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Editorial: Lynne Stewart's Crime of Courage, Honor and Resisting Tyranny
by Stephen Lendman
Years from now, Lynne F. Stewart's name will be spoken of with even greater reverence than it is today. On October 17, this courageous and redoubtable soft-spoken civil rights defense lawyer was vindicated in the same Foley Square New York federal courtroom where Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were unjustly framed, convicted and sentenced to death in April, 1951 in an act of state-sponsored vengeance for the crime of conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act. It was done in that earlier age of hysteria in the name of national security against an invented threat of that era that didn't exist.
On October 17, Lynne Stewart faced the possibility of 30 years in prison because of a modern-day state-sponsored campaign of intimidation using her trial to set a precedent allowing the government the right to deny those it accuses of "terrorism" their right of due process represented by competent counsel. A decisive Justice Department victory would have effectively destroyed the fundamental right under Section 1 of the 14th Amendment in the Constitution that guarantees all US citizens are not deprived of their right of "life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." It would also have been a renunciation of the landmark unanimous 1963 Supreme Court decision in Gideon v. Wainwright that affirmed the Sixth Amendment right of a defendant "in all criminal prosecutions....(to) the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury....to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense."
Lynne Stewart was charged under the 1996 Antiterrorism Act with four counts of aiding and abetting a terrorist organization. She was unjustly accused of providing material support for terrorism and violating Special Administrative Measures (SAMS) imposed by the US Bureau of Prisons, which included a gag order on Sheik Abdel Rahman whom she represented in his 1995 trial. At the request of former US Attorney-General Ramsey Clark, she was serving as a member of the court-appointed defense team for Sheik Rahman, known as the blind (Egyptian Muslim) Sheik. He was convicted in 2005 and is now serving a life sentence for "Seditious Conspiracy" in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Because he was a Muslim and accused of being a "radical" cleric, he was practically radioactive and not the kind of client most defense attorneys have the courage to accept in this era of anti-Muslim hysteria. Rahman was connected with the Islamic Group, an organization on the State Department's terrorist list that this country accuses of supporting militant Islam and advocating replacing Middle East secular governments with an Islamic caliphate.
Lynne Stewart has never been one to back off or shun controversy. She spent 30 years as a civil rights attorney acting as a courageous champion for the rights of the poor, underprivileged and others in society who are never afforded due process unless they're lucky enough to have an advocate like her. Where others fear to tread, she was willing to defend such controversial figures as David Gilbert of the Weather Underground, Richard Williams of the United Freedom Front, Sekou Odinga and Nasser Ahmed of the Black Liberation Army and many others like them. She always understood the personal risk to herself and knows the state uses every underhanded trick it can to convict these kinds of defendants wanting to lock them away for long prison terms even if they're innocent.
The Rahman case was so high-profile, it made Stewart herself a target, and her ordeal began on April 9, 2002 when FBI agents came to her Brooklyn home, handcuffed and arrested her. They also searched her Manhattan office and removed boxes of papers and files on all her cases. It was the beginning of a long struggle that included Stewart's battle with breast cancer. It played out in the Foley Square courtroom resulting in her conviction on all four counts of her indictment on February 10, 2005. Stewart's trial was a gross miscarriage of justice in a proceeding with echoes of the worst of McCarthyist tactics. Inflammatory terrorist images were displayed in the courtroom to incite the jurors, and prosecutors demonized Stewart as a traitor condemning her for her "radical" political views which have always embraced the letter and spirit of justice for all under the rule of law. Still, prosecutors falsely accused her of making statements that violence is sometimes justified to overthrow oppressive governments and that she advocated regime change in Egypt under President (and de facto dictator and close US ally) Hosni Mubarak.
Also, a few days before the verdict, prosecutors ignored the physical threat of the fascist Jewish Defense Organization putting up flyers near the courthouse with Stewart's home address calling for her to be driven out of the city. It was all part of a government-orchestrated witch-hunt process inside and outside the courtroom to use the Stewart case as an act of intimidation to scare off other defense attorneys with the clear threat that they, too, will become targets if they dare defend anyone charged with "terrorism" (guilty or innocent) that prosecutors want to convict. Just after the verdict, Georgetown University professor of law, author and civil rights advocate David Cole said: "This (verdict) will have a chilling effect on lawyers who might represent an unpopular client." National Lawyers Guild President Michael Avery added: "The US Department of Justice was resolute from day one in making a symbol out of Lynne Stewart in support of its campaign to deny people charged with crimes of effective legal representation." Avery courageously urged National Lawyers Guild members to "proudly represent clients who are openly critical of government policies (and added) We will also continue to stand by Lynne Stewart."
October 17 was Stewart's date to be sentenced. The Justice Department hoped it would get the harsh 30 years it asked for to set the precedent it wanted. Judge John G. Koeltl had other ideas and refused to comply. Instead, he vindicated Stewart in the sentence he gave her, effectively rebuking Justice Department prosecutors and handing them a major defeat. The government wanted the 67-year-old Stewart put away for what would have been a life or even a death sentence. Her cancer is in remission, but she still remains in fragile health following her illness and major surgery. Judge Koeltl took everything into account and sentenced her to 28 months, allowing her to remain free pending her appeal to a higher court which he acknowledged might overturn the case that he clearly implied was a gross miscarriage of justice for a woman of such noble stature in her long career fighting for justice.
The judge noted her past in issuing sentence saying: "She has represented the poor, the disadvantaged and the unpopular (and she had) enormous skill and dedication (earning little money for doing it). It is no exaggeration to say that Ms. Stewart performed a public service not only to her clients but to the nation." Judge Koeltl cited the many hundreds of letters of support Stewart got from law professors, former prosecutors, retired judges and former clients. One or more of them came from Ramsey Clark, a man of such enormous stature and eminence himself, he can't be ignored.
Lynne Stewart left the courtroom on October 17 a proud and vindicated woman who spent a lifetime advocating for society's most disadvantaged. She now has a chance to overturn a malicious and wrongful conviction that represents an appalling miscarriage of justice. She may even be able to regain her license to practice law that she lost through disbarment after being convincted. If she does, it will be a further stunning rebuke to a rogue administration and a major victory for the rule of law. It will also prove Lynne Stewart is only guilty of being a courageous advocate for justice and those in society least able to achieve it. Everyone of conscience supports her and hopes for the day she'll be fully exonerated and able to resume the vital work she spent so many years doing admirably and honorably and that so many of society's most disadvantaged need her for.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
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Editorial: Just Think
Charley Reese
17/10/2006
The foremost duty of a citizen, especially in dangerous times, is to think. Without independent thinkers who are also economically independent of the government, democracy doesn't work.
Remembering and imagining are not thinking. Emotional reactions or ideological reactions are not thinking. Belief in the "word magic" of labels is not thinking. Faith is not thinking.
Thinking is the use of reason to determine the truth as best we can. To do that, we have to shuck emotions, desires and wishes and look at the world in its nakedness as it is, not as we wish it were or as someone else has told us it is.
Reality is not affected by our desires or by our comprehension. We glean data from our senses of that world outside our bodies and use our brains to draw inferences from the data. We have to conform to it; reality will not conform to us.
Clear thinking today is especially difficult, because the present generations of human beings are exposed to information in an unprecedented flood. Some years ago, it was estimated that the average American was exposed to about 15,000 messages per day. I'm sure that number has increased.
Advertising is pervasive with labels, point-of-sale displays and ads in newspapers and on television, radio and the Internet, as well as signs and billboards. Information - much of it false or self-serving or incomplete or trivial - pours out of print publications, television, radio and the Internet.
Information is not truth. It is bits of data that might be true or false or completely useless to know. I've often recommended that people take an information break. Go a week without watching television, listening to the radio, reading newspapers or magazines or surfing the Net. It might be difficult at first, but if you persist, you will be surprised by how normal the world appears once you've cut out the political chatter and the daily roundup of the world's pain and misery.
Another exercise in mind control is that when you are driving, make a conscious effort not to read signs or billboards. Look instead at trees and other natural features. Work for the goal of being able to give someone directions to your house like this: Go three blocks north of the giant magnolia tree, turn east and look for two crab-apple trees.
The most important point is to realize that your mind belongs to you. It is your principal means of survival. Don't rent it out to politicians or political parties or anybody else, including columnists and commentators. All leaders of whatever stripe desire is to persuade you to adopt their agenda. Don't do it. Arrive at your own independent agenda. If your own agenda coincides with theirs, then cooperate. If it doesn't, go your own way.
Next, you should start editing the information that is presented to you. Do you really need to know that Mel Gibson said he's been sober for 65 days? Not unless you're kin or a personal friend. Do you need to know there has been a coup in Thailand? Not unless you plan to visit that country.
Despite all the talk about globalism, in most cases our true interests are local - family, community, region, state and our own country. We should concentrate on these, for here we can make a difference.
While global busybodies worry about rain forests, tribal conflicts in the Sudan and poverty in Africa, our own infrastructure, including public education, is deteriorating. Celebrities who want to hold poor black babies don't have to go to Africa. There are plenty of poor babies of all colors in the U.S.
Think, folks, think.
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Iraq
Iraq a 'helluva mess': former US secretary of state
AFP
Tue Oct 17, 2006
LONDON - Former US secretary of state James Baker was visibly shocked when he last visited Iraq, and said the country was in a "helluva mess", the BBC reported.
Baker is leading a review of the situation in Iraq by a bipartisan US committee of experts, and is expected to recommend a change in US strategy for rebuilding Iraq.
Citing a unnamed close friend and ally of Baker's, himself a top politician, the BBC said that Baker added that "there simply weren't any easy solutions".
Baker was secretary of state to US President George W. Bush's father, president George H. W. Bush.
Citing unnamed members of Baker's committee, The Los Angeles Times on Monday said that two options under consideration would represent reversals of US policy: withdrawing American troops in phases, and bringing neighboring Iran and Syria into a joint effort to stop the fighting.
The BBC also reported that a third possibility was under consideration -- to concentrate on getting stability in Iraq, and stop aiming to establish a democracy there.
The 10-member commission has agreed that change must be made, the Times report said.
"It's not going to be 'stay the course,'" the paper quoted one participant as saying. "The bottom line is, (current policy) isn't working. There's got to be another way."
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Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil
Alternet
16/10/2006
Even as Iraq verges on splintering into a sectarian civil war, four big oil companies are on the verge of locking up its massive, profitable reserves, known to everyone in the petroleum industry as "the prize."
Iraq is sitting on a mother lode of some of the lightest, sweetest, most profitable crude oil on earth, and the rules that will determine who will control it and on what terms are about to be set.
The Iraqi government faces a December deadline, imposed by the world's wealthiest countries, to complete its final oil law. Industry analysts expect that the result will be a radical departure from the laws governing the country's oil-rich neighbors, giving foreign multinationals a much higher rate of return than with other major oil producers and locking in their control over what George Bush called Iraq's "patrimony" for decades, regardless of what kind of policies future elected governments might want to pursue.
Iraq's energy reserves are an incredibly rich prize. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, "Iraq contains 112 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the second largest in the world (behind Saudi Arabia), along with roughly 220 billion barrels of probable and possible resources. Iraq's true potential may be far greater than this, however, as the country is relatively unexplored due to years of war and sanctions." For perspective, the Saudis have 260 billion barrels of proven reserves.
Iraqi oil is close to the surface and easy to extract, making it all the more profitable. James Paul, executive director of the Global Policy Forum, points out that oil companies "can produce a barrel of Iraqi oil for less than $1.50 and possibly as little as $1, including all exploration, oilfield development and production costs." Contrast that with other areas where oil is considered cheap to produce at $5 per barrel or the North Sea, where production costs are $12-16 per barrel.
And Iraq's oil sector is largely undeveloped. Former Iraqi Oil Minister Issam Chalabi (no relation to the neocons' favorite exile, Ahmed Chalabi) told the Associated Press that "Iraq has more oil fields that have been discovered, but not developed, than any other country in the world." British-based analyst Mohammad Al-Gallani told the Canadian Press that of 526 prospective drilling sites, just 125 have been opened.
But the real gem -- what one oil consultant called the "Holy Grail" of the industry -- lies in Iraq's vast western desert. It's one of the last "virgin" fields on the planet, and it has the potential to catapult Iraq to No. 1 in the world in oil reserves. Sparsely populated, the western fields are less prone to sabotage than the country's current centers of production in the north, near Kirkuk, and in the south near Basra. The Nation's Aram Roston predicts Iraq's western desert will yield "untold riches."
Iraq also may have large natural gas deposits that so far remain virtually unexplored.
But even "untold riches" don't tell the whole story. Depending on how Iraq's petroleum law shakes out, the country's enormous reserves could break the back of OPEC, a wet dream in Western capitals for three decades. James Paul predicted that "even before Iraq had reached its full production potential of 8 million barrels or more per day, the companies would gain huge leverage over the international oil system. OPEC would be weakened by the withdrawal of one of its key producers from the OPEC quota system." Depending on how things shape up in the next few months, Western oil companies could end up controlling the country's output levels, or the government, heavily influenced by the United States, could even pull out of the cartel entirely.
Both independent analysts and officials within Iraq's Oil Ministry anticipate that when all is said and done, the big winners in Iraq will be the Big Four -- the American firms Exxon-Mobile and Chevron, the British BP-Amoco and Royal Dutch-Shell -- that dominate the world oil market. Ibrahim Mohammed, an industry consultant with close contacts in the Iraqi Oil Ministry, told the Associated Press that there's a universal belief among ministry staff that the major U.S. companies will win the lion's share of contracts. "The feeling is that the new government is going to be influenced by the United States," he said.
During the 12-year sanction period, the Big Four were forced to sit on the sidelines while the government of Saddam Hussein cut deals with the Chinese, French, Russians and others (despite the sanctions, the United States ultimately received 37 percent of Iraq's oil during that period, according to the independent committee that investigated the oil-for-food program, but almost all of it arrived through foreign firms). In a 1999 speech, Dick Cheney, then CEO of the oil services company Halliburton, told a London audience that the Middle East was where the West would find the additional 50 million barrels of oil per day that he predicted it would need by 2010, but, he lamented, "while even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow."
Chafing at the idea that the Chinese and Russians might end up with what is arguably the world's greatest energy prize, industry leaders lobbied hard for regime change throughout the 1990s. With the election of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in 2000 -- the first time in U.S. history that two veterans of the oil industry had ever occupied the nation's top two jobs -- they would finally get the "greater access" to the region's oil wealth, which they had long lusted after.
If the U.S. invasion of Iraq had occurred during the colonial era a hundred years earlier, the oil giants, backed by U.S. forces, would have simply seized Iraq's oil fields. Much has changed since then in terms of international custom and law (when then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz did in fact suggest seizing Iraq's Southern oil fields in 2002, Colin Powell dismissed the idea as "lunacy").
Understanding how Big Oil came to this point, poised to take effective control of the bulk of the country's reserves while they remain, technically, in the hands of the Iraqi government -- a government with all the trappings of sovereignty -- is to grasp the sometimes intricate dance that is modern neocolonialism. The Iraq oil grab is a classic case study.
It's clear that the U.S.-led invasion had little to do with national security or the events of Sept. 11. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill revealed that just 11 days after Bush's inauguration in early 2001, regime change in Iraq was "Topic A" among the administration's national security staff, and former Terrorism Tsar Richard Clarke told 60 Minutes that the day after the attacks in New York and Washington occurred, "[Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq." He added: "We all said ... no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan."
On March 7, 2003, two weeks before the United States attacked Iraq, the U.N.'s chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, told the U.N. Security Council that Saddam Hussein's cooperation with the inspections protocol had improved to the point where it was "active or even proactive," and that the inspectors would be able to certify that Iraq was free of prohibited weapons within a few months' time. That same day, IAEA head Mohammed ElBaradei reported that there was no evidence of a current nuclear program in Iraq and flatly refuted the administration's claim that the infamous aluminum tubes cited by Colin Powell in making his case for war before the Security Council were part of a reconstituted nuclear program.
But serious planning for the war had begun in February of 2002, as Bob Woodward revealed in his book, Plan of Attack. Planning for the future of Iraq's oil wealth had been under way for longer still.
In February of 2001, just weeks after Bush was sworn in, the same energy executives that had been lobbying for Saddam's ouster gathered at the White House to participate in Dick Cheney's now infamous Energy Task Force. Although Cheney would go all the way to the Supreme Court to keep what happened at those meetings a secret, we do know a few things, thanks to documents obtained by the conservative legal group JudicialWatch. As Mark Levine wrote in The Nation($$):
... a map of Iraq and an accompanying list of "Iraq oil foreign suitors" were the center of discussion. The map erased all features of the country save the location of its main oil deposits, divided into nine exploration blocks. The accompanying list of suitors revealed that dozens of companies from 30 countries -- but not the United States -- were either in discussions over or in direct negotiations for rights to some of the best remaining oilfields on earth.
Levine wrote, "It's not hard to surmise how the participants in these meetings felt about this situation."
According to the New Yorker, at the same time, a top-secret National Security Council memo directed NSC staff to "cooperate fully with the Energy Task Force as it considered melding two seemingly unrelated areas of policy." The administration's national security team was to join "the review of operational policies towards rogue states such as Iraq and actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields."
At the State Department, planning was also underway. Under the auspices of the "Future of Iraq Project," an "Oil and Energy Working Group" was established. The full membership of the group -- described by the Financial Times as "Iraqi oil experts, international consultants" and State Department staffers -- remains classified, but among them, according to Antonia Juhasz's "The Bush Agenda," was Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, who would serve in Iyad Allawi's cabinet during the period of the Iraqi Governing Council, and later as Iraq's oil minister in 2005. The group concluded that Iraq's oil "should be opened to international oil companies as quickly as possible after the war."
But the execs from Big Oil didn't just want access to Iraq's oil; they wanted access on terms that would be inconceivable unless negotiated at the barrel of a gun. Specifically, they wanted an Iraqi government that would enter into production service agreements (PSAs) for the extraction of Iraq's oil.
PSAs, developed in the 1960s, are a tool of today's kinder, gentler neocolonialism; they allow countries to retain technical ownership over energy reserves but, in actuality, lock in multinationals' control and extremely high profit margins -- up to 13 times oil companies' minimum target, according to an analysis by the British-based oil watchdog Platform (PDF).
As Greg Muttit, an analyst with the group, notes:
Such contracts are often used in countries with small or difficult oilfields, or where high-risk exploration is required. They are not generally used in countries like Iraq, where there are large fields which are already known and which are cheap to extract. For example, they are not used in Iran, Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, all of which maintain state control of oil.
In fact, Muttit adds, of the seven leading oil producing countries, only Russia has entered into PSAs, and those were signed during its own economic "shock therapy" in the early 1990s. A number of Iraq's oil-rich neighbors have constitutions that specifically prohibit foreign control over their energy reserves.
PSAs often have long terms -- up to 40 years -- and contain "stabilization clauses" that protect them from future legislative changes. As Muttit points out, future governments "could be constrained in their ability to pass new laws or policies." That means, for example, that if a future elected Iraqi government "wanted to pass a human rights law, or wanted to introduce a minimum wage [and it] affected the company's profits, either the law would not apply to the company's operations or the government would have to compensate the company for any reduction in profits." It's Sovereignty Lite.
The deals are so onerous that they govern only 12 percent of the world's oil reserves, according to the International Energy Agency. Nonetheless, PSAs would become the Future of Iraq Project's recommendation for the fledgling Iraqi government. According to the Financial Times, "many in the group" fought for the contract structure; a Kurdish delegate told the FT, "everybody keeps coming back to PSAs."
Of course, the plans for Iraq's legal framework for oil have to be viewed in the context of the overall transformation of the Iraqi economy. Clearly, the idea was to pursue a radical corporatist agenda during the period of the Coalition Provisional Authority when the U.S. occupation forces were a de facto dictatorship. And that's just what happened; under L. Paul Bremer, the CPA head, corporate taxes were slashed, a flat-tax on income was established, rules allowing multinationals to pull all of their profits from the country and a series of other provisions were enacted. These were then integrated into the Iraqi Constitution and remain in effect today.
Among the provisions in the Constitution, unlike those of most oil producers, is a requirement that the government "develop oil and gas wealth ... relying on the most modern techniques of market principles and encouraging investment." The provision mandates that foreign companies would receive a major stake in Iraq's oil for the first time in the 30 years since the sector was nationalized in 1975.
Herbert Docena, a researcher with the NGO Focus on the Global South, wrote that an early draft of the constitution negotiated by Iraqis envisioned a "Scandinavian-style welfare system in the Arabian desert, with Iraq's vast oil wealth to be spent upholding every Iraqi's right to education, health care, housing, and other social services." "Social justice," the draft declared, "is the basis of building society."
What happened between that earlier draft and the constitution that Iraqis would eventually ratify? According to Docena:
While [U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay] Khalilzad and his team of U.S. and British diplomats were all over the scene, some members of Iraq's constitutional committee were reduced to bystanders. One Shiite member grumbled, "We haven't played much of a role in drafting the constitution. We feel that we have been neglected." A Sunni negotiator concluded: "This constitution was cooked up in an American kitchen not an Iraqi one."
With a constitution cooked up in D.C., the stage was set for foreign multinationals to assume effective control of as much as 87 percent of Iraq's oil, according to projections by the Oil Ministry. If PSAs become the law of the land -- and there are other contractual arrangements that would allow private companies to invest in the sector without giving them the same degree of control or such usurious profits -- the war-torn country stands to lose up to 194 billion vitally important dollars in revenue on just the first 12 fields developed, according to a conservative estimate by Platform (the estimate assumes oil at $40 per barrel; at this writing it stands at more than $59). That's more than six times the country's annual budget.
To complete the rip-off, the occupying coalition would have to crush Iraqi resistance, make sure it had friendly people in the right places in Iraq's emerging elite and lock the new Iraqi government onto a path that would lead to the Big Four's desired outcome.
Part 2
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Much of Iraq still in ruin as U.S. builders leave
Associated Press
16/10/2006
Local officials will be faced with running plants and finishing jobs left by big companies
Close behind U.S. tanks and troops, America's big builders invaded Iraq three years ago. Now the reconstruction funds are drying up and they're pulling out, leaving completed projects and unfulfilled plans in the hands of an Iraqi government unprepared to manage either.
The Oct. 1 start of the U.S. government's 2007 fiscal year signaled an end to U.S. aid for new reconstruction in Iraq.
"We're really focusing now on helping Iraqis do this themselves in the future," said Daniel Speckhard, reconstruction chief at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
Many Iraqi government ministries aren't able yet to pick up where the Americans leave off, he said: "They're very bad at sustainment in terms of programs and projects."
In 2003, Congress committed almost $22 billion to a three-year program to help Iraq climb back from the devastation of war, the looting that followed and years of neglect under U.N. economic sanctions and Saddam Hussein's rule.
Ambitious plans
The money, the biggest such U.S. effort since the post-World War II Marshall Plan in Europe, was invested in thousands of projects, large and small, such as rebuilt oil pipelines and upgraded power plants, schoolbooks, new ambulances and nurseries to replenish Iraq's groves of date palms.
But U.S. and Iraqi planners, engineers and construction crews faced major obstacles in a landscape wracked by anti-U.S. insurgency and Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence, in an economy bled by corruption, and in a nation abandoned by thousands of its skilled hands and shunned by much of the world.
In this dangerous climate, almost $6 billion of the U.S. reconstruction aid was diverted to training Iraqi police and troops and to other security costs, adding to what U.S. auditors now dub a "reconstruction gap."
Fewer than half the electricity and oil projects planned have been completed, internal documents of the U.S. reconstruction command show.
Scores of other projects were canceled, and the "gap" can be seen on the streets of Baghdad, where people spend most of their day without electricity, and spend hours in line for gasoline and other scarce fuels.
Although the Americans will complete jobs already under contract, probably into 2008, many participating in the U.S. program are disappointed Congress chose not to underwrite essential new projects.
"I always thought there would be value in having more money. (Other) donors haven't been coming in," noted Maj. Gen. William McCoy, senior U.S. Army engineer overseeing reconstruction. Of almost $14 billion pledged in 2003 by non-U.S. donors, barely $3 billion has been disbursed.
From one key Iraqi's perspective, much of the reconstruction funds were misspent.
Vast waste
"Huge amounts of funds were wasted because of bureaucracy, corruption, incapacity and the spending of money on unimportant projects," said Ali Baban, planning minister in Iraq's five-month-old government.
The auditors say, however, most projects show good workmanship and quality control.
U.S. officials point particularly to what Speckhard called a "very significant success in helping the oil sector get back on its feet" - vital to Iraq's future, since more than 90 percent of its government revenues come from oil sales.
It was a struggle against sabotage, equipment breakdowns and oil smugglers, but oil production, which scraped bottom at 1.4 million barrels a day in January, is again approaching prewar levels.
The greatest problems plague the giant U.S. effort to restore Iraqi electricity.
By adding 2,710 megawatts - more than the output of America's Hoover Dam - U.S. engineers have boosted Iraq's potential generating capacity above 7,000. But power hasn't flowed at anywhere near that capacity, and seldom topped even the paltry level of prewar Iraq, about 4,500 megawatts. Baghdad gets no more than four to six hours of electricity a day.
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More deadly than Saddam
By GWYNNE DYER
10/16/06 "Japan Times"
LONDON -- The final indignity, if you are an Iraqi who was shot for accidentally turning into the path of a U.S. military convoy (they thought you might be a terrorist), or blown apart by a car bomb or an airstrike, or tortured and murdered by kidnappers, or just for being a Sunni or a Shiite, is that U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair will deny that your death happened. The script they are working from says (in Bush's words last December) that only "30,000, more or less" have been killed in Iraq during and since the invasion in March, 2003.
So they have a huge incentive to discredit the report in the British medical journal The Lancet last week that an extra 655,000 Iraqis have died since the invasion in excess of the natural death rate: 2.5 percent of the population.
"I don't consider it a credible report," said Bush, without giving any reason why he didn't.
"It is a fairly small sample they have taken and they have extrapolated it across the country," said a spokesman of the British Foreign Office, as if that were an invalid methodology. But it's not.
The study, led by Dr. Les Roberts and a team of epidemiologists from the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, was based on a survey of 1,849 households, containing 12,801 people, at 47 different locations chosen at random in Iraq. Teams of four Iraqi doctors -- two men and two women -- went from house to house and asked the residents if anybody had died in their family since January, 2002 (15 months before the invasion).
If anybody had, they then inquired when and how the person had died. They asked for death certificates, and in 92 percent of cases the families produced them. Then the Johns Hopkins team of epidemiologists tabulated the statistics and drew their conclusions.
The most striking thing in the study, in terms of credibility, is that the prewar death rate in Iraq for the period January 2002-March 2003, as calculated from their evidence, was 5.5 per thousand per year. That is virtually identical to the U.S. government estimate of the death rate in Iraq for the same period. Then, from the same evidence, they calculate that the death rate since the invasion has been 13.3 per thousand per year. The difference between the prewar and postwar death rates over a period of 40 months is 655,000 deaths.
More precisely, the deaths reported by the 12,801 people surveyed, when extrapolated to the entire country, indicates a range of between 426,369 and 793,663 excess deaths -- but the sample is big enough that there is a 95 percent certainty that the true figure is within that range. What the Johns Hopkins team have done in Iraq is more rigorous version of the technique that is used to calculate deaths in southern Sudan and the eastern Congo. To reject it, you must either reject the whole discipline of statistics, or you must question the professional integrity of those doing the survey.
The study, which was largely financed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for International Studies, has been reviewed by four independent experts. One of them, Paul Bolton of Boston University, called the methodology "excellent" and said it was standard procedure in a wide range of studies he has worked on: "You can't be sure of the exact number, but you can be quite sure that you are in the right ballpark."
This is not a political smear job. Johns Hopkins University, Boston University and MIT are not fly-by-night institutions, and people who work there have academic reputations to protect. The Lancet, founded 182 years ago, is one of the oldest and most respected medical journals in the world. These numbers are real. So what do they mean?
Two-thirds of a million Iraqis have died since the invasion who would almost all be alive if it had not happened. Human Rights Watch has estimated that between 250,000 and 290,000 Iraqis were killed during Saddam Hussein's 20-year rule, so perhaps 40,000 people might have died between the invasion and now if he had stayed in power. (Though probably not anything like that many, really, because the great majority of Saddam's killings happened during crises like the Kurdish rebellion of the late 1980s and the Shiite revolt after the 1990-91 Gulf War.)
Of the 655,000 excess deaths since March 2003, only about 50,000 can be attributed to stress, malnutrition, the collapse of medical services as doctors flee abroad, and other side effects of the occupation. All the rest are violent deaths, and 31 percent are directly due to the actions of foreign "coalition" forces.
The most disturbing thing is the breakdown of the causes of death. Over half the deaths -- 56 percent -- are due to gunshot wounds, but 13 percent are due to airstrikes. Terrorists don't do airstrikes. No Iraqi government forces do airstrikes, either, because they don't have combat aircraft. Airstrikes are done by "coalition forces" (i.e. Americans and British), and airstrikes in Iraq have killed over 75,000 people since the invasion.
Oscar Wilde once observed that "to lose one parent . . . may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness." To lose 75,000 Iraqis to airstrikes looks like carelessness, too.
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
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Ten US soldiers killed in Iraq
AFP
October 18, 2006
BAGHDAD - Ten US soldiers have been killed in a single day of fighting in Iraq, amid a steep spike in military deaths during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
In the bloodiest of Tuesday's incidents, four soldiers were killed when their vehicle hit a roadside booby-trap west of the Iraqi capital.
A military statement said the four serving with Multinational Division Baghdad were killed at around 6:50 am (0350 GMT).
Separately, another soldier was shot dead when his patrol was ambushed in Baghdad almost three hours later, and yet another killed when his patrol was hit in the afternoon by another roadside bomb north of the city.
A US marine died of wounds "sustained during enemy action" in the western province of Anbar.
Also Tuesday, three soldiers from "Task Force Lightning" were killed and one was wounded "as a result of enemy action" during operations in Diyala province, north of Baghdad.
Over the first 17 days of the month US soldiers have been dying at a rate of almost four a day, and if they continue to do so more will have been killed in October than at any time since January 2005, when 107 died.
The latest killings brought the number of US military personnel to have died in the Iraq campaign since the March 2003 invasion to 2,776, according to an AFP count based on
Pentagon figures.
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Sharp rise in US death rate in Iraq
Associated Press
Wednesday October 18, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
The US military confirmed today that nine troops had been killed in fighting and bombings in Iraq yesterday, raising this month's death toll for American forces to 67.
If the rate of US fatalities continues at the same level throughout this month, it will make October the deadliest for coalition forces since January 2005, when 107 US troops died.
In more violence today, a roadside bomb killed a provincial police intelligence chief in southern Iraq and four of his bodyguards, police said.
Ali Qassim al-Tamimi, head of intelligence for the Maysan provincial police force, and the bodyguards were killed by a bomb planted on the main road between the cities of Amara and Basra. Two car bombs also exploded in Baghdad, injuring at least eight people, police said.
In the city of Balad, about 50 miles north-east of the capital, local Sunni and Shia leaders were meeting in an attempt to resolve the fate of a group of people who have apparently been kidnapped.
More than 40 people have been missing since their 13-car convoy was waylaid at a checkpoint on Sunday outside Balad, where almost 100 people have been killed in five days of sectarian fighting. Police said the hijacked cars had been diverted to the nearby Shia militant stronghold of al-Nebaiyi on Balad's outskirts.
A brief statement from the US military today said four US troops died early yesterday, when a roadside bomb struck their vehicle west of Baghdad.
Three US soldiers were killed and one wounded during combat in Diyala province, east of Baghdad. Another US soldier was killed when suspected insurgents attacked his patrol in northern Baghdad.
A US marine also died from injuries sustained during fighting in al-Anbar province.
The fighting in Balad forced US troops to return to patrolling the streets of the predominantly Shia city after Iraq's best-trained soldiers proved unable to stem a series of revenge killings sparked by the murder on Friday of 17 Shia construction workers.
The US military had turned over control of the surrounding province north of Baghdad to Iraq's 4th Army a month ago, and American forces apparently did not redeploy there until Monday, when the worst of the violence had ended.
Minority Sunnis, who were the focus of most of the violence in the city of around 80,000 people, have been fleeing across the Tigris river in small boats.
On the outskirts of the city, two fuel trucks were attacked and burned and Shia militiamen clashed with residents of Duluiya, a predominantly Sunni city on the east bank of the Tigris.
Shia militants have been blocking food and fuel trucks from entering Duluiya.
Some commentators said the violence in the area was an omen for the level of hostilities if Iraq was divided into three federal states - controlled by Shias in the south, Sunnis in the centre and Kurds in the north.
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The worst in Iraq is still to come
By Simon Tisdall
10/17/06 "The Guardian"
In its external aspects, Iraq remains a live, occasionally explosive issue in the US and Britain, as last week's row over General Sir Richard Dannatt's thoughts on a British withdrawal showed. But the deepening chaos inside the country attracts less and less attention. Like sailors long missing at sea, the fate of ordinary Iraqis three years after the country was driven on to the rocks grows increasingly remote from those who precipitated the disaster.
In the US, Iraq is now primarily an electoral rather than a nation-building, humanitarian or counter-terrorism issue. With the Republicans fighting to retain control of Congress in next month's midterm polls, George Bush's Middle East freedom mission has become a hard-nosed numbers game.
The Lancet's politically damaging report that more than 650,000 Iraqis have died since 2003 was swiftly dismissed by the White House. But the fact that October is proving the cruellest month for American soldiers, with an average 3.5 deaths a day so far, is deadlier domestic ammunition for the Democrats.
On related fronts, both American conservatives and Arab reformers worry that, burned by its Iraq experience, the Bush administration is reverting to old thinking - containment, deterrence, and maintenance of the Middle East status quo. And in Britain as in the US, Iraq is now a handy tool in the nuclear proliferation debate. Tony Blair is derided for seeing weapons in Baghdad when, actually, they were in North Korea all along. So who, his opponents ask, can trust him on Iran?
Such political and strategic games reflect a changed state of mind. Although the troops are still there, much of European and US opinion now seems to feel it has entered the "post-Iraq" period. The world has moved on to other issues, it is argued. Relatively soon, both Mr Bush and Mr Blair will be gone. And media interest has diminished, partly because of the evident dangers to reporters but also because the "story" has grown repetitive.
But inside Iraq, the picture appears very different to those who still care to look. As daily sectarian bloodshed, militia anarchy and political incompetence reach unprecedented levels, it seems likely that the worst is yet to come.
One sign came last week when the Shia parliamentary majority rejected Sunni opposition and passed a law allowing partition into autonomous federal regions. It is but a small step from there to national disintegration.
Another grim omen was the indefinite postponement at the weekend of a long-awaited "national reconciliation conference", an initiative central to the prime minister Nuri al-Maliki's efforts for a new start. Almost simultaneously, Sunni insurgents, including al-Qaida, announced the formation of an Iraqi Islamic state.
Policymakers agree the US approach has to change. The argument is about how, and to what end. The focus of the former secretary of state James Baker's Iraq Study Group, currently examining the issue at Mr Bush's behest, is not how to make Iraq a glowing success but how to prevent it becoming a permanent failure endangering US interests. Options under discussion include asking Iran and Syria for help and containment via a phased withdrawal to friendly neighbouring countries.
"The starting point is to recognise that Iraq is not going to be a democratic, unified country that serves as a model for the region," Dennis Ross, the Clinton administration's Middle East negotiator, told the Washington Post. Whatever happened, the US should set a withdrawal timetable, he said. That sounds very much like Gen Dannatt's "lowered ambitions".
In a report for the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Anthony Cordesman takes a more holistic approach reflecting Washington's responsibilities as well as its self-interest. He discusses a wide range of measures, including international military and economic incentives to facilitate Iraqi reconciliation. And he warns that new remedies are urgently required.
"Iraq is already in a state of serious civil war and current efforts at political compromise and improving security at best are buying time," he says. "There is a critical risk that Iraq will drift into a major civil conflict over the coming months ... The US cannot simply 'stay the course' and rely on existing actions and strategy. It needs new options."
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Gulf war hostages demand truth over secret mission
Hugh Muir
Tuesday October 17, 2006
The Guardian
Airline passengers and crew seized as "human shields" by Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf war yesterday demanded a public inquiry following claims that they were used by the government as cover to smuggle special forces into Kuwait.
Claims made in a BBC documentary suggest officials knew the flight was entering Kuwait in the early hours of Iraq's occupation of the country in August 1990 but it was sent there nevertheless because nine undercover agents needed to be transported to the area.
Though previous governments insisted "no military personnel" were on the flight, the documentary claims a "black operations" unit had been smuggled on board. Cabin crew yesterday disclosed how they saw the young men join the flight at the last minute, without explanation. They posed as "engineers and surveyors" and sat together without the visas normal passengers needed to enter Kuwait.
Journalist Steven Davis said he had spoken to five people involved in planning and executing the undercover operation. He said his inquiries had established that British Airways had been concerned about the safety of the flight and sought guidance. A consular official who reassured the airline that it was safe to fly was an MI6 agent, it is claimed. It is said the original plan was to have the operatives dropped off and for the plane to complete its journey to Madras and Kuala Lumpur but the invasion occurred with the flight in mid-air.
The revelations yesterday prompted Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker to write to Tony Blair, claiming parliament was misled about the operation. He is asking for a full inquiry. "The new evidence shows that the government allowed the flight to land knowing that Iraq had invaded Kuwait and knowing the passengers would be in danger," he said.
He added that statements by Baroness Thatcher [prime minister at the time of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait], who said the plane landed before the invasion, and Sir John Major [prime minister when hostilities began in 1991], who said no military were on board, must now be challenged.
A spokesman for Baroness Thatcher declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Sir John said he would have sought advice before answering any questions as prime minister. "He would have responded according to that advice and he would have responded in good faith," she said.
French passengers on the flight have received compensation from British Airways and some British hostages now hope for damages. Mr Baker said: "The least these people deserve is an explanation."
Mr Davis said the undercover operation had gathered vital intelligence but the operatives he had spoken to on condition of anonymity had mixed feelings about the use of the flight to transport them to Kuwait. "One said 'I feel very sorry for the passengers' but 'needs must' and 'what we did saved lives. The ends justify the means'. My first source, however, was rather guilty and thought that alternative means should have been used for getting them into the country."
It is claimed that two of the group were captured by the Iraqis. They joined the other captured Britons and were kept in sites around Kuwait. But their colleagues were able to pass on intelligence about the movement of troops and weaponry.
Clive Earley, 62, of Alresford, Hampshire, cabin services director, said: "I was taken hostage for five months. We had the fear of God put into us and when we came back and asked 'who and what were those men?' we were just told we imagined it; that we must be lying because the government would never put military people on an airplane and put the lives of 389 people at risk. I am very angry."
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Dollars and Sense
Russian music download site sends defiant message to US
AFP
Oct 17, 2007
Russian music download site allofmp3.com insisted it was a legitimate business and said US accusations of piracy were merely an excuse to keep Russia out of the World Trade Organisation.
"The US government is conveniently using allofmp3 as an issue to gain further concessions from Russia," said company boss Vadim Mamotin and other executives.
"We operate under Russian law, we pay taxes in Russia and we pay royalties," they said in response to journalists' questions in an online news conference.
Russia has campaigned for 12 years to join the WTO but the United States is still witholding its endorsement of Moscow's candidacy -- it is the only major economy that has not yet backed Russia's bid -- citing shortcomings in several key trade sectors.
Moscow wants to join the organisation both for the prestige of membership and as a means to spur diversification in its own economy, still focused heavily on raw materials export.
But US negotiators have repeatedly returned to the issue of the worldwide music sales of allofmp3.com -- protection of intellectual property being a major stumbling block in Russia's negotiations to join the club.
US Trade Representative Susan Schwab has placed allofmp3.com on a "notorious markets" list and in a speech last month she accused Russian authorities of allowing the website to operate with impunity.
The music site has a ready market outside Russia as well as at home, offering music tracks for as little as a third of a dollar and entire albums for two dollars, which compares with 99 US cents per track from iTunes.
The website's executives denied Tuesday that the site had refused to pay royalties for its world-wide music sales.
They said the company had paid royalties to a Russian music society, the Russian Organisation for Multimedia and digital Systems (ROMS), but the industry had refused to take such payments from the society.
"ROMS has offered to pay the record companies the royalties they collected but has been rebuffed.... As we see it, the record companies really have an issue with ROMS and perhaps the Russian government," they said.
They insisted the company would go from strength to strength, buoyed by the growth of the Internet, and that it was the record labels whose time was running out.
"They are concerned with making money for themselves not the artists. In our opinion, we and the artists are better off dealing directly with each other. In fact we believe it is the future of the music industry," they said.
The owner of the website, Denis Kvasov, has been battling a lawsuit in a Moscow court by the international music industry body IFPI.
In a bid to allay US concerns, Russia's parliament gave preliminary approval last month to a strict new law on intellectual property rights that Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said would bring Russian in line with Western demands.
But more widely, Russia's negotiations to join the WTO have been hampered by Washington's increasingly tough stance towards Moscow on the issue of Iran's nuclear programme.
Russia is the only major world economy not in the World Trade Organisation.
In Tuesday's news conference the website's executives refused to reveal details of the company's finances.
The Kommersant daily estimated earlier the annual turn-over of allofmp3.com at between 25 million and 30 million dollars (20 million and 23 million euros).
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Universal sues video-sharing websites
By Joshua Chaffin in New York
Financial Times
October 18 2006
Universal Music, the world's largest record company, has launched the established media industry's first legal action against user-generated internet sites in the wake of its distribution deal last week with YouTube, the most popular video-sharing website.
In separate lawsuits, Universal alleged that Grouper.com - recently acquired by Sony Pictures Entertainment - and Bolt.com had built up traffic by encouraging users to share music videos from its artists without their permission. In one incident, it claimed a video for the Mariah Carey song "Shake it Off" was viewed more than 50,000 times on Grouper without the company's permission.
User-generated sites have exploded in popularity in recent months by allowing users to share video clips online. Last week, Google confirmed the sector's appeal when it agreed to buy YouTube for $1.65bn.
Such sites have created a dilemma for established media companies. While they offer companies the promise of promoting their content to a vast new web audience, they also pose the risk of huge copyright violations.
Universal publicly threatened to sue YouTube before reversing and signing a partnership with the company last week to distribute its music videos. Universal was persuaded after YouTube agreed to pay a small licensing fee for the material and to share associated advertising revenues. It has also pledged to implement new systems to strengthen its copyright protections.
Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN have reached similar deals with the record companies, and News Corp's MySpace is in negotiations. Universal also reserved the right to add Sony to the suit since it acquired Grouper in August for an estimated $65m. Sony and Bolt executives could not immediately comment on the suits' claims.
Josh Felser, co-founder and CEO of Grouper, said: "The lawsuit is without merit and we expect to prevail. Our website is protected by federal law and we're vigilant about taking down copyrighted content when we're properly notified."
Aaron Cohen, Bolt's chief executive, disputed the notion that the primary function of its website was to share professionally made videos, saying most of its content was created by users. Bolt, he added, had promptly responded to requests from companies to remove their materials from its site and still hoped to establish partnerships with them.
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Home loan applications fall as rates extend rise
Reuters
October 18, 2006
NEW YORK - Applications for U.S. home mortgages fell last week, pulled down by a drop in refinancings as interest rates rose for the third straight week, an industry group's data showed on Wednesday.
The seasonally adjusted index of total mortgage applications fell 2.2 percent in the week ended October 13 to 585.8, extending its drop for a second consecutive week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.
The MBA's index of home purchase applications edged higher, however, stabilizing after falling more than 100 points to 375.9 in the year through August. The component index of home purchases rose 0.4 percent to 384.7, while the gauge of loan refinancing slipped 5.3 percent to 1,758.2.
Some economists viewed the purchase index and other recent housing data as evidence the market's slide has subsided.
The U.S. Department of Commerce on Wednesday reported housing starts jumped 5.9 percent in September to a 1.772 million annualized pace, versus expectations in a Reuters survey for a drop to a 1.64 million rate. A drop in building permits clouded the future.
On Tuesday, the National Association of Home Builders said its sentiment index rose in October for the first month in nine.
"The housing market is showing signs of bottoming" after its slump from a record pace, said Richard Yamarone, chief economist at Argus Research in New York. That doesn't mean investors should be expecting a rebound, though, he said.
A three-week rise in interest rates has begun to choke off loan refinancing opportunities that had lifted the MBA's mortgage applications index to a nine-month peak of 633.9 in late September from 527.6 in July.
In the week ending October 13, long-term, 30-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 6.33 percent, 0.15 percentage point above the September low of 6.18 percent that had helped push the rate of refinancings to its highest in almost a year, the MBA figures showed. Last week's rate rose 6 basis points from the preceding week.
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110-Building Site in N.Y. Sold to Speyer for $5.4 Billion
By CHARLES V. BAGLI
The New York Times
October 17, 2006
Jerry Speyer, a real estate investor who controls some of the city's most prominent icons, like Rockefeller Center and the Chrysler Building, signed a deal to buy 110 apartment buildings along the East River in Manhattan for $5.4 billion, MetLife announced today.
Mr. Speyer, the chairman of Tishman Speyer Properties, is buying a trophy of a different kind in Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, two adjoining complexes on First Avenue between 14th and 23rd Streets. Built by Metropolitan Life in 1947 for returning veterans, Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village have served as an affordable redoubt for generations of police officers, teachers, nurses and the like. The unremarkable brick buildings are set among trees and fountains on 80 acres of some of the most valuable land in the country.
Mr. Speyer and his partner, BlackRock Realty, outmaneuvered nearly a dozen other bidders, including a group aligned with the tenants at the complexes who hoped to preserve them as relatively affordable middle-class housing, a rapidly disappearing commodity in Manhattan. As housing costs have skyrocketed in the city in recent years, the pending sale of the complexes and the larger issue of affordable housing became a cause célèbre among New York politicians and tenant activists.
But Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg stayed on the sidelines, and MetLife was intent on selling for the highest possible price. The tenant group's offer of $4.5 billion lagged behind bids from some of the biggest names in real estate, including Apollo Real Estate Advisors with the Dermot Company, Related Companies with Lehman Brothers, the Millstein brothers, and Vornado Realty Trust.
"Peter Cooper Village/Stuyvesant Town is an extraordinary asset and we are very pleased with the market reaction we received to this sale," said Robert Merck, who oversees Met Life's real estate investments. "Tishman Speyer and BlackRock were illustrative of the outstanding caliber and reputation of the bid group and we are confident that they will be fine stewards of the property in the years to come."
Mr. Merck said the sale would be completed before the end of the year.
Tishman Speyer called tenant leaders to let them know that a deal was done and to say that residents of rent-stabilized apartments are completely protected by the existing system.
"No one should be concerned about a sudden or dramatic shift in this neighborhood's make-up, character or charm," Mr. Speyer, the president and chief executive of Tishman Speyer, said in a statement.
"As a business with deep roots in New York City, we have a sincere appreciation for these cherished neighborhoods, and we are honored to become stewards of the property," he said.
Daniel R. Garodnick, a city councilman who lives in Peter Cooper Village and helped organize the tenant offer, expressed disappointment in the outcome. Nearly three quarters of the 11,232 apartments have regulated rents that are roughly half the market rents, and tenants fear that a new owner will bring sweeping changes.
"We want to know how the new owner intends to preserve the long-term affordability of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village," Mr. Garodnick said. "We expect a new owner to not only to honor his obligations under the law, but to come up with a plan that preserves the long-term affordability of this middle-class community."
Most of the 11,232 apartments in the complexes are now subject to rent regulation. When MetLife announced earlier this year that it was putting the two complexes up for sale, it bridled at suggestions that the company had any continuing obligation to provide below-market housing. Real estate companies leaped at the prospect.
Company executives have suggested to city officials and reporters that many of the 25,000 residents of Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town made too much money to qualify for any kind of assistance.
In recent years, MetLife has ousted illegal sublettors and tenants whose apartments were not their primary residences. Under city regulations, an apartment can cease to be rent-controlled or rent-stabilized when it becomes vacant, or when the rent reaches $2,000 a month and the existing tenant's household income rises above $175,000 for two successive years. As a result, about 27 percent of the apartments in the complexes are now leased at market rates. An additional 1,600 units will be freed of rent regulation over the next two years, according to sale documents.
But tenant advocates have said that the city cannot afford to lose its middle class, which is coming under increasing pressure from high prices and rents, especially in Manhattan.
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Yahoo 3Q Profit Slides on Slowing Growth
By MICHAEL LIEDTKE
AP
Oct 17, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo Inc.'s third-quarter profit slid 38 percent amid slowing revenue growth that has raised investor doubts about the Internet bellwether's strategy and execution. Tuesday's disappointing results were compounded by a dimmed outlook for the current quarter.
But Yahoo Chairman Terry Semel offered hope for a turnaround next year by acknowledging the company's recent difficulties and vowing to fix them with a "back to basics" approach. The promise helped lift Yahoo's sagging stock price, which surged by nearly 5 percent in extended trading.
"I am not satisfied with our current financial performance, and we intend to improve it," Semel told analysts during a conference call Tuesday. "We are not exploiting our considerable strengths as well as we should be."
The Sunnyvale-based company said Tuesday that it earned $158.5 million, or 11 cents per share, for the three months ended in September. That compared with net income of $253.8 million, or 17 cents per share, in the same period last year.
The quarters weren't totally comparable because of new accounting rules requiring Yahoo to deduct the cost of employee stock options from this year's profit.
Still, the results matched analyst expectations, according to Thomson Financial.
Revenue for this year's quarter totaled $1.58 billion, a 19 percent increase from $1.33 billion last year.
After subtracting commissions Yahoo paid its advertising partners, third-quarter revenue totaled $1.12 billion, slightly below analyst expectations that had been lowered by Yahoo management a month ago.
Yahoo didn't give investors any reason to feel better about the fourth quarter, traditionally the company's most lucrative because the holiday shopping season encourages more advertising.
Excluding ad commissions, Yahoo forecast its fourth-quarter revenue will range from $1.15 billion to $1.27 billion. The average analyst estimate had been $1.30 billion, according to Thomson Financial.
Wall Street has been frustrated with Yahoo for most of this year, largely because the company hasn't been targeting online ads as effectively as Google Inc. (GOOG), the Internet search leader that runs the Web's largest marketing network.
Although Yahoo continues to run the most trafficked Web site on the Internet, the company faces stiff challenge from recent upstarts like News Corp. (NWSA)'s MySpace.com, Facebook.com and YouTube.com, which Google is buying for $1.65 billion.
The problems have battered Yahoo's stock price, which has dropped by 38 percent this year. Yahoo shares dipped 3 cents Tuesday to close at $24.15 on the Nasdaq Stock Market, then gained $1.14, or 4.7 percent, to $25.29 in extended trading.
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Iraq war cost years of progress in Afghanistan - UK brigadier
Richard Norton-Taylor
Wednesday October 18, 2006
The Guardian
The invasion of Iraq prevented British forces from helping to secure Afghanistan much sooner and has left a dangerous vacuum in the country for four years, the commander who has led the attack against the Taliban made clear yesterday.
Brigadier Ed Butler, commander of 3 Para battlegroup just returned from southern Afghanistan, said the delay in deploying Nato troops after the overthrow of the Taliban in 2002 meant British soldiers faced a much tougher task now.
Asked whether the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath had led to Britain and the US taking their eye off the ball, Brig Butler said the question was "probably best answered by politicians".
But echoing criticisms last week by General Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of the army, he added that Iraq had affected operations in Afghanistan. "We could have carried on in 2002 in the same way we have gone about business now.
"Have the interim four years made a difference? I think realistically they have," Brig Butler told journalists in London. Since then, he added, Britain had "marked time" and British troops were now "starting to make up for that time".
He said later it would be inappropriate to associate Iraq with Afghanistan; they were different problems.
Gen Dannatt last week questioned the decision to invade Iraq, saying the military campaign in 2003 "effectively kicked the door in" and that British troops should leave "sometime soon" - by which he made it clear he meant within two years.
Brig Butler said yesterday that British forces could also have attacked the Taliban more effectively and more quickly if they had had more resources, including helicopters, though he added that British commanders had to face "realities".
There are more than 5,000 British troops in southern Afghanistan and more than 7,000 in southern Iraq. Though British military chiefs say publicly that they could sustain that number for the time being, they make it clear they cannot do so for much longer.
Pressed on the issue yesterday, the prime minister insisted British forces would not "walk away" from either country, and again insisted that he was not at odds with Gen Dannatt. "If we walk away before the job is done from either of those two countries, we will leave a situation in which the very people we are fighting everywhere, including the extremism in our own country, are heartened and emboldened and we can't afford that to happen."
Brig Butler also gave fresh insight into the strain that fighting in two different theatres was creating for the army. He disclosed that at times in southern Afghanistan his men had been down to "belt rations" - water and basic supplies which normally last no more than two days. "It got pretty close. We never actually ran out but that was the nature of the conflict," he said. He added that they were never in danger of being overrun by Taliban forces though on occasion it "got pretty close".
Brig Butler said he believed that they had "tactically defeated" the Taliban. However, he warned they could regroup over the winter; it was now essential to press ahead with reconstruction projects to convince the local population that the Nato operation was worth supporting.
"If we take our eye off the ball and we don't continue to invest in it, there is a danger they [the Taliban] will come back in greater numbers next year," he said.
He said the ferocity of the fighting over the summer had taken some of his troops by surprise. "I think we might have been surprised on occasion how persistent the attacks were and how enduring the scale of the operation was," Brig Butler said.
He said it was "very clear" that the campaign to secure Afghanistan would be a long one. "I suspect there will be some elements of the international community there in 20 years' time," he said, referring mainly to aid agencies.
It was disclosed yesterday that British troops had pulled out of the Musa Qala district in the northern part of Helmand province under a deal with local tribal elders. Brig Butler insisted he had not been involved in any negotiations with the Taliban and expressed confidence that the agreement would hold. "I think it is a positive sign that they are delivering their own security," he said.
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U.S. Congress OKs sale of F-16 warplanes to Turkey
www.chinaview.cn 2006-10-18 19:24:07
ANKARA, Oct. 18 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Congress has formally approved a planned sale to the Turkish Air Force of 30 advanced F-16 Block 50 fighter aircraft and related equipment and services, Turkish Daily News reported on Wednesday.
According to the report, the Pentagon on Sept. 28 notified the Congress of the planned sale, worth up to 2.9 billion U.S. dollars, and no congressional objection has been raised within the formal waiting period of two weeks.
This means that all U.S. agencies have confirmed the sale and that the rest depends on negotiations between related defense agencies and companies from the two allies, a process that should lead to the signing of a contract, said the newspaper. Meanwhile, Turkish Anatolia news agency reported on Wednesday that Turkey and the United States plan to prepare and sign the contract that would cover the details of the project.
The "Block 50" version of F-16s is known as one of the latest models of warplanes in the world, it added.
The F-16s are manufactured by Lockheed Martin, one of the leading defence companies. Turkish defence industry is also envisaged to contribute to the manufacture of aircrafts of Turkish Air Forces.
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Report: Chinese university requiring golf lessons for business, law majors
00:47:51 EDT Oct 17, 2006
Canadian Press
BEIJING (AP) - A Chinese university is requiring law and business students to take golf lessons to prepare them for a business world where deals are made on the golf course, news reports said Tuesday.
Xiamen University in the southeastern city of Xiamen joins a growing number of Chinese schools offering golf lessons, but is unusual in making them a required class. Golf classes start in two months and also will be required for economics and computer software majors, the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing university president Zhu Chongshi.
"The aim is to help the students find good jobs," a sports professor at the school, Chen Xiao, was quoted as saying. "Many Chinese business deals are clinched on golf courses."
Elite Peking University set off a debate over whether golf is appropriate for China, where most people still live in poverty, when it announced in August that it was building a practice green.
Some students complained the sport was too elitist but supporters defended it as a healthy social activity.
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Mother Nature's Revenge
Hawaii quake damage hits $46 million
By SCOTT LINDLAW
Associated Press
Wed Oct 18, 2006
KAILUA-KONA, Hawaii - Preliminary damage estimates from the earthquake that shook Hawaii over the weekend hit $46 million on Tuesday, and President Bush declared a major disaster, opening the way for federal aid.
Damage to seven schools and a harbor on the island of Hawaii accounted for most of the preliminary figure, said Janet Snyder, a spokeswoman for Hawaii County Mayor Harry Kim. Damage to businesses, homes, roads and bridges accounted for the rest.
"These figures are going to change radically, I believe," because information continued to stream in, Snyder said.
The damage estimate included $31 million for schools, $8 million at Kawaihae harbor, $4.89 million to businesses, $650,000 to homes, $800,000 to roads and $750,000 to bridges, Snyder said.
Gov. Linda Lingle said during a news conference that it was premature to provide a statewide damage estimate.
"I think we're going to see damage that we didn't see immediately," she said, noting that some homeowners discovered roof leaks during Monday's rains.
An aftershock early Tuesday widened a crack on a pier at Kawaihae harbor and further damaged a second pier, said Rod Haraga, the state transportation director. The temblor was listed at magnitude 4.0 on the Web site of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory after review by a seismologist.
The concrete pier where container ships off load their goods pulled away from the main port area where those containers are processed. The gap was as wide as 13 inches in some spots, which prompted the U.S. Coast Guard to shut the entire facility. The port is the life line of the west side of the island.
"See those people over there? Everything they had for lunch, everything they had for dinner came through this port," said Elton K. Suganuma, the marine cargo specialist for the port, gesturing at a tourist restaurant. "We're going to need an operation to save this side of the island."
The president's disaster declaration makes federal aid available to the state and local governments and nonprofit organizations for debris removal and other emergency purposes.
A Federal Emergency Management Agency team arrived on the island of Hawaii on Tuesday to begin surveying damage.
Sunday's magnitude-6.7 earthquake was the strongest to hit the islands in more than two decades. No deaths or serious injuries were reported, and the damage appeared to be scattered, allowing most tourists and residents to resume life as normal.
The quake struck near Hawaii's Big Island, a 4,000-plus-square-mile isle with a population of 167,000. Most of its land is undeveloped or agricultural.
By comparison, the magnitude-6.7 earthquake that struck the Los Angeles area in 1994 caused $25 billion in damage.
The damage estimate is key because it could become part of the state's request for federal assistance.
The quake was the second major natural disaster to hit Hawaii this year. In April, heavy rains pounded the islands, contributing to a dam break that killed seven people. The rain also caused a major sewer line to rupture, closing Waikiki beaches.
The state estimated that the flood damage exceeded $50 million. It is spending tens of millions more to replace sewer lines.
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Hundreds of aftershocks could continue for weeks
Tuesday, October 17, 2006 6:07 AM HST
Helen Altonn
More than 200 aftershocks have occurred off the Big Island since the magnitude 6.7 and 6.0 earthquakes that shook the state early Sunday morning and they may continue for weeks, says Hawaiian Volcano Observatory geologist Michael Poland.
All of them are being recorded but it's difficult to locate the smaller ones automatically, he said.
Geologists have good locations for about 82 of them, which measure more than 2.0 magnitude, he said. Several occurred this morning, including two that measured 3.9 and 3.5.
Typically, after large earthquakes, he said, the seismicity decreases, with fewer and weaker aftershocks.
"Some scientists are saying we can expect a big one," he said. "There is no reason to believe that, no evidence that that's going to happen."
It is possible, he said, but there is no way to predict it.
The big question now is to determine the mechanism of the earthquake, Poland said.
"If it was on the south flank of Kilauea or associated with the volcano, it would be a much more straightforward answer. But these are strange depths and locations."
He said seismologists are poring over the data to see if they can piece together what might have happened. They're conducting surveys to see if there was any deformation, he said.
Crews are setting up global positioning system instruments on the west side of the island and remeasuring survey markers along the coast to see how far they moved, he said.
"I'm not sure how much we'll learn from that, given the earthquakes are offshore and deep."
The observatory also has requested radar satellite data from foreign space agencies, Poland said.
"I expect we'll see some interesting signals with radar deformation maps," he said, adding that scientists may learn something new about earthquakes.
"This was an unusual kind of event and it happened in a place where we have lots and lots of instrumentation running."
All the data will be available to those who are interested through a university consortium that archives seismic data, he said.
"It may be possible that very interesting insights into these earthquakes will come from strange places."
The Volcano Observatory had no damage from the earthquake, Poland said. "We were in good shape here; we didn't even lose power."
The biggest problem, he said, was that the observatory lost Internet conductivity about noon Sunday after some part of the link broke down.
Officials couldn't read e-mail for 24 hours, "but it didn't compromise us at all," he said. "We had access to all data coming in."
He said only one seismic station was lost; all others continued functioning. "We didn't lose any capability in monitoring volcanoes."
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Small earthquake rattles California's north coast
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Wed, Oct. 18, 2006
EUREKA - A small earthquake about 90 miles off the Humboldt County coast Tuesday caused no reported damage or injuries, the Humboldt County Sheriff's Department said.
"We didn't feel a thing," said Brenda Godsey, a sheriff's department spokeswoman in Eureka.
The quake measured 4.9 on the Richter scale, according to a preliminary report issued by the U.S. Geological Survey. The quake's epicenter was located about 260 miles northwest of San Francisco, according to the USGS.
The USGS said it received reports from people who felt the temblor in the San Francisco Bay area, including Walnut Creek and San Jose.
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Severe storm knocks down trees in Tenn.
By ELIZABETH A. DAVIS
Associated Press
Tue Oct 17, 2006
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - Torrential rains and hurricane-force winds ripped through Tennessee, downing trees and forcing officials to close major roads in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on Tuesday.
The storm, which had a peak wind gust of 106 mph, swept into the 520,000-acre preserve that straddles the Tennessee-North Carolina border on Monday evening.
In southeast Texas, the storm was blamed for severe flooding that killed at least five people, while it damaged hundreds of homes and forced schools to close in northern Louisiana.
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco on Tuesday declared a state of emergency for 11 parishes, and ordered state emergency management officials to send teams to assess damage. FEMA pledged to send teams later this week, authorities said.
One of the hardest-hit areas was Grayson, a town in north-central Louisiana's Caldwell Parish, which received 17 inches of rain between Sunday evening and Tuesday morning, the National Weather Service said.
In parts of northern Louisiana, the totals were the most in a single storm event since the Tropical Storm Allison in 1989, the agency said.
"The rainfall amounts were exceptional," said meteorologist Nick Fillo. "Outside of a tropical system, it happens every once in a while."
In the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Gatlinburg, two people were injured, including a 6-year-old boy when a tree fell on his family's camper, authorities said. The boy was taken to a hospital Tuesday morning.
The storm came during one of the park's busiest seasons as thousands of visitors travel there to see the brilliant fall foliage.
"We are not evacuating, but we are advising campers to vacate at least through 8 a.m. (Wednesday)," park spokeswoman Nancy Gray said.
Major roads closed for debris removal included a road that links the Tennessee and North Carolina sides of the park.
In Texas, floodwaters from the San Jacinto River seeped into subdivisions in Houston's northern suburbs Tuesday, a day after torrential storms and tornadoes wreaked havoc. An 18-year-old man who drowned when his horse got scared and threw him into the water was among the deaths attributed to the storm.
The National Weather Service issued a flood warning for the West Fork San Jacinto River until late afternoon Thursday, as residents of stilt houses hauled belongings out of their sheds and yards while those in ground level houses moved to motels to avoid the rising water.
"Just because the rain has stopped does not mean the flood dangers have ceased," said Gloria Roemer, spokeswoman for the Harris County Office of Emergency Services. About 50-250 households could be affected, Roemer said.
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Two Greek islands declared disaster areas after night of floods
AFP
Wed Oct 18, 2006
ATHENS - Two Greek Aegean islands and an entire prefecture in northwestern Crete were in a state of emergency after overnight storms flooded homes, businesses and hotels across the region, the Greek Civil Protection Authority has said.
The Greek fire department was called out Wednesday to drain water from dozens of buildings and rescue people trapped inside their cars in Hania prefecture on Crete, a major tourist destination attracting thousands of visitors every year.
Flood-related damage was also reported across the northern coast of Crete in the cities of Heraklion and Rethymnon, and on the islands of Astypalaia and Leros, the civil protection authority told AFP.
"With the amount of mud that washed down, it is fortunate that we do not have any victims," Aegean Minister Aristotelis Pavlidis told NET state television.
On Astypalaia, local police rescued an elderly man carried away by rushing water, and local authorities said landslides had clogged some of the island's roads.
"The road network has been damaged, some parts are actually dangerous to drive on," Astypalaia mayor Panormitis Kontaratos told NET state television.
A planned damage-assessing visit by the minister was delayed on Wednesday because of poor weather, which also forced the cancellation of a local flight between the islands of Rhodes and Kastellorizo, NET reported.
The southern Aegean was struck by a storm front on Tuesday with gale-force winds that reached 10 points on the Beaufort scale, disrupting traffic between the Greek islands and forcing many ships to port.
Most scheduled services from the Athens ports of Piraeus and Rafina were cancelled on Wednesday, with an exception made for ships sailing to the Saronic Gulf islands a short distance from the capital, the merchant marine ministry said.
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Haze from forest fires paralyses Indonesia airports
By Crack Palinggi
Reuters
Wed Oct 18, 2006
MUSI BANYUASIN, Indonesia - Thick smoke from forest fires in Indonesia has shut airports and slashed visibility to below 100 meters (330 ft) -- and there is no respite in sight, officials said on Wednesday.
The fires have been raging for weeks, spreading smoke across much of Southeast Asia and triggering fears of a repeat of the environmental disaster in 1997-98 when dry conditions linked to the El Nino weather pattern caused a choking haze that cost the region billions of dollars in economic losses.
Jakarta has appealed for funds and equipment from neighbors Singapore and Malaysia, which have also suffered from the haze coming primarily from the Indonesian provinces on Sumatra and Borneo islands.
At Sultan Thaha airport in Sumatra's Jambi province, all flights were canceled this week.
"It is not possible (to fly) at the moment. The visibility is terribly limited. The minimum should be 1,800 to 2,000 meters. Now, it is under 100 meters," airport head Basuki Mardiyanto told Reuters.
Mardiyanto is not counting on anything but the onset of heavy rain when the dry season ends to resolve the problem.
Indonesia's six-month rainy season usually starts in October but it may come late this year in many areas or has started with only low intensity in others.
"Rain started a week ago but was localized and with low intensity. Such intensity will only add moisture above hotspots, especially those in peat land. Automatically, this causes more smoke," said Remus Lumban Tobing, head of Jambi's weather office.
Peat fires are hard to put out and can burn for months.
"The pessimistic view is a long wait until there is high intensity of rain. Our prediction is in November," he said by telephone from Jambi, 630 km northwest of Jakarta.
The central government also appeared to lack ideas.
"We need large planes for water bombing which we don't have up until now. The weather is also not helping with the long dry season. With such a situation what can we do," Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar said.
ERRATIC RAINS
In neighboring Musi Banyuasin region, villagers are concerned about fires spreading to residential areas.
"There is a fire 50 meters away from the house. We have tried to put it out but it keeps on burning again and again," said Nurlaila Wati, who lives in a village near plantations.
"We are scared that when the wind blows hard, the fire can jump to the house," the mother of five told Reuters next to a scorched paddy field.
Heavy rain has fallen in West Kalimantan province where the main airport has been closed since Monday, but the pattern of rain has been erratic and the airport is expected to stay shut throughout the week.
"There was thundering rain last Wednesday and more three days ago but conditions have not improved," said provincial spokesman Citra Duani.
Indonesia's neighbors have grown increasingly frustrated over the fires, most of which are deliberately lit by farmers as well as timber and palm oil plantation owners.
Minister Witoelar said last week police had detained more than 300 people and had six court cases against firms. There have in practice been few convictions though.
Environment ministers from Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Brunei failed to reach a detailed attack plan when they gathered last week in Indonesia's Riau province on Sumatra island to discuss the crisis.
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Nookular News
N. Korea Bomb Tied to Bush Fiasco
Consortium News
17 October 2006
North Korea's nuclear test has been linked to a plutonium process that was unfrozen after George W. Bush started talking tough about regime change in Pyongyang and reversed a Clinton administration policy against aiming nuclear weapons at non-nuclear states.
The New York Times reported that U.S. officials have identified the source of the North Korean nuclear blast as plutonium harvested from a small nuclear reactor whose nuclear fuel was put under seal in 1994 through a deal reached with the Clinton administration.
But in 2003, after two years of mounting threats from George W. Bush - including listing North Korea as part of the "axis of evil" - the government of Kim Jong Il threw out international inspectors, unsealed the plutonium and began processing it.
Instead, Bush cut off nuclear talks with North Korea and stepped up spending on a "Star Wars" missile shield. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Bush got tougher still, vowing to "rid the world of evil" and listing North Korea as part of the "axis of evil."
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Defector: Sanctions won't hurt N. Korea
By KWANG-TAE KIM
Associated Press
Tue Oct 17, 2006
SEOUL, South Korea - The man once considered the mentor of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il said Tuesday that the reclusive country's nuclear weapons program cannot be stopped unless the strongman is ousted.
But Kim's total grip on the communist society makes that only a remote possibility, Hwang Jang Yop, the highest-ranking North Korean government official ever to defect to South Korea, told The Associated Press.
The 83-year-old Hwang, wearing a lapel badge in the shape of the South Korean national flag, is also skeptical that
United Nations sanctions imposed on the North for a nuclear test explosion will hurt Kim's rule.
"I don't think his grip on power will be significantly weakened," Hwang said, adding that South Korea continues to give aid to North Korea, while other countries, most notably China and Russia, are opposed to the idea of pressuring the North.
Hwang, who seldom gives interviews, made his surprising defection in 1997 when he and an aide took refuge in the South Korean embassy in Beijing while on a visit to the Chinese capital. At the time, he was a longtime member of the North's elite, serving as secretary of the ruling Workers' Party.
He had been close to the country's founder, Kim Il Sung, the father of Kim Jong Il, and is often described as the younger Kim's former mentor. Hwang is also widely seen as the intellectual architect of the North's "juche" philosophy of self sufficiency.
After intense negotiations between China and South Korea, Hwang eventually left Beijing for the Philippines, where he stayed briefly before making his way to Seoul.
Now under police protection 24 hours a day to prevent any North Korean attempt on his life, Hwang said the six-nation talks aimed at ending the North's nuclear weapons program will not resolve the crisis.
He said South Korea, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan should not bargain with the North. They should instead isolate the regime, he said, calling it an "international criminal organization and the enemy of democracy."
The North's nuclear test last week was not Kim's last card and the North Korean leader could still test fire more missiles like he did in July and even mount nuclear warheads on them, Hwang said.
"It is nonsense to urge the North to abandon its nuclear weapons with Kim in place," he said.
Hwang said China is key to bringing an end to Kim's regime.
China is the last remaining ally and main aid donor to its impoverished neighbor, but their relations have been strained by Beijing's support of the U.N. resolution. Still, Beijing succeeded in blocking an even tougher one pushed by the U.S. and Japan.
"No Chinese officials like the North Korean leader, but they keep him in power," Hwang said, adding that Kim's regime serves Beijing's interests by helping keep U.S. influence in the region at bay.
Hwang said the best-case scenario would be if the North pursued economic openness and reform in trying to rebuild its dismal economy, which he said would likely lead eventually to Kim's overthrow and naturally resolve the nuclear dispute.
But Hwang doubts that will happen. "Kim Jong Il actually fears Chinese-style economic reform and openness coming to North Korea," he said.
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DPRK's nuclear test powered by plutonium
www.chinaview.cn
2006-10-18
WASHINGTON -- U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that last week's nuclear test by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) was fuelled by plutonium, the New York Times reported Tuesday.
The newspaper quoted unidentified officials as reporting that the explosion was most likely not fuelled by uranium, but rather by plutonium harvested from its small nuclear reactor.
The DPRK announced on Oct. 9 that it had successfully conducted its first nuclear test.
U.S. authorities and intelligence officials were reportedly watching for indications that the DPRK might be preparing for a second nuclear test.
"The DPRK have made no secret of their desire to be provocative. The first test did have a low yield and perhaps it would not be unreasonable to expect that they would like to try to something again," White House spokesman Tony Snow said on Tuesday.
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30 more countries could have nukes soon
By GEORGE JAHN
Associated Press
Oct. 16, 2006
VIENNA, Austria - The head of the U.N. nuclear agency warned Monday that as many as 30 countries could soon have technology that would let them produce atomic weapons "in a very short time," joining the nine states known or suspected to have such arms.
Speaking at a conference on tightening controls against nuclear proliferation, Mohamed ElBaradei said more nations are "hedging their bets" by developing technology that is at the core of peaceful nuclear energy programs but could quickly be switched to making weapons.
ElBaradei, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, called them "virtual new weapons states."
The warning came amid heightened fears that North Korea's nuclear test explosion and Iran's defiance of a U.N. Security Council demand that it suspend uranium enrichment could spark a new arms race, particularly among Asian and Middle Eastern states that feel threatened.
ElBaradei did not single out any country in his warning, but was clearly alluding to Iran and other nations that are working to develop uranium enrichment capability, such as Brazil.
Other nations, including Australia, Argentina and South Africa, have recently announced that they are considering developing enrichment programs to be able to sell fuel to states that want to generate electricity with nuclear reactors.
Canada, Germany, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland, Taiwan, Spain, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Lithuania are among nations that either have the means to produce weapons-grade uranium if they chose, could quickly build such technology, or could use plutonium waste for weaponization. All are committed non-nuclear weapons states, and no one has suggested they want to use their programs for arms.
Japan also says it has no plans to develop atomic weapons, but it could make them at short notice by processing tons of plutonium left over from running its nuclear reactors. South Korea also has spent reactor fuel and was found a few years ago to have conducted small-scale secret experiments on making highly enriched uranium that would be usable in warheads.
Other countries considering developing nuclear programs in the near future are Egypt, Bangladesh, Ghana, Indonesia, Jordan, Namibia, Moldova, Nigeria, Poland, Thailand, Turkey, Vietnam and Yemen, U.N. officials say.
There are five formally declared nuclear weapons states _ the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain _ and four others are known or thought to have such arms _ India, Pakistan, Israel and now North Korea.
North Korea developed its capacities from what it had portrayed as a peaceful nuclear energy program, and there are widespread suspicions Iran may be trying to obtain arms through its enrichment program, despite Tehran's insistence it seeks only to produce fuel for reactors to generate electricity.
North Korea's nuclear weapon test a week ago sparked widespread condemnation and led the Security Council to agree on broad sanctions. On Iran, the council plans this week to discuss possible selective penalties for Tehran ignoring its demand to stop enrichment by Aug. 31.
Much of ElBaradei's comments were directed at the potential for misuse of uranium enrichment, which can generate both low-enriched, reactor-grade uranium and highly enriched material for nuclear bombs.
"The knowledge is out of the tube ... both for peaceful purpose and unfortunately also for not peaceful purposes," ElBaradei said.
"It's becoming fashionable for countries to try to look into possibilities of shielding themselves ... through the possibility of nuclear weapons," he said, adding: "Another 20 or 30 would have the capacity to develop nuclear weapons in a very short time."
Indirectly criticizing nuclear weapons states, ElBaradei said it was illogical for them to maintain their atomic arsenals while urging others not to acquire such arms.
He also obliquely took some of them to task for not signing or ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, suggesting their endorsement of the 1996 pact "would have changed the behavior of North Korea, maybe."
The treaty, which prohibits all nuclear explosions, will not take effect until it has been ratified by 44 states that possess either nuclear reactors for power-generation or research. So far 34 have ratified it. Holdouts include the U.S., China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea.
ElBaradei said more money and international commitment are needed for his agency's verification efforts, describing the $120 million annually budgeted as "a drop in the ocean."
"It's important that the system continues to be ahead of the game," he said. "We cannot continue to do business as usual."
Comment: After ElBaradei's announcement, Bush announced that all 30 countries are now a part of the "Axis of Evil". Curiously, he then added that any country whose citizens eat food or consume any resources at all would also be added to the infamous axis.
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Amerika
Could an "October surprise" shape the midterm election?
By John Whitesides
Reuters Political Correspondent
Tue Oct 17, 2006
WASHINGTON - A last-minute "October surprise" -- a dramatic news event that shakes up the U.S. election -- could be a big wild card in the final three weeks of the fight for control of Congress.
With Democrats threatening to sweep Republicans out of power in Congress in the November 7 elections, a late-breaking foreign crisis, terrorist attack or a new scandal could change the debate and shape the ultimate outcome.
The possibilities are numerous, as President George W. Bush juggles multiple foreign threats like North Korea's nuclear tests, Iran's nuclear ambitions and civil war in Iraq, along with mushrooming Republican scandals at home.
"There is a huge potential for some sort of October surprise that changes the dynamic, something that reminds everyone just how unstable the world is," pollster John Zogby said.
The October surprise has a long history in U.S. political campaigns, from the collapse of hostage negotiations with Iran before President Jimmy Carter's 1980 loss to Ronald Reagan to the airing of an Osama bin Laden video before President George W. Bush's re-election in 2004.
The phenomenon is not as prevalent in congressional elections, which involve a collection of individual races and are not as focused on a single event. This year, Democrats must pick up 15 seats in the House of Representatives and six Senate seats to win control of Congress.
In the last midterm elections, in 2002, the plane crash death of Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota little more than a week before the vote threw his Senate race into chaos. Republican Norm Coleman beat replacement Democrat Walter Mondale, the former vice president.
But the potential for a campaign-shaping event in the final weeks remains a topic of intense speculation.
"We are wary of their October surprise," said New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, chairman of the Senate Democratic campaign committee, which he said was keeping campaign money in reserve for late emergencies.
While most late-breaking events are beyond the control of politicians, plenty of conspiracy theorists expect the White House to make a late attempt to halt Democratic momentum.
'NO SURPRISE'
"It should come as no surprise if the Bush administration undertakes a pre-emptive war against Iran sometime before the November election," Gary Hart, a former Democratic senator and presidential candidate, predicted last month on the Huffington Post, an Internet site.
In many scenarios, the man imagined to be pulling the strings on an October surprise is White House political adviser Karl Rove, the architect of Bush's 2004 re-election.
"Karl Rove wouldn't be earning his pay if he didn't try something that would benefit the White House," said Larry Sabato, a political analyst at the University of Virginia.
Early speculation about a late surprise to benefit Republicans focused on troop pullouts in Iraq, but that has been off the table for months. Another favorite, a plunge in gasoline prices, already happened to little apparent effect.
One Web site ran a contest to pick the most likely October surprise, with the winner being "Iran totally had it coming." The capture or death of bin Laden is another favorite.
Democrats already benefited from a sex scandal involving ex-Rep. Mark Foley, a Florida Republican. News of a federal investigation into Republican Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania will make his re-election more difficult.
The October surprise phenomenon surfaced in 1968, when President Lyndon Johnson halted bombing of North Vietnam a week before the 1968 election. It was not enough to help his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, beat Richard Nixon.
In 2000, Bush's 1976 drunken driving arrest became public days before the election. Bush narrowly lost the popular vote to Democrat Al Gore but won the Electoral College after the U.S. Supreme Court halted a dispute over votes in Florida.
For those running campaigns, though, strategy and voter turnout efforts trump concerns about a late surprise.
"There is nothing you can do. If something happens, then we'll worry about it," said Carl Forti, spokesman for the House Republican campaign committee.
Comment: "In the last midterm elections, in 2002, the plane crash death of Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota little more than a week before the vote threw his Senate race into chaos. Republican Norm Coleman beat replacement Democrat Walter Mondale, the former vice president."
Gee, wonder what they'll do this time around? Given Bush and Rove's confidence, it seems they have a plan that will ensure that the Foley sex scandal seems like peanuts in comparison.
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Americans anxious over U.S. foreign ties
By WILLIAM C. MANN
Associated Press
Wed Oct 18, 2006
WASHINGTON - Americans are anxious and frustrated over the state of U.S. foreign relations, a survey indicates, with large majorities worried that the country's foreign policy is making the world increasingly dangerous for the United States and its people.
The poll, taken in September, included an "anxiety indicator" that calculates the level of angst in the country based on answers to five general survey questions. The indicator registered 130 on a scale of zero to 200, with zero being the most secure and 200 the most anxious.
That indicates "that apprehension and unease about the country's international position are at high levels and that the public mood may be nearing a tipping point," said veteran survey researcher Daniel Yankelovich, chairman of Public Agenda, the nonpartisan public policy institute that released the study Wednesday.
The survey identifies a "tipping point" as the point at which "attitudes have reached such a high level of concern that political leaders ignore it at their peril."
"This level of public anxiety, combined with Americans' disapproval of the nation's current course, is not something leaders can just dismiss," Yankelovich said.
"It's not just one event or one specific policy that is worrying people. It's Iraq; it's the danger of a terrorist attack; it's energy dependence; it's our diminished reputation around the world; it's the rise of violent Muslim extremism," he said.
This was the third survey from Public Agenda Confidence in U.S. Foreign Policy Index. The first was in June 2005 and the second last January. The latest was the first to include the Anxiety Indicator, which will be a part of subsequent surveys with the same five questions.
The survey finds that slightly more than eight in 10 Americans worry about the way things are going for the United States, and just under eight in 10 feel the world has become more dangerous for the U.S. and Americans.
These are some of the survey's findings that reflect a disconnect with current U.S. government policy:
- 87 percent of Americans believe the threat to national security is exacerbated when other countries and cultures view the United States in a negative light; 78 percent believe their country is seen as arrogant.
- 52 percent believe democracies reduce conflict and violence, but 64 percent believe democracy can't be imposed and that countries have to be ready for it.
- 20 percent think the United States can do "a lot" to nourish a democratic system in Iraq; only slightly more, or 24 percent, feel that creating democracies should be a very important goal for the United States.
On a grading system, fewer than one in three respondents gave the U.S. government an A or B in achieving its objectives in
Iraq or Afghanistan; and fewer than one in four graded A or B on becoming less dependent on other countries for energy and having good relations with Muslim countries.
The survey said energy independence registered higher than any other issue on whether the government should be held accountable for its failures.
Eighty-seven percent said the government could so "something" or "a lot" to decrease dependence on other countries for energy supplies. An increasing number, 41 percent, up from 35 percent in the previous survey, said it was realistic to expect the government to maintain a steady supply of oil at a reasonable price.
The survey, done in cooperation with Foreign Policy magazine, was based on telephone interviews with a national random sample of 1,001 people over the age of 18 between Sept. 5 and Sept. 18. The margin of error for the overall sample is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
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New Space Policy 'Sets Up' Intel Turf War
UPI
Oct 17, 2006
Washington - The new U.S. policy on space exploration and exploitation sets the stage for a turf battle between intelligence and the military, says one expert. Steven Aftergood, the government transparency campaigner at the Federation of American Scientists, says the new policy, released recently by the White House, "creates overlapping and possibly conflicting responsibilities" for Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Aftergood noted that the section of the policy on national security was higher up in the document than in the 1996 policy it replaced, which "perhaps reflects a higher priority" for national security concerns.
The national security section of the policy tasks the defense secretary to "establish specific intelligence requirements that can be met by tactical, operational, or national-level intelligence gathering capabilities." It also gives him responsibility for "space situational awareness," in which capacity he "shall support the space situational awareness requirements for the director of national intelligence."
For his part, Negroponte is instructed to "establish objectives, intelligence requirements, priorities and guidance for the intelligence community to ensure timely and effective collection, processing, analysis and dissemination of national intelligence." But he is also told to "support military planning and satisfy operational requirements as a major intelligence mission," and "provide intelligence collection and analysis of space-related capabilities to support space situational awareness for the U.S. government."
Neither the Pentagon nor Negroponte's office immediately responded to a request for comment.
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U.S. studies passport card for Canada, Mexico trips
Reuters
Tue Oct 17, 2006
WASHINGTON - The U.S. State Department on Tuesday proposed developing a wallet-sized "passport card" that would allow U.S. citizens to travel to Canada, Mexico, Bermuda and parts of the Caribbean.
The card is designed to speed the travel of the millions of Americans who go to Canada and Mexico by land as well as those who visit some Caribbean nations from cruise ships.
At present, such travelers typically do not need passports and the card -- if developed -- would create a new travel document that would be more secure and uniform than a U.S. drivers' license or birth certificate, a U.S. official said.
The State Department said the card itself would not contain personal information but -- using radio technology -- would link to a government database that would contain a photograph and biographical data.
The proposal -- which is being submitted for public comment before it can be carried out --- was criticized by Sen. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), a Vermont Democrat, who said in a statement it would "risk the personal information of millions of Americans."
The State Department said obtaining the proposed card would cost adults $45 and children $35. In contrast, applying for a passport costs $97 for adults and $82 for children under 16.
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For Your Health
More tests confirm low-risk bird flu in Illinois
Reuters
Oct 17, 2006
WASHINGTON - A second round of tests on ducks in central Illinois confirmed the birds have a low-pathogenic form of avian influenza, the U.S. government said Tuesday.
The low-pathogenic H6N2 virus was found in five of the 11 samples collected from wild Green-winged Teals in Fulton County, Illinois, the U.S. Agriculture Department and the Department of Interior said in a joint statement. Early testing on September 29 indicated it might be the low-pathogenic strain of H5N1.
The low-pathogenic avian influenza virus commonly occurs in nature, but usually results in minor sickness or no noticeable disease for birds.
Low-pathogenic bird flu has been confirmed in the United States this year including in Michigan, Montana, Pennsylvania and Maryland.
In an effort to detect the high-pathogenic H5N1 strain that has killed 151 people overseas, USDA and the Department of the Interior are working with the states to collect between 75,000 and 100,000 wild bird samples in addition to more than 50,000 environmental tests throughout the United States.
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Prozac: Study gives clues about aggression, suicide
www.chinaview.cn 2006-10-18 16:21:46
BEIJING, Oct. 18 (Xinhuanet) -- A new study that has found juvenile hamsters became aggressive on low doses of Prozac (fluoxetine) but less aggressive on high doses may provide clues as to why children and adolescents taking the drug can become aggressive or even suicidal.
But some scientists caution that a hamster brain and a child's brain are not the same. And a child's brain and an adult's brain are also differ.
"Just remember that a hamster is a hamster is a hamster," said Dr. Jon Shaw, director of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.
"There are a lot of studies on the maturation and evolution of the central nervous system structure through adolescence, and nobody thinks the adult brain is [the same as] the child's brain," Shaw added. "And this just reminds us that other studies are needed to try and understand what the difference means in terms of metabolism of drugs."
In October 2004, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration directed manufacturers of SSRIs, which include Celexa, Paxil, Prozac and Zoloft, to put a special "black-box" warning on the drugs' labeling. The warning alerts health-care providers about an increased risk of suicidality in children and teens using the medications.
In July 2005, the FDA issued a public health advisory that raised the possibility the risk of suicidality also applied to adults taking SSRIs, after several studies pointed to that possibility.
Other studies have found a lower incidence of youth suicide related to Prozac and other SSRIs. Prozac is the only medication approved to treat depression in children and adolescents.
Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin injected hamsters with either high or low doses of Prozac in the latest study.
They created a threatening situation two hours later by putting a younger hamster in the home cage of another same-sex hamster for 10 minutes. Usually, male hamsters respond to such situations with aggression.
In these scenarios, the adult hamsters injected with either the high or low dose of Prozac were calmer.
Juvenile hamsters, however, reacted differently to the different doses. Those on low doses were more aggressive while those on higher doses were less aggressive, though still not as calm as the adults.
"We do know from adolescent studies that the brain continues to mature during adolescence, and even the early adult years," Shaw said. "So, this study is an important study in that it reminds us that further research is really necessary to look at how an evolving central nervous system responds to different stimuli."
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Vaccine protects mice against 1918 Spanish flu virus
www.chinaview.cn 2006-10-18 16:11:11
LOS ANGELES, Oct. 17 (Xinhua) -- A newly developed vaccine has successfully protected mice against the deadly 1918 Spanish flu virus, U.S. scientists reported on Tuesday.
The scientists also created a technique for identifying antibodies that neutralize this virus, a tool that could help contain future pandemic flu strains, according to a report in the latest online advance edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The findings are important to understanding and preventing the recurrence of the H1N1 influenza virus that caused the 1918 pandemic, and to protecting against future flu virus strains in the future, including the H5N1 avian flu virus, the researchers said.
The 1918-1919 pandemic, the most deadly flu outbreak in modern history, killed 30 million or more people worldwide. Scientists are afraid that a new flu virus strain would cause a similar disaster.
"A key to containing pandemic flu viruses is to understand their vulnerabilities and determine whether they can evade immune recognition," said Gary Nabel, director of the Vaccine Research Center at U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who led the study.
"What we learn about the H1N1 virus that caused the 1918 pandemic is pertinent to other pandemic viruses and to the development of effective and universal vaccines."
Using the genetic sequence information for the 1918 flu virus, the researchers created plasmids, small strands of DNA designed to express specific characteristics, carrying genes for the virus' hemagglutinin (HA) protein, the surface protein found in all flu viruses that allows the virus to stick to a cell and cause infection.
They created two types of plasmids: one to reflect the HA found in the original 1918 flu virus; the other an altered HA protein designed to weaken the virus.
Mice were then injected with a DNA vaccine containing both types of plasmids to determine whether they would generate immune responses to the 1918 virus.
The researchers found significant responses both in terms of production of T-cells, the white blood cells critical in the immune system's battle against invading viruses, as well as the production of neutralizing antibodies.
All of the 10 immunized mice survived when they were exposed to reconstructed 1918 virus 14 days later, and eight of the 10 mice that received antibodies from the immunized mice also survived the challenge, the researchers reported.
To evaluate the vaccine's antibody-inducing capabilities while minimizing exposure of lab personnel to the deadly virus, the researchers also created artificial viruses, or pseudoviruses, featuring the HA of the 1918 flu virus but stripped of the ability to cause infection.
The pseudoviruses were then incubated with antibody-containing blood samples from the mice immunized with the DNA vaccine and those that were not. The researchers found that the antibodies from the immunized mice neutralized the pseudoviruses while the blood samples from the mice that were not immunized had no effect.
This method was also effective in identifying neutralizing antibodies to the H5N1 avian flu virus and could be used to screen for monoclonal antibodies that may be used as an antiviral treatment, according to Nabel.
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Hair reveals eating disorders
www.chinaview.cn 2006-10-18 09:53:05
BEIJING, Oct. 18 (Xinhuanet) -- A new research report published on Monday indicated that hair reveals evidence of a person's diet and can help doctors diagnose eating disorders, according to media reports.
Researchers from Utah's Brigham Young University found that examining carbon and nitrogen in the proteins of hair could reveal information about a person's day-to-day nutrition.
Lead author Kent Hatch from the university's Department of Integrative Biology said clinicians could use this as a tool to help diagnose such disorders as anorexia or bulimia because many sufferers lied or did not recognize their problems.
Current methods used to diagnose and monitor patients suffering from eating disorders relied heavily on questionnaires and interviews.
"Their self-evaluation is very impaired," said Jennifer Tolman, clinical director at Avalon Hills, a treatment facility in Cache County, Utah of the United States.
"We had a girl who was five feet and 10 inches tall and weighed 98 pounds and she wasn't even sure she had an eating disorder, although she could recognize it in others," Tolman said.
Hair grows by adding new proteins to the base of the strand, and pushing the strand up out of the hair follicle. The make-up of these proteins will be influenced by the nutritional state of the person at that moment. This nutritional state is in turn subtly affected by eating patterns associated with eating disorders. Because hair grows all the time, each strand consequently becomes a chemical diary, recording an individual's day-by-day nutrition, the researchers said.
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US full of Internet addicts: study
AFP
Oct 17, 2006
The United States could be rife with Internet addicts as clinically ill as alcoholics, an unprecedented study released suggested.
Researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine in Silicon Valley said their telephone survey indicated more than one of every eight US residents showed at least one sign of "problematic Internet use."
The findings backed those of previous, less rigorous studies, according to Stanford.
Most disturbing was the discovery that some people hid their Internet surfing, or went online to cure foul moods in ways that mirrored alcoholics using booze, according to the study's lead author, Elias Aboujaoude.
"In a sense, they're using the Internet to self-medicate," Aboujaoude said. "And obviously something is wrong when people go out of their way to hide their Internet activity."
According to preliminary research, the typical Internet addict was a single, college-educated, white male in his 30s, who spends approximately 30 hours a week on non-essential computer use.
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Zionism in Action
Canada blocks bid by Arab countries for vote on Israel's nuclear capabilities
Canadian Press
Published: Saturday, September 23, 2006
VIENNA, Austria (AP) - More than a dozen Arab countries were blocked by a Canadian motion in their bid to have a vote on a resolution labelling Israel's nuclear capabilities a threat on the final day of the International Atomic Energy Agency's annual meeting.
The draft resolution, which also called upon Israel to join the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, was blocked from going to a vote Friday by the Canadian delegate.
The final session of the UN nuclear watchdog agency's weeklong meeting did adopt a separate, non-binding resolution calling on all Middle Eastern countries to accept IAEA safeguards and take steps toward the establishment of a nuclear weapons-free zone. Israel and the United States were the only two countries that voted against it. Three countries abstained.
The measure calling Israel's program a threat, which was co-sponsored by Iran, was kept from going to a vote after 45 countries backed a no-action motion by the Canadian delegate, effectively adjourning the debate Friday evening.
Among those supporting the effort to block the vote were the United States, Israel, France, Germany and Britain. Those abstaining included China, Russia and Nigeria, among others.
The 15 Arab countries behind the resolution, which would also have been non-binding, had hoped to send a signal to Israel following its monthlong war with Hezbollah, which killed hundreds of people - most of them civilians - in Lebanon.
"Peace and nuclear weapons are two enemies - there is no cohabitation," said Ramzy Ramzy, head of the Egyptian delegation to the meeting and his country's ambassador to Austria.
In co-sponsoring the resolution, Iran was also seeking to counter criticism of its own nuclear program, which the United States and others insist is aimed at the production of atomic weapons. Iran insists it only wants to generate power.
"Iran...has always called for establishing a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction...It is of profound regret that this issue is trapped in a vicious cycle," said Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, Iran's ambassador to the IAEA.
Arab countries at the annual conference have regularly threatened to submit such a resolution but in past years have opted instead to voice their concerns about Israel's nuclear program through a statement from the conference president, which carries less weight than a resolution.
The last time such a resolution was submitted at the annual IAEA conference was in 1991. It passed.
Israel neither confirms nor denies its nuclear status but is considered to be the only country in the region with nuclear weapons. Israel does not accept IAEA controls on its nuclear activities.
Israel's ambassador to the IAEA said efforts to bring security to the Middle East should be focused on peace efforts, not necessarily arms control.
"The fundamental goal in the Middle East, as in other regions, is obtaining regional peace, security and stability, not arms control per se," Israel Michaeli said.
The draft resolution was submitted earlier this week by 15 countries: Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
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Israeli PM meets Putin for Iran talks at Kremlin
by Ron Bousso
AFP
October 18, 2006
MOSCOW - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was to meet President Vladimir Putin in Moscow for talks focusing on Israeli concerns over Iran's Russian-backed nuclear programme and Russian weapons sales in the Middle East.
Olmert's trip marks 15 years of diplomatic ties with Russia, but behind the pageantry and ceremonious welcome late Tuesday serious tensions exist over Moscow's ties with Iran and
Syria.
Olmert was expected to present his concerns during the Kremlin meeting with Putin and separate talks with Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Backed by its US ally, Israel has been pushing for the UN Security Council to adopt sanctions against Iran over its failure to heed demands to suspend uranium enrichment -- a process Israel says hides a secret nuclear weapons programme.
Russia, which is building Iran's first civilian nuclear power station at Bushehr, has resisted the push for sanctions.
Israel -- widely considered the Middle East's sole, if undeclared nuclear weapons power -- considers Tehran its chief foe because of calls from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to wipe the Jewish state off the map and its alleged backing for the Lebanese Hezbollah militia and Palestinian militant groups.
"We are determined to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear capability. Russia understands that this is a general existential threat and not only a threat to Israel," Olmert said earlier.
Israel also claims that sophisticated Russian weaponry sold to Syria has been passed on to Hezbollah guerrillas, who allegedly used the latest Russian-made anti-tank rockets to deadly effect during fighting with the Israeli army in July and August.
Moscow has also raised eyebrows in Israel and the United States by maintaining contacts with the radical Palestinian movement Hamas.
The Vremya Novostei daily reported Wednesday that Putin was furious over reports that Syria had supplied Hezbollah with weapons sold by Russia.
"However, this does not mean that Russia will completely stop selling weapons to Iran and Syria, as the Israelis want," the daily predicted.
"Cooperation with Tehran and Damascus, including in the oil-gas and atomic (energy) spheres, bring Moscow dividends -- and not only material. Russia plays a unique middleman role."
On Tuesday, Olmert said that "Putin told me when he was in Israel 18 months ago that he would never consciously and willingly give a hand to harm Israel's security. I do not feel the Russia position on the issue is aggressive towards us."
In a statement ahead of the Putin-Olmert meeting, the Kremlin reiterated its frequent call for restraint in the Middle East, saying that "use of force will not lead to the desired resolution in the region."
Russia, along with the European Union, the United Nations and the United States, is part of the so-called quartet that sponsors the floundering Middle East peace process but an Israeli government official has made it clear that efforts to revive it were off the agenda of this week's talks.
"At the moment, the peace process is not an issue on the agenda," the official said.
Olmert was also due to meet leaders of Russia's Jewish community during his stay in Moscow.
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Hamas says likely to accept forming gov't of technocrats
www.chinaview.cn 2006-10-18 05:38:22
GAZA, Oct. 17 (Xinhua) -- Spokesman of the Hamas-led government Ghazi Hamad announced on Tuesday that Hamas is likely to agree on a unity government of independent and professional ministers.
"There is a trend for Hamas to accept forming a unity government that includes professionals, experts and independents from all Palestinian political spectrum," Hamad said.
The new technocrat government would be accepted at home and abroad, he said.
Hamad made the remarks shortly after President Mahmoud Abbas said he would support a technocrat government to replace the current Hamas-led one.
Hamad said that there were Arab and international diplomatic moves to bridge gaps between ruling Hamas and its rival Fatah, adding those mediations were being studied.
According to Hamad, platform of the upcoming government was more important than name of the would-be 11th government.
Meanwhile, Hamad confirmed reports on an Egyptian proposal to form a Palestinian government without direct participation of Hamas ministers who are lawmakers, adding the idea was still studied.
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Military Toys
Lockheed Martin Rolls Out F-22 Slated For Operations In The Pacific Region
SPX
Oct 18, 2006
Marietta, GA - Lockheed Martin rolled out the first combat capable F-22 stealth fighter destined for basing and operations in the Pacific Rim yesterday. Raptor 4087 completed its final assembly with Air Force leaders from Alaska and Lockheed Martin employees on hand to mark the event outside the production line in Marietta.
"This F-22 rollout marks another significant milestone for the F-22 program. The Raptor industrial team is proud to continue to produce this revolutionary 5TH Generation stealth fighter for the United States Air Force," said Nick Cessario, vice president and F-22 program deputy general manager. "I know we will all sleep better knowing the F-22 will be flying for at least the next four decades, and is ready to defend our nation if the call comes to send in the Raptors."
Speaking before Lockheed Martin F-22 production employees, Brig. Gen. "Hawk" Carlisle, Commander, 3rd Wing at Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska, proudly declared, "Great Americans wear all kinds of clothes, some wear military uniforms, some wear suits and ties, while others wear blue jeans and t-shirts while they build the F-22. You are all great Americans and I thank you."
The F-22 dominates any adversary through unmatched performance: stealth, supercruise speed, agility, precision and a complete view of the battlespace achieved with the advanced sensor suite embedded in the aircraft.
The F-22 Raptor is currently assigned to four bases across the United States:
+ Testing is conducted at Edwards AFB, Calif.
+ Tactics development is ongoing at Nellis AFB, Nev.
+ A full squadron of Raptors is based at Tyndall AFB, Fla., for pilot and maintainer training.
+ Operational F-22s of the 1st Fighter Wing are assigned to two squadrons at Langley, Va.
+ Future F-22 bases identified by the United States Air Force include:
- Elmendorf AFB, Alaska
- Holloman AFB, New Mexico
- Hickam AFB, Hawaii
Raptors from Langley deployed to Alaska in June for joint exercise Northern Edge, where the F-22's performance was declared exceptional by Air Force officials who touted the ability of pilots and maintainers to fly a 97% sortie rate; successfully drop and hit 26 of 26 ground targets; and amass an impressive air-to-air kill ratio of 140-0 during the first week of the exercise. The commander of the F-22 squadron remarked this summer that the most impressive outcome of the exercise was the realization by all players of just how much of the battlespace information or situational awareness F-22s saw and could share with other forces. This increased the effectiveness and survivability of all flying with the Raptor.
The F-22 Raptor, the world's most advanced, 5TH Generation stealth fighter, is built by Lockheed Martin in partnership with Boeing and Pratt and Whitney. Parts and subsystems are provided by approximately 1,000 suppliers in 42 states. F-22 production takes place at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics facilities in Palmdale, Calif.; Meridian, Miss.; Marietta, Ga.; and Fort Worth, Texas, as well as at Boeing's plant in Seattle, Wash. Final assembly and initial flight testing of the Raptor occurs at the Marietta plant facilities.
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Video Imagery Delivered To Military Forces In Urban Combat
SPX
Oct 18, 2006
El Segundo, CA - Northrop Grumman has once again successfully demonstrated a low-cost, tasking and control system for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) that can deliver video information about enemy positions to U.S. military forces in urban battle zones, making their missions safer and more effective.
The system, called "HURT," controls a network of small, low-flying UAVs to send video images in real time to individual warfighters with handheld computers. Military forces in urban warfare situations currently have no direct access to real-time surveillance data. HURT stands for heterogeneous urban RSTA (reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition) team.
Northrop Grumman is developing HURT in a program funded and managed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory serves as the technical and contracting agent.
The second and latest HURT demonstration was conducted Sept. 25 to Oct. 6, 2006 at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, Calif. Marines used HURT's capabilities during regular training exercises in an urban environment. The system was initially demonstrated in September 2005.
HURT allows ground forces to view surveillance images of the surrounding area and request specific information about a suspected enemy position on a user-friendly touch screen. The system autonomously prioritizes multiple requests and directs the most suitable UAVs to the required locations to achieve a closer look.
"In a dynamic urban warfare environment where 'see-decide-and-act' timelines are extremely short, it's important to get information quickly to combat forces on the ground so they're better prepared to act upon it," said Tom Williams, vice president of Advanced Capabilities Development for Northrop Grumman's Integrated Systems sector. "We're one step closer to bringing HURT's capabilities to the warfighter with this successful demonstration."
Building upon the success of the 2005 demonstration, these exercises showed that HURT can control various combinations of UAVs and seamlessly hand off control of one platform for another one while maintaining persistent surveillance.
Other highlights of this demonstration:
-- A user-friendly interface allowed a Marine unit commander on the ground to reprioritize or override requests from individual warfighters. The HURT system was able to distinguish between requests from the commander and those from other ground forces. -- HURT provided continuous updates of a surveillance image that was superimposed in a mosaic fashion over a reference map with GPS coordinates, giving warfighters better situational awareness. -- If one of the UAVs required refueling or recharged batteries, it could be removed from the battlespace, and HURT would autonomously compensate for the reduced number of aerial platforms until the UAV was returned to service. This feature will allow HURT to maintain surveillance coverage for hours or even days. -- HURT easily incorporated "no fly" zones established for certain UAVs so they would avoid fixed obstacles such as hills or mountains.
This demonstration employed different combinations of four UAVs at a time, including Dragon Eye, Pointer, Raven and WASP. Both demonstrations utilized small UAVs, but HURT technology could eventually be used with larger, more capable systems such as the RQ-4 Global Hawk, the Unmanned Combat Air System, Predator, Fire Scout and Hunter. The technology could also be easily adapted to military surveillance applications not relying on aerial vehicles.
Key members of the HURT demonstration team included AeroVironment, Honeywell Laboratories, Sarnoff Corporation and Teknowledge Corporation, as well as researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
HURT is another example of Northrop Grumman's world-class systems integration capabilities that can enable a variety of military users to exchange real-time information on tactical, ad-hoc networks.
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Odds n Ends
NATO air raids inflict casualties on civilians in S. Afghanistan
www.chinaview.cn 2006-10-18 19:25:31
KABUL, Oct. 18 (Xinhua) -- Air raids carried out by NATO forces in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province claimed the lives of nine civilians, a local resident said Wednesday.
"In the air strikes conducted in Ashagho area of Jalai district Tuesday night, nine civilians were killed and 11 others injured," Ghulam Sakhi, a victim of the bombardment under treatment in Mir Wais hospital in Kandahar city, told Xinhua.
Women and children were among the dead and wounded persons, he added.
Eight of the injured persons, he added, had been taken to Mir Wais hospital for treatment.
The incident occurred when clash erupted between Taliban fighters and Afghan troops backed NATO on Tuesday evening.
However, NATO sources in Kandahar rejected the claim, saying eight militants were killed in the operation.
Jalai district was the scene of bloody fighting between the Taliban and the joint NATO-Afghan forces last month during which more than 500 militants, according to officials, were killed.
More than 2,400 people, mostly rebels, have been killed in the post-Taliban Afghanistan since January this year.
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Iran bans fast internet to cut west's influence
Robert Tait in Tehran
Wednesday October 18, 2006
The Guardian
Iran's Islamic government has opened a new front in its drive to stifle domestic political dissent and combat the influence of western culture - by banning high-speed internet links.
In a blow to the country's estimated 5 million internet users, service providers have been told to restrict online speeds to 128 kilobytes a second and been forbidden from offering fast broadband packages. The move by Iran's telecommunications regulator will make it more difficult to download foreign music, films and television programmes, which the authorities blame for undermining Islamic culture among the younger generation. It will also impede efforts by political opposition groups to organise by uploading information on to the net.
The order follows a purge on illegal satellite dishes, which millions of Iranians use to clandestinely watch western television. Police have seized thousands of dishes in recent months.
The latest step has drawn condemnation from MPs, internet service companies and academics, who say it will hamper Iran's progress. "Every country in the world is moving towards modernisation and a major element of this is high-speed internet access," said Ramazan-ali Sedeghzadeh, chairman of the parliamentary telecommunications committee. "The country needs it for development and access to contemporary science."
Iran has not responded to a western incentive package that includes the offer of state-of-the-art internet technology in return for the suspension of a key part of the country's nuclear programme.
A petition branding the high-speed ban as "backward and unprincipled" bearing more than 1,000 signatures is to be sent to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Scores of websites and blogs are censored using hi-tech US-made filtering equipment. Iran filters more websites than any other country apart from China. High-speed links can be used with anti-filtering devices to access filtered sites.
The telecoms regulator declined to explain the decision but said it was taken by "a collection of policy-makers". However, Etemad, a pro-reformist newspaper, suggested it was part of an official campaign to stem a western "cultural invasion".
"Unpleasant whispers are saying that the motivations behind the scenes are the same as those involved in the purging of satellite dishes," the paper wrote.
Parastoo Dokoohaki, a prominent Iranian blogger, said the move was designed to foil the government's opponents. "If you want to announce a gathering in advance, you won't see it mentioned on official websites and newspapers would announce it too late. Therefore, you upload it anonymously and put the information out. Banning high-speed links would limit that facility. Despite having the telecoms facilities, fibre-optic technology and internet infrastructure, the authorities want us to be undeveloped."
The crackdown comes in an atmosphere of increasing restrictions on the media. Last week, Mr Ahmadinejad launched a fierce attack on the head of the state broadcasting organisation, IRIB, which he blamed for stoking public fears about inflation. Iran's leading reformist newspaper, Shargh, was also closed last month.
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Two killed in major suicide attack on Sri Lanka port
by Amal Jayasinghe
AFP
October 18, 2006
COLOMBO - Tamil Tiger rebels staged a suicide attack against Sri Lanka's main southern naval base, killing at least two people and destroying three vessels.
The attack on the historic port of Galle -- a popular destination with foreign tourists -- came as foreign envoys pushed for the Sri Lankan government and the rebels to hold peace talks later this month.
The guerrillas, disguised as fishermen, forced their way into the tightly-guarded port in five boats, three of which rammed naval craft and exploded while one was blown out of the water due to naval fire, police said.
The fate of the fifth Tiger vessel was not immediately known.
Police said two sailors were killed in the attack and a total of 26 people were taken to hospital with injuries.
Fearing intercommunal violence in Galle, which lies in the heartland of Sri Lanka's Sinhalese majority, police imposed a curfew and opened fire and wounded three people who tried to attack Tamil-owned shops, a senior officer in the area said.
Defence spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella said he believed the Tigers chose to attack Galle to provoke a reaction against minority Tamils.
He said the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) broke through defences and barged into Galle, the country's third-largest city.
"Obviously they have come to Galle on a suicide mission," Rambukwella told AFP. "There was no damage to merchant shipping. It looks like they are keen to create a backlash."
The attack came two days after a huge suicide bombing against a naval convoy northeast of Colombo killed at least 103 people and wounded 150.
The government blamed the Tigers and accused them of targeting the navy on the ground because they could not stand up to it at sea. However, Wednesday's attack showed that the guerrillas were prepared to take the navy head-on.
Peace envoys from Japan and Norway were trying to convince the two sides to attend peace talks scheduled for later this month. The talks are aimed at restoring a 2002 truce.
Japan's Yasushi Akashi arrived in Sri Lanka Sunday while Norway's peacebroker Jon Hanssen-Bauer arrived on Tuesday to attempt to prepare an agenda for talks the two sides agreed to hold on October 28-29 in Switzerland.
There was no immediate indication of rebel casualties from Wednesday's attack, but police took two bodies to hospital, an official said, as the fighting was underway.
Police used loudspeakers to ask residents to leave their homes near the port and the historic Galle Fort area, a
UNESCO world heritage site.
The city got its name from a Portuguese fleet that landed there in 1505.
Rambukwella said the military sent gunboats into Galle, 70 miles (110 kilometres) south of Colombo, to counter the LTTE attack.
The military maintains a base in the area and ammunition depots in Galle harbour, which is also used by commercial shipping companies.
Residents in Galle said at least 10 explosions were heard and that there was also gunfire in the area.
Sri Lanka's military has used Galle harbour to import arms and ammunition for security forces following threats to the bigger port of Colombo, which is a container hub for South Asia.
There was no immediate reaction from the Tigers, who in December 1997 detonated a truck bomb near the port in Galle, targetting the navy commander at the time.
In recent months, the military has discovered large quantities of explosives allegedly transported by the Tigers from the island's north to other areas.
Rambukwella said several other consignments of explosives may have gone undetected and that the Tigers could be using them in the island's south to stage more attacks.
The three decades of ethnic bloodshed in the tropical island nation has claimed over 60,000 lives.
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Eleven-millennium-old building discovered in Syria
www.chinaview.cn 2006-10-17 23:48:42
DAMASCUS, Oct. 17 (Xinhua) -- Archaeologists have unearthed an 11-millennium-old building on the banks of the Euphrates River in northern Syria, the official SANA news agency reported on Tuesday.
The building, which dates back to 8,700 B.C., "may represent the oldest ritual practices related to the holy ox," said Dr. Yousef Kanjo from the Archeological Department of Aleppo, in northern Syrian.
The ancient building, shaped like a wild ox skull, consists of a rectangular forepart with geometrical drawings in red, black and white colors, said the report, quoting a statement by the Aleppo Archeological Department.
On the two sides of the rectangle, two semi-circle walls representing the two horns of the ox were also found, said the report, adding that the house still keeps it original shape, colors and decoration works.
The site was discovered by the French-Syrian Archeological Mission for Excavations, SANA said.
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