach as too tough, instead favoring U.N. sanctions that would narrowly target North Korea's programs for nuclear and ballistic missiles. In an effort to address China's concern, the United States has agreed to include more restrictive language on the scope of military sanctions and inspections.
Rice told reporters that she, Bush and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley "had excellent talks" with Tang, a senior official who outranks the foreign minister.
"I think the Chinese clearly understand the gravity of the situation," Rice said. "They clearly understand that the North Koreans in doing this have made the environment much less stable and much less secure."
China has voiced concern that international inspections of North Korean cargo would excessively intrude into the country's commercial affairs.
Beijing also expressed concern that the resolution invokes a provision of the U.N. Charter, Chapter 7, that has been used in the past to authorize military force. China insists that the text should refer to a section of Chapter 7, Article 41, that authorizes only sanctions.
Security Council diplomats said the United States and China are working on compromise language that would split the difference. It would refer to Chapter 7 but would require explicit council approval to consider any action against North Korea.
Russia's ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, meanwhile, said early Thursday that Moscow needs more time to consider the U.S. draft. He said a vote should be delayed until after Russian officials hold high-level meetings in Moscow with a senior Chinese delegation on Friday and Saturday.
But council diplomats said Russia softened its opposition after Rice agreed in a phone conversation with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to drop U.S. opposition to a Russian-backed resolution criticizing its neighbor Georgia, which recently detained seven Russian soldiers who were accused of spying.
Comment: The headline and second paragraph say it all. The UN is a club for the brokering of the interests of the veto-carrying Security Council members. If you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.
Comment on this Article
Lest We Forget
Brother of the Fist: The Passing of Peter Norman
By Dave Zirin
Almost four decades later, the image can still make hairs rise on unsuspecting necks. It's 1968, and 200 meter gold medalist Tommie Smith stands next to bronze winner John Carlos, their raised black gloved fists smashing the sky on the medal stand in Mexico City. They were Trojan Horses of Rage -- bringing the Black revolution into that citadel of propriety and hypocrisy: the Olympic games.
When people see that image, their eyes are drawn like magnets toward Smith and Carlos, standing in black socks, their heads bowed in controlled concentration.
Less noticed is the silver medalist. He is hardly mentioned in official retrospectives, and people assume him to be a Forrest Gump-type figure, just another of those unwitting witnesses to history who always end up in the back of famous frames. Only the perceptive notice that this seemingly anonymous individual is wearing a rather large button emblazoned with the letters O-P-H-R, standing for the Olympic Project for Human Rights.
Only those who see the film footage notice that he never throws a furtive glance back at fellow medal winners as they raise their fists. He never registers surprise or alarm. At a moment that epitomized the electric shock of rebellion, his gaze is cool, implacable, his back ramrod straight, a fellow soldier proud to stand with his brothers.
Only those who go beyond official history will learn about the true motivations of all three of these men. They wanted the apartheid countries of South African and Rhodesia to be disallowed from the Olympics. They wanted more coaches of African descent. They wanted the world to know that their success did not mean racism was now a relic of history. The silver medalist with the white skin stood with Smith and Carlos on every question and it was agreed before the race, that if the three, as expected, were the ones on the dais, they would stand together: three young anti-racists standing together in struggle.
That silver medalist with the nerves of steel and thirst for justice was Australian runner Peter Norman. Norman died of a heart attack last week at the age of 64 and Monday was put to rest.
Two people who knew the depth and conviction of Norman's solidarity were the two who acted as lead pallbearers at his funeral: Tommie Smith and John Carlos. Over the years the three men had stayed connected, welded together by history and the firestorm they all faced when the cameras were turned off.
The backlash endured by Smith and Carlos is well documented. Less known are Norman's own travails. He was a pariah in the Australian Olympic world, despite being a five-time national champion in the 200 meters. He desired to coach the highest levels, yet worked as a Physical Education teacher, the victim of a down under blacklist.
As John Carlos said, "At least me and Tommie had each other when we came home. When Peter went home, he had to deal with a nation by himself. He never wavered, never denied that he was up there with us for a purpose and he never said 'I'm sorry' for his involvement. That's indicative of who the man was." "
When the 2000 Olympics came to Sydney, Norman was outrageously outcast from the festivities, still the invisible man. In a conversation at that time with sportswriter Mike Wise, Norman was absent of bitterness and wore his ostracism as proudly as that solidarity button from 1968. "I did the only thing I believed was right," he said to Wise. "I asked what they wanted me to do to help. I couldn't see why a black man wasn't allowed to drink out of the same water fountain or sit in the same bus or go to the same schools as a white guy. That was just social injustice that I couldn't do anything about from where I was, but I certainly abhorred it."
Norman never strayed from a life of humility. When a sculpture was unveiled of Smith and Carlos last year in California, Norman was left off, the silver medal platform purposely vacant so others could stand in his place. Smith and Carlos protested it, feeling it fed the false idea of Norman as political bystander. But Norman himself who traveled from Australia to California for the unveiling said, "I love that idea. Anybody can get up there and stand up for something they believe in. I guess that just about says it all."
Norman didn't define himself by self-promotion, book deals, or the lecture circuit -- only by the quiet pride that he was a part of a movement much bigger than himself. By happily surrendering his personal glory to the greater good, Norman earned the love and respect of his peers.
As Carlos said about sudden passing of the man his children called Uncle Pete, "Peter was a piece of my life. When I got the call, it knocked the wind out of me. I was his brother. He was my brother. That's all you have to know."
Comment on this Article
Shameful legacy: British camps in Kenya
Chris McGreal
Friday October 13, 2006
The Guardian
In the early 1950s, Mau Mau rebels murdered 32 people in an uprising against colonial rule in Kenya. Britain's response was brutal: 150,000 Kenyans were detained in camps where, survivors claim, prisoners were beaten, tortured, sexually abused and even murdered. Fifty years on, a handful of them are suing the British government.
It has been 50 years and there is much to remember. But what still stands out from his time in the camps is a tall white man in shorts with a swagger stick. "When we first arrived we didn't know who he was, but we quickly knew he was in charge," says Espon Makanga. "All the other whites and the black guards waited for him to speak, and when he gave the order that is when it began. After that it never really stopped. I came to hate that man. I can never forgive him."
Article continues
Makanga, now 78, had already endured more than two years as a prisoner of the British when the colonial authorities sent him to Kandongu camp in Kenya in 1957. He describes life in the earlier camps as a routine of tortures, beatings and typhoid that claimed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives.
But Kandongu was designed to be the toughest stop on what British officials described as the "pipeline" of camps intended to break down the "hard core" of Kenyans supporting the Mau Mau rebellion against colonial rule, which began in 1952. Hard core did not mean the worst killers, merely the most defiant.
The camp enforced a regimen known as the "dilution technique". It was designed by three white colonial officials, one of them the officer whom Makanga spotted as being in charge when he first arrived at Kandongu, and whom he and the other inmates came to fear. They had various nicknames for that officer, but it was only in time that they discovered he was really called Terence Gavaghan. "He was a tall man with a thin face and we soon discovered his camp was about nothing more than being beaten and tortured. They beat us from the day we arrived, with sticks, with their fists, kicking us with their boots. They beat us to make us work. They beat us to force us to confess our Mau Mau oath. After a year I couldn't take it any longer. Gavaghan had won," he says.
Makanga was just one of the estimated 150,000 Kenyans held in British prison camps for up to seven years during what was known as the Kenya Emergency, a rebellion against colonial rule in Kenya. Today, he is among a group of 10 survivors, all in their 70s and 80s, who took the first legal step in London this week towards suing the British government for what they say was officially sanctioned torture and other human rights abuses.
Some of the former prisoners describe rape and sexual abuse of women; others say they survived camps where inmates were flogged, worked to death, murdered in cold blood or starved. They want compensation but also an apology for what they describe as a system of organised brutality unmatched anywhere else in the waning years of the British empire. Even in the 1950s, the camps were described as "Kenya's gulags" and likened by officials to Nazi slave labour camps.
The camps were justified, in British eyes, by the Mau Mau's butchering of 32 white settlers and African chiefs loyal to the crown early in the rebellion. The Mau Mau were dominated by the Kikuyu, the largest ethnic group in Kenya, and were largely driven by bitterness at the loss of land to the white settlers. But the struggle also divided the tribe, and the Mau Mau ultimately killed far more fellow Kikuyu than whites, with massacres such as the killing of 120 men, women and children at Lari in March 1953. In Britain the Mau Mau were portrayed as representing the re-emergence of a primitive bloodlust that the twin benefits of colonisation - Christianity and civilisation - were intended to eradicate. But the British soon proved they could be as brutal as their enemies.
Jane Muthoni Mara is among those taking legal action against the British government. She was 15 when she was arrested for supplying Mau Mau fighters with food and taken to Gatithi screening camp. There she says she and two friends, including a young boy, were beaten with the butts of guns. Her interrogators demanded to know the whereabouts of her brother, who was a member of the Mau Mau. Mara says she was ordered into a tent by a white army officer. There was a black soldier from her area she knew as Edward. He ordered her to lie down and asked her where her brother was. When she did not answer, he picked up a bottle. "He filled the bottle with hot water and then pushed it into my private parts with his foot. I screamed and screamed," she says.
Mara says other women were also tortured by having bottles thrust into their vaginas. "For older women, Edward would use bigger beer bottles, but for us younger girls it was smaller soda bottles," she says. "The next day we were forced to sit with our legs in front of us, and the African guards marched over them in their army boots. We were often beaten."
Mara was later tried and sentenced to three years in prison for Mau Mau membership. "We were taken to Embu prison. A lot of people died there of typhoid. We were forced to do work carrying bricks to build a school. We were beaten if we moved too slowly. It was very hard work," she says. "They would just flog everyone at times, four or five guards with whips would come into the cell." She was finally released in September 1957, but never saw her brother again. She says she never recovered from the sexual violence and for years was frightened of sex with her husband.
Terence Gavaghan is 84 now and lives in London. His former prisoners do not accuse him of the worst crimes committed in some of the camps, such as the sexual abuse or killing. But they do say that the camps under his authority enforced a regime of systematic brutalisation aimed at breaking any resistance to the authority of British rule.
Gavaghan was a colonial district officer when he was recruited to oversee "rehabilitation" of Mau Mau prisoners at six camps in the Mwea area of central Kenya. In his memoirs he describes agreeing with John Cowan, the head of Kenya's prisons, on a system to force detainees to renounce their support for the Mau Mau that he described as "enlightened, humane and Christian-based". He also writes that "no legal restraints were envisaged".
In a telephone interview with the Guardian, Gavaghan says his orders were to end the defiance of inmates who were viewed as a block toward economic and political progress on the way to independence. He declines to discuss whether he ever used the beatings described by Makanga on prisoners, or other specifics of how he broke the hard-core Mau Mau, other than to say he was intent on ensuring that on release they would "not be demonstrating defiance".
He also says he cannot be expected to remember a few individuals from among the mass of detainees who passed through the camps under his authority. "It would not be sensible to answer questions about people I cannot remember who say I did things I did not do," he says. "I decided on a process, with the agreement of the attorney general, Eric Griffith-Jones, which led to their release within a year. And that was achieved without a single death, and no ill-treatment."
Griffith-Jones was Kenya's top law officer during the emergency. In June 1957, he visited Kandongu to watch Gavaghan at work and wrote a secret memo detailing what he saw. The memo was attached to a letter, also marked "secret", from the governor of Kenya, Sir Evelyn Baring, to the colonial secretary, Alan Lennox Boyd. In it, Baring says that Gavaghan had established a regime of beatings as a means to break the prisoners and that the government needed to give it legal cover, as violence was "in fact the only way of dealing with the more dyed-in-the-wool Mau Mau men who will be our problem in the future".
Griffith-Jones says he and other colonial officials were shown around Kandongu by Gavaghan, who "participated in the proceedings and maintained, in conjunction with the senior prison officers, direct personal control over the proceedings". Those proceedings were to oversee the intake of 80 Mau Mau detainees over whom "camp discipline" was to be swiftly established. This included shaving their heads and beards, and requiring them to wear prison uniforms.
"Any who showed any reluctance or hesitation to do so were hit with fists and/or slapped with the open hand," wrote Griffith-Jones. "This was usually enough to dispel any disposition to disobey the order to change. In some cases, however, defiance was more obstinate, and on the first indication of such obstinacy three or four of the European officers immediately converged on the man and 'rough-housed' him, stripping his clothes off him, hitting him, on occasion kicking him, and, if necessary, putting him on the ground. Blows struck were solid, hard ones, mostly with closed fists and about the head, stomach, sides and back. There was no attempt to strike at the testicles or any other manifestations of sadistic brutality; the performance was a deliberate, calculated and robust assault, accompanied by constant and imperative demands that the man should do as he was told and change his clothes." Griffith-Jones says that eventually all of the new intake submitted.
"Gavaghan explained, however," Griffith-Jones's memo continues, "that there had, in past intakes, been more persistent resistors, who had had to be forcibly changed into the camp clothing; that some of them had started the 'Mau Mau moan', a familiar cry that was promptly taken up by the rest of the camp, representing a concerted and symbolic defiance of the camp authorities; that in such cases it was essential to prevent the infection of this 'moan' spreading through the camp, and that accordingly a resistor who started it was put on the ground, a foot placed on his throat and mud stuffed in his mouth; and that a man whose resistance could not be broken down was in the last resort knocked unconscious."
Although Gavaghan says that this regime was carried out with the approval of the attorney-general, Baring's letter suggests that the routine of beatings was already established and that the colonial authorities were keen to give it legal authority. "We have felt that either we must forbid Gavaghan and his staff to proceed in this way, in which case the dilution technique will be ineffective and we will find that we cannot deal with many of the worst detainees, or, alternatively, we must give him and his staff cover provided they do as they say they are doing," Baring writes to the colonial secretary. "Put another way the problem is this. We can probably go further with the more fanatical Mau Mau in the way of release than we had ever hoped 18 months ago. But to do so there must be a phase of violent shock."
In the end, Gavaghan's methods were approved with "safeguards", including a requirement for a medical examination and that violence should be carried out only by Europeans. The new regulations permitted force to be used to "enforce discipline and preserve good order" because established punishment "achieves little or nothing". Such a broad definition opened the way to a regime of perpetual violence endured by men such as Makanga.
Gavaghan came late to the camps, however. The British government's apparent desire to bring some order and legal cover to the treatment of Mau Mau prisoners was prompted by a string of abuses long before Gavaghan appeared on the scene, and growing questions at home, particularly from the Labour opposition. The camps were one part of a process of breaking the Mau Mau that extended from herding large numbers of Africans into "protected villages" to confiscating livestock and destroying homes.
Espon Makanga witnessed many abuses before he arrived in Kandongu. He had joined the Mau Mau in 1952 when he was 24. Two years later he was shot in his right elbow in a British army ambush, and he lived with the wound for a year until he was arrested and sent to Thika prison camp. "Many inmates in Thika died from beatings and typhoid. We had to bury many of our comrades who died there," he says.
Makanga was moved to Manyani, where on arrival the prisoners were thrown in a pit of disinfectant. "The guards surrounded us and beat us to force us in as if we were cattle," he says. "Some people went under and swallowed the disinfectant, which made their stomachs swell up and caused a lot of pain. The camp was under the command of a white officer who frequently gave orders for us to be beaten if he thought we weren't working hard enough. Some people died from the beatings. Others died from typhoid. They were buried just outside the camps." One typhoid outbreak in Manyani killed more than 100 inmates.
Another survivor from Manyani is Kariuki Mungai. He says a much-feared punishment was to be forced to carry the overflowing toilet buckets from the cells. "You had to carry the bucket on your head. They were always overflowing with excrement and urine, and the guards would beat you as you ran with it on your head so that it flowed down your face," he says. In time, Mungai was forced down the "pipeline" and into the hands of Gavaghan. "There was a day when a group refused to work. Gavaghan called all the guards together and ordered that we all be beaten for an hour. Those who still did not work were beaten again."
Another former prisoner who has joined the lawsuit, Wambugu wa Nyingi, says Gavaghan ordered inmates to walk on gravel on their knees with their hands up for long periods. He shows me the scars to his knees that he says are the legacy of the punishment. "We were terrified of him," says Nyingi.
Patrick wa Njogu was a Mau Mau general who led a force fighting from the Mount Kenya forest, which was frequently bombed by the RAF, and who lost a leg after he was shot by British troops. He was arrested, tried for the murder of a forestry officer and acquitted. But he was still sent down the camp pipeline. "I remember the preaching and indoctrination," says Njogu, who says he was held in 15 camps over six years. "And I remember the beatings and the lack of food and the typhoid. When I was in Gathigiriri [camp] I refused to work digging trenches because I had lost a leg. They still beat me as they beat anyone else who would not work. On one occasion they beat me and dragged me around the camp by my remaining leg."
Back in Britain, Labour MP Barbara Castle was one of those worried by what was happening in Kenya. Among her sources was Kenya's assistant police commissioner, Duncan McPherson, who was frustrated at being blocked by the colonial government from prosecuting camp officials. He told Castle of several instances in which Mau Mau prisoners were beaten to death or shot, and about the ensuing cover-ups. "I would say that the conditions I found existing in some camps in Kenya were worse, far worse, than anything I experienced in my four-and-a-half years as a prisoner of the Japanese," he told Castle.
A Kenyan judge, Arthur Cram, offered a damning verdict after an investigation into torture, murder and cover-up at one interrogation centre, not under Gavaghan, by drawing comparisons with infamous Nazi labour camps. "They not only knew of the shocking floggings that went on in this Kenya Nordhausen, or Mathausen, but must be taken to be the men who were said to have carried them out. From the brutalising of flogging it is only a step to taking life without qualm," he said in his judgment.
The executioners were also working at a rate unprecedented in the final years of the British Empire. At the height of the emergency, about 50 Kenyans a month were being hanged for rebellion. Prominent Britons, including Bertrand Russell, Michael Foot and Tony Benn, wrote to a senior Kenyan cabinet minister objecting to the numbers of people executed for offences other than murder. The letter noted that in the two years to November 1954, 756 Africans were hanged, more than 500 of them for crimes other than murder and 290 for "unlawful possession of weapons". Only a minority of the 1,090 eventually executed for Mau Mau-related offences during the emergency were convicted of killings.
What some saw as the inevitable outcome of the camp regimes was realised in March 1959 at a place called Hola, where African guards clubbed 11 prisoners to death while European officers looked on. The camp authorities immediately moved to cover up the cause of the killings. When the local district officer, Willoughby Thompson, arrived, he was told that the dead Mau Mau prisoners were overcome by heat and that water had been thrown over them and they had drowned. Thompson described the explanation as "very improbable", but it was accepted by the colony's governor, Baring, and passed on to London. The truth came out in part because Nyingi and other prisoners gave accounts at an inquiry into the killing of the 11 inmates. The investigating magistrate, W H Goudie, blamed officially sanctioned brutality for the deaths.
An official report into the emergency concluded that about 12,000 Mau Mau were killed in the conflict. Some historians put the figure much higher. But the numbers are not what concerns the former prisoners now suing the British government. They are worried that their accounts will not be believed in London because the British do not think they are capable of such abuses. "The British see themselves as good," says Njero Mugo, another veteran of the camps. "But from the day the first missionaries arrived we never believed that the British stood for the rule of law. They stole our land. They treated us as though they had more right to be in our country than we did. Did you know that if you were walking down the street and you met a white person you had to remove your hat?"
At the end of Gavaghan's tenure in charge of the Mwea camps, a young district officer, John Nottingham, was assigned to take over. Nottingham, who still lives in Kenya, refused. "I heard the most terrible stories about those camps from my fellow DOs. They didn't surprise me very much. There had long been indications of the brutality," he says now. "I went to see Gavaghan in his office. He said that people were just roughed up, it wasn't anything very violent. He described it as being like a good rugger scrum. I went back to Nairobi and wrote possibly the most pompous note of my life. I said I myself think I know the difference between right and wrong, and I also realise it's not my job to teach the government the difference between right and wrong. But what you're doing is wrong and I can't accept this job."
In his memoirs, Gavaghan describes Nottingham as encumbered by "confused pretensions and attitudes". Nottingham says there could not have been many colonial officials who did not know the truth of what was going on. "After Hola I was at a meeting with Baring and other DOs at which Baring was asked if he knew about the violence in the camps. Baring answered no, he knew nothing. He said he had given the strongest possible orders that violence should not be used," says Nottingham. "Outside the meeting I asked Gavaghan if what Baring had said was true. Didn't Baring know? And Gavaghan said: 'Of course he knew.' People in Britain said our people could never do that. But they did. The men who ran these camps were specially chosen from top schools. They didn't last long before they fell and the whole argument that we're bringing civilisation collapsed," he says. "It's a big lesson".
Comment on this Article
The Daily Life of Terror
Plot to hit UK with dirty bomb and exploding limos
Rosie Cowan, crime correspondent
Friday October 13, 2006
The Guardian
A British Muslim yesterday admitted plotting mass murder through a series of terrorist outrages in the UK and the US that were "designed to kill as many innocent people as possible".
In one of the few major successes for anti-terrorist investigators since September 11, Dhiran Barot, 34, also admitted planning to use a radioactive dirty bomb in the UK that would have caused "injury, fear, terror and chaos", a court heard.
Among the other targets for the synchronised bombings were landmark financial institutions in New York and Washington.
Another of his plans involved blowing up three limousines, packed with flammable gas cylinders and explosives, in underground car parks somewhere in Britain. The locations were not specified.
Prosecutors told Woolwich crown court how Barot, of Willesden, north-west London, was arrested in August 2004 and how details of the plans to target a series of high-profile buildings were found on a computer. Edmund Lawson QC, for the crown, said the buildings included the International Monetary Fund and World Bank buildings in Washington, the New York stock exchange and Citigroup headquarters in New York, and the Prudential premises in Newark, New Jersey.
"These being plans ... to carry out explosions at those premises with no warning, they were basically designed to kill as many innocent people as possible," said Mr Lawson, outlining the basis of Barot's plea.
The plan to detonate limousines full of explosives and gas cylinders - the "gas limos project" - was to form the "main cornerstone" of a series of attacks in the UK, added the prosecutor.
Kenyan-born Barot, who moved to Britain with his Indian parents as a child and is believed to have converted to Islam as an adult, also wanted to set off a dirty bomb made up of radioactive material.
Mr Lawson said that, according to expert evidence, this would have been unlikely to cause fatalities by itself, but was designed to affect about 500 people, and raise widespread panic and social disruption.
"The project was, on its face, designed to achieve a number of further and collateral objectives so as to cause injury, fear, terror and chaos."
Mr Lawson said three additional projects, including the dirty bomb plan, were designed to be executed in a "synchronised, concurrent and back-to-back way" with the main gas limos project. "The gas limos project was supplemented by three other projects which were presented for consideration, the first being as it was described the 'rough presentation for radiation or dirty bomb project'," said the QC. "The defendant's expressed preference was that the radiation project was designed to be an independent project on its own."
The crown did not dispute claims from the defence that no funding had been received for the plots, nor had any of what would have been the necessary vehicles or bomb-making equipment been acquired.
Armed police stood guard outside the courtroom and prison officers surrounded Barot as he appeared in the dock behind high transparent screens.
He had a short beard and was wearing a khaki-coloured zip-up sweater, black shirt and jeans.
The court clerk said: "On count one of this indictment you are charged with conspiracy to murder. The particulars of the offence being that on diverse days between January 1 2000 and August 4 2004, you conspired together with other persons unknown to murder other persons. Do you plead guilty or not guilty?"
Barot stared intently ahead and showed no emotion as he answered: "I plead guilty." Mr Lawson said Barot had indicated that he pleaded guilty in respect of count one against him, which concerned both the US and the UK.
Barot had also faced 12 other charges: one of conspiracy to cause public nuisance, seven of making a record of information for terrorist purposes, and four of possessing a record of information for terrorist purpose.
Following the defendant's guilty plea, the judge, Mr Justice Butterfield, ordered all 12 to lie on file. He will sentence Barot at a later date.
Mr Lawson said that by pleading guilty, Barot "makes no admission with regard to the involvement of any of his seven co-defendants in the conspiracy". Seven other men, who deny all charges against them, are due to face trial next year.
Comment on this Article
Man admits UK-US terror bomb plot
BBC
12/10/2006
A man has pleaded guilty to conspiring to murder people in a series of bombings on British and US targets.
Dhiren Barot, of north London, planned to use a radioactive "dirty bomb" in one of a series of attacks in the UK, Woolwich Crown Court heard.
He intended to cause "injury, fear, terror and chaos", prosecutors said.
Barot, 34, also allegedly plotted to cause explosions at several US financial buildings "designed to kill as many innocent people as possible".
Prosecuting QC Edmund Lawson said plans had been found by police on a computer after Barot was arrested in August 2004.
Locations in the US allegedly targeted
Sites of the alleged American targets of the plot
The plans were for attacks on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank buildings in Washington, the New York Stock Exchange and Citigroup buildings in New York and the Prudential buildings in Newark, New Jersey.
"These being plans...to carry out explosions at those premises with no warning, they were basically designed to kill as many innocent people as possible," said Mr Lawson.
The defendant also plotted to blow up three limousines "packed" with gas cylinders and explosives in underground car parks in the UK, the court heard.
Mr Lawson said the plot - known as the Gas Limos Project - was to form the "main cornerstone" of a series of synchronised attacks in the UK.
Other bombings being planned included a so-called "dirty bomb project".
Mr Lawson said this plot was designed to achieve "a number of further and collateral objectives such as to cause injury, fear, terror and chaos".
According to expert evidence, if the radiation (dirty bomb) project had been carried out, it would have been unlikely to cause deaths, but was designed to affect about 500 people, he said.
The Crown could not dispute claims from the defence that no funding had been received for the projects, nor any vehicles or bomb-making materials acquired, he said.
Barot had also faced 12 other charges: one of conspiracy to commit public nuisance, seven of making a record of information for terrorist purposes and four of possessing a record of information for terrorist purposes.
The judge ordered all these charges to lie on file following his guilty plea to conspiracy to murder.
Mr Lawson said that by pleading guilty, Barot made "no admission with regard to the involvement of any of his seven co-defendants in the conspiracy".
Seven other men are due to face trial next year.
Barot will be sentenced at a later date.
Comment: Run for your lives!!...oh, wait, this guy isn't Arabic. False alarm.
Comment on this Article
UN report reveals 'shocking' levels of violence against children
Last Updated: Thursday, October 12, 2006 | 10:39 AM ET
CBC News
Violence at home, school and care facilities is a part of daily life for hundreds of millions of children around the world, a United Nations report released Thursday suggests.
"We knew children were victims of violence, but even so it was very surprising and shocking that it was so widespread," said Mehr Khan Williams, the UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights.
"It cuts across cultures, income levels, education levels. No country is immune from it."
The four-year study that encompassed 130 countries was completed by Paulo Pinheiro, an independent expert appointed by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
It concludes the majority of violent acts experienced by children take place in areas where they should feel most safe, such as at home and school, or in state care.
While the report notes violence in the home usually doesn't leave serious or permanent physical injuries, it is most often accompanied by psychological violence, including threats, belittling, isolation and rejection.
"Violence against children in the family may frequently take place in the context of discipline and takes the form of physical, cruel or humiliating punishment," said the report.
"Harsh treatment and punishment in the family are common in both industrialized and developing countries."
Corporal punishment common
Mali Nilsson, Save the Children's global advisor on child protection, said corporal punishment is one of the most common forms of violence against children.
"In most regions, it is looked upon as justifiable and socially accepted," she said.
Millions of children are exposed to sexual violence each year, says the report.
"As many as 150 million girls and 73 million boys worldwide are subject to sexual violence each year, usually by someone in their family circle," said the report.
A 2002 Canadian study showed children made up 23 per cent of the population, but accounted for 61 per cent of sexual assault victims.
Hundreds of millions of children witness domestic violence each year, according to the report. Estimates range as high as 275 million, including as many as 362,000 in Canada.
Most are exposed to fights between parents or a mother and her partner, it says.
Khan Williams said violence in the home is "a private space that's hard to throw light on."
State-sanctioned violence
The world's children are also exposed to state-sanctioned violence, such as corporal punishment at schools and child labour.
More than 100 countries allow physical punishments such as beating and caning in schools, while violence also occurs in the form of fights and bullying on school playgrounds.
Much of this violence is directed against females and homosexuals, said the study.
"Sexual and gender-based violence is facilitated by government's failure to enact and implement laws that provide students with explicit protection from discrimination," said the report.
About 218 million children are part of the world's labour force, while roughly one million children are in prisons around the globe.
It's mostly boys who experience violence in state-run institutions such as detention centres, orphanages and reform schools, said the report, which noted 77 countries accept violent punishments in penal institutions.
"Children may be beaten, caned, painfully restrained, and subjected to humiliating treatment such as being stripped naked and caned in front of other detainees," said the report.
"Girls in detention facilities are at particular risk of physical and sexual abuse, mainly when supervised by male staff."
There are also as many as 250,000 child soldiers around the world. In Congo, more than 11,000 children are missing and believed to be either forced into armies and militias or used as sex slaves.
Harmful traditional practices encouraged by community leaders, such as female genital mutilation, are prevalent in Africa and occur in immigrant communities in Europe, Asia, Canada and the U.S., said the report.
"These are centuries-old traditions and attitudes we've had," said Khan Williams, who said she hopes the study will increase awareness of levels of violence against children.
Comment on this Article
Britain: Guantanamo "unacceptable"
www.chinaview.cn 2006-10-13 14:33:52
LONDON, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett on Thursday lashed out at the U.S. regarding its detention center at Guantanamo Bay, saying the prison camp was "unacceptable in terms of human rights."
"The continuing detention without fair trial of prisoners is unacceptable in terms of human rights. But it is also ineffective in terms of counter-terrorism," Beckett said at the launch of Britain's annual report on human rights around the world.
"It's widely argued now that the existence of the camp is as much a radicalizing and discrediting influence as it is a safeguard for security," she said.
The report called for the camp to be closed.
In response, Washington said it looked forward to the camp's closure but emphasized the need to keep terrorist suspects in prison.
"We don't want to be the world's jailers. We certainly would look forward to the day when Guantanamo is closed," U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said at a daily briefing.
But he stressed that the military camp in Cuba was housing "very dangerous people, including those who were responsible for the attack on this country which killed 3,000 people."
The United States has been widely criticized for human rights violations at the Guantanamo base, where it holds some 450 suspected al-Qaida and Taliban members. Some have been held for more than four years without trial.
Comment on this Article
Russian Court Orders Shutdown of Chechen Rights Group
Created: 13.10.2006 16:41 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 16:41 MSK
MosNews
A court in Nizhny Novgorod ordered a closure of a Chechen rights group that has regularly exposed abuses against civilians in violence-torn Chechnya, the Gazeta.Ru news website reported Friday. Co-founder of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, Stanislav Dmitriyevsky, said he was going to appeal the ruling.
Earlier this week the Nizhny Novgorod regional prosecutor's office told The Associated Press that a court in the central Russian city was to examine prosecutors' request to shut down the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society on Thursday.
"The government cannot accept any criticism of its conduct in Chechnya," said the group's leader, Stanislav Dmitriyevsky, who linked the threatened closure to the weekend murder of a prominent Russian investigative journalist who was also a fierce critic of the Kremlin over Chechnya.
Anna Politkovskaya was gunned down in an apparent contract killing in her Moscow apartment building on Saturday. Her colleagues linked the murder to her work exposing rights abuses in the troubled southern region; it came as the journalist was about to publish an article about torture and kidnappings in Chechnya based on witness accounts and photos of tortured bodies.
"Whoever ordered it, it's absolutely clear that the authorities either were directly behind it or at the very least created the conditions that allowed it to happen," said Dmitriyevsky, who was one of thousands of mourners who attended Politkovskaya's funeral on Tuesday.
His non-governmental organization, which successfully fought off an attempt to close it last year, has faced increased official pressure in recent months. In February, a court handed Dmitriyevsky a two-year suspended sentence after finding him guilty of inciting ethnic hatred.
The rights group has vigorously campaigned against the more than decade-old conflict against separatists in Chechnya and published reports alleging torture, abductions and murder of civilians by Russian forces and their pro-Moscow Chechen allies.
The Russian-Chechen Friendship Society said in a statement that prosecutors justified the demand for its closure under a new law that made it illegal for an NGO to be headed by a person with a criminal record.
The restrictive law, which came into effect early this year, imposed government oversight of NGO work and financing, giving the authorities scope to close down groups whose activities are perceived to contradict their stated goals or harm state interests.
The law provoked a tide of criticism from Western governments amid concerns that it could herald a tightening state control over non-governmental organizations. President Vladimir Putin has been accused of stifling media freedoms and rolling back post-Soviet democratic freedoms since coming to power in 2000.
"This marks the start of a general campaign against NGOs which are involved in monitoring Chechnya," warned Oleg Orlov from Memorial, the leading Russian human rights body, of the move against the Nizhny Novgorod group. "We expect to be next."
Comment on this Article
Dollar Ain't Worth a Dime
Wal-Mart faces at least $62M in damages
By MARYCLAIRE DALE
Associated Press
October 12, 2006
PHILADELPHIA - A state jury found Thursday that Wal-Mart broke Pennsylvania labor laws by forcing employees to work through rest breaks and off the clock, a decision plaintiffs' lawyers said would result in at least $62 million in damages.
Jurors will return Friday to determine damages in the class-action lawsuit, which covers up to 187,000 hourly current and former workers.
"I think it reinforces that this company's sweatshop mindset is a serious problem, both legally and morally," said Chris Kofinis, a spokesman for WakeUpWalMart.com, a union-funded effort to improve working conditions at the stores.
The Bentonville, Ark.-based retail giant is facing a slew of similar suits around the country.
Wal-Mart settled a Colorado case for $50 million and is appealing a $172 million award handed down last year by a California jury.
The company declined to comment because of the pending deliberations over damages.
"Because the jury is still in deliberations, it would not be appropriate to comment on this matter until a decision is reached," Wal-Mart spokesman John Simley said.
Plaintiffs' lawyer Michael Donovan also declined comment.
The jury deliberated on the verdict for several hours over two days, after a five-week trial. Jurors found that Wal-Mart acted in bad faith but rejected claims that the company denied workers meal breaks.
Wal-Mart, the nation's largest employer, earned $10 billion in 2004.
The Pennsylvania case involves labor practices at Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores between March 1998 and May 1, 2006.
Lead plaintiff Dolores Hummel, who worked at a Sam's Club in Reading from 1992-2002, charged in her suit that she had to work through breaks and after quitting time to meet work demands in the bakery. She said she worked eight to 12 unpaid hours a month, on average, to meet work demands.
"One of Wal-Mart's undisclosed secrets for its profitability is its creation and implementation of a system that encourages off-the-clock work for its hourly employees ..." Hummel said in her suit, which was filed in 2002.
The plaintiffs used electronic evidence, such as systems that show when employees are signed on to cash registers and other machines, to help win class certification during several days of hearings last year.
Wal-Mart had a corporate policy that gives hourly employees in Pennsylvania one paid 15-minute break during a shift of at least three hours and two such breaks, plus an unpaid 30-minute meal break, on a shift of at least six hours.
Comment: $62 million is a drop in the bucket for Wal-Mart...
Comment on this Article
Fed Finds Cooling in Housing Market
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
AP Economics Writer
Oct 12, 2006
WASHINGTON - The economy continued to grow in the early fall despite a "widespread cooling" in the once-hot housing market, the Federal Reserve reported Thursday.
The Fed's latest survey of business conditions around the country found the economy expanding with growth being described as "moderate or mixed."
However, the report found there was a distinct slowdown in housing with the majority of the Fed's 12 regions reporting lower asking prices for homes, a softening in sales and rising inventories of unsold homes.
The Fed said that reports from around the country "indicated widespread cooling" in housing markets with financial institutions finding that mortgage lending activity had tapered off. That decline in lending was being offset to some extent by an increase in lending for commercial projects in several districts, the Fed said.
The latest snapshot of the economy, based on reports from the Fed's regional banks, will be used when central bankers next meet on Oct. 24-25 to consider what to do with interest rates.
It is widely expected that the Fed will for a third straight meeting leave rates unchanged, preferring to wait and see if the economic slowdown brought on by previous rate hikes will be enough to keep inflation under control.
Minutes released on Wednesday of the Fed's deliberations in September found that Fed officials remained concerned about inflation. Those worries were seen as a signal that the Fed will not soon start cutting interest rates, something that financial markets had grown hopeful might occur given the spreading economic slowdown.
Last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said that housing was going through a "substantial correction" that he estimated would trim economic growth by a full percentage point in the second half of the year.
The economy grew by just 2.6 percent in the second quarter, less than half the pace of the first three months of the year, as it was battered by soaring gasoline prices, rising interest rates and the cooling housing market.
Many economists believe growth has slowed even further in the last half of the year. But recent declines in gasoline and other energy prices are expected to help bolster consumer spending in the final three months of the year and keep the economy from tumbling into a full-blown recession.
In the latest "beige book," named for the color of its cover, two Fed districts - Dallas and Philadelphia - reported that growth cooled further in the period from mid-September to early October. But other districts reported that growth had firmed in recent weeks.
A number of districts found consumer spending - critical because it accounts for two-thirds of total economic activity _ was rising at a more rapid pace even though several districts continued to note sluggish auto and home sales.
Philadelphia, Atlanta and Minneapolis reported solid back-to-school sales, New York said that sales of upscale items had picked up while clothing sales were stronger in Boston, Cleveland and the San Francisco districts.
The Fed said that manufacturing activity was holding up well with eight of the 12 districts reporting an increase in factory output. Tourism was described as strong, especially in the New York and Kansas City areas.
Farm conditions improved, the Fed reported, as rainfall brought relief to drought-stricken parts of the country.
The Fed described labor markets as "taut" especially for certain skilled workers but said that wage growth remained "generally modest." Overall inflation was also reported under control with energy prices moderating and "few signs of increased price pressures in recent weeks."
Increases in raw materials prices were noted by Philadelphia, Richmond and Atlanta while Minneapolis said that the price of building materials had increased. New York reported that prices for hotel rooms and theater tickets were up sharply from a year ago.
Comment on this Article
Air America Radio files for Chapter 11
By SETH SUTEL
AP Business Writer
October 13, 2006
NEW YORK - Air America Radio, a liberal talk and news radio network that features the comedian Al Franken, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, a network official told The AP.
The network had denied rumors just a month ago that it would file for bankruptcy protection. On Friday, Air America spokeswoman Jaime Horn told The Associated Press that the filing became necessary only recently after negotiations with a creditor from the privately held company's early days broke down.
The network will stay on the air while it resolves issues with its creditors, Horn said. In addition to Franken, the network also features shows from liberal talk show host Randi Rhodes and syndicates shows from Jerry Springer and Portland, Ore.-based talk show host Thom Hartmann.
Horn declined to name the creditor with which talks had reached a logjam. The company will operate in the interim with funding from its current investor group.
Air America also said Friday it had named Scott Elberg as its new CEO. Elberg, a former general manager of the radio station WLIB in New York, has been with the network since May of last year.
The filing and executive shuffle marked the latest turbulence at the liberal talk radio network, which went on the air two years ago. This April, Danny Goldberg stepped down as CEO and was replaced by an interim chief executive from a management consulting firm.
"Nobody likes filing for bankruptcy," Elberg said in a statement. "However, this move will enable us to concentrate on informing and entertaining our audience during the coming months."
Air America has struggled financially since its inception. According to documents filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, the company lost $9.1 million in 2004, $19.6 million in 2005 and $13.1 million so far in 2006.
Air America also disclosed in the court documents that two directors departed in the last two months, Douglas Kreeger and Tom Embrescia. Gary Krantz also departed as president in June, and executive vice president Tom Athans and chief operating officer Carl Ginsburg both left in July.
Comment on this Article
IBM moves key US unit to China
AFP
Oct 12, 2006
SHANGHAI - Computing giant IBM Corp said Thursday it was transferring its chief purchasing operations to China, a move that highlights Asia's growing importance in the global supply chain.
The decision to transfer its chief procurement office from New York to Shenzhen marks the first time the headquarters of a global IBM division has been located outside the US, the company said in a statement.
The leading American technology and software group began shifting its Asia-Pacific headquarters from Tokyo to China's commercial hub of Shanghai in 2004, a process it completed earlier this year.
It also has major research, software, hardware and computer services operations in India which make it that nation's sixth largest technology-related employer.
The addition of its global procurement office to Shenzhen where it has 1,850 employees and has operated for over a decade, is aimed at reshaping the company's supply base in the region, IBM said.
The firm that revolutionized office work with electronic typewriters and then personal computers works with 3,000 suppliers across Asia that account for about 30 percent of the 40 billion dollars IBM spends on annual procurement.
"The demand for software and services skills -- across Asia and worldwide -- is growing," said the group's global procurement chief John Paterson.
"To meet the demand, it will require developing relationships with new partners and suppliers and working with existing ones to help them build skills, processes and management practices to compete globally in the services market."
IBM, once a leading hardware maker, struggled to transform itself over the past decade into a software producer but now earns about half of its revenues from outsourcing and IT consulting.
In May last year, it sold its personal computer unit to Chinese group Lenovo for 1.75 billion dollars, leaving the US company focused on business mainframes and consultancy services.
Paterson said it illustrated a shift underway at IBM from a multinational corporation to a new model -- a globally integrated enterprise.
"In a globally integrated enterprise, for the first time, a company's worldwide capability can be located wherever in the world it makes the most sense, based on the imperatives of economics, expertise and open environments," he said.
Comment on this Article
House repossessions soar amid record debt levels in Australia
12 October 2006
wsws.org
The economic position of millions of people in Australia has become increasingly insecure, with debt levels reaching record proportions. The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) reported last month that household debt rose 12.7 percent in the year to June, to $795 billion. Over the past ten years, the ratio of household debt to income has jumped from 60 percent to 171 percent.
Most of this change was propelled by increased housing costs. Some $785 billion is owed on housing, up tenfold from $75 billion in 1990, according to the RBA.
The impact of mortage debt on households is the product of two factors: the amount borrowed and the prevailing interest rates. Currently Reserve Bank interest rates stand at 5.75 percent, much lower than 1989, when they reached 17 percent under the Labor government of Paul Keating. But the pressure of mortgages has increased because property prices have soared.
According to the Real Estate Institute of Australia, median house prices have jumped from $202,000 to $516,000 in Sydney and from $144,000 to $359,000 in Melbourne during the past decade. The average mortgage on a new home is now $230,000, compared with $68,000 in January 1990, so a relatively small rise in interest rates can produce crippling levels of debt. For millions of working people, especially the young, even the thought of buying a home has become virtually inconceivable.
There is another factor also at work. Mortgages are part of a debt structure upon which millions of people rely simply in order to live. The number of people withdrawing equity from their homes has grown by 30 percent since 2003. According to the RBA, about $6 billion a year of this borrowing is funding consumer spending. Paul Gordon of financial advisers IPAC commented: "A lot of people put their credit card debt into the mortgage-and it just soaks it up. In reality you are creating an unbelievably large, long-term debt."
Yet credit card debt is also continuing to rise, and this is starting to impact on borrowers' ability to repay their mortgages. In January, consumers held a record 12.6 million credit cards, up almost a million from a year earlier, with an average debt of $2,656 a card.
Some 46 percent of 18-25 year olds now have a credit card and, in 2003, Financial Counsellors of NSW reported that more than half the 18-24 year-olds it interviewed had debts of more than $14,000, while a quarter had more than $20,000. Some of this has been incurred under federal government's Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) and the Higher Education Loans Program (HELP). Under these schemes, students and graduates owe the government more than $13 billion, and the figure is set to reach $18.8 billion by 2008-2009. The average HECS\HELP debt is approximately $10,500.
In one form or another, huge debts have become an inescapable fact of life for wide layers of the population. Deutsche Bank Australia's chief economist Tony Meer warned: "Debt levels keep on rising and the risk level in the whole system just keeps going up. It's got to be a worry."
Many people are stretched to their financial limits and beyond. In the June quarter, for example, households paid out an all-time high of 21 percent of after-tax income on regular financial bills such as mortgage payments, insurance premiums, council rates and rent. IPAC's Paul Gordon commented: "Three quarters of the population are spending more than they earn ... they are going from week to week, month to month and surviving."
Factors such as loss of employment, higher interest rates or increased living costs can have dire social consequences and thousands of households have already faced economic ruin. According to recent figures provided by the New South Wales Supreme Court, in the 12 months to March 2006 repossessions by financial institutions climbed to 4,837, more than double the level three years ago. In Victoria, this figure increased by 52 percent in the six months to June, compared with the same period last year.
Rising interest rates and falling house prices are opening up new dangers for over-extended borrowers. Rates have risen seven times since 2002, and twice this year already. On a loan of $300,000, homebuyers now pay around $150 a month more than a year and a half ago. A recent survey found that 36 percent of 2,065 respondents would see their capacity to pay back their mortgage significantly impeded if interest rates rose another percentage point.
Any fall in property prices means that, if people come under financial pressure, they cannot sell their homes without suffering huge losses or going bankrupt. The global property boom was particularly strong in Australia. According to a report by the OECD, at one stage Australia had the highest prices relative to rental levels, the third-highest prices relative to incomes, and the fourth-highest levels of household debt relative to incomes.
Since the peak of the boom in 2003-04, prices have fallen by an average 10 percent, with some working class areas affected far more severely, particularly in western Sydney. For example, a one-bedroom unit in Cabramatta, purchased for $262,500 in 2003, recently sold for $95,000-about a third-at a repossession auction. In August, a house at St. Clair sold for $260,000, a loss of 42 percent on the 2003 purchase price of $450,000.
Financial Counsellors Association of NSW vice president David Bell warned: "There's a fundamental difference now-house values have dropped and people simply can't sell their home."
The various federal and state political leaders have responded with crude attempts at political point-scoring. NSW Premier Morris Iemma remarked: "These are the terrible consequences of [Prime Minister] John Howard's interest rate policies." NSW opposition leader Peter Debnam blamed the "high-cost, high tax, high regulation regime" in NSW, without offering any alternative policies that would make life more affordable.
Federal opposition leader Kim Beazley said interest rates had risen due to Howard's "broken promises," which had led to "bottlenecks in the economy". Beazley nominated "a lamentable collapse in training in relation to trade skills ... and lack of national leadership on infrastructure issues." For his part, Howard simply declared as "false" any connection between interest rates and the soaring debt burden, implying that debt had risen only because of higher house prices.
Taken collectively, these empty phrases only serve to underscore the fact that neither Labor nor Liberal, at state or federal level, can formulate any genuine response to the potentially explosive financial and social problem of massive household debt and home repossessions.
The financial stress now being experienced is particularly politically significant. A key plank of Howard's 2004 election win was a scare campaign about higher interest rates under Labor. Until recently, higher house prices continued to create an illusion of wealth for homeowners. Now, with ever-rising interest rates, the financial threat to mortgagees, coupled with growing levels of household debt more widely, threaten to puncture the Howard government's officially-cultivated image as a steward of prosperity.
Comment on this Article
The Gay Old Party
What Not to Wear in Front of Bush
By Johanna Neuman, Times Staff Writer
October 12, 2006
WASHINGTON - Even as he talked about North Korea's nuclear ambitions and other weighty matters, President Bush on Wednesday returned to his occasional role as fashion critic to the White House press corps.
"If I might say, that is a beautiful suit.... And I can't see anybody else that even comes close," the president told NBC's Kevin Corke, who was wearing pinstripes, in the course of a Rose Garden news conference that focused on North Korea-related diplomacy and the Iraq war.
Corke responded that he would convey the president's comments to his tailor. "I'll be happy to pass along my tailor's number if you'd like that, sir," he also offered.
Soon after, the president asserted that CNN's Suzanne Malveaux was the "first best-dressed person here."
By the time Bush called on Jim Axelrod of CBS, the reporter felt compelled to start with a defensive comment: "My best suit's in the cleaners," Axelrod explained to the president.
"That's not even a suit," Bush retorted, eyeing Axelrod's sport coat and slacks.
Bush, who has suits made by Georges de Paris, the tailor to presidents since Lyndon Johnson's time, has teased reporters about their appearance in the past. In June, he poked fun at CNN's David Gregory for his loud pocket scarf.
"Gregory, fine-looking scarf - not scarf, what do you call that thing?" said Bush. "It's strong."
In August, while discussing the war in Lebanon, Bush took note of a suit worn by Ken Herman of Cox Newspapers, saying: "By the way, seersucker is coming back." Later in the news conference, Bush again referred to the suit, calling it "that just ridiculous-looking outfit."
Asked about the president's commentary, White House Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino called Bush "a personable man," saying that "although he's president and that's a serious job, he does like to reach out to others in friendly ways."
Some who study presidential news conferences attached no great meaning to the byplay.
"I think this is probably the way he deals with people in social encounters," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. "It may make him feel more comfortable."
Herman, the reporter in seersucker, was amused when a media dust-up followed Bush's comments on his suit. "If there's anything reporters know better than math, it's fashion," he joked.
Herman said he considered the banter just part of Bush's social mannerisms. "I've been covering him since 1993 in Texas," Herman said. "That's the way he likes to make connections. He still has some frat boy in him. He likes to tease people."
Comment on this Article
A Gay Purge Looms for the GOP
Max Blumenthal
The Nation
October 13, 2006
Armed with a list of names of gay Republican staffers in Washington, Christian Right leaders are calling for their exit.
Immediately after the Mark Foley scandal broke, some anti-Republican gay-rights activists composed a memo containing the names of closeted gay Republican Congressional staffers and sent it to leading Christian-right advocacy groups. The founder and chairman of one of those groups, the Rev. Don Wildmon of the American Family Association, told me he has received that memo, which he referred to simply as "The List." Based on The List's contents, Wildmon is convinced that a secretive gay "clique" boring within the Republican-controlled Congress is responsible for covering up Foley's sexual predation toward teenage male House pages. Moreover, Wildmon calls on the Republican Party leadership to promptly purge the "subversive" gay staffers.
"They oughtta fire every one of 'em," Wildmon told me in his trademark Mississippi drawl. "I don't care if they're heterosexual or homosexual or whatever they are. If you've got that going on, that subverts the will of the people; that subverts the voters. That is subversive activity. There should be no organization among staffers in Washington of that nature, and if they find out that they're there and they're a member, they oughtta be dismissed el pronto."
Wildmon claimed that an investigation by Congressional Republican leaders into the gay menace lurking in their midst will clear House Speaker Dennis Hastert of allegations that he repeatedly ignored warnings about Foley's behavior. "I think the identification of the members of the homosexual clique is going to come out," Wildmon declared. "I think it's going to come out whether or not Hastert knew what he says, and at this point I'm inclined to believe he's telling the truth. I'm beginning to think that the homosexuals shielded their former Congressman Foley and that Denny Hastert did not know the depth of what's going on up there."
Wildmon's defense of Hastert dovetails loosely with Hastert's own explanation for his actions, or lack thereof. Hastert did nothing after being warned last spring by House majority leader John Boehner and Representative Tom Reynolds about Foley's explicit exchanges with House pages. Yet during an October 10 press conference, Hastert deflected blame onto his own staffers, who he said may have engaged in a "cover-up." (In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Hastert also blamed his woes on "ABC News and a lot of Democratic operatives, people funded by [liberal billionaire philanthropist] George Soros.")
While Hastert has never suggested his staffers were part of any gay Republican "clique," openly gay Hill staffers who had contact with Hastert's staff and his Congressional allies have become subjects of a House Ethics Committee and FBI investigation into Foleygate. One of the gay staffers, Kirk Fordham, former chief of staff to Foley, was serving as Reynolds's chief of staff when the news broke of Foley's activities. Another, Jeff Trandahl, served as House Clerk from 1999 to 2005 and oversaw the page program.
Hastert's chief of staff, Scott Palmer, has confirmed he was informed by Fordham of Foley's lurid IMs in 2005. Fordham, however, alleges that Palmer knew of Foley's behavior much earlier than 2005. Trandahl, for his part, was presented with Foley's IMs in 2003 and, together with Illinois Republican Representative John Shimkus, told Foley to break contact with the teen.
Even though Fordham and Trandahl are key figures in the Foley scandal, the disclosure of their actions does not absolve House Republican leaders of their own roles in keeping Foley's licentious and possibly illegal behavior from the public. Yet Fordham and Trandahl are tempting targets for the gay-obsessed Christian right. In their desperate effort to stave off a Democratic takeover of Congress and preserve their political agenda, Wildmon and his allies have volunteered as Hastert's surrogates, casting him as the victim of a gay Republican cabal.
Family Research Council president Tony Perkins first laid out the strategy on October 9, writing in FRC's newsletter : "Has the social agenda of the GOP been stalled by homosexual members and or staffers? When we look over events of this Congress, we have to wonder." Perkins continued: "Does the [Republican] party want to represent values voters or Mark Foley and friends?" Though a portrait of Trandahl appeared beside Perkins's missive, Perkins stopped just short of calling for a purge of gay GOP staffers.
Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, a co-founder of the FRC and a close ally of Wildmon, has taken a different tack. During the October 6 broadcast of his radio show, syndicated on more than 3,000 stations worldwide, Dobson dismissed Foley's explicit e-mail exchanges with a former House page as "sort of a joke by the boy and some of the other pages." Dobson then suggested that the liberal media concocted the entire scandal in order to depress turnout by so-called "values voters."
Five days later, Dobson returned to the airwaves to give the liberal media another tongue-lashing. After accusing Media Matters for America and the Huffington Post of "spinning" his earlier comments downplaying the Foley scandal--"These folks can always be counted on to give the most extreme liberal interpretation of everything," Dobson exclaimed--he recounted an upsetting inquiry from a reporter from the St. Petersburg Times.
"She [the reporter] said, 'I heard late yesterday that Dr. Dobson had asked House leadership to fire all gay staffers,'" Dobson recalled in a voice brimming with indignation. "That's crazy too. That, first of all, would be flat-out illegal. You can't fire people just because somebody says so, and they're certainly not going to do it because James Dobson says so. That's crazy! They're trying to make us look like extremists and people who do ridiculous things, and there's absolutely no basis in this."
With Wildmon brandishing The List and demanding a gay purge, which in Dobson's words would be a "crazy," "flat-out illegal," "ridiculous thing," the chaos and panic among the House leadership has spread to the Christian right. As Election Day draws nearer, the movement's most influential leaders are markedly off-message, contradicting one another, and on the defensive. And their rhetorical fusillades have made gay Republican House staffers, some about to testify before the Ethics Committee and the FBI, fear for their careers.
Meanwhile, the so-called "values voters," cultivated to propel the Republicans into control of the White House and Congress, appear to have lost the faith. An October 5 poll by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that 57 percent of white evangelicals plan to vote for Republican Congressional candidates in the midterms--a twenty-one-point drop in support from 2004. With such a large portion of the GOP's core constituency likely to stay home on November 6, the results could be devastating.
Yet Wildmon remains confident that the Christian right can somehow snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. "This [scandal] might backfire in that if the 'values voters' see the methodology being used here, that could irritate them more than ever and motivate them to vote," Wildmon assured me. "George Soros and his wrecking crew might have made a tactical mistake."
Comment on this Article
Foley says White House snubbed him
Reuters
October 12, 2006
MIAMI - Disgraced former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley complained to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush two years ago that the White House snubbed him during presidential visits to the state, according to e-mails obtained by the Palm Beach Post.
In e-mails the newspaper excerpted on its Web site (http://www.palmbeachpost.com) on Thursday, Foley asked the governor to intervene on his behalf with his brother,
President George W. Bush.
"Have I done something to offend the White House? ... I am always getting the shaft," Foley wrote to Gov. Bush on September 29, 2004.
The Republican former congressman said in that message he had not been allowed to accompany the president on post-hurricane visits to Foley's district in Florida, although other local lawmakers had been invited.
"I can't quite figure what I have done, but this is a continuing pattern of slights. ... I have constantly put the president in the best possible light," Foley wrote to the governor.
The governor responded, "I will try to help. I know it is nothing you have done."
Foley, who is gay, resigned from Congress on September 29 amid revelations that he sent sexually explicit messages to young male congressional aides, a scandal that threatens Republicans' control of Congress.
The newspaper said Gov. Bush and Foley exchanged about 100 electronic messages since 1999, and that it obtained copies from the governor's office in a public records request.
It said the messages showed a friendly relationship with the governor and mostly concerned hurricanes, legislation and appointments.
After Foley's resignation, Gov. Bush described Foley's messages to the congressional aides as "disgusting" and said he was angered by Foley's breach of public trust.
Comment: In other words, the White House told Foley to distance himself from Bush and the gang.
Comment on this Article
Bush signs port security, Internet bill
By JENNIFER LOVEN
Associated Press
October 13, 2006
WASHINGTON - President Bush signed a bill Friday to help prevent terrorists from sneaking a nuclear, chemical or germ weapon into the United States inside one of the 11 million shipping containers that enter the nation each year - many without inspection.
"We're going to protect our ports. We're going to defend this homeland, and we're going to win this war on terror," Bush said.
The president used the bill-signing ceremony to assert that Republicans are tough on terror, a key issue in congressional elections just less than four weeks away.
He didn't mention an unrelated provision that seeks to put teeth into laws that forbid most online gambling. Instead, Bush focused on the multiple ways the legislation tightens security and closes a loophole in anti-terror defenses, especially at ports.
He noted that the SAFE Port Act authorizes the development of high-tech inspection equipment so customs agents can check cargo containers for dangerous materials without having to open them. It requires radiation-detection technology at 22 of the nation's busiest ports by the end of next year.
"We'll do everything we can to prevent an attack, but if the terrorists succeed in launching an attack, we'll be ready to respond," Bush said.
The president said the bill codifies the Container Security Initiative, which deploys U.S. inspectors to dozens of foreign ports on five continents where they can screen cargo bound for the United States. He said it also codifies the Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism, a joint public-private sector initiative in which private shippers agree to improve their own security measures and in return can receive benefits, including expedited clearance through U.S. ports.
Bush also noted that the bill provides additional authority for the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, which was established to guard against the threat of terrorists smuggling a nuclear device into the country. And the act requires the Department of Homeland Security to establish a plan to speed the resumption of trade in the event of a terrorist attack on a U.S. port or waterway.
"This bill makes clear that the federal government has the authority to clear waterways, identify cleanup equipment and re-establish the flow of commerce following a terrorist attack," the president said.
Comment on this Article
Winter in October
Thousands without power in Buffalo after first snowfall of season
Last Updated: Friday, October 13, 2006 | 6:04 AM ET
The Associated Press
Having just set a record for the "snowiest" October day, the city of Buffalo in western New York state braced for more Friday as the season's first snowfall closed schools and left 155,000 customers without electricity.
At least 60 centimetres of snow blanketed parts of the Buffalo area early Friday, signalling a possible second record-setting day. The snow downed scores of tree limbs and toppled power lines.
The snowfall was expected to continue throughout the morning, said Tom Paone, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in the U.S.
On Thursday, 21 centimetres of heavy snow set the record for the "snowiest" October day in Buffalo in the 137-year history of the weather service, said meteorologist Tom Niziol. The previous record of 15 centimetres was set Oct. 31, 1917.
"This is an extremely rare event for this early in the season," Niziol said.
The Buffalo Police Department received more than 3,000 calls late Thursday and about two-thirds were related to the weather, Lt. James Watkins said.
"There are power lines going down all over the place," he said.
Crews worked into the night to restore power, but many customers were expected to remain in the dark through the weekend and into next week, National Grid energy company spokesman Steve Brady said.
"This is extremely heavy snow and most of the trees still have most of their leaves, he said. "We can't do a complete damage assessment until the snow stops falling."
Other western New York communities also experienced heavy snowfall. Officials in Amherst ordered a driving ban for the entire town.
"We have a condition where 80 percent of the roads are impassable," said Lt. Stephen McGonagle of the Amherst Police Department.
Buffalo schools were closed Friday.
The snowstorm caused flight delays and cancellations at Buffalo Niagara International Airport, officials said. The airport shut down for almost two hours late Thursday.
Tree branches were strewn across the roads around the region. A large box maple tree split in half, falling on Joan Casey's home in Buffalo.
"The whole house shook," Casey said. "We were very afraid. Originally I thought it was just the thunder, and then I came outside and I couldn't believe it."
Comment on this Article
Chicago: Snowfall Sets Record As December Comes Early
CBS 2 Chicago
Oct 12, 2006
CHICAGO - The calendar said October, but it felt and looked more like December. Chicago picked up its first official snow of the season Thursday, setting a record for the earliest measurable snowfall.
A total of 0.3 inches of snow fell at O'Hare International Airport this morning, breaking a record set in 1972. While average date for the first trace of snow is Oct. 30, the first measurable snowfall usually does not come until mid-November.
In Lake Forest and Highland Park snow flurries fell more than once, covering cars parked on the street.
"It's a surprise. I wasn't expecting it," Highland Park resident Jim Bernahl said. "It's kind of slowing down the construction projects."
The snow fell quickly and heavily, blanketing trees, bushes and lawns with a layer of white, and making driving difficult.
"I was wearing shirts and shoes, now I'm wearing turtlenecks, and it's kind of early to bring out my winter clothes," said Chicago resident Jessica Figueroa.
But not everyone is upset about it.
"I mean, it's good for business," Highland Park business owner Tony Caponi said. "People buy sweaters and things. But it's too early."
The average freeze date for the area is about mid-month. Stephanie Robinson considered that fact before going out this morning.
"I kind of started pulling out all my winter things last week," Robinson said.
But the brisk conditions caught a few people in shorts off guard, like Indiana resident John Busenbark, who was found standing outside the Cultural Center downtown.
When asked if he was crazy, Busenbark replied "Probably, yeah. I was expecting to be picked up a lot faster than I am, so I was going for the comfort of shorts. It didn't work out in my favor today, I guess."
As a result of the weather, 20 to 45 minute delays were reported at O'Hare for inbound flights. Midway International Airport was experiencing only a handful of delays due to icing.
While Chicago is still likely to get warm days before winter comes for real, it is in an unseasonable cold snap for the long haul now. But some people placed it in perspective, including Brenda and Elvis Graham, who were found in Wicker Park.
"Living in Chicago, it's worth going through the cold weather because the rest of the city is so great," said Elvis Graham. "It's a trade off, Chicago's worth going through winter with."
"Hot dogs and pizza," Brenda Graham as Elvis Graham spoke next to her, referring to the qualities of the city she did like.
But the Grahams said they were not dressed for temperatures like the city was experiencing.
On Wednesday night, the cold snap did not stop the Rolling Stones from rocking out Soldier Field.
With winds ripping through the crowd and plummeting temperatures, the mid-October rock concert felt more like a late-December Bears game, and most fans came armed with blankets, scarves, hats and anything else to bundle up in. But the Rolling Stones themselves seemed to be dressed for the occasion.
A sign off the Kennedy Expressway said 31 degrees around 2 a.m. this morning The record is 28 degrees, and we are expected to get close. And while it does not usually get this cold, the first frost does usually come around this time of year.
Comment on this Article
Warming will cost trillions, says report
Larry Elliott, economics editor
Friday October 13, 2006
The Guardian
Failure to take action to combat climate change will cause environmental catastrophe and cost the global economy $20 trillion (£10.8 trillion) a year by the end of the century, the pressure group Friends of the Earth says today.
In a report based on research from more than 100 scientific and economic papers, the group says allowing global warming to continue unchecked will mean a temperature rise of 4C by 2100, causing economic damage worth up to 8% of global GDP.
The study coincides with research from the oil group Shell yesterday, which said the need to find solutions to climate change could create a £30bn market for British business over the coming decade.
Shell's chairman, James Smith, said: "We do have to tackle climate change and that's a matter for government, companies and individuals as well, because the costs in the coming years from rising sea levels, from floods and extremes of climate will be too high.
"The cost-benefit equation of action to tackle climate change is favourable. That's true not just for the UK but internationally as well," he said on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
Both reports were released ahead of the government's own review of the economics of climate change carried out for the Treasury by Sir Nicholas Stern. That is expected to be published later this month and is likely to conclude that the costs of tackling climate change are far more modest than had been thought.
The Friends of the Earth report was compiled by economists at the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University in Massachusetts in the US. Institute director Frank Ackerman said: "The climate system has enormous momentum, as does the economic system that emits so much carbon dioxide. Like a supertanker, which has to turn off its engines 25km before it comes to a stop, we have to start turning off greenhouse gas emissions now in order to avoid catastrophe in decades to come."
According to the report, global temperatures are already 0.6C above pre-industrial levels and temperatures will rise by more than 2C unless there are "immediate and vigorous efforts to reduce emissions", that a 3C increase was "extremely likely without major efforts at reducing emissions", and the increase would be 4C with "no efforts at reducing emissions".
Friends of the Earth says the impact on Britain of a 4C increase will be much hotter summers, droughts, flooding to cost £22bn a year by 2080, a doubling of the number of people at risk of coastal flooding to 1.8 million and the need for a cooling system on the London Underground.
It also says there is a danger that the Thames Barrier will be unable to cope with the demands on it from rising sea levels. Friends of the Earth's head of campaigns, Mike Childs, said: "This report demonstrates that climate change will not only be an environmental and social disaster, it will also be an economic catastrophe, especially if global temperatures are allowed to increase by more than 2C."
Shell's research sought to quantify for the first time the potential size of the market for businesses that develop technologies, products and services that help combat climate change. There would be a global market worth $1 trillion within five years, it said.
Comment: If you can't convince people that global warming will lead to resource wars, civil war, and the loss of life as we know it, then tell 'em it's going to cost an arm and a leg...
Comment on this Article
Worlds in Collision
Strong earthquake rocks Chile
Forbes
10.12.2006
SANTIAGO (XFN-ASIA) - A strong earthquake hit central Chile Thursday, rocking tall buildings on the coast and in Santiago inland, without immediate reports of damage, the University of Chile said.
The quake registered 6.5 on the Richter scale, which measures the maximum amplitude of the energy released, at 02.08 pm (1808 GMT).
The quake frightened residents in the Pacific port city Valparaiso and resorts in Vina del Mar as well as the capital.
In Santiago, the quake reached 5.0 on the six-point Mercalli scale and lasted 45 minutes, according to the Interior Ministry's national emergencies office.
The US Geological Survey gave an amplitude of 6.1 Moment Magnitude at 2.06 pm (1806 GMT) at a depth of 45.6 kilometers with the epicenter 150 kilometers south of Coquimbo, 195 km north of Valparaiso, and 245 km north by northwest of Santiago.
The open-ended Moment Magnitude scale, now used by US seismologists, measures the area of the fault that ruptured and the total energy released.
A measurement of five indicates a moderate earthquake, six or higher a strong quake, seven a major quake and eight a great quake.
Comment on this Article
Does world-record meteorite await unearthing in Kansas?
By KEVIN MURPHY
The Kansas City Star
Fri, Oct. 13, 2006
Something big is buried beneath a south-central Kansas wheat field, according to Steve Arnold's metal detector.
But could it be a meteorite, likely the largest ever found on Earth? Or could it be something as mundane as an old tractor?
Meteorite hunter Arnold and some scientists may know the answer today as they use special equipment to make images of the object, which Arnold's metal detector measured at 12 feet by 18 feet and perhaps 7 feet below ground.
"I usually try to set my expectations a little low and be pleasantly surprised," Arnold, a Wichita native, said in a phone interview Thursday from the farm near Greensburg.
Arnold has created a lot of interest in his discovery. Scientists from The Houston Museum of Natural Science and NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston are in Kansas to look at the object using a ground-penetrating radar device.
Carolyn Sumners, director of astronomy at the museum, said no one has tried to hype the potentially large meteorite. Only a few news outlets have been notified.
"We don't want another Capone's vault," Sumners said, referring to the 1986 buildup to the live television opening of gangster Al Capone's vault. Only dirt and some empty liquor bottles were discovered.
Sumners wants to do a film for the museum on the recovery of a meteorite and then put the rock on display.
Even if the large object is not a meteorite, several much smaller but potentially significant meteorites could be on the site, according to Arnold's metal detector.
Arnold made big news last fall when on the same farm he uncovered a 1,400-pound pallasite meteorite, the largest of its type ever found. It had a rare bullet-like shape and smooth surface, and was made of nickel and olivine crystals.
The size of that one was not close to the world-record Hoba meteorite, which is about 9 feet by 9 feet and weighs 66 tons. Found in 1920, it is in Namibia.
If the object Arnold found is a meteorite, it could be twice as big as the Hoba meteorite, said Phil Mani, Arnold's partner and lawyer, who will be at the farm site this weekend.
Mani said 99 of 100 objects the metal detector picks up are "meteor-wrongs," but he was still hopeful the Kansas one was a meteorite because of its size. If it is detected as an apparent meteorite, a hole will be dug Monday so that part of it can be uncovered and viewed.
That, Mani said, would be "the eureka moment."
Comment on this Article
Saturn's Rings Show Evidence Of A Modern-Day Collision
October 13, 2006
NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Scientists with NASA's Cassini mission have spied a new, continuously changing feature that provides circumstantial evidence that a comet or asteroid recently collided with Saturn's innermost ring, the faint D ring.
Imaging scientists see a structure in the outer part of the D ring that looks like a series of bright ringlets with a regularly spaced interval of about 30 kilometers (19 miles). An observation made by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in 1995 also saw a periodic structure in the outer D ring, but its interval was then 60 kilometers (37 miles). Unlike many features in the ring system that have not changed over the last few decades, the interval of this pattern has been decreasing over time.
These findings are being presented today at the Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting of the American Astronomical Society held in Pasadena, Calif. Images are available at http://www.nasa.gov/cassini , http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://ciclops.org .
"This structure in the D ring reminds us that Saturn's rings are not eternal, but instead are active, dynamical systems, which can change and evolve," said Dr. Matt Hedman, Cassini imaging team associate at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.
When Cassini researchers viewed the D ring along a line of sight nearly parallel to the ringplane, they observed a pattern of brightness reversals: a part of the ring that appears bright on the far side of the rings appeared dark on the near side of the rings, and vice versa.
This phenomenon would occur if the region contains a sheet of fine material that is vertically corrugated, like a tin roof. In this case, variations in brightness would correspond to changing slopes in the rippled ring material.
Both the changes over time and the "corrugated" structure of this region could be explained by a collision of a comet or meteoroid into the D ring, which then kicked out a cloud of fine particles. This cloud might have inherited some of the tilt of the colliding object's path as it slammed into the rings. An alternate explanation could be that the object struck an already inclined moonlet, shattering it to bits and leaving its debris in an inclined orbit.
In either case, the researchers speculate the aftermath of such a collision would be a ring slightly tilted relative to Saturn's equatorial plane. Over a period of time, as the inclined orbits of the ring particles evolve, this flat sheet of material would become a corrugated spiral that appears to wind up like a spring over time, which is what was observed.
Based on observations between 1995 and 2006, scientists reconstructed a timeline and estimated that the collision occurred in 1984.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
Comment on this Article
Life in Amurika
Self-professed 'drunken pirate' runs for U.S. Congress on lobbying reform plank
15:59:57 EDT Oct 12, 2006
Canadian Press
ELDRIDGE, Iowa (AP) - Pillaging, plundering and grog, sweet grog; James Hill is happy to discuss the finer points of pirate life. But first, you'll have to hear him out on lobbying reform.
"Lobbying should be illegal," said Hill, a self-professed "drunken pirate" who is running for Congress as an independent in Iowa's 1st District. "It amounts to taxation without representation."
Lobbying probably never irked Blackbeard, nor is it likely that William Kidd rued the lack of transparency in government. But Hill, a former factory worker and stablehand who's wrapped himself in the Jolly Roger in his long-shot bid for Congress, isn't your average buccaneer.
Assuming the pirate mantle is partly about ethos and partly about drawing attention, Hill said.
"I have to get a little bit of notoriety," he said. "On the other hand, this kind of attitude will keep me straight and it will help keep them (Congress) straight."
For Hill, being a pirate is more about mind-set than physical prototype, which probably explains why he is somewhat lacking in pirate credentials.
Though he sports a suitably scraggly beard, it is carrot-coloured, not black. His animal companions are dogs, not parrots. And he opts to navigate the district on a Kawasaki motorcycle rather than a three-masted schooner. His bike does sport a small skull and crossbones sticker, though.
It may sound strange coming from a pirate, but Hill insists his campaign is about ideas, not imagery.
"Before we were a country they - pirates - were running mini-democracies. We need to get back to that," he said, adding an unsolicited promise that he will bring more "swashbuckling" to Congress if elected.
To many, the pirate's campaign is just a lot of yo-ho-hum.
Hill's major opponents, Democrat Bruce Braley and Republican Mike Whalen, have more or less ignored his candidacy in their intense fight for the open seat. Hill also has struggled to get local media coverage and has managed only one debate invitation so far.
Braley spokesman Jeff Giertz acknowledged that the Democrat hasn't paid much attention to Hill.
"I've spoken to the pirate captain," Giertz said. "He was friendly."
But Hill said he's been pleasantly surprised by how much his profile soared on the Internet after his campaign website, www.jameshillforcongress.com, was linked by the popular Fark.com.
When Hill announced his candidacy in August, bloggers of all political stripes wrote him up, many expressing surprise that there were pirates in Iowa.
Hill hopes the web hits keep coming until he reaches his goal: a sizable percentage in November's election.
"I want to light up the board, I want to have some kind of percentage," he said.
And if he's somehow elected?
"I won't mind getting in front of people and asking them hard questions," Hill said. "I bet I'll be the most honest person in Washington."
Comment on this Article
Police investigate after mummified human remains offered for sale on EBay
12:30:10 EDT Oct 12, 2006
Canadian Press
PORT HURON, Mich. (AP) - Authorities confiscated mummified human remains from a woman who was auctioning them on EBay, after a browser on the Internet auction site called police.
Lynn Barrett, 45, told police she obtained the mummy from a friend who said he found them in a Detroit school he helped demolish nearly 30 years ago. Barrett told the Port Huron Times Herald that she was selling the remains for a friend, and contacted a lawyer before advertising on EBay.
"It's an anatomical, medical-use skeleton," she said. "I would never have put it on (EBay) if I thought it was anything other than an anatomical, medical thing."
The St. Clair County medical examiner's office claimed the remains Tuesday from Barrett's home. Medical Examiner Daniel Spitz described the remains as an intact skeleton with mummified tissue. He said the remains are very old, and appear to be those of a child, but age, sex and race could not yet be determined.
"It's very, very old. It's probably some type of anatomical dissection that was part of an anatomy class that over time got into the hands of somebody in the general public," he said.
A spokeswoman for EBay said Barrett's posting was removed from the auction site Wednesday morning because it violated a policy against selling human remains. The website allows the sale of skeletons for medical use, but not mummified remains.
Police Capt. Don Porrett said criminal charges appear unlikely, but police are trying to track down Barrett's friend.
He said the mummy attracted at least one bid before being removed. "There was a bid on it for US$500 from 'Satan's Child,' " he said.
Comment on this Article
4 bodies found shot along Fla. turnpike
AP
October 13, 2006
PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. - Two adults and two children were found shot to death Friday along an isolated stretch of Florida's Turnpike, with the woman clutching the two children in an apparent attempt to protect them, authorities said.
Florida Highway Patrol troopers got a call shortly before 8 a.m. after someone spotted the bodies of a man, woman, boy and girl off the southbound shoulder of the highway in Port St. Lucie, the St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office said.
The adults were both in their 20s or 30s, and the children appeared to be between the ages of 4 and 6, Sheriff Ken Mascara said. All had been shot multiple times, he said.
"It appears to be a Hispanic family," Mascara said. "The female had both the children clutched in a defensive mode, in an attempt to protect them. It gives the appearance that they were a family traveling."
No vehicle was found near the bodies, but there were tire tracks leading back onto the turnpike, Mascara said.
The bodies were found in a grassy area near the St. James Golf Club, several miles from the nearest rest stop, the sheriff's office said.
Tracy Maynor, staff clerk at the golf club, said a resident of the homes along the golf course reported hearing "some shots or fireworks at about three in the morning. That's about all we heard."
Cameras posted along the turnpike were not recording at the time, Mascara said.
A blue tent was set up over the bodies and white material covered them until they were released to the medical examiner. An autopsy was scheduled Friday afternoon.
A message left at the medical examiner's office was not immediately returned.
Florida's Turnpike is the main toll road connecting the Miami area with cities along the Atlantic Coast to Fort Pierce and then inland to Orlando and Interstate 75.
Comment on this Article
Remember, we need your help to collect information on what is going on in your part of the world!
Send your article suggestions to: sott(at)signs-of-the-times.org