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Editorial: Civil War in Iraq: The Salvador Option and US/UK Policy
Craig Murray
October 18, 2006
As the catastrophe in Iraq continues to unfold, an unresolved question remains on the role of Bush, Blair, and the US/UK military. To what extent were they passively incompetent in facilitating the decline into civil war, and to what extent were they actively pursuing policies that promoted that outcome?
The adoption of the 'Salvador Option' by the US in Iraq was reported and discussed from the beginning of 2005 onwards. As described by Newsweek, the Salvador Option looked something like this:
Following that model, one Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions. It remains unclear, however, whether this would be a policy of assassination or so-called "snatch" operations, in which the targets are sent to secret facilities for interrogation. The current thinking is that while U.S. Special Forces would lead operations in, say, Syria, activities inside Iraq itself would be carried out by Iraqi paramilitaries, officials tell NEWSWEEK.
US Congressman Denis Kucinich took up the issue in April of this year in a letter to Donald Rumsfeld:
Dear Secretary Rumsfeld:
I am writing to request a copy of all records pertaining to Pentagon plans to use U.S. Special Forces to advise, support and train Iraqi assassination and kidnapping teams.
On January 8, 2005, Newsweek magazine first published a report that the Pentagon had a proposal to train elite Iraqi squads to quell the growing Sunni insurgency. The proposal has been called the "Salvador Option," which references the U.S. military assistance program, initiated under the Carter Administration and subsequently pursued by the Reagan Administration, that funded and supported "nationalist" paramilitary forces who hunted down and assassinated rebel leaders and their supporters in El Salvador. This program in El Salvador was highly controversial and received much public backlash in the U.S., as tens of thousands of innocent civilians were assassinated and "disappeared," including notable members of the Catholic Church, Archbishop Oscar Romero and the four American churchwomen. According to the Newsweek report, Pentagon conservatives wanted to resurrect the Salvadoran program in Iraq because they believed that despite the incredible cost in human lives and human rights, it was successful in eradicating guerrillas.....
...About one year before the Newsweek report on the "Salvador Option," it was reported in the American Prospect magazine on January 1, 2004 that part of $3 billion of the $87 billion Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill to fund operations in Iraq, signed into law on November 6, 2003, was designated for the creation of a paramilitary unit manned by militiamen associated with former Iraqi exile groups. According to the Prospect article, experts predicted that creation of this paramilitary unit would "lead to a wave of extrajudicial killings, not only of armed rebels but of nationalists, other opponents of the U.S. occupation and thousands of civilian Baathists." The article further described how the bulk of the $3 billion program, disguised as an Air Force classified program, would be used to "support U.S. efforts to create a lethal, and revenge-minded Iraqi security force." According to one of the article's sources, John Pike, an expert of classified military budgets at www.globalsecurity.org. "the big money would be for standing up an Iraqi secret police to liquidate the resistance."...
...News reports over the past 10 months strongly suggest that the U.S. has trained and supported highly organized Iraqi commando brigades, and that some of those brigades have operated as death squads, abducting and assassinating thousands of Iraqis.
The evidence that the US directly contributed to the creation of the current civil war in Iraq by its own secretive security strategy is compelling. Historically of course this is nothing new - divide and rule is a strategy for colonial powers that has stood the test of time. Indeed, it was used in the previous British occupation of Iraq around 85 years ago. However, maybe in the current scenario the US just over did it a bit, creating an unstoppable momentum that, while stalling the insurgency, has actually led to new problems of control and sustainability for Washington and London.
So, what did Blair know of and approve in the implementation of the Salvador Option? How does he feel about it now? Maybe someone should ask him.
Comment on this Editorial
Editorial: Upon Red Rivers of Genocide
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Manuel Valenzuela
Daily upon the rivers that birthed civilization can the flow of crimson colored blood be seen journeying over liquid roadways through the land of Mesopotamia, its accumulated and growing volume the result of scattered bodies, bullet hole riddled men and bloated humans, all silent witnesses to the devastation that has cursed the Iraqi people.
Tainted with the flow of human wickedness, the Tigris and Euphrates spread their polluted waters over the entire culture of Iraq, like sewers of human waste contaminating land, water and air, their toxins of evil and torture and murder and suffering spreading a noxious fog over cities and towns, its cocktail of death and destruction infecting the fabric of society, the very foundation of Iraq cracked and shattered by the spillage of human energy, that crimson liquid granting life.
Upon red rivers of genocide do twenty five million human beings sip out of, forced to endure the aftertaste of rotting flesh, drinking from the chalice of human violence, swallowing the red liquid of their nation's blood, bathing in its corrupted waterways as their country slowly, yet surely, hemorrhages to death. Unable to close a gaping and now pussing wound, unable to stitch back together lacerated flesh, millions upon millions of human beings have become the gangrened body infected by America's disastrous debacle, slowly rotting from within, turning vile in color and putrid in smell with each passing day, their only salvation the amputation of the whole, the division of their nation, the destruction and partition of Iraq.
To twenty five million Iraqis hell on Earth has been introduced to their land by the demons roaming the halls of American power that care not an ounce for the misery and wickedness now roaming like a vulture over Iraq's skies. For human evil has been imported into the Cradle of Civilization, an export birthed, nurtured and molded by Old Glory itself, under the watchful eyes of Jefferson, Lincoln and Washington, crafted by debasement and corruption, becoming the most successful product launch America has sent abroad in many, many years. For the war culture has perfected the art of sadistic mass murder, a new edition introduced like a software program, resurrected every few decades to enrich war profiteers and greed mongers while making comfortable the lives of those residing inside the belly of the beast. Like a virus the American angel of death has spread far and wide, free of antidotes or miracle cures, given the freedom that is denied Iraqis, like a haze enveloping almost every city and town, village and farm, infecting madness and hatred and vengeance and anger into the minds of millions, injecting civil war upon Iraq and genocide upon the Iraqi people.
Upon the affliction that has befallen them, born of lies, deceit and criminality, against all precepts of human and international law, rising out of smoldering ashes and destroyed skyscrapers, fashioned by incompetent daydreamers and pathological deviants, Iraqis - whose only true curse is having evolved for millennia in the lands pregnant with the devil's excrement - find themselves stuck in a nightmare whose waking hour will not come and whose terror cannot be made to disappear. To them, the nightmare is all too real, as evident as the smell of burning flesh or the concussion of the next explosion, as real as the searing shrapnel tearing and ripping open body parts or the decapitated and mangled head of a loved one.
This nightmare does not wake, nor does it allow eyes to open, becoming as real as the destruction of homes, livelihoods or rape of an older sister. Whether murdered execution style with a bullet to the head or murdered by an American smart bomb, the Iraqi nightmare seems only to end upon the last breaths of life, upon the expiration of human energy. Only then does fire and phosphorous and bullets and missiles and beheadings turn to nothingness; only then does hell on Earth subside and peace prosper.
The omnipotent darkness of genocide, American style, has been resurrected in lands ancient and mesmerizing, where history began and where humanity was nurtured and reared. From the fertile bosom and succulent nectars of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers humankind took a great leap forward, advancing in civilization, growing in numbers, evolving in time. Today, from rivers once offering life only death and the products of human malevolence can be seen, courtesy of greed, arrogance and apathy, of the self-aggrandized narcissism and inexperienced idiocy that blinds and insulates populations smeared in comfort and willful ignorance. Through the silence and acquiescence of Americans, through the complete indifference to the plight of 25 million Iraqis, genocide has become America's foreign policy in Iraq, becoming Iraq's new normal, rising to the present as it once did in the past, a disease thriving wherever America's armies land, just as it once did in the Philippines, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia, where in the span of a century the lives of tens of millions of human beings were systematically erased from the face of Earth.
Genocide, that most malevolent of human activities, that most common of historical realities, that most useful of American foreign policy objectives, a demon that invariably never fails to leave our mammalian psychology, becoming as common to our history as music is to our culture, has been birthed in the land of sand and dunes, becoming as common as scorching temperatures, rising like ancient Babylon once did to lay claim to Mesopotamia. Upon rivers that once brought life now only death floats by; where fertile mud once flowed now human blood gushes. Where sustenance once flourished only misery can now be irrigated; where once fish were pulled out in bountiful amounts now bodies of rotting human flesh are fished out of the water.
For what can you call what is happening in Iraq in the first decade of the twenty-first century anything but genocide, the complete and systematic decimation - the annihilation - of an entire culture, of an entire society, of an entire nation? What do you call the death, mostly by violent murder, state sponsored terrorism, American birthed civil war, sectarian violence and counterterrorism operations, of 655,000 human beings if not mass murder, genocide, the genesis of Holocaust? Two to three percent of the Iraqi population has been exterminated, never to breathe life again, never to see children grow up, never to see mothers give birth or see fathers become proud grandfathers. Two to three percent of Iraq's people lie six feet under, buried under the massive and monstrous American military machine. If two to three percent of America was killed in the span of three years, a number reaching 6 to 9 million individuals, what would happen to the United States? What would happen if a city the size of Los Angeles or New York or Chicago was wiped off the face of the nation? The equivalent of this hypothetical is happening today in Iraq.
Entire families have disappeared, entire ways of life extinguished; the devastation of daily anarchy, occupation, chaos, thirst for vengeance and civil war results in several hundred deaths by murder every single day in Iraq. Every month in Iraq at least 3,000 civilians die at the hands of human wickedness, creating an Iraqi 9/11 every 30 days, every 720 hours. Rivers and puddles of blood flowing through Iraq's streets never seem to run dry, with each new day spawning the next bloodbath of body parts and devastated flesh. The Iraqi genocide refuses to relent, thriving off of human psychology, off of a culture of revenge and honor, off of a brutal guerilla resistance to foreign occupation. In each case of murder, torture or intolerable suffering, the common denominator is always the invasion of Iraq by America and the subsequent occupation that has become a catalyst to the horrors facing average Iraqis today. Each day only seems to make things worse; each year only cements the continuing decent into human Hell. From the bowels of hell the demons of mankind have risen in the land of Mesopotamia.
Children rise one day to innocence only to fall asleep to malevolence. Teenagers once full of idealism, hope and love are now possessed by hate, anger and psychological maiming. Young adults hoping for a fruitful life now have only the memories of the past to sustain them, their potential and opportunity now eroded, their talents and abilities quashed. Mothers and fathers once hoping for a better tomorrow for their children now see nothing but decades of decimation to come. Grandmothers and grandfathers look at the present and remember the past, cursing the devil's excrement, condemning the Anglo-American world, shedding tears over the crushed vibrancy of a destroyed society. Through the eyes of babies a world of violence and murder becomes routine, along with bloated bellies and diseased bodies, hungry mouths and depleted brain power. Through the eyes of babies Iraq and its cities burn in a fiery inferno of man killing man, its pillars crumbling under the weight of the evil birthed through American intervention. This, today, is reality and truth to 25 million Iraqis, or to those who remain, unable to flee.
Genesis of Holocaust
The lives of 25 million human beings lie in ruins, destroyed like the rubble and mortar that lines city streets and boulevards. The Iraqi genocide is what we at present see, a reality fated to continue well into the future, without a hint of when it will stop, a direct and proximate cause of America's war crimes and its illegal and immoral occupation. The curse upon Iraqis, begun with the act of economic genocide called sanctions, imposed, implemented and supervised by America in the 1990's - which resulted in the death of up to 1.5 million Iraqis, 500,000 of them children lacking proper nourishment or medicines - and continued with Bush's Crusade against Iraq, an operation of blatant terrorism disguised under the state's veil of Lady Liberty and Old Glory, has in the span of a decade and a half become a shameful and criminal Holocaust, resulting in the death of perhaps two million human beings. If the mass murder by radiation through America's weapon of mass destruction, depleted uranium munitions, is added to the calculations, the Iraqi Holocaust approaches some of the worst crimes of human civilization in the brief history of our species.
The monster engendered by George W. Bush, the military-energy industrial complex and the neocons has become an unstoppable force whose momentum has spiraled out of control, its life growing and evolving not in accordance with the commands from Washington but rather from the vicious cycle of devastation now feeding its unquenchable appetite for blood and malice. Like a hurricane it gains speed and strength from warm liquid, in this case human blood, becoming a vicious circle of mass murder that cannot be halted.
Has the greed and hunger for unsurpassed wealth and power been worth the genocide of Iraqis? Has it been worth the indescribable pain and suffering and anger and hatred emanating from millions of Iraqis against the United States? To you and me the answer is surely no; to the war mongers and greed addicts in power, however, it has been worth every penny, for they care nothing for ordinary Iraqis, having not one drop of remorse or empathy or humanity in their ice cold veins from where only the green of the Almighty dollar and the thick black oil of the devil's excrement is allowed to flow. To them, the Iraqi genocide is seen only through the macabre vision of dollar signs and enhanced power. To these individuals, they would just as easily squash a cockroach than care about 300 deaths a day in Iraq.
How high will the final tally of dead Iraqis reach? How much killing and murder and maiming and destruction is left to achieve? How much longer will the blueprint for Central America during the Cold War be implemented in Iraq, with its counterinsurgency operations full of torture, disappearances, mass executions and death squads? Will the final death count approach the two to three million dead that were recorded in Vietnam, that the American military left in its wake as it retreated from its embassy's rooftop? Will the killing stop only when there is nothing left to kill, only when the enemies of America have exhausted destroying each other, when they realize that they have been made to fight each other so as not to unite and fight the common enemy, just as the pathological occupiers desired in a classic example of divide and conquer?
The Iraqi genocide will not be destroyed until America is kicked out of Iraq, until its bases are overrun, until the Green Zone is sacked, until the last remaining Americans are evacuated with helicopters from the rooms of Saddam's old palaces, for it will never leave voluntarily. It has created a mess it cannot extricate itself out of, both strategically and financially. It has invested too much precious treasure, to say nothing of blood, in the pursuit and control of Iraq's energy resources. It has built more than a dozen permanent bases, it has firmly planted itself in a most geostrategic location, the easier to wage battle against tomorrow's rivals, Russia and China. America has made the first move in the great chess match for control of Earth's remaining petroleum. It cannot now simply pack up and leave, no matter how costly the enterprise, no matter how much blood is spilled. With its reputation in tatters, with its military trapped in quicksand, with its leaders as incompetent and arrogant as they are unwise, America will, like a spoiled and undisciplined child of wealth, thinking itself privileged and enveloped under hallucinations of chosen grandeur, refuse to listen to reason, preferring to suffocate under the immense weight of the greatest strategic disaster in the history of the nation than declare defeat and retreat.
The killing and destruction will continue, with America as catalyst, as the malignancy destroying the invaded nation with the cancer of human wickedness, until the term genocide is replaced by the word Holocaust, until millions lie in graves, their bodies returning to dust and earth and grass, the winds carrying radiation poisoning becoming the silent reminders and perpetual killers of America's foray into the Iraqi deserts. Millions of Iraqis, those already born and those yet to come, are destined to die at the hands of what America wrought. Thousands will die of bullet holes to the head, while thousands more will be murdered by bombs and missiles. Still many more will die of preventable disease, dead for lack of sanitation, lack of potable water, lack of electricity, medicine and nutritious food. Tens of thousands will die of lack of security, as anarchy and chaos and civil war devastate Iraqi culture and society. Untold numbers of Iraqis will die of cancers and diseases resulting from radiation poisoning caused by the use of hundreds of tons of depleted uranium munitions. Thousands of newborns will be born mutated or deformed, distorted in ways human babies have never looked before; thousands more will never be born at all, for stillborn will they enter this planet, becoming the lucky few to escape the human hell their parents must confront and escape.
Up to a million Iraqis, those lucky enough to possess some form of infinitesimal wealth, have fled their native country, never to return to their homes, their lives left behind. Displaced by America's occupation and the resulting insecurity and guerilla warfare, uncounted millions have decided that it is better to risk leaving Iraq than remaining under the real threat of becoming one more statistic in a Baghdad morgue. The Iraqi Diaspora has begun, with those allotted a little luck in money and fate creating a mass exodus from Mesopotamia, choosing poverty abroad rather than insecurity and constant threat at home. Already hundreds of thousands of professionals have left the cities, from professors to doctors, leaving Iraq a desolate and anemic society, never to return to the nation of their birth. As a result, hundreds of thousand of students are without teachers, millions of civilians are without doctors.
Yet for the poor of Iraq, for those comprising the salt of the earth, the great majority of Iraq's citizens whose resources prevent escape from the gates of hell on Earth, only the certainty of living in constant fear of death or injury awaits, their lives reduced to an understanding that the last breath they take could very well be their final gasp of air. For the poor of Iraq, America and its brutal occupation, with its massive debacle of historical proportions, makes Saddam Hussein seem like Franklin D. Roosevelt. Indeed, how many Iraqis today wish Saddam was still in power? Iraq, after all, was safe, secure and at peace with him at the helm, a reality that today does not exist.
While brutal and a dictator, he was nonetheless the fulcrum upon which all of Iraq stood united, in control, free of terrorism, a non-threat to its neighbors, much less to George W. Bush's America. Yet even today his war crimes pale in comparison with those unleashed by George W. Bush, yet it is Saddam that will soon hang from a noose. It was Saddam that acted as the thread and needle needed to stitch Iraq together. Without him the entire deck of cards has come tumbling down. With a western created nation such as Iraq, with borders delineated according to European interests and not ethnic or religious realities, only a strong-arm despot sponsored by the west could maintain control, becoming the thread holding the nation together. Unfortunately for America, George W. Bush and his neocon handlers have no interest in learning history or its many lessons.
The Folly of Ignoring History's Lessons
What those who discard or ridicule the study of history fail to realize is that history - not the kind that is written by powers or winners but by reality - is but the decoded pattern of repeated psychologies and behaviors of our past and the blueprint for understanding our present and future. It is our demons, mistakes, lessons, triumphs, wonders and evolution as a civilization outlined for us to learn from and study, to absorb fully into our existence. For it is indeed true that those who fail to learn history are utterly, and faithfully, condemned to repeat it, which is what has happened in the American disaster in Iraq, as well as in the brewing failure in Afghanistan. Had the history of the region been taken seriously, had it been studied and learned from, Iraq would have never become the inferno it is today. Quite simply, Iraq should have never been invaded and occupied. Yet wisdom and intelligence are almost always mutually exclusive from politicians, elites and their legions of yes-men and women.
By throwing away the readily available history of Mesopotamia, with its plethora of lessons and warnings for arrogant yet ignorant imperial seekers saturated with the honey of hubristic honey, America and her so-called leaders embarked on a course towards debacle from the very beginning, preferring to believe those whose minds dwell in fantasy, delusion and theory espoused in books over those whose decisions are based on history, experience, wisdom and reality. America's so-called leaders chose to smell the sweet yet delusional aroma of being greeted as liberators, believing they would be welcomed with flowers, candy thrown at their feet. Instead, they were greeted with AK-47s, rocket propelled grenades and IED's, along with the collective and growing anger of the Iraqi people. Because of this gross incompetence, because of complete negligence and disregard for reality, American soldiers were sent into a hornet's nest, straight into a pit of quicksand designed to meticulous tear apart one soldier at a time, trapping citizen soldiers in a guerilla war that was never going to be won and was always going to end in disaster.
Because of the complete ignorance festering at the top of America's pyramid of hierarchy and inside the decrepit neocon nest of vultures, in three years 655,000 Iraqis have died, more than a million Iraqis have become refugees, countless more have suffered maiming of both body and mind, and an entire society has been decimated, raped of its vibrancy and usurped of its peace and unity. With years yet to go before the madness is halted, with America unable and unwilling to extricate itself from the tar pit it has nosedived into, the genocide now taking place will only grow, easily surpassing the present evil in the Darfur, the past wickedness in Rwanda and the Congo, and threatening to reach levels of genocide America created and furthered in both Vietnam and Cambodia, which resulted in millions of deaths.
If this is the case, the time honored American tradition of waging invasion and occupation against a concocted enemy nation will continue, as always biting off more than it can chew, refusing to change the course, through guerilla war waged by resistance forces being forced to retreat, in the process engendering and furthering genocide, creating a bloodbath in the process, and eventually leaving the nation it originally invaded a wasteland of destruction, suffering and death. Its time honored tradition of killing millions through invasion, occupation and through a barrage of state sponsored terrorism every two or three decades will thus continue. Which country, which people, we should all wonder, will be next to become the blood needed by the Pax Americana to gorge on? Which nation will be next to suffer the wrath of American genocide that invariably helps sustain the comfortable standard of living of those residing inside the belly of the beast?
For those residing in the reality based community and not the fantasy based bubble of delusion, the Iraq debacle has become even greater than originally thought, becoming, in the span of three years, a disaster of monumental proportions, a comma of history that will be studied and analyzed as the greatest strategic disaster in the history of the United States. It will become the comma of history that is used, along with that other comma called Vietnam, as a case study of how not to hand incompetent greed addicts and war mongers the reigns of military power, becoming, as all disaster usually is, a harsh lesson taught future generations so that they do not repeat the mistakes and disasters of their forefathers. Unfortunately, the same was once said of the Vietnam experience.
Forever Remembered, Never Forgotten
The Iraq genocide from 1991 through the Bush Crusade will forever be remembered in history books, just as the president wanted, though not for the reasons those who concocted and furthered it thought. It will be remembered not for triumph or grandeur or to memorialize America or its leaders but rather for the crimes against humanity, for the war crimes, the horrible suffering and the genocide perpetuated by America along with the shameful indifference, acquiescence and silence of an American people that have lost all sense of shame, or decency, preferring to bask under the glow of purposeful ignorance than have their lives of comfort and materialism interrupted by the destruction and genocide their country is committing in the Middle East.
The Iraq/Bush Crusade will be remembered for the greed and lust for oil of the American people, of millions upon millions driving gas-guzzling SUVs while Iraqis were forced to spend entire days in line to fill up their cars. It will be remembered for a housing bubble that granted Americans inflated and borrowed comfort, allowing them the opportunity to purchase enormous cookie cutter homes and a myriad number of toys, wants and luxuries, even as our war machine destroyed the lives of 655,000 human beings, even as our beautiful minds placed the entire decimation of another nation by our government out of sight and out of mind.
The Bush Crusade will be seen for what it has become: the utter failure of the American people to act during our most loathsome hour. At a time when America hit the nadir of morality and virtue, the American people of the first decade of the 21st century will be judged guilty of complicity in the first mass genocide of the new millennium. Our callous complicity in supporting criminals and murderers, while living lives of gluttony and apathy, have made us all guilty in what has certainly become a crime of the highest order. But for our terrible passivity in the face of an illegal and immoral invasion and occupation, obvious war crimes, and the decadence of American virtue and principles, perhaps the Iraq genocide might have been avoided, saving the lives of millions of human beings, both Iraqi and American, and perhaps saving our honor and reputation as well.
As a result of this most incompetent of administrations, Iraq and its valiant resistance has disemboweled the grand American military machine, gutting its power, re-opening the large scab that refuses to heal, bringing the American imperial project to its knees and proving to humanity, yet again, that asymmetric guerilla warfare cannot be defeated by a conventional military, no matter how arrogant or powerful it claims itself to be. In the streets of Iraq battles are waged according to the dictates of the resistance, a fragmented amalgam of native mujahadeen whose knowledge of Iraq, patience in attacking, discipline in retreating and noble cause in fighting off a brutal occupation, have allowed it to bruise and make bloody the American military on a daily basis, slowly, yet surely, tiring out the powerful giant.
With 95 percent of the resistance born and bred in Iraq, fighting for the independence of their nation and not for an al-Qaeda ideology, with 90 percent of the civilian population supporting them, America will never defeat the insurgency, no matter how hard it tries to divide and conquer, no matter how many times it tries to foment sectarian violence and civil war, no matter how many billions it spends on a monthly basis, no matter how many permanent bases it decides to build. Shiite and Sunni may be fighting each other, yet their common enemy remains America.
A culture of vengeance and of honor, a society brimming with anger and a people thirsting for freedom from America cannot be defeated, no matter how many times the occupier decides to stay the course on a most defective ship. Iraqis fight for freedom and independence; they fight to prevent their oil from being stolen; they fight for family and honor, for the death of loved ones and against the dehumanization by the occupier. They have reason to fight, possessing passion knowing they are in the right, which cannot be said of American soldiers. What does America fight for? What cause guides it forward? What passion drives its momentum? How is America in the right? This war is all about control of oil, all about greed and engorging the bank accounts of the military-energy industrial complex. The Bush Crusade is about pillage of resources, plundering of the treasury and securing for tomorrow the oil fiefdoms that will further enrich and empower the American elite and its corporations. How do you get American soldiers to believe in a cause and fight for a war based on lies, deceit, manipulations and for the greed and power of a tiny minority that have sent them to become the cannon fodder of the wealthy?
The Shame of America
Make no mistake, America will prefer to stay the course, for to its alpha male leaders it can never "cut and run." Her so-called leaders will always choose to sacrifice thousands of sons and daughters of poverty so leaders' and their reputations and legacies survive intact. It is not their sons and daughters bleeding to death, it is not their relatives being maimed in body and mind. No, America never loses a war, it never suffers defeat, for in the national narrative, in the fables and myths told the masses, America is blessed by the Christian god, she is good and everything else evil, she is right and all else wrong, her soldiers fight only for freedom and democracy, not for corporate and elite power. In the national fiction a war on terror exists and Iraq is the central front, the place where evil must be confronted because it hates us for our freedoms, not our foreign policy.
Sure, the appearance of withdrawal of forces will be concocted to appease the grumbling masses, enough to satisfy their beautiful minds, yet tens of thousands of troops will remain, protecting pipelines, refineries, permanent bases and the oil fields that now fly the great red, white and blue. You do not think the American state would spend a trillion dollars in the Bush Crusade simply to expel a despot from power, right? You do not think a trillion dollars will in the end be spent to bring freedom and democracy to a partitioned tri- state, do you? Because of oil and its strategic location in the Middle East and near Central Asia, Iraq will remain an American colony for decades to come or until that time that Iraq's oil fields run dry. It will be infested with American troops protecting America's corporate interests until the day arrives when America and her military are forced out of the nation by a resistance that continues to gain momentum, strength and support. Only by force, and with her tail between her feet, will America stubbornly relent and retreat in the face of a perpetual bloodbath.
To her leaders, as well as to most of her citizens, the Iraqi genocide is of no more significance than last week's episode of Survivor. Out of sight and out of mind, hundreds of millions of Americans could care less about Iraqis and their plight. To America's so-called leaders, genocide is part of doing business, part of war profiteering and greasing the engine of perpetual war for perpetual profit. To most Americans, both leaders and civilians, Iraqis are subhuman dark skinned Arabs and the death of 655,00, or the displacement of one million, are of little importance or consequence, whether or not the American state perpetrated crimes against humanity in their name.
Why be bothered by the misery and suffering of Arabs in the Middle East when a pedophile was just forced to resign from the Congress? Why feel any ounce of sympathy for the plight of Iraqis when Democrats will only continue the massacre when they regain control of the legislative branch? Why feel extreme sadness and guilt and shame at what is done in our name when we have trouble even finding Iraq on a global map? Why feel indignation at the genocide taking place when more than 40 percent of Americans still think Iraq was involved in the inside job of 9/11?
As a result of what America has unleashed upon Iraq, given the silent passivity and blind acquiescence of the masses, given the loyal support granted Bush by 59 million voters in 2004 and the perpetual support of 30 percent of American sheeple, given the reprehensible indifference and racist xenophobia towards Iraqis by many Americans, given the astounding mortality figures rising out of Iraq in the last fifteen years as a result of American involvement, it is both a shame and an embarrassment to consider oneself American. In this day and age, to consider oneself proud to be an American is to be in serious need of psychological assistance, psychotropic medication, or both. It is to be so brainwashed and manipulated by the state and the corporate media that the labeling of someone as ignorant is a valid affirmative defense.
To show no remorse against the myriad number of crimes against humanity and the war crimes perpetrated by the American government and its president is to lack the basic tenets of what it is to be human. It is to dwell in the land of sheeple and lemmings, immersed in a population of pathological sadists more concerned for the health of fictional television characters than in the genocide of hundreds of thousands of real human beings. To salute the red, white and blue today is to give comfort to terrorists and blind loyalty to criminals. It is to support the destruction of the Constitution, of democracy, international law and human decency. In short, saluting the American flag today is to declare war and commit treason against all the United States has ever stood for, all it has ever fought to preserve. It is to appease the real terrorists, aiding war criminals and granting blind loyalty and faith to the United Corporations of America, a nation of, by and for the corporate world and the elite that control it.
How sad that in the worst cluster of years in our history the American people decided to do nothing, preferring to sit on our ever expanding buttocks hypnotized by the corporate media, failing to act at the most important moment of our lives, our only contribution being remaining silent to the avalanche of war crimes and crimes against humanity that have laid waste to Iraq. How sad and pathetic Americans have become, in the first decade of the 21st century, becoming the ignorant, fearful, xenophobic, acquiescent and indifferent army of good Americans. A once virtuous and honorable people, at one time possessed of intelligence and free thinking minds have, in the span of a few decades, been transformed into the epitome of cattle, sheep and any other unthinking creatures of group mentality, today lacking the cognitive qualities used to reason and use logic to think independently of what the state and the corporate world inculcate.
Ignorance has prevailed over knowledge, eroding the very foundation of democracy, for an unthinking populace cannot possibly question its leaders, their motives, or be given the vital responsibility of electing representatives to act in their interest. With a population bred over decades for ignorance, incurious about the world, unaware of other cultures or lands, conditioned to fear what is not known, the state can act without accountability or restraint, for the blind masses have become too numb minded to even care or be concerned. This is the reality in America today, and the reason genocide goes silent, why it goes unquestioned or why it remains relatively unknown, much like that mass murder that took place in Vietnam. The truth is that Americans would rather not know what their government does in their name, fearing their comfortable lives would become upset with the knowledge of what is transpiring in Iraq at the hands of the American military machine.
Unthinking and easily manipulated, those residing inside the belly of the beast are mere clay in the hands of the powerful, easily molded into the cookie cutter drones of the corporatist state. Combined with the xenophobia, patriotism and nationalism spawned by 9/11, a dumbed down populace thus cares nothing for genocide committed in their name, regressing down a few steps down the evolutionary ladder, devolving into a knuckle dragging proto-primate only a nose hair separated from our chimp cousins. To the average American citizen, better a dead Iraqi than a night without the comfortable glare of the omnipresent television monitor. Better 655,000 dead subhuman Arabs than a day living without a gas-guzzling SUV tank.
To the 25 million Iraqis whose lives have been condemned to hell on Earth, courtesy of the United States, please accept this man's sincere apology for what this wicked nation has done to your land and people, to your daily lives, culture and society. I know I speak for many who live in the United States when I say that I lower my head in shame at what is done in my name. Today, more than ever, I am ashamed to be American. I am ashamed for what this nation has done, for what it will continue doing, for what it has become and for the continued and silent acquiescence of the American people.
As much as words can traverse entire oceans and deserts, as much as they can never replace lives lost or family members buried, as much as they can never make right what has been wronged, please accept this digital apology for a horror many of us detest and abhor. I am truly sorry, from the bottom of my heart, for the curse that has befallen your beautiful land and culture. I apologize for the 30 to 40 percent of Americans that are one-step away from complete mental retardation. I apologize for the lazy, gluttonous and complacent millions whose only experience with life is the nightly glow of television. I apologize for the tens of millions of so-called Christians that call themselves the culture of life even as they drool with glee at the genocide taking place in your nation. I apologize that the Bush Crusade has not been stopped, that the American people have not hung the neocon cabal from the rafters and that the war culture will only continue laying waste to the peoples of the world.
The Iraq Genocide is a curse upon us all, a shame for all humanity, a crime of the highest order that should bring those responsible to deserved justice. In a more perfect world, there would be confidence that criminals and murderers and malfeasant authoritarians would be brought to justice. In the real world, however, they are promoted, elected and made much more powerful. They are given bonuses and pats on the back, allowed to join the elite membership of privilege and power. Such is human civilization that the genocide of 1.5 million a few years ago, 655,000 Iraqis the last three years, perhaps that of millions tomorrow, will be glossed over and forgotten, becoming one comma of history, not unlike many others that have come before, not unlike many others that are sure to follow, becoming yet one more reality of this self-destructive species called humankind. Genocide comes in many shapes and sizes, monopolized by nobody, suffered by all. Upon red rivers of genocide is Iraq being flooded with, released by America through its spigots of human wickedness.
May we one day be forgiven for the madness that has contaminated us. May Iraqis one day offer us the humanity we seem to have lost. May we find our way, if not for us, then for our progeny. May our children learn from our ways, evolving a better culture than we are leaving behind. Shame on us all for what we have allowed our government to become. Shame on us all for what we have allowed it to do in our name. Shame on America. Shame. Shame. Shame.
Original
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Bloody Truth About Iraq
Iraq vet dismembers girlfriend in New Orleans; cooks body parts
By Walt Philbin
Times-Picayune
October 18, 2006
A suicide note in the pocket of a man who jumped off the Omni Royal Orleans Hotel late Tuesday led police to the grisly scene of his girlfriend's murder, where they found her charred head in a pot on the stove, her legs and feet baked in the oven and the rest of her dismembered body in trash bag in the refrigerator, according to police and the couple's landlord.
The man, Zackery Bowen, a tall man in his mid 20s with long blond hair, claimed in the note to have killed his girlfriend, Adrian "Addie" Hall, on Oct. 5, according to police. Hall was also in her mid 20s.
In the five-page note, Bowen claimed he strangled Hall in the bathtub, then dismembered her body before taking it in pieces to the kitchen, police said. An autopsy conducted today shows that Hall was in fact manually strangled, police said. It also appears that Hall's body was cut up after she died, police said.
"He appeared to clean up the bathroom a lot after he did it," one officer said.
Police found the victim's head burned beyond recognition in a pot on top of the stove, and her legs and feet in the same condition in pans inside the oven, police said.
Bowen was from Los Angeles, but apparently had lived in the New Orleans area for quite a while, police said. Friends said he served in the military in Iraq and Afghanistan and displayed both pride and bitterness over that experience.
Detectives said they were compiling a detailed profile of Bowen to submit as soon as possible to the FBI's VICAP (Violent Criminal Apprehension Program) center. VICAP is a nationwide data information center designed to collect acts of violence that might be serial in nature and recognized by other jurisdictions with access to VICAP as similar to a crime that they investigated.
Shortly after Oct. 1, the couple had rented an apartment together at 826 N. Rampart Street above a voodoo shop, said their landlord, Leo Watermeier, who recently ran a campaign for mayor.
The couple seemed happy at first, he said, though that would soon break down.
"He may have in retrospect seemed a little troubled," Watermeier said in an interview early Wednesday morning, shortly after he led investigators to the gruesome scene inside the apartment.
Last Sunday, several days after he claimed in his suicide note to have killed her, Bowen appeared "all jolly, talking about the trip he was going to take," said Lisa Perilloux, a regular at Buffa's bar, where Bowen worked a weekly bartending gig.
Bowen had told several co-workers and friends there he planned to take a "much-needed vacation" to Cozumel or some other island resort, said Donovan Kalabaza, a fellow bartender and friend.
"Just think, tomorrow night, you'll be in paradise," Kalabaza recalled telling him.
Sunday afternoon, Bowen came in briefly in the afternoon, drinking with two other guys.
"He was a great mood, best mood I've ever seen him in."
Bowen jumped to his death two nights later.
Though they appeared happy when they rented the Rampart Street apartment - telling Watermeier they had fallen in love on the night Hurricane Katrina struck and Hall gave Bowen shelter - they soon had a bitter falling out, Watermeier said. After the storm, the couple lived a vagabond existence in the shattered city, becoming feature fodder for the swarm of national media eager to profile post-flood diehards.
But on Oct. 5, during a dispute over which of their names would appear on the lease, Hall told Watermeier she intended to kick Bowen out of the apartment, after finding out that he had cheated on her, Watermeier said.
Bowen did not take the news well, Watermeier said.
"He said, 'Did you just let her sign a lease alone? Because I'm screwed. I'm totally messed up now. She's trying to kick me out of our apartment," Watermeier said.
Hall admitted she was trying to throw Bowen out, he said.
"I caught him cheating on me, and I am kicking him out of this apartment," she told Watermeier.
Watermeier told the couple to work through their differences and get back to him. He never saw Hall again, and assumed they'd worked it out.
Police came to Watermeier's door about 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, shortly after Bowen committed suicide, asking if he knew a tall man with long blonde hair, and if he had a connection with the apartment at 826 N. Rampart St.
He took them to the apartment, he said, where they warned him he might not want to enter. Investigators told Watermeier what they found, however: charred body parts strewn about the kitchen.
Hall was also not from New Orleans, Watermeier said, but both she and Bowen seemed "hard core" about the city and proud that they had stayed here through Katrina.
Bowen's suicide was first discovered Tuesday when his body was spotted below by someone in an upper floor lounge. It was soon determined that Bowen had jumped from an outside terrace near a swimming pool on an upper floor to the roof of the Chartres Street garage on the second floor, police said.
A surveillance camera showed him walking several times to the edge of a ledge on the upper floor, then retreating, then returning again, until he finally plunged, police said.
Police found the five-page suicide note in his pocket, which not only led him to the scene of the murder, but included information on an out-of-state person who should be contacted after he was found, police said.
As the news began to filter through the French Quarter and Faubourg Marigny - where the couple worked, drank and at times argued - friends and co-workers relayed details of their personalities, their demons, and the tumultuous last weeks in their lives. Some offered portraits of a loving couple that sometimes fought; others painted a darker portrait of a dysfunctional couple at perpetual war.
Perilloux said she never heard Bowen speak anything but ill of Hall.
"He was getting rid of her," she said, meaning he was trying to break up with her. "He used to complain about her to me. It was revolving door."
She also relayed an recent incident where Hall screamed expletives at Bowen through the front door of Buffa's, in front of a crowd of regulars. Associates of Bowen described him as a strapping, smooth-talking man who flirted with other women, often making Hall often jealous. Karen Lott, owner of Buffa's bar on Esplanade, where Hall worked one bartending shift a week, said she had hired him as "eye candy for the ladies" after meeting him when he made deliveries to her from Matassa's.
"The customers loved him. Everyone loved him," she said, still reeling from the news of his suicide and her gruesome murder.
They knew Hall well at Buffa's, too, where she often sat at the other end of the bar, often staring admiringly at Bowen as he either served drinks or ordered his own, almost always a Miller High Life and a shot of Jameson Irish Whiskey. When loud music drowned out their conversation, she would pass him notes, often to tell him she loved him, said Donovan Kalabaza, 34, a fellow bartender at Buffa's and friend of both Hall and Bowen.
Ed Parrish, co-owner of the Spotted Cat bar on Frenchman Street, where Hall worked up until a month ago, said he could tell something had gone awry in her life. She started missing work, then coming back to apologize and seek to save her job.
"I had a feeling something was seriously wrong," he said.
She had worked there for about a year, he said, before becoming unreliable. After not showing up for shifts three times, Parrish never saw her again.
Eura Jones, who cleans the bar in the mornings, had not heard about the gruesome killings until told by a reporter early Wednesday. She described Hall a "real friendly" and "a real pretty girl" who was smitten with Bowen.
"She loved that guy. She really loved him," Jones said, though she added the couple squabbled often.
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Bush acknowledges Iraq-Vietnam war comparison
AFP
Thu Oct 19, 2006
WASHINGTON - US President George W. Bush has for the first time acknowledged a possible parallel between the raging violence in Iraq and the Vietnam War.
But the White House also affirmed that it has no plan to reassess its strategy in the war-ravaged country, despite a surge in US casualties there and unrelenting sectarian bloodshed.
Bush was asked in an ABC News interview late Wednesday if he agreed with a New York Times columnist's comparison of the strife in Iraq with the Tet Offensive, which is considered a key turning point in the US war in Vietnam.
"He could be right," Bush said. "There's certainly a stepped-up level of violence."
Bush said insurgents were trying "to inflict enough damage that we'd leave."
"First of all, Al-Qaeda is still very active in Iraq. They are dangerous. They are lethal. They are trying to not only kill American troops, but they're trying to foment sectarian violence," he said.
"They believe that if they can create enough chaos, the American people will grow sick and tired of the Iraqi effort and will cause (the) government to withdraw," Bush said.
The Tet Offensive, a campaign launched by the North Vietnamese in early 1968, was considered a military defeat for them, but the scope of the assault shocked Americans and helped turn US public opinion against the war.
Many Americans concluded that the war was unwinnable or victory too costly.
The White House later sought to put the comparison in context.
"The full context was that the comparison was about the propaganda waged in the Tet Offensive ... and the president was reiterating something he's said before -- that the enemy is trying to shake our will," Dana Perino, a Bush spokeswoman, said in a statement.
"They know that we're a caring and compassionate people and that we're deeply affected by gross violence," she said.
"The president also believes the American people understand the importance of beating our enemy who is determined to kill innocent freedom-loving people."
The comments came amid a steep spike in US deaths in Iraq, including 10 killed in a single day, on Wednesday.
The US military announced two more US soldier deaths early Thursday, bringing the total number of American fatalities in Iraq this month to 69.
The US administration said the surge in US casualties would not lead to a reassessment of the US strategy there.
"The strategy is to win," spokesman Tony Snow said in the southern state of North Carolina Wednesday. "As everybody says, correctly, we've got to win. And that comes at a cost."
"The president understands not only the difficulty of it, but he grieves for the people who have served and served with valor," said Snow, who told reporters that US forces "do believe in the mission."
Also on Thursday, a suicide truck bomber slammed into an Iraqi police station in the northern city of Mosul, killing 10 and wounding 14, police said. Nine of the dead were civilians.
The attacks came amid a spectacular surge in insurgent and sectarian violence around Iraq, which has claimed hundreds of lives since the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan just over three weeks ago.
In the television interview, the US leader expressed support for Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki but warned that his patience is not infinite.
"In my judgment, Maliki has got what it takes to lead a unity government," Bush said.
"I'm patient. I'm not patient forever. And I'm not patient with dawdling. But I recognize the degree of difficulty of the task, and therefore, say to the American people, we won't cut and run," he said.
Bush ruled out a complete troop withdrawal as long as he is president, through January 2009.
However, a high-powered panel named by the US Congress to assess policy options in Iraq is weighing recommendations that could deal a blow to Bush's "stay-the-course" policy in Iraq.
A source associated with the Iraq Study Group confirmed media reports that options under consideration include a phased withdrawal of US soldiers from Iraq and an opening of diplomatic channels with Iran and Syria.
Both steps would represent a major break with the president's policies.
The 10-member panel of bipartisan heavyweights will deliver its report sometime after the November 7 mid-term elections, according to its leader, respected former secretary of state James Baker.
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Iraq like Vietnam? Bush says that 'could be right'
SMH.com.au
October 19, 2006
US President George Bush today for the first time acknowledged a possible parallel between the raging violence in Iraq and the Vietnam War.
Bush was asked in an ABC News interview if he agreed with a New York Times columnist's comparison of the strife in Iraq with the Tet offensive, which is considered a key turning point in the US war in Vietnam.
"He could be right," he said. "There's certainly a stepped up level of violence."
Bush said insurgents are trying "to inflict enough damage that we'd leave".
"First of all, al-Qaeda is still very active in Iraq. They are dangerous. They are lethal. They are trying to not only kill American troops, but they're trying to foment sectarian violence," he said.
"They believe that if they can create enough chaos, the American people will grow sick and tired of the Iraqi effort and will cause (the) government to withdraw," Bush said.
The White House later sought to put the comparison in context.
"The full context was that the comparison was about the propaganda waged in the Tet offensive ... and the president was reiterating something he's said before - that the enemy is trying to shake our will," Dana Perino, a Bush spokeswoman, said in a statement.
"They know that we're a caring and compassionate people and that we're deeply affected by gross violence," she said.
"The president also believes the American people understand the importance of beating our enemy who is determined to kill innocent freedom-loving people."
In the television interview, the US leader also expressed support for Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki but warned that his patience is not infinite.
"In my judgment, Maliki has got what it takes to lead a unity government," Bush said.
"I'm patient. (But) I'm not patient forever. And I'm not patient with dawdling. But I recognise the degree of difficulty of the task, and therefore, say to the American people, we won't cut and run," he said.
Comment: Wow! Words of wisdom from the genius president! What would we do without him to keep us on the straight and narrow!
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Saddam execution could 'defuse violence'
19/10/2006
AP
Iraq's prime minister says Saddam Hussein's execution would help undermine the insurgency as the ex-president's genocide trial heard more testimony today of poison gas attacks on Kurdish villages two decades ago.
Prime minister Nouri Maliki said he hoped the trial would not last long and "shortly a death sentence will be passed against this criminal tyrant, his aides and the criminals who worked with him".
"Definitely, with his execution, those betting on returning to power under the banner of Saddam and the Baath (Party) will loose," Maliki said in Najaf.
Saddam and six co-defendants are on trial for their roles in Operation Anfal, a military offensive against the Kurds in 1987-88. The prosecution says some 180,000 Kurds were killed and hundreds of villages destroyed.
Saddam and another defendant are also charged with genocide, but all could face the death penalty if convicted.
Saddam is also awaiting a verdict in a first trial in connection with the deaths of about 148 Shiite villagers in Dujail after an assassination attempt against him in 1982.
A verdict in the Dujail trial is expected next month, and if convicted Saddam could also face death by hanging.
Both trials are being closely watched by the US-backed [controlled] Iraqi government, which is battling an insurgency in which Saddam's supporters play a major role.
Comment: "A load of old hogwash" is the best description of the Iraqi puppet Prime Minister's suggestion that executing the fake Saddam would stop the violence in Iraq. The simple truth is that the violence in Iraq is being carried out by US backed death squads in an effort to turn the US invasion of Iraq into a "sectarian conflict" which will provide justification for the eventual break-up of Iraq, which just happens to be one of the original aims of the US invasion in the first place.
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US and UK forced out of Iraq and Afghanistan as local people resist the occupation with growing courage
UK Independent
18/10/2006
George Bush and Tony Blair were looking more isolated than ever last night as the ground shifted further under their strategy of remaining in Iraq "until the job is done".
The President and the Prime Minister were left clinging to the dream of establishing a lasting democracy in Iraq as their advisers urged them to look for a new, more realistic, exit strategy.
A leaked report by the Iraq Study Group, chaired by former US secretary of state James Baker, a close friend of the Bush family, paved the way for a large-scale withdrawal of US forces and a dramatic shift of US policy.
It suggested that instead of the "stay the course" policy, President Bush could extricate the US from the quagmire of Iraq by removing US forces to bases outside Iraq. In an even more spectacular U-turn, they are believed to suggest that Iran and Syria could be invited to co-operate in the stabilisation of lawless Iraq.
That was implicitly rejected by the White House spokesman Tony Snow, who said the administration would not "subcontract" management of the war to outside advisers. But two high-profile Republican senators separately called for a change of course.
"We clearly need a new strategy," said Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a possible 2008 presidential candidate.
John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Iraq was "drifting sideways" and that if there was no improvement within two or three months, then policy would have to change.
That deadline coincides with the expected publication of the conclusions of Mr Baker's Iraq Study Group around the end of the year.
Support for the war is at its lowest ebb and top Republicans warned that the present state of affairs could not continue.
With the carnage on the ground mounting daily, and American military losses approaching 2,800, a new CNN poll found 64 per cent of the public believing the war was a mistake - more than at any time since the invasion in March 2003.
Mr Bush's approval rating is close to all-time lows, three weeks before mid-term elections at which the Republicans face the loss of one or both Houses of Congress.
Senior Labour figures in Britain are hoping a shift of opinion in the highest reaches of the US administration could signal a turning point to force Mr Blair to revise his own approach to Iraq where Allied forces have failed to establish the rule of law, in spite of the promises that followed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Last week, Mr Blair was urged by the chief of Britain's armed forces, General Sir Richard Dannatt to scale down his ambitions for Iraq. Warning that the Army could be broken if it was forced to stay in the country, Sir Richard said: "The original intention was that we put in place a liberal democracy that was an exemplar for the region, was pro-West and might have a beneficial effect on the balance within the Middle East... I think we should aim for a lower ambition."
Sir Richard said the presence of British troops in Iraq was exacerbating the security situation. On Monday night, the Home Secretary, John Reid also broke ranks by admitting for the first time at a private meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party that foreign policy was contributing to the radicalisation of young Muslims in Britain.
Yesterday, at his first Downing Street press conference since he announced that he will be gone within a year, Mr Blair resisted the calls for a change of strategy. He appeared to contradict Mr Reid, describing such arguments as absurd.
"You can't end up in a situation where you say, when we are on the side of ordinary, decent Muslims in Iraq or Afghanistan who want their own democratic government, when we are there at the behest of those governments with a full UNresolution, that we, when we are protecting those against people who are driving car bombs into markets and mosques and so on, that we somehow are causing their extremism.
"It's absurd and you won't defeat this extremism until you take that argument head on. And the real problem we've got is it has got to be taken head on in the Muslim community as well."
Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic believe there is an endgame being played out for Mr Blair and Mr Bush and a policy shift is growing nearer. Labour MPs said privately last night that Mr Blair may be the last one standing by the President.
Meanwhile, his most likely replacement - Gordon Brown - who admitted last month that mistakes had been made in Iraq, is left watching anxiously as more soldiers' lives are lost in Iraq.
How the big wheels in the Bush administration have turned full circle
The CIA Man
"Iraq is now what Afghanistan was in the late-1970s and throughout the 80s into the 90s, and that's an insurgent magnet, if you will, a mujahedin magnet, only much, much worse."
Michael Scheuer, Former Head of the CIA's Bin Laden Unit
The Neo-Con
"The US objective in Iraq has failed... Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000. And the administration has, now, to cope with failure."
William Buckley, Conservative Editor of The National Review
The General
"The commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions - or bury the results."
Retired Marine Lt Gen Gregory Newbold
The Administration Man
"We didn't have enough troops on the ground. We didn't impose our will. And as a result, an insurgency got started and... got out of control."
Colin Powell, Former Joint Chief of Staff and US Secretary of State
The Adviser
"There'll probably be some things in our report that the administration might not like... I personally believe in talking to your enemies. Neither the Syrians nor the Iranians want a chaotic Iraq."
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Civilians reported killed by Nato in Afghanistan
19/10/2006
AP
Airstrikes by Nato helicopters hunting Taliban fighters ripped through three dried mud homes in southern Afghanistan as villagers slept, killing at least nine civilians, including women and children, said residents and the provincial governor.
Airstrikes by Nato helicopters hunting Taliban fighters ripped through three dried mud homes in southern Afghanistan as villagers slept, killing at least nine civilians, including women and children, said residents and the provincial governor.
Shell-shocked, angry villagers in Ashogho condemned the attack, which set back Nato's hopes of winning local support for their tough counter-insurgency campaign. The airstrikes came at about the same time as a rocket struck a house in a village to the west, reportedly killing 13 people.
"I am not Taliban! We are not Taliban!" Gulab Shah shouted by the rubble of the ruined houses in Ashogho.
Kandahar provincial Gov. Asadullah Khalid said it appeared no Taliban fighters were in the village at the time of the airstrikes, which left giant pieces of mud packed with straw scattered along Ashogho's narrow lane.
Bibi Farida, a six-year-old whose red hair was matted with dirt, fidgeted and bit down on her scarf as she remembered the assault. Her voice was barely a whisper. "I cried. I just cried."
The 2am (local time) raid yesterday in the Zhari district of Kandahar province was less than a mile from the scene of September's Operation Medusa, one of the most ferocious battles between Western forces and insurgents since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.
Nato's International Security Assistance Force said in a statement that yesterday's operation in Kandahar was believed to have caused several civilian casualties. The alliance said the operation was meant to detain people involved in roadside bomb attacks in Panjwayi district, which borders Zhari. Nato said it regretted any civilian casualties.
Khalid, who travelled yesterday to Ashogho, about 15 miles west of Kandahar city, said nine people were killed, including women and children, and 11 wounded. Residents said 13 were killed, including four women, and 15 wounded. The governor stuck with his figures when contacted late yesterday by The Associated Press.
Since late 2001, there have been numerous incidents of civilians killed in military operations against Taliban and al-Qaida fighters, although US-led coalition and Nato forces say they go to extreme lengths to avoid civilian casualties.
The international troops accuse insurgents of blending in with local populations while attacking foreign and Afghan soldiers. Many other civilians have been killed in Taliban attacks, including scores in recent suicide bombings.
President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly demanded that Nato and US-led coalition forces take more care when conducting military operations in residential areas to avoid civilian casualties, which undermine his government's already weak standing in parts of the country.
Khalid said Karzai expressed his sympathy after he called the president on his cell phone from the village. "He told them how he hurt for them and how sad he was for their loss," Khalid said.
One of the homes that was attacked had only one wall standing, and looked ready to topple over. A blast ripped a hole through the middle of another.
Elsewhere yesterday, a rocket hit a house during a night-time clash between suspected Taliban insurgents and Nato and Afghan security forces in the farming village of Tajikai in Helmand province's Grishk district, 135 miles west of Kandahar city, police said.
The rocket attack came after Afghan police called in Nato air support during the clash, which began late Tuesday and left one Taliban militant killed and three police wounded, said provincial police chief Ghulam Nabi Malakhel.
Nato said in a statement that its aircraft and helicopters had fired on a "positively identified" compound from where the suspected Taliban were firing rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons.
"Initial bomb damage from an observer on the ground confirmed a direct hit on the compound," the statement said.
However, Abdul Rehman, a resident contacted by phone, said the rocket fired from an aircraft killed 13 villagers inside the home. He said relatives of the dead told him all those inside the dried mud house - five women, five children, three men - were killed, including the house's owner, Nabi Khel.
Nato said it will "fully investigate" the claim that civilians were killed in the strike.
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12 killed, 25 wounded in Mosul suicide blast
19/10/2006
AP
At least 12 people were killed and 25 wounded when a suicide bomber hit a major police station in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul today.
Many of the dead and injured were motorists waiting to buy petrol at a nearby fuel station, police said.
Authorities imposed an indefinite curfew after the attack on Abi Tamam police station at 7.15am Irish time. Police fired into the air in several parts of the city, forcing motorists and pedestrians to scurry for cover.
Police Col Khalaf Ismail said the bomber was trying to slam a fuel tanker he was driving into the station when he was shot dead by a policeman, igniting the fuel in his vehicle and setting off the explosives.
Comment: So we only have the word of Iraqi police Colonel that the driver was going to ram the tanker into the police station and was therefore shot which then ignited the tanker which killed 12 people and wounded 25 others. It really is amazing what passes for a "suicide bomber" these days.
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Yahweh's Stormtroopers
French forces to Israel: Stop Lebanon overflights or we'll open fire
Haaretz
October 18, 2006
The commanders of the French contingent in UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) have warned that if Israeli warplanes continue their overflights in Lebanon, they may have to open fire on them, Defense Minister Amir Peretz told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee yesterday.
Peretz told members of the committee that despite the warnings, Israel would continue to patrol the skies of Lebanon as such operations were critical for the country's security. Over the past few days, Peretz said, Israel had gathered clear evidence that Syria was transfering arms and ammunition to Lebanon, meaning that the embargo imposed by UN Resolution 1701 was not being completely enforced.
Israel plans to inform the joint committee of representatives of UNIFIL, the Israel Defense Forces and the Lebanese Army that unless the arms transfers are stopped, Israel will be forced to take independent action, Peretz said.
Turning to the situation in the Gaza Strip, Peretz said that Israel could under no circumstances allow the Strip to be turned into a second South Lebanon. According to Peretz, the time when Israel used to check who was sending every missile is over, and the IDF is intent on striking at every terrorist no matter what organization he belongs to.
The defense minister said that the current ground operations underway in the Gaza Strip were much more extensive than before. But, he said, "No one is hankering for ground action deep inside the entire Gaza Strip".
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Israeli Soldiers Storm Palestinian City, Interrogate and Abuse Civilians
IMEMC
19/10/2006
Palestinian medical sources in Jenin, in the northern part of the West Bank, reported on Thursday at dawn that two Palestinian youth were injured during clashed that erupted in the city after Israeli soldiers invaded it. Soldiers broke into homes, forced the residents out and interrogated them.
Local sources said that at least twenty armored military vehicles and jeeps invaded the city and conducted house-to-house searches after forcing dozens of families out of their homes and interrogating the men and youth.
The sources added that dozens of residents were forced against the walls for several hours, and were forced to undress. Most of the attacks were carried out in the Eastern neighborhood, Al Marah area, Al Seebat, and Wad Iz Ed Deen.
Also, soldiers surrounded a residential building that belongs to Abu Jomhour family, and occupied it after forcing the residents out.
Meanwhile, dozens of youth hurled stones at the soldiers near the Grand Mosque of Jenin, soldiers fired rounds of live ammunition, rubber-coated bullets and gas bombs, two youth were injured.
The two were identified as Dhrigham Kamal Al Sa'ady, 16, and Bakir Atef Nabhan, 14. Al Sa'ady was injured by a round of live ammunition is his foot, while Nabhan was hit by a rubber-coated bullet in his upper body.
In a separate incident, Palestinian resistance factions in Al Yamoun village, west of Jenin, exchanged fire with the army after at least twenty military vehicles invaded the village.
Fighters said they detonated an explosive charge under a military vehicle and damaged it.
Fighters exchanged fire with the soldiers especially after the army broke into dozens of houses and forced the residents out, local sources reported.
The sources added that soldiers abused several residents, forced them to undress and interrogated them.
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UK refuses to back cluster bomb ban as extent of use in Lebanon revealed
Richard Norton-Taylor and Ewen MacAskill
Thursday October 19, 2006
The Guardian
Britain has joined the US, China and Russia to block a proposed ban on cluster bombs in the wake of extensive use of the weapons during the war in Lebanon.
A group of countries, led by Sweden, is urging a worldwide ban on cluster bombs at arms talks in Geneva. Each bomb contains hundreds of small "bomblets", many of which fail to explode until picked up by inquisitive children or stepped on by civilians.
Israeli forces dropped an estimated 1m cluster bomblets in southern Lebanon this summer - 90% of which were dropped in the last three days of the conflict, a new report from Landmine Action said yesterday. The weapons have left a trail of unexploded munitions that is killing between three and four civilians each day and impeding relief work.
In just one month, the UN identified more than 500 areas hit by cluster bombs, the report said.
Richard Moyes, policy and research manager of Landmine Action, which supports the proposed ban, said Britain's refusal to back a ban was "incredible". "Unfortunately, it is not surprising because the UK has been one of the biggest users of the munitions, in Kosovo and in Iraq," he added.
Mr Moyes said he did not want to speculate on why Israel had dropped so many cluster bombs in the last days of the war in Lebanon that ended in August. One theory was that Israel hoped it would make it more difficult for Hizbullah to fire its rockets from southern Lebanon.
Aid agencies and human rights groups, such as Landmine Action, have repeatedly called for an international ban on the use of cluster weapons
Most Israeli cluster strikes hit built-up areas. Landmine Action says when the research for its report was undertaken a month after the ceasefire, water and power supplies had been blocked, and schools, roads, houses, and gardens were still littered with unexploded devices.
The report says: "In many affected areas, farmers have not been able to safely harvest what was left of this summer's tobacco, wheat, and fruit; late-yielding crops such as olives will remain too dangerous to harvest by November and winter crops will be lost because farmers will be unable to plough their grains and vegetables."
Simon Conway, the director of Landmine Action, said: "Every day women and children are killed or injured as they sift through the rubble of their former homes by cluster munitions that failed to go off. If they were any other kind of product, they would have been recalled."
The Foreign Office confirmed that the UK is opposing the diplomatic push led by Sweden in Geneva to change the certain conventional weapons treaty.
It said: "The UK believes existing humanitarian law is sufficient for the conduct of military operations, including the use of cluster munitions, and no treaty is required. The UK remains committed to improving the reliability of all munitions with the aim of achieving lower failure rates and leaving few unexploded ordnance in order to minimise the humanitarian risk." It said this had been longstanding British policy.
Sweden is supported by various countries, including Austria, Mexico and New Zealand, as well as the Vatican and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Cluster bombs have been used in most conflicts since the Vietnam war. Belgium has banned them and Australia and Norway have declared a moratorium on their use. Germany has said its forces will stop using them.
The Foreign Office minister, Lord Triesman, told peers in a debate this month that "cluster munitions are legitimate weapons when used in accordance with international humanitarian law".
He added: "They provide a unique capability against certain dispersed and wide-area military targets, for which other munitions are not necessarily practical." He said Britain expected the Israeli government to investigate any "well-founded allegations of the misuse of munitions by their armed forces".
The British embassy in Tel Aviv was pursuing the matter with the Israeli authorities, Lord Triesman said.
According to the UN's mine action coordinating centre, Israeli forces fired 1,800 rocket systems, each with 12 individual rockets, into south Lebanon.
The high failure rate meant that 450,000 cluster bomblets were left on the ground, according to the Liberal Democrats.
Nick Harvey, the Liberal Democrat defence spokesman, said: "There is now an irrefutable case for a comprehensive international ban on the use, production, and transfer of cluster munitions."
Flawed weapons
- Cluster bombs are usually dropped from medium to high altitudes and consist of dozens of bomblets in an outer casing. They have anti-armour and anti-personnel capabilities
- They do not have precision guidance. With a 5% dud rate, unexploded bombs become landmines
- According to Human Rights Watch, Nato aircraft dropped nearly 2,000 during the campaign in the former Yugoslavia in 1999
- They also estimate that 1,600 Kuwaiti and Iraqi civilians were killed by the estimated 1.2m duds left after the 1991 Gulf war
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Linda Heard: Israelis, Arabs Should Cut Out the Middlemen
By Linda Heard
Palestine Chronicle
17/10/2006
Palestinian suffering rarely hits the headlines in a world preoccupied with North Korean nukes, British politicians pontificating about the rights or wrongs of veil wearing and Madonna's new baby. It's doubtful that many in the West are even aware of Israel's "Operation Summer Rain" targeting Gaza that has robbed the lives of 290 Palestinians - almost half of them children - or that Israel is considering re-occupying this overpopulated open-air prison.
I've just finished reading an excellent book by the American-Palestinian author Ramzy Baroud "The Second Intifada: a Chronicle of a People's Struggle", which takes the reader on an excruciating journey from the failed Oslo Accords until the present day. It's a catalogue of pain that doesn't make easy reading for anyone with a conscience. But it's also a fine salute to the courageous and tenacity of the Palestinian people, who refuse to conveniently fade away.
While championing the Palestinians' right to resist occupation, Baroud believes that "the front-line in the battle for Palestine is public opinion in the United States". He maintains that "only by changing popular attitudes toward Israel and the Palestinians can we hope to end US sponsorship of Israel's ongoing war..."
He has a point but given the powerful pro-Israel think tanks and lobbies that wield influence over Congress and the corporate media any such opinion-altering process would take untold decades and thousands more deaths to reach fruition, if ever. There is another way - one that would require the Arab world adopting a unity of purpose, speaking with one voice and proactively seeking an end to the conflict. There was a glimmer of this during the 2002 Arab League Summit held in Beirut when Saudi Arabia put forward a peace plan that was endorsed by all 22 member nations.
It didn't get off the ground due to lack of support from Washington, which favored a "road map" to nowhere as a concession to Britain's Tony Blair in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Moreover the timing wasn't conducive as the proposal came when the Sharon-led Israeli government was in no mood to talk peace.
Today, the climate is very different. The recent Israel-Lebanon conflict exposed Israel's military vulnerabilities and triggered existential concerns among ordinary Israelis, now well aware that their nuclear arsenal provides little deterrence to hostile neighbor states or non-state actors.
It's interesting that Israelis are now debating whether to make peace with Syria that would necessitate the relinquishment of the strategic Golan Heights, formerly considered a "no-no".
Then earlier this month the Israeli Minister of Justice Meir Sheetrit urged his government to engage Saudi Arabia and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in talks on the lines of Israel's pull back to its 1967 borders in return for full peace. "In other words, if you want peace - we welcome you," Sheetrit said, adding, "We are prepared to make far-reaching concessions and fix the permanent borders of the State of Israel".
This is a historic moment...or should be. If Israel truly wants peace and the Arabs want peace while Palestinians need a viable, secure state then where is the obstacle? It's doubtful that Hamas would continue its reluctance to recognize Israel in the event land occupied post-1967 was returned and even if it did it would no longer receive popular support. Palestinians may be idealists but they are also pragmatists.
The problem is the so-called honest broker, the US, is far from honest. If Bush administration genuinely wanted peace in this region, the president would have flown to the area himself in an attempt to put the parties together.
Moreover, Tony Blair would have sought permission from the White House to shuttle between Riyadh, Ramallah and Tel Aviv so as to secure a meaningful legacy before he leaves office next spring.
Instead, the US is busy sowing division between Palestinian groups with its campaign to provide millions of dollars, weapons and military training to anti-Hamas factions. If Palestine ends up embroiled in a civil war, Israel can confidently say it doesn't have a partner for peace and be believed.
If Washington sought peace, it would be engaged in uniting those factions and putting pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to meet with his Palestinian counterpart.
Let's face it. If the Arabs and the Israelis got together to produce a fait accompli this would not be in America's interests.
A region devoid of enemies would not need Washington's "protection" or US bases. In such a peaceful region economies would flourish and in time the Israelis would no longer require US aid while foreign investment would flood into the fledgling Palestinian state.
Put simply, Israelis and Arabs should cease looking toward Washington for direction. The Bush administration harbors its own secret road map, one that facilitates its grip on the region and enables it to control the area's rich natural resources.
I recently received an e-mail from Albert Pardo, an Egyptian Jew now residing in France, in response to an article I wrote on the subject of Cairo's famous Groppi teashop (Maison Groppi) that's approaching its 100th anniversary.
Pardo thanked me for what he described as a "moving evocation of our carefree and happy youth". Another communication came from an American journalist requesting permission to republish that article in a memoir she is writing on her Jewish Egyptian grandfather.
Arabs and Jews have lived together harmoniously and, given time, they could do so again.
It was Britain and France that pulled the political strings initially driving Arabs and Jews apart, a role since adopted by the US. Only when regional leaders are able to look that unpalatable truth in the face will they say "no" to faux honest brokers and "yes" to a genuine road map to peace rather than one with inbuilt hurdles and untenable aims.
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Israeli PM Meets Putin for Iran Talks at Kremlin
Created: 18.10.2006 15:11 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 15:11 MSK
MosNews
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will meet President Vladimir Putin for talks focusing on Israeli concerns over Iran's Russian-backed nuclear program and Russian weapons sales in the Middle East, the AFP news agency reports.
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 U.S. 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 program.
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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Israeli army reoccupies the Rafah border crossing
IMEMC
19 October 2006,
The Israeli army reoccupied, the Rafah Border crossing in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday at midnight, for the first time since the implementation of the disengagement plan in 2005.
The Rafah border crossing connects Gaza with Egypt and is the only access in and out of Gaza. According to local sources tanks and bulldozers surrounded the crossing, taking control of it and the surrounding areas. Since the operation began on Wednesday four civilians have been killed by the Israeli army.
Noah Maeer, an Israeli army spokes person stated that the army operation would continue for as long as it takes to stop the resistance from smuggling rifles, explosives and anti-shield missiles into Gaza.
The Israeli Prime Minister stated, from Moscow, that those operations which he referred to as 'the rain man', will be limited, and not on a wide scale. He clarified that the impetus behind them is to avert stability in the Gaza strip.
Comment: First the re-occupation of the crossing then the re-occupation of Gaza, making last year's pullout a publicity stunt and utter sham.
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Israeli Army attacks, injures three children in Hebron
IMEMC & Agencies
19 October 2006
The Israeli army shot and injured three children while attempting to enter the Ibrahimi Mosque (Tomb of the Patriarchs) in Hebron, in the South of the West Bank late Wednesday night.
The injured were identified as Amar Abu Sinanah, 15 years old, who was shot by a rubber bullet in his hand, Hussam Abu Hussain, 13, who took a rubber coated bullet in the leg, and Shadi Ishtaih, 16, who sustained head injuries due to a sound bomb. All were moved to the public hospital in the city, medical sources reported.
Eye witnesses said that the three were injured as they attmepte to enter the Ibrahimi mosque for Lailat al Kader (Night of Destiny), the night Muslims believe God revealed the Koran to the prophet Mohammed.
Others attempting to enter the mosque were searched by soldiers, and sometimes turned away with the use of tear gas, rubber coated bullets and sound bombs, for no clear reason, eyewitnesses added.
Comment: The reason for this attack is indeed clear; it is the same reason that Israeli soliders attack and kill any Palestinians: Hatred and Racism.
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PCHR: "28 Palestinians killed, 48 injured in one week"
IMEMC
19 October 2006
The Palestinian Center For Human Rights published on Thursday its weekly report and revealed that Israeli soldiers shot and killed 28 Palestinians, 17 of whom including two children and a woman are civilians. Six of the killed residents were extra-judicially executed.
The Center reported that the army escalated its attacks in on Palestinian civilian and their property in the occupied Palestinians territories.
The center reported that 28 Palestinians were killed, 17 of whom, including two children and a woman, are civilians. 24 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip.
The center added that the two children together with their fathers, and that the assassinations of the six residents were carried in three separate attacks.
44 Palestinians, including 14 children and 4 women, were injured.
This increase in the number of casualties in the Gaza Strip followed orders by the Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz to his army to expand military operations in the Gaza Strip allegedly to stop the armament of Palestinian organizations, the center reported.
Also, the center reported that five Palestinian houses and civilian facilities were destroyed and several other houses were damaged due to the Israeli shelling of civilian area.
Troops carried a total of 30 invasions into the Palestinian cities, villages and refugee camps in the occupied West Bank, six invasions were carried out in the Gaza Strip.
The comprehensive siege imposed on the occupied territories was tightened barring the residents from leaving their own areas. Three civilians were arrested at checkpoints in the West Bank.
The construction of the Annexation Wall in the occupied West Bank resumed taking more Palestinian lands and isolating them from their owners.
Palestinian farmers have been denied access to their orchards to cultivate olives.
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Army plans to level ten homes in a Palestinian village
IMEMC & Agencies
19 October 2006
Under the pretext of "illegal constructions", the Israeli army plans to level ten Palestinian homes in Faroun village, near Tulkarem, in the norther part of the West Bank. The residents were handed military orders and were given three days to appeal against the decision.
Local sources reported that soldiers invaded the village and photographed the constructions before handing their inhabitants military orders informing them of the decision to level the buildings.
The residents were given three days to contact the so-called Civil Administration Office controlled by the Israeli army.
Although the army claims that these houses were constructed without obtaining construction permits, the fact remains that these houses are close to the Annexation Wall is built on orchards that belong to the residents.
Local sources in the village reported that these houses were constructed dozens of years ago, and that Israel issued a similar military order in 2004 but the order was frozen after the residents, and the village council, appealed against it to the Israeli High Court of Justice.
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Harper vows Canadian support for Israel
Last Updated: Thursday, October 19, 2006 | 9:36 AM ET
CBC News
Canada will not remain neutral when Israel is involved in a fight to defend itself against extremists, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in a speech to the Jewish community on Wednesday.
Speaking at a B'nai Brith dinner in Toronto, Harper made no apologies for the stance of his government on Israel, saying the Jewish state can expect the full support and friendship of Canada.
"When it comes to dealing with a war between Israel and a terrorist organization, this country and this government cannot and will never be neutral," Harper said.
"Those who seek to destroy the Jews, who seek to destroy Israel, will ... ultimately seek to destroy us all. It is why Canada's new government has reacted with speed and spoken with clarity on the recent events in the Middle East."
Harper quickly sided with Israel in July after it launched an offensive into Lebanon to fight Hezbollah, which had captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid.
Harper said, however, that the Palestinian people need a future that is fair and just and he hopes that a two-party solution, in which the Palestinian people have their own state, will one day have Palestinians and Israelis living side by side in peace.
"Issues of human dignity, of giving people the opportunity to build their community, to realize their own dreams - as long as they respect the rights and dignity of others - are values we also share."
Harper's remarks resonated with members of the Jewish community at the dinner.
Michael Mostyn, a member of B'nai Brith, said Wednesday night that the strong pro-Israel stance of the Conservative government has not gone unnoticed by the Jewish community.
"Certainly foreign policy has an impact, as it would with any other immigrant group here in Canada," he said.
But Mostyn added that support can shift and the Conservative party should not take support from one group for granted because there are many issues of concern to all voters.
"I think Jewish voters are like all other Canadians. There are a multitude of issues that concern them. They are concerned about taxes and security," said Mostyn.
Last week, Harper said the federal Liberal party leadership candidates are anti-Israeli after Michael Ignatieff had said Israel's bombing of the Lebanese town Qana in July, which killed dozens of civilians, was a war crime.
Ignatieff, who describes himself as a "lifelong friend of Israel," said Harper's response was inappropriate and Harper was trying to gain politically by commenting on Middle East issues.
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Terror, Inc.
Website Warns Of Attacks At NFL Games This Weekend
CBS 13 / AP
Oct 18, 2006
WASHINGTON - A website is claiming that seven NFL football stadiums will be hit with radiological dirty bombs this weekend, but the government on Wednesday expressed doubts about the threat.
The warningt, posted Oct. 12, was part of an ongoing Internet conversation titled "New Attack on America Be Afraid." It mentioned NFL stadiums in New York, Miami, Atlanta, Seattle, Houston, Oakland and Cleveland, where games are scheduled to be held this weekend.
The Homeland Security Department alerted authorities and stadium owners in those cities, as well as the NFL, of the Web message but said the threat was being viewed "with strong skepticism." Officials at the NCAA, which oversees college athletics, said they too had been notified.
Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said there was no intelligence that indicated such an attack was imminent, and he said the alert was "out of an abundance of caution."
"The department strongly encourages the public to continue to go about their plans, including attending events that involve large public gatherings such as football games," Knocke said.
The FBI also expressed doubt about the threat.
"While the credibility of the threat is questionable, we have passed the information on because it has been carried in some open source reporting," said FBI spokesman Richard Kolko. He said the FBI was discussing the threat with the NFL as "part of our routine discussions this week."
The nation's alert level remains at yellow, signaling an elevated risk of an attack. The threat level for airline flights is at orange, a higher level, where it has been since a foiled plot to bomb U.S.-bound commercial jets was revealed on Aug. 10.
NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said stadiums around the country "are very well protected through the comprehensive security procedures we have in place, including secure facility perimeters, pat-downs and bag searches."
Officials were made aware of the Web posting on Oct. 16. The threat was timed to be carried out on Sunday, Oct. 22, marking the final day in Mecca of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month.
"The death toll will approach 100,000 from the initial blasts and countless other fatalities will later occur as result from radioactive fallout," according to a copy of the posting that was obtained by The Associated Press.
The bombs, according to the posting, would be delivered to the stadiums in trucks. All but one of the stadiums -- Atlanta -- are open-air arenas, the posting noted, adding: "Due to the open air, the radiological fallout will destroy those not killed in the initial explosion."
Explosions would be nearly simultaneous, the posting said, with the cities specifically chosen in different time zones.
The posting said that al-Qaida would automatically be blamed for the attacks and predicted, "Later, through al-Jazeera, Osama bin Laden will issue a video message claiming responsibility for what he dubbed 'America's Hiroshima."'
Tony Wyllie, the vice president of communications for the Houston Texans, said the team had been in contact with the NFL regarding what security precautions should be taken for Sunday's game against the Jacksonville Jaguars.
In Indianapolis, where the Colts were preparing for a home game this weekend, head coach Tony Dungy said, "I've been waiting for this to happen for a couple of years now and you try and handle the security and put it out of your mind."
"We'll let the security people do their job, and we'll do our job," Dungy said. "We've got a lot of confidence in NFL security and our own security here."
Amy Trask, CEO of the Oakland Raiders, said, "We work closely with a number of governmental agencies, including the FBI, and with the NFL on an ongoing basis."
Stacey Osburn, associate director of public relations for the NCAA, said the organization passed the warning to members "so that they may take the appropriate precautions."
The postings were made on a Web site dubbing itself "The Friend Society," which links to various online conversations and off-color cartoons.
Authorities traced the site's Internet provider back to Voxel Dot Net Inc., which has support and engineering staff based in Troy, N.Y. A man who answered the phone at Voxel, who declined to give his name, said he was unaware of the posted threat on the Web site and refused further comment.
The author of the threats, posted at 9:31 p.m. EDT on Oct. 12, identified himself online as "javness."
"In the aftermath civil wars will erupt across the world, both in the Middle East and within the United States," javness wrote. "Global economies will screech to a halt. General chaos will rule."
Fellow online posters sounded skeptical about the claims.
"This isn't something you should joke about," a poster identified as "Kim Possible" wrote in response almost two hours later. "If you are (serious) about this may I see your sources. Unless you're a psychic."
The Oakland Raiders are scheduled to play the St. Louis Rams at McAfee Stadium in Oakland at 1:15 p.m.
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FBI interviewing man over stadiums threat
AP
19/10/2006
The FBI is today interviewing a Milwaukee resident believed to be responsible for posting what officials think are phoney threats on a website about radiological dirty bomb attacks on National Football League stadiums this weekend.
The person, described only as a young adult, did not appear to have any ties to terrorist groups, according to a law enforcement official.
The threats, which were posted on the internet site a week ago, were not seen as credible and were not backed up by intelligence indicating such an attack might be imminent, according to the FBI and the Homeland Security Department.
Homeland Security yesterday alerted the NFL and authorities in New York, Miami, Atlanta, Seattle, Houston, Oakland and Cleveland, saying they were acting "out of an abundance of caution."
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Britain now No 1 al-Qaida target - anti-terror chiefs
Rosie Cowan and Richard Norton-Taylor
Thursday October 19, 2006
The Guardian
Britain has become the main target for a resurgent al-Qaida, which has successfully regrouped and now presents a greater threat than ever before, according to counter-terrorist officials. They have revised their views about the strength of the network abroad, and the methods terrorists are able to use in the UK.
Intelligence chiefs with access to the most comprehensive and up to date information have told the Guardian that al-Qaida has substantially recovered its organisation in Pakistan, despite a four-year military campaign to seek out and kill its leaders. In that time, the organisation has become much more coherent, with a strong core and a regular supply of volunteers.
More worrying, officials say, is evidence of new techniques that would-be terrorists within the UK have adopted. The structure of individual al-Qaida-inspired groups is much more like the old Provisional IRA cells, with self-contained units comprising a lead organiser/planner, a quartermaster in charge of weapons and explosives acquisition and training, and several volunteers.
Officials describe these groups as "multi-tasking" - involved in fraud and fundraising and courier work as well as planning attacks. "There is a hierarchy within each cell with a very tightly run command and control," said one counter-terrorism source.
Many suspects appear to be aware they are under surveillance and have taken to having important conversations outside - in parks and other public spaces - similar to the tactics used by PIRA leaders during the Troubles.
Intelligence experts fear the UK is a target as never before, with extremists intent on carrying out a huge spectacular, on the scale of the US atrocities in 2001.
"They viewed 7/7 as just the beginning," said one senior source. "Al-Qaida sees the UK as a massive opportunity to cause loss of life and embarrassment to the authorities." A second source agreed: "Britain is sitting at the receiving end of an al-Qaida campaign."
Britain is an easier target, they have concluded, because of its traditional links with Pakistan which is visited by tens of thousands of people each year. Intelligence agencies have found it very difficult to penetrate the camps there.
Previously, security chiefs described the UK terrorist threat as comprising small groups which shared the same basic jihadi philosophy but lacked structure and were largely self-taught. Now, intelligence suggests a much more hierarchical system, with a far greater degree of organisation and inter-linkage, and sophisticated methods of recruitment, training and planning attacks.
However, core al-Qaida figures in Pakistan and their emissaries to Europe are still happy to delegate initiatives to different cells. The cells, intelligence shows, have different approaches - some might discuss a method of attack before talking about a target, while others discuss a potential target first.
Potential new recruits are carefully selected and targeted - mainly Muslim men in their late teens and early 20s - with recruiters often shunning the more obvious recruiting grounds of mosques and Islamic bookshops.
These young men are then put through a psychologically compelling indoctrination of weekend and evening briefings which start with legitimate religious lectures and prayer, but move gradually to more radical teachings and political discussions about the position of Islam in relation to the western world.
"It's all about building up these recruits to consider themselves as Muslim 'patriots' and encouraging them to make the leap and ask themselves 'This is how the west treats Muslims, what are we going to do about it?'" said one source.
The next stage often involves technical instruction in bomb-making, and during this phase, the recruiters do their best to engender a sense of brotherhood and bonding, sometimes putting recruits through bizarre initiation rites, such as staying out all night in remote areas in bad weather to prove their macho credentials and that they will not let their comrades down.
From this, the cells will move into latter-stage preparations, making martyrdom videos and shaving all their body hair off in readiness for an imminent suicide attack.
Even though the police and M15 have disrupted terror plots and groups influenced by al-Qaida, they describe the networks as very resilient.
They say there is a frightening number of young men willing to step up and replace those who have been arrested or gone to ground.
"It's like the old game of Space Invaders," said one senior counter-terrorism source. "When you clear one screen of potential attackers, another simply appears to take its place."
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US regime will dominate the world in a future war with new space weapons
UK Indpendent
19/10/2006
The Bush administration has staked an aggressive new claim to dominate space - rejecting any new treaties that seek to limit the United States' extraterrestrial activities and warning that it will oppose any nations that try to get in its way.
A new policy recently signed by President George Bush, asserts that his country has the right to conduct whatever research, development and "other activities" in space that it deems necessary for its own national interests.
The new policy further warns that the US will take those actions necessary to protect its space capabilities "and deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile" to those interests. The document adds: "Space activities have improved life in the United States and around the world, enhancing security, protecting lives and the environment, speeding information flow serving as an engine for economic growth and revolutionising the way people view their world and the cosmos."
"Freedom of action in space is as important to the United States as air power and sea power."
In some respects the policy represents the space equivalent of the "Bush Doctrine" national security policy initially outlined by Mr Bush in a speech at West Point military academy in June 2002. At that event - and later more formally codified - Mr Bush said the new US policy would place more emphasis on military pre-emption and unilateral actions.
Some experts believe the space directive, discreetly published more than a week ago and barely noticed outside specialist circles, puts the US on a new and dangerous course given that it transports "Bush Doctrine" policy to a new arena and rejects any efforts to limit US behaviour.
"I think that saying we will not have any limits on our actions is quite dangerous," said Theresa Hitchens, director of the Washington-based Centre for Defence Information.
"It claims no one can prohibit our rights but it also denies rights to [others].
"You would think that we would have learnt our lessons about the danger of military pre-emptive action and unilateralism in Iraq yet we are repeating the same policy towards space."
In part the new directive builds on the space policy of the Clinton administration. But some believe its new, hardline rhetoric will increase international suspicions that the US is seeking to develop and deploy weapons in space.
"The Clinton administration opened the door to developing space weapons but that administration never did anything about it. The Bush policy now goes further," Michael Krepon, of the Stimson Centre, told The Washington Post.
Mr Bush's attitude to space has always been more ambitious than that of his predecessor. In 2004 he outlined a vision to restart sending astronauts to the Moon, and even to Mars. In the same year the US Air Force published a highly controversial plan for establishing weapons in space, amid speculation that advanced lasers, spacecraft and space-based weapons firing 100kg tungsten bolts were being developed. And earlier this year it was revealed that the Pentagon was seeking hundreds of millions of dollars from Congress to test and develop space weapons.
In those portions of the new policy document that have been made public, there is no specific mention of the weaponisation of space. It says the US's priorities are to "strengthen the nation's space leadership" and to enable "unhindered US operations in and through space to defend our interests there". But the policy also claims that national security is "critically" dependent upon space capabilities. As a result it calls on the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and the Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, to "develop and deploy space capabilities that sustain US advantage and support defence and intelligence transformations".
In recent years some nations have called for talks to ban the deployment of weapons in space. Currently the deployment of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction are prohibited by the 1967 United Nations Outer Space Treaty.
When proposals to ban the weaponisation of space have been put forward at the UN, the United States has routinely abstained. But last October the US voted against a UN resolution calling for the banning of weapons in space.
Likewise, the US has repeatedly resisted efforts to hold negotiations on the issue of banning the placement in weapons by the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament.
Wade Boese of the Arms Control Association said the language in the new policy was "much more hard line" than any that previously existed.
He added: "We believe that this allergy to treaties is counter-productive. The US has the most to lose if there is an arms race in outer space in the long run. If the US [puts weapons in space], other countries will respond in some way."
A spokesman for the White House's National Security Council said in a statement that the policy was needed to "reflect the fact that space has become an even more important component of US economic, national and homeland security".
The final frontier
Moon
President Bush announced his Vision for Space Exploration in January 2004, calling for humans to return to the Moon by the end of the next decade. The first wave of robotic probes is the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, due to launch in 2008. As well as seeking landing sites, it will search for water ice and other resources. The initiative is supported by 68 per cent of Americans, according to opinion polls.
Mars
Under President Bush's 2004 vision, Moon exploration would pave the way for human space travel to Mars and beyond. The Mars reconnaissance Rover arrived on the Red Planet on 10 March 2006, equipped with the most powerful telescope ever taken to another planet.
Star Wars
The Clinton administration in 1999 revived Ronald Reagan's "star wars" space-based anti-missile shield as the Pentagon pushed for a more aggressive military posture in space amid warnings that North Korea, Iran and Iraq could obtain nuclear weapons. The programme became known as "son of star wars". Space weapons could include lasers that can shut down rival satellites and "killer" satellites that could ram others.
The new Bush policy calls for space-based capabilities to support missile-warning systems, and "multi-layered and integrated missile defences" that could lay the groundwork for the militarisation of space.
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Official: Israel incapable of leading Iran attack
www.chinaview.cn 2006-10-19 20:18:30
ERUSALEM, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Interior Defense Minister said on Thursday morning that Israel was neither responsible for, nor capable of leading an international offense against Iran, Israel's newspaper Jerusalem Post reported.
Avi Dichter, the former Shin Bet chief, was quoted by the paper as saying that "It is the role of the U.S., Europe and Russia.
Israel does not have to head this campaign and I'm not convinced that Israel would succeed," Dichter made the comments as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was discussing with Russian leaders in Moscow about the Iranian threats to the region.
On Wednesday, Olmert said on his visit to Russia that the Israelis are greatly concerned with the Iranian nuclear program.
"I emphasized that in no case will we reconcile with nuclear arms in the hands of Iran. This is a fundamental question for us, and I made it clear that the State of Israel has no margin of error,has no privilege to err," Olmert told Russian President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov.
One of the main purpose of Olmert's trip to Russia was to know Russia's position on the American suggestion to impose sanctions on Iran for pursuing its nuclear program, said the report.
Comment: How do Israel's neighbours feel about the fact that Israel is armed with nukes? Is there any way that they can "reconcile" themselves to that fact?
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US stops Venezuela planes deal
Giles Tremlett in Madrid
Thursday October 19, 2006
The Guardian
The US has stopped Spain selling 12 military aircraft to Venezuela by refusing to allow American military technology to be used in the planes.
Venezuela planned to buy the aircraft from the Spanish company Eads-Casa but US determination to prevent Hugo Chávez building up his armed forces wrecked the deal, according to the deputy president, José Vicente Rangel.
George Bush's administration claims President Chávez, an ally of Fidel Castro, is a destabilising force in Latin America. The US imposed an arms ban on Venezuela in May.
Mr Rangel said replacing the US technology with French or Israeli parts had made the €500m (£335m) deal too costly. Miguel Angel Moratinos, Spain's foreign minister, confirmed that what would have been his country's biggest arms deal was now just a sale of naval vessels.
Venezuela's decision to drop the order for 10 C-295 transport planes and two CN-235 patrol planes came the day after Spain declined to back its effort to be a temporary member of the UN security council.
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Life Under the Bush
Not it! Mass. elementary school bans tag
AP
October 18, 2006
ATTLEBORO, Mass. - Tag, you're out! Officials at an elementary school south of Boston have banned kids from playing tag, touch football and any other unsupervised chase game during recess for fear they'll get hurt and hold the school liable.
Recess is "a time when accidents can happen," said Willett Elementary School Principal Gaylene Heppe, who approved the ban.
While there is no districtwide ban on contact sports during recess, local rules have been cropping up. Several school administrators around Attleboro, a city of about 45,000 residents, took aim at dodgeball a few years ago, saying it was exclusionary and dangerous.
Elementary schools in Cheyenne, Wyo., and Spokane, Wash., also recently banned tag during recess. A suburban Charleston, S.C., school outlawed all unsupervised contact sports.
"I think that it's unfortunate that kids' lives are micromanaged and there are social skills they'll never develop on their own," said Debbie Laferriere, who has two children at Willett, about 40 miles south of Boston. "Playing tag is just part of being a kid."
Another Willett parent, Celeste D'Elia, said her son feels safer because of the rule. "I've witnessed enough near collisions," she said.
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A vile teen fad: beating the homeless
By Michael Stoops and Brian Levin
Christian Science Monitor
Wed Oct 18, 2006
WASHINGTON; AND SAN BERNARDINO, CALIF. - Across the nation, America's homeless are under attack - literally. They are hunted down during youthful rites of passage by roving packs of males armed with prejudice and tools of torture.
The number of violent incidents against our country's most vulnerable members has risen dramatically this year, with 16 murders in the first nine months so far.
One homeless man was set ablaze in his wheelchair in Spokane, Wash.; another man was beaten with baseball bats in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; a homeless woman was drowned by two young men who rolled her into Tennessee's Cumberland River while she slept.
The hate behind this brutality is not fostered in rural Klan rallies or overseas terrorist camps, but in high school locker rooms and suburban living rooms. While homeless people have often been stereotyped as worthless, depraved, and disposable, prejudice now has a potent new ally: "bum rushing" videos.
This twisted fad has inspired some youths to kill for the "fun" of emulating what they see on a video screen. One group of teens inspired by these videos murdered Michael Roberts, a frail homeless man who succumbed after being relentlessly pummeled by nail-studded two-by-fours and a log in Holly Hill, Fla. Teens buy and trade hundreds of thousands of these videos, making their producers rich. They also film their own assaults, broadcasting them online.
In the first nine months of 2006, 36 of 58 known homeless attackers were teens ages 14 to 19. Such violence seems to be correlated with the rise of bum videos. The number of reported incidents in 2003 nearly doubled, jumping from 36 reported attacks in 2002 to 70 in 2003. The number of nonlethal attacks reached 77 through the end of this September.
In Calgary, Alberta, youths filmed themselves beating and urinating on a homeless man, and screaming out "bum fights!" In Los Angeles, a youth admitted that he, too, was inspired to kill a homeless man with an aluminum baseball bat after viewing a video.
Perhaps most disturbing is not the media's influence on violence and prejudice, but the nation's almost casual acceptance of this violence and the images that derive from it.
If any other minority group reported hate- crime homicide numbers this high there would be a national outcry for justice. A comparison by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, and the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH), found that from 1999 to 2005 there were 167 homeless homicides by domiciled attackers. The number of these killings is more than double the number of all other officially tabulated hate- crime homicides combined. The glaring disparity underscores the case for action. But how do we act?
We need to enhance data collection by law enforcement and improve outreach to the homeless community. Homelessness must be added to vulnerable-victim laws and hate-crime legislation.
Officials should work to raise community awareness so neighbors can help eradicate homelessness altogether, not just remove it from their own line of vision. Community education efforts should model the NCH's Faces of Homelessness Speakers' Bureau. The Bureau is made up of of current and former homeless people who give talks to break stereotypes. This year, this panel has made more than 300 appearances, speaking to more than 17,000 people, mostly youths.
Their work is leading the way to stop the dehumanization of those without homes. Without further effort, violence against the homeless will continue. The burden falls on all our shoulders to end homelessness. Until the day when all Americans are housed, the least we can do is ensure their safety.
Michael Stoops is acting executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington. Brian Levin is director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.
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5 dead in Arizona plane crash
AP
Thu Oct 19, 2006
PRESCOTT, Ariz. - A twin-engine plane carrying five people on a flight to photograph a vintage Soviet jet fighter crashed Wednesday, killing everyone on board, a federal official said.
The Piper Cheyenne plane and a MiG-21 fighter took off from an airport in Prescott, about 60 miles north of Phoenix, about 1:30 p.m. for a photo shoot, said Ian Gregor, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman.
As the Cheyenne ascended after takeoff, an air traffic controller radioed the pilot to warn him about vapor seen coming from the right engine, Gregor said. The pilot radioed back saying he didn't think it was a problem.
The MiG pilot told investigators he thought he had a problem with a landing gear door about 20 minutes into the flight and asked the pilot of the other plane to fly in close for an inspection, Gregor said.
The MiG pilot said the other plane flew under his jet but never reappeared. He radioed air traffic controllers that there may have been a mid-air collision at about 8,900 feet. But Gregor said there was no sign of damage on the jet after it landed safely in Prescott.
Searchers spotted a large column of smoke 16 miles northeast of Prescott and found the Cheyenne destroyed in a crash.
"The plane was completely burned up," said John Ginn, fire district chief for Chino Valley north of Prescott. "The only thing left was a small section of tail and two engines. There was very little discernible."
Scott Reed, a spokesman for the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office, said the medical examiner's office will determine who was on the plane.
"It's fair to say that we have an idea who may have been on the plane, but we can't release names until we have positive identification," he said.
Investigators from the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the accident.
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7 plead guilty in corpse plundering scam
By TOM HAYS
Associated Press
Thu Oct 19, 2006
NEW YORK - Seven funeral home directors linked to a scheme to plunder corpses and sell the body parts for transplants pleaded guilty to undisclosed charges and have agreed to cooperate with investigators, prosecutors announced Wednesday.
The unidentified directors secretly pleaded guilty in the probe of what investigators say was a plot to harvest bone and tissue and sell it to biomedical supply companies, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes said.
"It is clear that many more funeral home directors were involved in this enterprise," Hynes said at a news conference.
The seven entered their pleas in closed courtrooms and their names were withheld, but defense attorneys said that among those cooperating was the director of a funeral home that took parts from the body of "Masterpiece Theatre" host Alistair Cooke, who died in 2004.
The four original defendants in the case pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to enterprise corruption, body stealing and other charges in the new indictment. If convicted, they face up to 25 years in prison. All remain free on bail.
Prosecutors allege Michael Mastromarino, owner of Biomedical Tissue Services of Fort Lee, N.J., and three other men secretly removed skin, bone and other parts from up to 1,000 bodies from funeral homes, without the permission of families. They have accused the former oral surgeon of making millions of dollars by selling the stolen tissue to biomedical companies that supply material for common procedures including dental implants and hip replacements.
They were charged in February with counts including body stealing, unlawful dissection and forgery in a case a district attorney called "something out of a cheap horror movie."
All the defendants pleaded not guilty before being released on bail.
At the time, prosecutors said they had unearthed evidence that death certificates and other paperwork were falsified. In Cooke's case, his age was recorded as 85 rather than 95 and the cause of death was listed as heart attack instead of lung cancer that had spread to his bones.
Other evidence includes X-rays and photos of exhumed cadavers show that where leg bones should have been, someone had inserted white plastic pipes - the kind used for home plumbing projects, available at any hardware store. The pipes were crudely reconnected to hip and ankle bones with screws before the legs were sewn back up.
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Report: Priest Admits Foley Relationship
AP
19/10/2006
SARASOTA, Fla. (AP) - A Roman Catholic priest said he had an inappropriate two-year relationship with former Rep. Mark Foley in the 1960s that included massaging the boy in the nude, but he did not specifically remember having sex, a newspaper reported Thursday.
The Rev. Anthony Mercieca, 72, described several encounters that he said Foley might perceive as sexually inappropriate, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported. They include massaging Foley while the boy was naked, skinny-dipping together at a secluded lake in Lake Worth and being nude in the same room on overnight trips.
Mercieca said there was one night when he was in a drug-induced stupor and there was an incident but he couldn't clearly remember, the newspaper reported.
"I have to confess, I was going through a nervous breakdown,'' the newspaper reported Mercieca as saying from his home on the island of Gozo, south of Italy. "I was taking pills - tranquilizers. I used to take them all the time. They affected my mind a little bit.''
Mercieca could not immediately be located for comment Thursday by The Associated Press.
Foley resigned from Congress last month after his sexually explicit e-mails to young male pages surfaced.
His lawyer said shortly after his resignation that Foley was an alcoholic, gay and had been molested as a boy by a "clergyman.'' Foley's civil lawyer, Gerald Richman, said the alleged abuser was a Catholic priest whose name he shared with state prosecutors on Wednesday.
Richman did not return phone messaged left Thursday by The Associated Press. Foley's criminal defense lawyer David Roth declined to comment.
Earlier this month, Roth said "Mark does not blame the trauma he sustained as a young adolescent for his totally inappropriate'' e-mails and instant messages. "He continues to offer no excuse whatsoever for his conduct.''
Mercieca had worked at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Lake Worth in 1967, according to church records. Foley would have been 13 at the time.
Mercieca, 72, said he and Foley became fast friends when he moved there from Brazil and "loved each other like brothers,'' the newspaper reported.
Mercieca said he taught Foley "some wrong things'' related to sex, though he wouldn't specify what he meant, the newspaper said. It reported the priest said that at the time, he considered the relationship innocent, but he now says he could see how his actions could be called inappropriate.
Mercieca said although Foley plans to "expose him to the world,'' he still has "great memories of our trips,'' the newspaper reported.
"I wish him well," Mercieca said. "Let bygones be bygones."
Mercieca was adamant that his encounter with Foley was an aberration, and that the Catholic Church never had to send him for counseling during his 38 years in the priesthood in Florida, according to the newspaper.
"I have been in many parishes, and I have never been'' accused, he said.
A Web site for the Diocese of Gozo lists Mercieca as one of its priests. Joseph Calleja, a priest with the diocese, said Mercieca is still an active priest but that he lives at his own home. Gozo, a Mediterranean island, is part of the Republic of Malta.
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End of the culture war
Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday October 19, 2006
The Guardian
The spectacle of hypocrisy, impunity and corruption engulfing the Republican Congress has its origins in its rise in 1994, extolled as the party's "revolution". First came the Republican Lenin - the speaker, Newt Gingrich - determined to annihilate his enemies and extirpate the "counter-culture". But after twice causing parts of the federal government to shut down and being cited for ethics violations, Gingrich was forced to resign, on the eve of Clinton's impeachment trial, by fellow Republicans. (They had private knowledge: Gingrich promptly abandoned his second wife for the mistress he had maintained on the House payroll for years).
The next speaker, Bob Livingston, resigned almost at once when the pornographer Larry Flynt threatened to release recordings of Livingston moaning in the company of his mistress, which Flynt had purchased from the scorned woman. Into that vacuum the most powerful figure in the House, the then whip and later majority leader Tom DeLay (nicknamed "the exterminator" for his pest control business), inserted a dull, reliable frontman - Dennis Hastert, known as "coach" for supervising school wrestling in small-town Illinois, his greatest previous distinction.
DeLay was the Republican Stalin, a ruthless consolidator and centraliser. His K Street project forged an iron triangle of lobbyists, special interests and Republicans that he believed would rule forever. But DeLay overreached and was indicted for corruption. Hastert was left to fend for himself.
When the story broke about Mark Foley, the Republican congressman from Palm Beach who lured teenage congressional pages to his townhouse, Hastert lumbered forth like an agitated but dazed bear. "The people who want to see this thing blow up," he said, "are ABC News" - the network that first broadcast the story - "and a lot of Democratic operatives, people funded by George Soros" - a Jewish, Hungarian-born financier who funds liberal causes.
Demonising this rootless cosmopolitan, however, failed to distract attention from a dissolving cover-up. Day after day aides have trooped before the suddenly reassembled ethics committee to testify that Hastert and others had known about Foley for years. In the process a network of mostly closet gay pages has been exposed, who advanced and protected each other while working for politicians whose careers were propelled by gay-bashing. The unmasking of Republican Capitol Hill has excited leaders of the religious right to demand a witch-hunt.
As Christians battle Sodomites under the crashing Republican big tent, several high-wire acts have fallen to earth. Last week Bob Ney, of Ohio, pleaded guilty to bribery, caught in the web of Republican super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff. This week the wacky Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, renowned for his personal hunt for WMD in Iraq, came under investigation for corrupt practices; the FBI has also raided his lobbyist daughter.
At the White House Karl Rove's assistant, Susan Ralston - formerly Abramoff's assistant - resigned for facilitating favours for and from Rove and others, including Ken Mehlman, Republican national committee chairman. This week another Republican congressman, John Doolittle of California, announced he was turning cooperative witness in the federal investigation.
The concatenation of scandals is shattering the last shards of "revolution". "Reform" has metastasised into the Abramoff scandal, "culture war" into the Foley cover-up. And Hastert has transmuted from omnipotent Brezhnev into ghostly Chernenko, presiding over the final decrepit stage.
Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, is the author of How Bush Rules sidney_blumenthal@yahoo.com
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Got An Eye On You
FBI director wants ISPs to track users
By Declan McCullagh
CNET News.com
October 17, 2006
FBI Director Robert Mueller on Tuesday called on Internet service providers to record their customers' online activities, a move that anticipates a fierce debate over privacy and law enforcement in Washington next year.
"Terrorists coordinate their plans cloaked in the anonymity of the Internet, as do violent sexual predators prowling chat rooms," Mueller said in a speech at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Boston.
"All too often, we find that before we can catch these offenders, Internet service providers have unwittingly deleted the very records that would help us identify these offenders and protect future victims," Mueller said. "We must find a balance between the legitimate need for privacy and law enforcement's clear need for access."
The speech to the law enforcement group, which approved a resolution on the topic earlier in the day, echoes other calls from Bush administration officials to force private firms to record information about customers. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, for instance, told Congress last month that "this is a national problem that requires federal legislation."
Justice Department officials admit privately that data retention legislation is controversial enough that there wasn't time to ease it through the U.S. Congress before politicians left to campaign for re-election. Instead, the idea is expected to surface in early 2007, and one Democratic politician has already promised legislation.
Law enforcement groups claim that by the time they contact Internet service providers, customers' records may have been deleted in the routine course of business. Industry representatives, however, say that if police respond to tips promptly instead of dawdling, it would be difficult to imagine any investigation that would be imperiled.
It's not clear exactly what a data retention law would require. One proposal would go beyond Internet providers and require registrars, the companies that sell domain names, to maintain records too. And during private meetings with industry officials, FBI and Justice Department representatives have cited the desirability of also forcing search engines to keep logs--a proposal that could gain additional law enforcement support after AOL showed how useful such records could be in investigations.
A representative of the International Association of Chiefs of Police said he was not able to provide a copy of the resolution.
Preservation vs. retention
At the moment, Internet service providers typically discard any log file that's no longer required for business reasons such as network monitoring, fraud prevention or billing disputes. Companies do, however, alter that general rule when contacted by police performing an investigation--a practice called data preservation.
A 1996 federal law called the Electronic Communication Transactional Records Act regulates data preservation. It requires Internet providers to retain any "record" in their possession for 90 days "upon the request of a governmental entity."
Because Internet addresses remain a relatively scarce commodity, ISPs tend to allocate them to customers from a pool based on whether a computer is in use at the time. (Two standard techniques used are the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol and Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet.)
In addition, Internet providers are required by another federal law to report child pornography sightings to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which is in turn charged with forwarding that report to the appropriate police agency.
When adopting its data retention rules, the European Parliament approved U.K.-backed requirements saying that communications providers in its 25 member countries--several of which had enacted their own data retention laws already--must retain customer data for a minimum of six months and a maximum of two years.
The Europe-wide requirement applies to a wide variety of "traffic" and "location" data, including: the identities of the customers' correspondents; the date, time and duration of phone calls, VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) calls or e-mail messages; and the location of the device used for the communications. But the "content" of the communications is not supposed to be retained. The rules are expected to take effect in 2008.
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'Beginning of the end of America'
By Keith Olbermann
Anchor, 'Countdown'
MSNBC
We have lived as if in a trance.
We have lived as people in fear.
And now-our rights and our freedoms in peril-we slowly awake to learn that we have been afraid of the wrong thing.
Therefore, tonight have we truly become the inheritors of our American legacy.
For, on this first full day that the Military Commissions Act is in force, we now face what our ancestors faced, at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering:
A government more dangerous to our liberty, than is the enemy it claims to protect us from.
We have been here before-and we have been here before led here-by men better and wiser and nobler than George W. Bush.
We have been here when President John Adams insisted that the Alien and Sedition Acts were necessary to save American lives, only to watch him use those acts to jail newspaper editors.
American newspaper editors, in American jails, for things they wrote about America.
We have been here when President Woodrow Wilson insisted that the Espionage Act was necessary to save American lives, only to watch him use that Act to prosecute 2,000 Americans, especially those he disparaged as "Hyphenated Americans," most of whom were guilty only of advocating peace in a time of war.
American public speakers, in American jails, for things they said about America.
And we have been here when President Franklin D. Roosevelt insisted that Executive Order 9066 was necessary to save American lives, only to watch him use that order to imprison and pauperize 110,000 Americans while his man in charge, General DeWitt, told Congress: "It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen-he is still a Japanese."
American citizens, in American camps, for something they neither wrote nor said nor did, but for the choices they or their ancestors had made about coming to America.
Each of these actions was undertaken for the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.
And each was a betrayal of that for which the president who advocated them claimed to be fighting.
Adams and his party were swept from office, and the Alien and Sedition Acts erased.
Many of the very people Wilson silenced survived him, and one of them even ran to succeed him, and got 900,000 votes, though his presidential campaign was conducted entirely from his jail cell.
And Roosevelt's internment of the Japanese was not merely the worst blight on his record, but it would necessitate a formal apology from the government of the United States to the citizens of the United States whose lives it ruined.
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'National yawn as our rights evaporate'
By Keith Olbermann
Anchor, 'Countdown'
MSNBC
Oct. 18, 2006
On Tuesday, "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann talked to Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University about a new bill signed by President Bush that redefines the right of habeas corpus.
History does not play well at this White House. Expressionless faces would probably greet references to how John Adams ended his political career by insisting he needed the Alien and Sedition Acts to silence his critics in the newspapers, or how Franklin D. Roosevelt's executive order to seize Japanese-Americans during World War II necessitated a formal presidential apology eight presidents later.
But even so, somebody probably should have told President Bush that today was the exact 135th anniversary, to the day, that President Grant suspended habeas corpus in much of South Carolina for the noble and urgent purpose of dispersing the Ku Klux Klan and making sure the freed slaves had all their voting rights, neither of which has yet truly occurred. It is your principal defense against imprisonment without charge and trial without defense thrown away for no good reason, then and now.
Our fifth story on "Countdown": President Bush, happy Habeas Corpus Day.
First thing this morning, the president signed into law the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which does away with habeas corpus, the right of suspected terrorists or anybody else to know why they have been imprisoned, provided the president does not think it should apply to you and declares you an enemy combatant.
Further, the bill allows the CIA to continue using interrogation techniques so long as they do not cause what is deemed, quote, "serious physical or mental pain." And it lets the president to ostensibly pick and choose which parts of the Geneva Convention to obey, though to hear him describe this, this repudiation of the freedoms for which all our soldiers have died is a good thing.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRESIDENT BUSH: This bill spells out specific, recognizable offenses that would be considered crimes in the handling of detainees, so that our men and women who question captured terrorists can perform their duties to the fullest extent of the law. And this bill complies with both the spirit and the letter of our international obligations.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
OLBERMANN: Leading Democrats view it differently, Senator Ted Kennedy calling this "seriously flawed," Senator Patrick Leahey saying it's, quote, "a sad day when the rubber-stamp Congress undercuts our freedoms," and Senator Russ Feingold adding that "We will look back on this day as a stain on our nation's history."
Outside the White House, a handful of individuals protested the law by dressing up as Abu Ghraib abuse victims and terror detainees. Several of them got themselves arrested, but they were apparently quickly released, despite being already dressed for Gitmo.
To assess what this law will truly mean for us all, I'm joined by Jonathan Turley, professor of constitutional law at George Washington University.
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Terror and Cause and Effect
By Andrew Cohen
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, October 18, 2006; 12:00 AM
We know now what we didn't know then, back in the dark days of the autumn of 2001, and we still cannot get it right. After five years we now have a long track record of seeing what can, will and usually does go wrong when the administration acts unilaterally in the legal war on terror. It has been written into the record of one Supreme Court case after another, one lower court ruling following the next, and still we accept the premise that the rule of law as we knew it could and should be twisted unrecognizably, now and forever more, until this ill-defined, ever-evolving, undeclared war is over.
The detainee legislation that the Congress has just passed, with the advice and consent of White House officials hungering for more legal latitude upon their conduct, represents a complete abdication of the legislative branch's vital duty to act as a brake upon the executive branch. Worse, Congress has now officially become an explicit co-conspirator along with the Bush administration in its five-year-long effort to freeze out of the equation the federal courts, the last bulwark against tyranny. The less-than-do-nothing Congress finally did something and in doing so made a bad situation an order of magnitude worse.
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Generations from now, historians and scholars and lawyers and judges will look back upon the past five years, and last month's formal legislative reaction to it, and marvel at the vast gulf between cause and effect. It is of course inapt to compare this atrocious law to the decrees that caused the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. But it is not too early to predict that our heirs will look back upon this law, and the dark effort behind it, with the same mixture of astonishment and disgust which our generation feels over what our government did in our name following Pearl Harbor. A Sept. 28 New York Times editorial compared this law with the notorious Alien and Sedition Act of the late 18th Century and, indeed, it is that bad and maybe even worse given what we know of the current war on terrorism.
But back to the grand disconnect that exists between what this law does -- gives the President new broad power -- and what preceded it -- the White House's often bungled use of its already-existing broad power. Long after both President Bush and Osama Bin Laden are gone from the scene, our successors-in-interest will look at this wretched law in particular, and the events upon which it is based, and wonder why Congress dramatically loosened the Bush Administration's legal leash at this time rather than severely restricting it.
Reasoned voices will then ask: What did the White House do between 9/11/01 and 9/11/06 to earn the trust and added authority that the Congress now has given it? What did President Bush do along the terror law front since the Twin Towers fell to cause Congress to place so much faith in him and his Administration when it comes to tiptoeing the tightrope between security and freedom?
The answer to these questions is nothing. So far, some legal experts say, the Bush Administration's track record when it comes to exercising unbridled power has been lame. To put it less mildly, as some legal experts have, it is actionable. Over and over again, they say, the executive branch has deceived Congress and the courts. Over and over again, the Administration has oversold its terror cases. Over and over again it has tried to hide its errors under the veil of "national security."
And after this foreboding pattern and practice by the executive branch what does the Congress do? Does it increase its oversight until it is satisfied that its partners in the White House are doing a better job of fighting the war on terror? Does it give the White House clear and unequivocal limits for its authority? Does it point to the abuses and excesses of the past five years and say, "no more"? No. It does none of these things. Instead, it rewards the White House's behavior with more discretion, authority, and power. And then, to ensure that the White House can safely use its new freedom, the Congress also tries to ensure that the federal courts cannot subsequently come in and put a stop to it all.
Enormous and unchecked new power now has been given to a White House whose officials at first called Zacarias Moussaoui the "20th hijacker" but were wrong; who at first called Jose Padilla the "dirty bomber" but were wrong; who at first called Yaser Hamdi such a threat to national security that he could not even be allowed to talk to his attorney -- until they decided to set him free. Freedom from judicial review now has been given to the same administration officials who allowed Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen whom we now know that they knew was not a terrorist, to be transferred to Syria for torture. Vague or narrow definitions of torture now have been given to the executive branch operatives who are responsible for Abu Ghraib. New powers have been given to the people who brought us the National Security Agency's domestic spying program, the one that some legal experts say violates both federal law and the Constitution.
The list goes on and on. The draconian USA Patriot Act, enacted just weeks after September 11, 2001 without any meaningful review or discussion on Capitol Hill, seems like the Bill of Rights compared with this effort. And yet despite the breadth and weight of this evidence, Congress, our national fact-finding body, has just reached its verdict: The culpable party doesn't just get acquitted -- it goes free with permission to operate under a brand new set of laws made especially for it, laws that will make it even more difficult to ever find it guilty again. This isn't Orwell. It's the Marx Brothers. Only there is absolutely nothing funny about it. Our elected officials have just traded the promise of more security for the actual loss of our liberty.
Thanks to this new law, fewer judges will be willing or able to look behind the curtain and help tell us all what is really happening to those individuals who, under the new law, can be rounded up and denied fundamental rights (like the right to face charges or the right to a trial). Remember the old Reagan saw? Trust but verify? Here, Congress has given the President its trust and ours without verifying whether the White House truly deserved either. The record establishes that it doesn't.
Andrew Cohen writes Bench Conference and this regular law column for washingtonpost.com.
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State Department Officer Works To Dispel Lies, Conspiracy Theories And Urban Legends That Harm U.S. Image
October 16, 2006
By WILLIAM WEIR, Courant Staff Writer
Page 76 of the sixth-grade U.S. textbook, "An Introduction to Geography," tells us that the United Nations and the United States have teamed up to take control of the Amazon forest.
It's a startling revelation, but you're out of luck if you want to know more. Though the page has made its way around the world, no other trace of the book has been found and no publishers have any record of it. The page is also riddled with misspellings and odd syntax.
This was one of the easier cases for the State Department, which declared it a fake that probably came from a right-wing group out of Brazil. But the forgery still makes the rounds via e-mail and picks up new believers.
It's the kind of thing that keeps Todd Leventhal busy. He's the U.S. State Department's sole counter-misinformation officer. As such, he tracks conspiracy theories and urban legends, dissecting the inaccuracies and identifying the origins of questionable information that reflects poorly on the nation and its government.
Go to the State Department's "Identifying Misinformation" website usinfo.state.gov/media/misinformation.html and you'll find Leventhal's research. It's a curious body of work, and impressive in scope. Research posted there covers everything from a brief mention of the legend of the woman who tried drying her dog by microwave oven to an exhaustively researched report - nearly 6,000 words - on rumors of Americans kidnapping children for organ and cornea transplants.
Besides the glut of 9/11 conspiracy theories, counter-misinformation work takes on various false rumors: AIDS was invented in a Pentagon laboratory; the author of an 1830 Islam-bashing book is President Bush's grandfather (though he was the cousin of Bush's great-great-great grandfather). It works over Hugo Chavez's oft-repeated claims that the U.S. plans to invade Venezuela (he's confused it with a Spanish military war game that has no U.S. involvement, the State Department says).
Many of the entries' titles are in question form, and "no" is almost always the answer. "Is the U.S. harvesting organs from Iraqis?" "Did the U.S. create Osama Bin Laden?" "Was Saddam's capture faked?"
Another debunker of misinformation says she's impressed with the thoroughness of the enterprise.
"Clearly, they've been putting a lot of time and effort into it," says Barbara Mikkelson. She's one of the founders of Snopes.com, the popular website that tracks urban legends and assigns each a verdict of true or false.
It's probably good thinking on the government's part, she says. "Generally, it is better to combat rumors than to let them lie," she says. "The best way to combat misinformation is with information."
But for all the work, the State Department doesn't do much to promote the results, at least here in the U.S. When we called Leventhal at his home in Washington, the former Bolton resident said he'd be happy to talk about his work, but that the State Department rarely allows him to give interviews.
The State Department did agree, though, to answer a series of questions by e-mail. Responses were attributed to "a State Department official." The State Department declined to say whether the unnamed official was a man or a woman.
The official said the State Department doesn't promote its counter-misinformation work in the U.S. because, by law, work in the International Information Programs Bureau is directed toward foreign audiences.
What's the budget for counter-misinformation work? The diffuse nature of the work "makes it difficult to assign an exact figure."
How does counter-misinformation work? When U.S. embassies become concerned about misinformation gaining credence in their region of the world, the official said, they contact Leventhal.
"Mr. Leventhal leads the effort to collect information on 'myth busting,' drawing on the expertise of other offices to craft a response." Embassy officials then decide how best to use Leventhal's research to counteract the bad information.
Conspiracies Run Amok
Thanks to the Internet and the enormity of 9/11, there may be more conspiracy theories circulating the globe than ever.
Among the most egregious "disinformers" singled out by the State Department is "Islam Memo," a "pro-al Qaeda, pro-Iraqi insurgency, Arabic-language" website in Saudi Arabia.
And there's "Loose Change," a documentary available on the Internet that's been a prodigious source of 9/11 conspiracy theories. Although not mentioned by name, the movie's claims (planted explosives brought down the World Trade Center towers; an American missile, not a plane, hit the Pentagon, etc.) are dissected in the "Top September 11 Conspiracy Theories" section.
Conspiracy theorists - no surprise - aren't impressed. Many cite the number of times the U.S. government has played a hand in media affairs in the past few years - paying columnists to promote government policies, planting military-boosting stories in Iraqi newspapers, etc. - and say the government has lost the authority to counteract propaganda.
John Perkins' book, "Confessions of an Economic Hitman," is featured prominently on the "Identifying Misinformation" website and denounced as largely a work of fiction. Perkins claims the National Security Agency paid him to sabotage the economies of other nations.
But Perkins says denials from the National Security Agency don't hurt his credibility. "Their mission statement is a lie, so when they use their mission statement to say my book is a lie, I think it speaks for itself," he says. "I think anything like this helps books sales."
Correcting Lies
How much damage can a few crackpot theories do? Actually, says the State Department official, a great deal of harm can result "when people believe these lies and then act on the basis of their mistaken beliefs."
For example, the official says Al-Qaida members "were encouraged to 'join the jihad' at least in part because of disinformation."
And an American woman visiting Guatemala in 1994 was attacked and permanently disabled. The attackers were spurred on by the story of Americans adopting Latin American children for organ transplants.
In 1979, rumors of U.S. involvement in the takeover of a Saudi Arabian grand mosque caused a mob in Pakistan to attack and kill two U.S. servicemen and two Pakistani employees at an embassy in Islamabad.
Even when you can't pinpoint the effects of false information "it is clearly not in the interests of the U.S. government or the American people if foreign audiences believe outrageous lies about Americans or their government."
And, of course, "crackpot" is a relative term. Stories that sound absurd to one group of people may well fit the worldview of others, says Herb Romerstein, who held an earlier version of Leventhal's job up through the 1990s. For those who already think poorly of the United States, he says, any story with a U.S. villain could seem credible.
Romerstein doesn't agree with the State Department's keeping a low profile on its counter-misinformation work. "I think they should be disseminating this information," he says. "There's a desire for it."
But whenever you rebut a claim, you're also publicizing it. Perkins knows this. He was unaware of the State Department's website until somebody called his attention to its section on the Venezuelan "invasion" plan. Right above it was a section about "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man," arguing they were "fantasies," not confessions.
Suddenly, major newspapers started paying attention to the book.
"Mainstream journalists weren't touching the book because no one thought they should give it any play," he says. "But once the State Department admitted the book was out there, it kind of broke the code of silence."
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Me, too! Me, too!
N. Korea informs China of plan to conduct 3 more nuke tests
AP
Oct 18, 2006
North Korea has informed China that it is prepared to conduct "as many as three additional tests" following the first nuclear experiment Oct. 9, CNN television reported Wednesday.
Quoting U.S. intelligence analysts and officials, CNN and Fox News said U.S. spy satellites have detected activities which could be preparations for nuclear explosion tests at three North Korean sites.
CNN also said that latest U.S. intelligence show that North Korea's missile sites remain at a "very high state of readiness," and Pyongyang could use them "in the next several days."
On Tuesday, NBC News reported that the North Korean military has told China that it intends to conduct a "series of underground nuclear tests."
According to ABC News, meanwhile, a North Korean diplomat said Wednesday it would be "natural" for North Korea to conduct a second nuclear test.
In an interview with the U.S. television, Ri Gun, director general of the North Korean Foreign Ministry's American affairs bureau, said, "Even if there's a nuclear test, that is natural."
Ri did not reveal the timing or the scale of the prospective nuclear test.
Asked if the United States should not be surprised by the second test, Ri reportedly said that was the case.
Ri added that there are "many nuclear weapons" in South Korea and Japan and that they are conducting new military exercises, the report said.
Ri also said North Korea declared last year it has nuclear weapons, and said Pyongyang proved through its nuclear test that it possesses nuclear weapons peacefully, according to the report.
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Bush to Blame for North Korean Crisis, Soros Says
By William Sim
Bloomberg
Oct. 18, 2006
Billionaire investor George Soros today blamed U.S. President George W. Bush for escalating tensions with North Korea, which last week tested a nuclear bomb for the first time.
Bush shouldn't have labeled North Korea part of an "axis of evil," Soros told a group of investors and academics in Seoul. The president "aggravated the problem'' by rejecting South Korea's so-called Sunshine Policy of engaging with the North, Soros said.
North Korea drew international condemnation after last week's test and the United Nations Security Council banned the sale or transfer of arms and nuclear-related materials to the communist country. China, South Korea and the U.S. have been cooperating in their handling of the crisis, and their desire for stability on the Korean peninsular bodes well, Soros said.
"Chinese want stability, or no change. South Korea the same,'' Soros said. "The United States, having lots of problems elsewhere, wants to keep this under wraps.''
North Korea, Iraq and Iran were labeled an "axis of evil'' by Bush in January 2002. The U.S. subsequently invaded Iraq, where more than 2,700 U.S. military personnel have been killed, and the country has been pressing for international action to reign in Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program.
North Korea has isolated its citizens for almost 60 years, under Kim Il Sung and his son Kim Jong Il, who has ruled since 1994. The atomic test followed the July 5 test-flight of seven missiles, including the Taepodong-2, which U.S. officials have said may be able to reach Alaska.
Hungarian-born Soros is a long-standing critic of the Bush administration and spent $27.5 million trying to defeat the president in the 2004 election. He last month said Bush's war on terror is "misleading, counterproductive and destructive,'' because it creates innocent victims and spurs the rage and resentment that fuels more terrorism.
South Korea's financial markets won't be much affected by the crisis, Soros said. "It's nothing new. The nuclear test is an act of desperation.''
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Jimmy Carter: Bush Trashed N. Korea Peace Effort
18 October 2006
Newsmax
Former President Jimmy Carter said that an agreement he brokered 12 years ago for North Korea to halt nuclear weapons development is "in the wastebasket" since the Bush administration turned its back on the deal and labeled the isolated nation part of an "axis of evil."
But Carter, speaking at a previously scheduled panel discussion on his 1994 mediation, said he does not foresee the current dispute over North Korea's test of a nuclear bomb to lead to war.
"I really think it's less likely now," Carter said, adding that in 1994 war "appeared to be imminent" if the Clinton administration had pushed sanctions against North Korea through the U.N. Security Council.
The former U.S. president said the late North Korean leader, Kim Il Sun, had agreed to every stipulation that Carter proposed, including a freeze of the weapons program, a halt to processing of nuclear fuel, a return of U.N. inspectors and bilateral talks with South Korea.
Within weeks, Kim died, but his son and successor, Kim Jong Il, soon notified the Clinton administration that he would abide by the agreements, Carter said.
In exchange, he said, there were no sanctions, and the U.S., Japan and other countries agreed to supply North Korea with enough oil to produce electricity to replace that generated by a nuclear plant shut down under the agreement.
"All of that has been thrown in the wastebasket," Carter said.
He said that after President George W. Bush took office, "there was a rapid change in the attitude toward North Korea."
"Within a year, the entire framework was destroyed, and North Korea was branded a member of the axis of evil," he said.
Between October 1994 and December 2002, no plutonium was produced in North Korea, said Marion Creekmore, author of the new book "A Moment of Crisis," about his 1994 trip with Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, to Pyongyang.
"Most people believe that since 2002, North Korea has produced enough plutonium for six to 10 nuclear weapons," said Creekmore, who joined the Carters in the panel discussion at The Carter Center, along with James Laney, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea 12 years ago.
Laney said it appeared that war was certain before Carter's trip, which demonstrated to him that every opportunity for peaceful resolution of a crisis must be used.
"That is not appeasement. It's not being a wimp," Laney said.
Comment: Note that North Korea is alleged to have up to 10 nuclear weapons, yet Bush et al would have us believe that N Korea threatens our very lives. If possession of nukes is the yardstick as to a country's danger to the world, why is Israel, with its at least 200 and possibly 1500 nukes, not being taken to task as a much clearer threat to the world? Why is America, with possibly 10,000 nukes and a stated intention to use them, not being lambasted by the entire planet??
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Bush: U.S. will stop N. Korea nuke moves
AP
Thu Oct 19, 2006
WASHINGTON - President Bush said Wednesday the United States would stop North Korea from transferring nuclear weapons to
Iran or al-Qaida and that the communist regime would then face "a grave consequence."
Bush refused to spell out how the United States would retaliate. "They'd be held to account," the president said in an ABC News interview.
In light of North Korea's Oct. 9 test detonation of a nuclear bomb, Bush warned that any transfer of nuclear material elsewhere in the world by the North would be considered a grave threat to the security of the United States. He previously used "grave threat" in relation to
Iraq's Saddam Hussein, whose government was toppled in the U.S.-led war in 2003.
"If we get intelligence that they're about to transfer a nuclear weapon, we would stop the transfer, and we would deal with the ships that were taking the - or the airplane that was dealing with taking the material to somebody," the president said.
Asked how he would retaliate, Bush would not be specific, "You know, I'd just say it's a grave consequence."
"The leader of North Korea to understand that he'll be held to account. Just like he's being held to account now for having run a test," Bush said.
The United States repeatedly has said it does not intend to attack the North. But the Bush administration also has refused to take any military option completely off the table.
Shifting to Iraq, Bush said intensifying violence now might be compared with the Tet offensive in Vietnam beginning in 1968. The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese armies undertook a series of attacks that shook America's confidence about winning the war and eroded political support for President Johnson.
"There's certainly a stepped up level of violence, and we're heading into an election," Bush said. But he added, "My gut tells me that they have all along been trying to inflict enough damage that we'd leave. And the leaders of al-Qaida have made that very clear."
Bush said al-Qaida was very active in Iraq. "They are dangerous. They are lethal. They are trying to not only kill American troops, but they're trying to foment sectarian violence.
"They believe that if they can create enough chaos, the American people will grow sick and tired of the Iraqi effort and will cause government to withdraw," he said.
The military said Wednesday that 11 U.S. troops died in combat amid a security crackdown in Baghdad, putting October on track to be the deadliest month for American forces since the siege of Fallujah nearly two years ago.
Bush said the news of casualties "breaks my heart" but said it is surrender "if you pull the troops out before the job is done."
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Pyongyang will be held 'to account' on nuclear aggression: Bush
Last Updated: Wednesday, October 18, 2006 | 8:56 PM ET
CBC News
U.S. President George W. Bush said Wednesday that his country would stop North Korea from transferring nuclear weapons and technology, warning Pyongyang it would then face "a grave consequence."
The Communist state staged an underground nuclear test on Oct. 9 and has described international attempts to prevent more testing as "an act of war." Officials in Washington are worried that the North Korean government might share information or nuclear material with Iran or al-Qaeda.
In an interview with ABC News, Bush said that any attempt to transfer nuclear material would be considered a grave threat to the United States.
"The leader of North Korea needs to understand that he'll be held to account," Bush said, "just as he's being held to account now for having run a test."
U.S. will defend Japan against North Korea: Rice
In Japan, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has also been warning Pyongyang about the consequences of its nuclear ambitions.
She told Japanese leaders on Wednesday that the United States is prepared to employ the "full range" of its military options to defend Japan if necessary, given that North Korea has tested a nuclear weapon.
"North Korea will be held accountable," Rice said in Tokyo.
Japan is the first stop on a round of diplomacy by Rice to rally support for enforcing United Nations sanctions against North Korea for its recent nuclear test. The sanctions were approved by the UN Security Council on Saturday.
Rice met Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso and is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday. She is also planning to visit South Korea, China and Russia.
"We have discussed the security situation in region in light of the North Korean nuclear test and earlier the North Korean missile test," she said.
"The United Nations Security Council has acted firmly and resolutely in both cases to say to the North Koreans that their behaviour is unacceptable and it is, in fact, isolating North Korea from the international community."
Rice said she and Aso have agreed to "work together and with other states" to implement sanctions swiftly and effectively against North Korea.
Japan won't join nuclear club: PM
Meanwhile, Abe said Japan has no plans to develop its own nuclear weapons despite the North Korean test.
Japan established a policy after the Second World War of not having, developing or allowing nuclear bombs on its soil, and Abe said there are no plans to deviate from that policy.
"In my opinion, that debate is finished," Abe told reporters.
Japan is expected to provide the support of its navy to the U.S. military when it conducts searches of North Korean vessels as part of sanctions imposed by the Security Council.
Japanese aid to U.S. military a touchy issue
Providing logistical support to U.S. military vessels as they inspect cargo ships entering and leaving North Korea could be a sensitive issue in Japan, however, because its constitution prohibits its armed forces from taking part in military operations abroad.
Japan has imposed sanctions of its own, banning North Korean ships from its ports, all North Korean imports and North Korean nationals from entering Japan. It has also suspended food aid to North Korea and imposed limited financial sanctions.
North Korea remains defiant, having rejected the UN sanctions, called them a declaration of war and threatened more nuclear tests.
Satellite data indicates increased activity around two North Korean sites that began a few days ago. At one site, the ground is being prepared and there is construction of some buildings.
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One Man, One Vote?
Doubts about vote count strong in U.S.
By WILL LESTER
Associated Press
Thu Oct 19, 2006
WASHINGTON - Count on close, contentious elections to stir up public distrust in the vote count.
That could be why people in the United States, Italy and Mexico had the lowest levels of confidence in the vote count among nine countries in AP-Ipsos polling taken just weeks before the U.S. midterm elections. Fewer than two-thirds in each of the three countries said they were confident the vote count would be accurate.
That's lower than in the other countries polled - Canada, France, Germany, South Korea, Spain and the United Kingdom, where three-fourths or more in each country felt the vote count is accurate.
"If we're going to have an effective democracy, we can't lose confidence in the institutions that deal with the votes," said Gabriel Nunez, a 39-year-old sales clerk in Mexico City.
In Mexico, Italy and the United States, recent contested elections left one side feeling cheated.
- In Mexico this past summer, ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon was proclaimed the winner after the country's top electoral court rejected claims by leftist candidate Andres Manual Lopez Obrador of widespread fraud. By the end of the year, Mexicans will have an elected president, and the man he beat will have been "inaugurated" president by his followers.
- In Italy's parliamentary elections last April, outgoing Premier Silvio Berlusconi alleged the vote was marred by irregularities and for weeks refused to accept the narrow-margin victory of Romano Prodi's center-left coalition.
- In the United States, the 2000 election was contested for more than a month before the Supreme Court ended the dispute, enabling Republican George W. Bush to be certified the winner over Democrat Al Gore. The 2004 election had enough problems to bring back memories from four years earlier.
- Germans had a close election in 2005 but worked out a compromise and the German people accepted the count with little outcry.
The U.S. complaints in 2000 and again in 2004 left Charlotte Blum, an independent voter from Fairfax, Vt., with doubts about the accuracy of the vote count. "People were asking for recounts," she said of the 2004 voting. "It's a bad atmosphere for the country."
The doubts come at a time that voter turnout has been sliding in many different countries.
Only half in the United States said they always vote, the lowest level in any of the nine countries polled. More than seven in 10 in Canada, France and Germany say they always vote, with almost that many in Spain and Britain saying that.
Voter turnout is traditionally higher in many European democracies than in the United States, and some voting analysts blame U.S. voter registration laws that put much of the burden on the voter to register.
Voter turnout has been dropping in many democracies, however, and the lack of interest among young adults is frequently cited.
For example:
- In the United Kingdom's 2001 election, just 59 percent of registered voters cast a ballot, the lowest turnout since 1918. The 2005 national elections brought out 61 percent of voters, recording a slight upturn in a trend that has been moving down.
- Voter turnout in Canada has waned steadily over recent years, dropping from 75 percent of registered voters in 1988 to an all-time low of 60 percent in the June 2004 election.
- Turnout for German parliamentary elections usually hovers around 80 percent, matching a post-World War II low last year with about 78 percent of the electorate turning out - still high for most democracies.
- In France, voter turnout has been dropping, especially in parliamentary elections, but the 2002 results when right-wing candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen forced a runoff - eventually won by President Jacques Chirac - were a shocker for many.
Margot Gillouard, a 19-year-old student in Paris who would be voting for the first time in 2007, is aware of the high stakes in the French elections. "When you see what happened the last time, I wouldn't miss it for anything," she said.
Turnout in the United States has been dropping over the last few decades, but was higher in 2004 when 122 million, or 62 percent of the voting age population, turned out in the presidential contest.
The drop in voting levels is widespread and often involves young people, said Bruce Cain, a political scientist at University of California-Berkeley.
"There seems to be a general wave of demobilization, a problem of disengagement," he said, noting that voting is marked by "peaks and valleys." "A major part of it in many countries is young people. They move a lot, they don't have a vested interest in the society."
Compulsory voting is one approach that scattered countries have tried over the years - though few enforce the law. That approach to improving voter turnout was backed by 63 percent in France, 59 percent in Mexico and 58 percent in Britain.
Only 33 percent in the United States favored that approach, according to the polling of about 1,000 people in each of the countries. The telephone polls, conducted between Sept. 8 and Oct. 1, have margins of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points in each country.
Skeptical attitudes about how much an individual's vote counts runs high in European democracies - with totals ranging from 32 percent in Germany and 51 percent in Spain saying they feel their vote doesn't count.
But occasional election problems don't upset Giancarlo Rossi, a 60-year-old export manager in Rome, who agrees with six in 10 in his country that he's confident his vote counts.
"Little tricks can happen often," he said, "but they don't influence the overall result."
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AG: Voter warning linked to GOP campaign
AP
October 19, 2006
SANTA ANA, Calif. - State investigators have linked a Republican campaign to letters sent to thousands of Orange County Hispanics warning them they could go to jail or be deported if they vote next month, a spokesman for the attorney general said.
"We have identified where we believe the mailing list was obtained," said Nathan Barankin, spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer.
He declined to identify the specific Republican campaign Wednesday, citing the ongoing investigation. The Los Angeles Times and The Orange County Register both reported Thursday that the investigation appeared to be focused on the campaign of Tan D. Nguyen, a Republican challenger to Democratic U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez.
The letter, written in Spanish, tells recipients: "You are advised that if your residence in this country is illegal or you are an immigrant, voting in a federal election is a crime that could result in jail time."
In fact, immigrants who are naturalized U.S. citizens can vote.
Complaints about the letters this week prompted state and federal investigations, and Barankin said investigators had been questioning people in Orange County.
The two newspapers reported state investigators had found the location where the letters were printed and mailed to an estimated 14,000 Democratic voters in central Orange County. The Los Angeles Times, citing an unnamed source, said authorities had interviewed Nguyen at his office.
Nguyen did not return messages left by The Associated Press or either newspaper.
Sanchez said in an interview Thursday on Univision that the sender should be punished for stating that immigrants can't vote. It would be unfortunate if the person responsible was another immigrant, she said.
"What a shame, really, that this is still happening in the United States today," Sanchez said.
The owner of Huntington Beach-based Mailing Pros, Christopher West, told The Orange County Register that he was hired to do the mailings but didn't know what they said and didn't know any laws were being broken when the mailer was sent. He said he gave investigators the name of the person who hired him.
"I'm the one that processed it, and I don't read Spanish," West said. "Until the investigator read it to me, I didn't know the content."
Scott Baugh, chairman of the Orange County Republican Party, condemned the letter as "an obnoxious, grotesque piece of work."
"Regardless of who did it - Republican or Democrat - if it's a crime, then whoever did it should be prosecuted," Baugh said.
A group of six Vietnamese-American political candidates running for offices in Orange County issued a joint statement saying: "The content of this mailer is offensive to the immigrant voters, regardless of their ethnicity."
The note's letterhead resembles that of an anti-illegal immigration group, California Coalition for Immigration Reform, but group leader Barbara Coe said she told investigators for the attorney general's office Wednesday that her group didn't authorize the letter and she didn't know who sent it.
"The letterhead was altered and I've never head of any Sergio Ramirez," the name signed to the letter, Coe said.
Numerous political leaders including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have denounced the letter and called for the investigations.
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New Laws and Machines May Spell Voting Woes
October 19, 2006
NY Times
WASHINGTON - New electronic voting machines have arrived in Yolo County, Calif., but there is one hitch: the audio program for the visually impaired in some of them works only in Vietnamese.
"Talk about panic," said Freddy Oakley, the county's top election official. "I've got gray-haired ladies as poll workers standing around looking stunned."
As dozens of states are enforcing new voter registration laws and switching to paperless electronic voting systems, officials across the country are bracing for an Election Day with long lines and heightened confusion, followed by an increase in the number of contested results.
In Maryland, Mississippi and Pennsylvania, a shortage of technicians has vendors for new machines soliciting applications for technical support workers on job Web sites like Monster.com. Ms. Oakley, who is also facing a shortage, raided the computer science department at the University of California, Davis, hiring 60 graduate students as troubleshooters.
Arizona, California, Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania are among the states considered most likely to experience difficulties, according to voting experts who have been tracking the technology and other election changes.
"We've got new laws, new technology, heightened partisanship and a growing involvement of lawyers in the voting process," said Tova Wang, who studies elections for the Century Foundation, a nonpartisan research group. "We also have the greatest potential for problems in more places next month than in any voting season before."
Election officials in many of the states are struggling with delays in the delivery of machines before the election as old-fashioned lever and punch-card machines are phased out. A chronic shortage of poll workers, many of them retirees uncomfortable with new technology, has worsened matters.
Wendy S. Noren, the top election official for Boone County, Mo., which includes Columbia, said delays in the delivery of new machines had left her county several weeks behind schedule and with 600 poll workers yet to be trained. Ms. Noren said she also had not yet been provided with the software coding she needed to print the training manuals.
"I think we will make it," she said, "but my staff is already at the point of passing out, and the sprint is just starting."
New computerized registration rolls and litigation over new voter identification laws in states like Arizona, Georgia, Indiana and Missouri have left many poll workers and voters unclear about the rules, including whether they are in effect, as the courts have blocked many of the new laws.
"We're expecting arguments at the polls in these states that will slow everything down and probably cause large numbers of legitimate voters to be turned away or to be forced to vote on provisional ballots," said Barbara Burt, an elections reform director for Common Cause.
Meanwhile, votes in about half of the 45 most competitive Congressional races, including contests in Florida, Georgia and Indiana, will be cast on electronic machines that provide no independent means of verification.
"In a close race, a machine error in one precinct could leave the results in doubt and the losing candidates won't be able to get a recount," said Warren Stewart, policy director for VoteTrustUSA, an advocacy group that has criticized electronic voting.
Deborah L. Markowitz, president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, was less inclined to sound the alarm. She said that since it was not a presidential election year and many states had encouraged voting by mail, fewer people would turn up at the polls than in 2004.
With computerized registration rolls, Ms. Markowitz said, there will be far fewer people incorrectly excluded from the new databases compared with when registration rolls were on paper.
"There will be isolated incidents, there is no doubt about that," she said. "But over all the system will move faster and with fewer problems."
Charles Stewart, head of the political science department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published a study this year indicating that from 2000 to 2004, new technology helped reduce the number of improperly marked ballots by about one million votes.
"If you think things are bad and worrisome now, they were much worse before 2000," Mr. Stewart said, adding that breakdowns in the mechanics of voting are simply more highlighted, not more prevalent.
Still, this is a year of firsts for some local election officials. Cherie Poucher, elections director for Wake County, N.C., which includes Raleigh, said she expected 350,000 voters on Election Day, up from the 30,000 in the May primary. She worries that the county's 218 optical scan machines may be unable to handle the increased load. During the primary, 12 of the new machines would not boot up and needed to be replaced.
Comment: This appears to be the beginning of the setup of the excuse for "strange election results" in next month's Congress and Senate elections in the US.
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Approval of Republicans at record low: poll
Reuters
Oct 18, 2006
WASHINGTON - With congressional elections less than three weeks away, the Republican party's approval ratings are at an all-time low, with approval of the Republican-led Congress at its lowest point in 14 years, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released on Wednesday.
Forty-seven percent of respondents said they were less in favor of keeping Republicans in control of Congress, compared to 14 percent who were more in favor of maintaining the current congressional makeup, according to the poll.
Only 16 percent of respondents approve of the job Congress is doing, the lowest level since 1992, NBC said.
In October 1994, when Democrats held congressional majorities, Congress had a 24 percent job approval, NBC said. Democrats lost 52 House and 8 Senate seats in the 1994 midterm elections.
NBC said the poll indicates people have been paying attention to the issues they are hearing about -- from Iraq and Bob Woodward's new book on the Bush administration's handling of the war to the unfolding scandal over former Florida Rep. Mark Foley's e-mail messages to teenage congressional aides.
The poll numbers and President George W. Bush's own job approval ratings, which have been mired in the 30 percent range, are an ominous sign for a party trying to maintain control of Congress, NBC said.
Bush had a job approval rating of 38 percent, down 1 percentage point from a previous NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released earlier this month after the Foley news first broke, NBC said.
Asked who they planned to vote for in the congressional election, 37 percent of those polled said Republicans and 52 percent said Democrats. The 15 percent difference was the highest disparity ever in the poll and up from a 9-point difference a month ago, NBC said.
The poll of 1,006 registered voters was taken from October 13-16 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
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Hot Enough For You?
10 million people at risk from pollution
By TRACEE HERBAUGH
Associated Press
October 18, 2006
NEW YORK - More than 10 million people are at risk for lung infection, cancer and shortened life expectancy because they live in the 10 worst-polluted cities in the world, according to a report issued Wednesday.
The report published by the Blacksmith Institute, an international environmental research group, lists 10 cities in eight countries where pollution poses health risks and fosters poverty.
"Living in a town with serious pollution is like living under a death sentence," the report said. "If the damage does not come from immediate poisoning, then cancers, lung infections, mental retardation, are likely outcomes."
The worst-polluted places in the world, the report said, are in secluded areas far away from capitals or tourist areas.
These countries, which are mostly part of the developing world, generally have few or inadequate pollution controls, and the problem is compounded by the local governments' "lack of knowledge" and the inability of citizens to enforce justice.
Three Russian cities are among the most polluted - Dzherzhinsk, Norilsk and Rudnaya Pristan. The other cities are Linfen, China; Haina, Dominican Republic; Ranipet, India; Mayluu-Suu, Kyrgyzstan; La Oroya, Peru; Chernobyl, Ukraine; and Kabwe, Zambia.
According to the report the cities are reminders of an early industrial era, with most pollution stemming from relics such as unregulated lead and coal mines or unrefined nuclear weapons manufacturing plants.
In Chernobyl, the report estimates 5.5 million people are still threatened by radioactive material that continues to seep into groundwater and soil 20 years after the nuclear power plant exploded there.
Residents of Linfen, which is in the heart of China's coal-producing Shanxi province, suffer from bronchitis, pneumonia and lung cancer because of the poor air quality.
And according to the report, the 300,000 people in Dzherzhinsk, a chemical weapons manufacturing site during the Cold War era, have a life expectancy about "half that of the richest nations." The life expectancy for men in the city is about 42 years and about 47 for women.
Richard Fuller, director and founder of the Blacksmith Institute said the report was intended to shed light on the problem as well as the solutions.
"The good news is we have known technologies and proven strategies for eliminating a lot of this pollution," he said.
The report was compiled over seven years by a team of environmental and health experts, including faculty from Johns Hopkins University, Mount Sinai Medical Center and the City University of New York.
The top 10 list was compiled from more than 300 areas nominated by non-governmental agencies, local communities and international environmental authorities. The list of criteria included the size of the affected population, severity of the toxins involved and reliable evidence of health impacts.
Dave Hanrahan, Blacksmith Institute's chief of global operations, said some solutions to these problems could be as simple as reducing dust levels and removing contaminated soil.
"The most important thing is to achieve some practical progress in dealing with these polluted places," he said. "There is a lot of good work being done in understanding the problems and identifying possible approaches."
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Toxic plume prompts evacuation in N.C.
AP
Wed Oct 18, 2006
RALEIGH, N.C. - Emergency crews evacuated businesses near a chemical waste plant Wednesday after a chemical reaction sent a toxic plume into the air two weeks after a raging inferno at the same site forced thousands of people from their homes.
Firefighters extinguished the smoldering chemical mix two hours after it began spouting smoke from a 55-gallon barrel amid the plant's ruins in Apex, a Raleigh suburb. The drum contained a sodium metal solution that can ignite when exposed to water or air, said Apex Mayor Keith Weatherly.
Rain had drenched the area Tuesday.
The irritating fumes produced by the reaction reportedly caused burning eyes, Weatherly said.
"It's very frustrating to see something like this happen again," he said. "There's now additional apprehension among our folks, which is unfortunate."
The chemical plant belonging to EQ Industrial Services Co. had erupted in flames on Oct. 5, lighting up the sky with explosions and blanketing parts of town in a yellow-green haze. Town officials had urged as many as 17,000 people to evacuate, citing potentially toxic fumes that had made a few dozen people seek medical attention.
More than 200 residents had packed Apex Town Hall on Tuesday looking for answers about the blaze.
Though company officials have said tests found no harmful levels of toxins in the air after the Oct. 5 fire, residents wanted to know more about their vegetable gardens, their children's health and the quality of their air. Some asked if the company would rebuild at the site - a prospect town officials said they would try to prevent.
"We cannot tolerate the continued operation of a hazardous-waste storage facility in Apex," Weatherly said. "Let me just say our concern - and the point we will not forget - is that EQ has exposed our citizens to an unprecedented level of danger."
The Michigan-based company has said a decision about rebuilding in Apex won't be made until cleanup is complete.
State regulators say more tests will be conducted on the ground and water and they expect to release a report on air quality later this week.
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Russia's Kamchatka hit by 230 tremors in one day
RIA Novosti
18/10/2006
MOSCOW - A total of 230 minor quakes have been registered over the past 24 hours near the most active volcano on the Kamchatka peninsular in Russia's Far East, local seismologists said Wednesday.
Experts said Mount Karymsky, in the southeast of the peninsular, which rises to 1,536 metres (5,039 feet) above sea level, spewed ash emissions up to an altitude of around 3,600 meters, although a precise evaluation was made difficult by the volcano's remoteness from detection equipment.
Satellite images show a dust cloud, currently about 120 km to the east of Mount Karymsky.
The volcano last erupted in February following an 11-year period of normal activity. An observatory in Alaska then reported a 15-kilometer ash plume stretching from the volcano eastwards, at a height of 4,000 meters.
Two short quakes, each measuring 5.0 on the Richter scale, were also registered late Tuesday in Far East Russia's Amur Region, bordering on China, a spokesman said. No damage was caused by the tremors.
The largest major disaster was on May 28, 1995, when over 2,000 people were killed when an earthquake devastated the town of Neftegorsk on the island of Sakhalin.
This year more than 1,200 people, including 542 children, were evacuated from the north of the Kamchatka peninsula after a series of earthquakes. The first 7.8-magnitude quake, the strongest in the Koryak Autonomous Area since 1900, injured 31 people on April 21 and had an epicenter about 30 kilometers (18 miles) from the town of Khailino. It also damaged about 380 houses and 25 administrative facilities in four other towns.
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Pacific Island Vanuatu Hit By Magnitude-6.2 Offshore Earthquake
By Alex Morales
Oct. 18 (Bloomberg)
The Pacific island of Vanuatu was hit by a magnitude-6.2 offshore earthquake, said the U.S. Geological Survey, which monitors global seismological events.
The temblor struck at 9:45 p.m. local time today, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) north-northeast of Luganville, on Vanuatu's Espiritu Santo island, and 315 kilometers north-northwest of the archipelago's capital, Port Vila, the USGS said in a preliminary e-mailed report. There were no immediate reports of damage.
Vanuatu is slightly larger than Connecticut and has a population of about 209,000.
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Death in Many Forms
Norway Shocked By New Documentary
Barbara Sumner Burstyn
Researcher/Writer
17/10/2006
A television documentary screened last night in Norway showed the shocking long-term effects of a vaccine recently injected into one million healthy New Zealand children.
The documentary, 'The Vaccine Experiment - In The Service of Good' has sparked an outcry against a meningococcal vaccine trial in Norway.
The documentary presents compelling evidence of serious adverse effects resulting from the 'parent' Norwegian vaccine and New Zealand's experimental MeNZB vaccine. The film reveals a remarkable trail of lies and deceit by meningococcal vaccine officials and researchers in Norway and New Zealand.
Connie Barr, a Norwegian TV personality who made 'enlistment' films for the original vaccine trial, hosts the film. It outlines her change of heart as the evidence of medical misadventure began to build up.
Ms Barr says the films she made in the 80's to attract youth to participate in the vaccine experiment had a very strong effect. "The more I looked into the material, the clearer I saw this was an ugly story."
The film features leading medical experts in Norway who heavily criticize the Norwegian Institute of Public Health for withholding information on the dangers of the vaccine and the fact those who did get sick had to fight for years to get compensation.
"The Norwegian situation is so similar to New Zealand's it is scary," says Risk & Policy Analyst Ron Law.
The Norwegian parent vaccine is considered bio-identical to the MeNZB vaccine - to the extent that Norwegian bridging data was used in lieu of phase three trials.
Norwegian manufactured vaccine was also used in the majority of the trials in New Zealand and an unspecified amount was used in the final rollout.
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Researcher/Writer Barbara Sumner Burstyn comments New Zealand seems to be in a state of denial at the extent of the fraud surrounding the development and use of the vaccine. "From the highest levels of government to media and the medical profession, we seem to be desperate to believe everything is fine with this vaccine, despite copious evidence to the contrary."
The documentary reveals that New Zealand officials were warned about serious long-term adverse effects following the meningococcal vaccine in 2003. Officials systematically chose to keep quiet about those serious adverse effects.
"There has clearly been a cover-up by Ministry of Health officials and advisors that warrants a formal inquiry," says Ron Law.
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Boat collision kills at least 50 south Sudan soldiers
Reuters
October 19, 2006
KHARTOUM - At least 50 soldiers from the former rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army drowned in southern Sudan after two steamboats collided on the Nile, state media and a southern official said on Thursday.
The state-owned SUNA news agency said 50 troops drowned in the accident on Wednesday night as they were being transported from the southern Malakal town to their new base along the river.
A southern Sudan official said the toll was as high as 75.
"There were two diesel steamers and they crashed," said Joseph Dut, a member of the former southern rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM).
"One was carrying around 109 soldiers and we are hearing that up to 75 of those drowned immediately," he added.
After more than two decades of bitter civil war which claimed 2 million lives, the SPLM signed a peace deal in January 2005 with the Khartoum government. A coalition government was formed and an autonomous southern regional authority.
Under the deal, all militias were to join the SPLM's armed wing (the SPLA) or the national Sudanese Armed Forces. The SAF are in the process of withdrawing from the south and the SPLA from areas it controlled in the north under the deal.
During the war, river traffic was subjected to gunfire or taxes from militias.
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Australian farmers commit suicide as hope evaporates
By Michael Perry
Reuters
Thu Oct 19, 2006
SYDNEY - One Australian farmer commits suicide every four days, defeated by the country's worst drought in 100 years which has left them with dust-bowl paddocks and a mountain of debt, says a national mental health body.
As drought rolls into a sixth year, stoic farmers are reduced to tears under the stress of trying to produce a crop and hold onto land sometimes farmed by the same family for generations.
"One male farmer every four days is committing suicide," Jeff Kennett, chairman of beyondblue, said on Thursday.
"My fear is that when under prolonged stress and when they see their assets totally denuded of value, that we will see an increase (in suicides)," Kennett told local radio.
The rate among male farmers and farm workers is more than twice the national average, the NSW Farmers Association says.
The figure is all the more worrying because only about 10 percent of Australia's 20 million population live in rural areas and the number has been declining for years as the rural economy struggles. The vast majority of Australians live in cities.
The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics suicide report says 2,098 Australians took their lives in 2004.
Crop losses stretch across the country, 92 percent of economically dominant New South Wales state is in drought, and farmers have started off-loading stock before the hot, dry summer when they would be forced to buy feed and water.
With an El Nino weather pattern, which will bring more dry weather and soaring temperatures, now on the horizon and little prospect of rain until early in 2007, rural hope is evaporating like water in Australia's mud-cracked dams and rivers.
Farmers' wives calling talk-back radio in the city describe their husbands' depression at trudging out into their dry paddocks, day after day, knowing they are losing money.
Prime Minister John Howard has announced a $350 million (US$263 million) aid package, but Kennett says farmers also need help coping with the depression and stress of years of drought.
BREAKING INTO TEARS
A team of 60 psychologists should be sent out for the next six months "to help address the anxiety, stress, depression being faced by many farmers," particularly men, said Kennett.
Australia's farmers are typically tough, resilient and resourceful -- qualities that have enabled generations of country families to tough it out in hard times of drought and bushfires.
But these same qualities also prevent many from seeking help, particularly for depression, because they are worried that asking for help could be seen as weak or shameful.
Rural counselor Liz Tomlinson-Reynolds said she receives up to 12 calls a day from depressed farmers.
"They're actually breaking into tears and you know, obviously, terribly, terribly distressed and that's over the phone. The ones that I see personally are no more stoic," Tomlinson-Reynolds told radio from northwest New South Wales.
More than 300,000 rural Australians experience depression each year, says beyondblue, but only a small number seek help.
A beyondblue study found several factors contributed to rural stress, such as isolation, drought-induced financial difficulties, stock loss, pressure of decision-making and the constant mental and physical demands of farming.
But rural communities are the least well-equipped to deal with mental health problems, with limited access to counseling, said the New South Wales Farmers Association.
"There are other facets of severe drought that are unable to be measured in production or dollar terms," the association said in a discussion paper on the drought released on Thursday.
"These are the social ramifications testing not only the farmers but all people on the frontline of drought," it said.
"Depression, isolation, alcohol abuse, family breakdown and suicide rates in regional and farming communities are all exacerbated in time of drought."
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Four killed as small plane explodes in France
19/10/2006
AP
A small plane exploded soon after takeoff from the eastern French city of Besancon early today, killing the two pilots and two surgeons who had been heading for a liver removal operation.
The plane crashed after the explosion 1,000 feet from the end of the runway of Besancon airport, according to the regional emergency situations department. The reason for the explosion was unclear.
All four people aboard were killed, and the bodies were recovered.
The two surgeons had been heading to a hospital in Amiens in northern France to remove a patient's liver for a transplant operation.
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Global Chaos
Five Ukrainian ministers tender resignation
By Olena Horodetska
Reuters
October 19, 2006
KIEV - Five Ukrainian ministers from President Viktor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine party have tendered their resignations after talks to create a broad ruling coalition failed, a senior party official said on Thursday.
The talks on the broad coalition were meant to bridge a difference between Ukraine's nationalist western and central regions that back pro-Western liberal Yushchenko and a pro-Russian east that supports Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich.
But they have collapsed.
Roman Bezsmertny, leader of Our Ukraine's parliamentary faction, said that the Justice, Health, Culture, Youth and Interior Ministers had tendered their resignation to parliament.
"At this very moment all resignation letters from Our Ukraine ministers had been registered in parliament," he told a news conference broadcast live on television. All the ministers met Yushchenko earlier this week.
But the resignations are unlikely to provoke a government crisis in Ukraine. All key posts in the finance, economy and energy sectors are occupied by Yanukovich allies.
Yanukovich was reluctantly appointed by Yushchenko in August after a failure to form a coalition of liberals that led the 2004 Orange Revolution. The premier is backed by a coalition of his Regions party, Communists and Socialists.
Foreign Minister Borys Tarasyuk and Defense Minister Anatoly Hrytsenko have said they would remain in their posts. They were appointed by Yushchenko personally and symbolize his pro-Western drive.
Evhen Kushnaryov, a senior official from the Regions party, said parliament might offer Yushchenko the chance to name his candidates to vacant ministerial posts.
Yushchenko's powers were reduced at the start of the year after a constitutional reform. The Prime minister and other ministers are appointed by parliament. The president has no right to sack the premier.
Yushchenko defeated Yanukovich in the presidential election in 2004 but he made a comeback when his Regions party finished first in the parliamentary election in March.
The two clashed publicly last month over cooperation with
NATO after Yanukovich said Ukraine was not ready for fast-track membership because of low public support.
But passions have calmed since and Yushchenko and Yanukovich have united in a drive to persuade parliament to pass legislation vital for Ukrainian talks with the World Trade Organization.
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Lula lead widens sharply for Brazil runoff ballot
By Andrei Khalip
Tue Oct 17, 2006 9:16pm ET
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva widened his lead to 20 points less than two weeks before the October 29 presidential runoff, an opinion poll showed on Tuesday as the impact of a political scandal seemed to be wearing off.
The recent scandal over a dossier to smear opposition candidates involving Lula's Workers' Party prevented him from winning the first round on October 1, and rival Geraldo Alckmin has since stepped up attacks on Lula to little avail so far.
A survey by the Datafolha polling firm showed Lula, Brazil's first working-class president who has huge support from the country's poor, would win 60 percent of the valid votes, compared with 56 percent in a poll released last Wednesday.
Alckmin, a former Sao Paulo state governor and a centrist favored by many business leaders, garnered 40 percent of valid votes in the opinion poll, down from 44 percent last week. The poll, carried out on Monday and Tuesday, surveyed 7,130 voters and had a margin of error of 2 percentage points.
In the first round of voting on October 1, Lula captured 48.6 percent of votes versus Alckmin's 41.6 percent.
"Lula's campaign calls on people not to swap something certain, which they have with this government, for dubious, and that seems to be working," said Carlos Lopes, a political analyst with the Santafe Ideias e Communicacao consultancy firm.
Social welfare for the poor and tame inflation are among the strengths of Lula's government, although the opposition says economic growth has been only modest.
Brazil's Central Bank last month cut its 2006 growth forecast to 3.5 percent from 4 percent, and Brazil lags other emerging countries, including its Latin American neighbors.
"As for Alckmin... it looks more and more like he needs a new scandal to be able to recover in polls," Lopes added.
Both candidates campaigned Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday, with Lula telling his supporters not to trust the opposition, which he says has plans to carry out "predatory" privatizations and layoffs and cut welfare programs.
"Their history is predatory, all they know is sell (state property)," Lula said during a rally in downtown Rio.
Alckmin denies such plans and says the government is using such claims to distract attention from the scandal.
"The only enterprise I want to put an end to is the enterprise of government lies," Alckmin said at a rally.
Earlier this month, the head of Lula's Workers' Party, Ricardo Berzoini, quit in the aftermath of the scandal in which senior aides were caught trying to buy documents to smear the opposition. It was the latest in a series of scandals that resulted in the removal of some of Lula's closest aides over two years.
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Tel Aviv sighting: UFO or plane?
16/10/2006
YNet
A strange object was spotted in the Tel Aviv skies Thursday afternoon by three flat mates standing on their terrace. The three told ynet they suddenly saw a flash of light cross the sky as they were standing on their terrace located on Rothschild Boulevard.
"We suddenly saw a strip of bright light flying downwards," said Lior one of the three flat mates. "There was a sense of something supernatural happening, I have never seen such a thing," she added.
The three testified that the unidentified object didn't make a sound and it remained in the sky for about 15 minutes, they said it was orange at first and then it turned white.
Meir, one of the three flat mates, didn't want to miss the opportunity of documenting the unidentified object crossing the sky and quickly grabbed his camera capturing the picture you see here. "This thing fell downwards and before landing it made a right turn and disappeared from view," he told ynet.
So have aliens from outer space arrived in Tel Aviv? Experts are very skeptical. Chairman of the Israeli Astronomical Association and the director of the observatory in Givataim Yigal Pat-El said he was convinced it was an aircraft.
"If they saw it at five o'clock in the afternoon it is very likely that it was an aircraft emitting white smoke, in the picture it even looks like it has two engines, and you can see that it is flying towards the horizon and not downwards," said Pat-El.
Pat-El added that the reddish tint was created by the angle of the sun's rays, just as it paints clouds red at sunset. He explained that when the sun sets, its rays pass through and color the clouds red, and this is what he believes happened here.
Surprisingly, despite the scary feeling Lior tends to agree with the expert. "It was my assumption as well," she said. "I also thought the orange tint came from the sunset."
Police say they received no reports of irregular aerial activity in the area.
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Eight youths arrested for assault on French policemen
PARIS, Oct 19, 2006 (AFP)
French police on Thursday arrested eight youths in a tough Paris suburb over the ambush last week of three police officers, one of whom suffered serious facial injuries.
The suspects, aged 17 to 21, identified by their fingerprints, were taken into custody and face possible charges of attempted murder with premeditation over the attack in the southern 'banlieue' of Epinay-sur-Seine, police said.
Friday's incident, in which a police patrol car was set upon by around 30 youths with stones and metal bars, was the third in as many weeks in the Paris area, prompting a chorus of alarm from police unions.
Serious clashes have also occurred at the Les Tartarets estate in Corbeil-Essonnes and at Les Mureaux, in the western Paris outskirts - sparking high profile police raids to root out the suspects.
The pre-dawn operation in Epinay, carried out by plain-clothes officers, was lower key than the previous operations, which critics accused of dangerously fuelling tensions with the local population.
Reporters, though they received notice of the operation, were held at bay as officers carried out the arrests at the suspects' homes.
Almost a year after France's suburban riots, sparked on October 27 last year, police have warned the latest attacks could herald a new upsurge of violence in the country's high-immigration, out-of-city estates.
Thousands of cars and hundreds of buildings were torched last year in three weeks of nightly confrontations.
With presidential elections due in April, the resurgence of tensions in the 'banlieues' has major political implications - raising questions over the tactics of Interior Minister and presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy.
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Our Friends, the Animals
Wild elephants kill five people in Bangladesh
19/10/2006
AP
A family of five people were killed today when a herd of wild elephants rampaged through a village in south-eastern Bangladesh.
The dead, including two children, were asleep in their thatched hut when the elephants trampled them to death at Bashkhali village in Chittagong district, said police chief Zahirul Islam.
Islam said a herd of about 12 elephants had been foraging in a nearby forest when they approached the village, 136 miles south-east of national capital, Dhaka, and destroyed more than a dozen huts.
Villagers used fire-lit torches to scare the pachyderms away, he said.
It was not clear what caused the rampage. Several hundred elephants make their homes in Bangladesh's tropical forests, but their habitat has been reduced in recent years due to human development.
That occasionally causes elephants to invade residential areas for food, according to a Bangladeshi wildlife expert.
Ainun Nishat, country representative of the IUCN-The World Conservation Union, said elephants sometimes wandered into residential areas in search of food, but usually did not attack "without a valid reason".
"Maybe once the area was a source of food, or somebody from the localities had caused injuries to one of the elephants," Nishat said, adding that elephants have "very sharp" memories.
He said elephants often became angry when they found homes or other buildings at the places once they used to roam.
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Florida man critical after sting-ray stabbing
AP
19/10/2006
An 81-year-old Florida man is in a critical condition after he was stabbed in the chest by a stingray that jumped into his boat.
James Bertakis was boating with his adult granddaughter and her friend yesterday afternoon when the rare attack occurred.
The women were able to steer the boat back to Bertakis' home in Lighthouse Point where they called authorities.
Australian "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin, 44, died on September 4 when a stingray's barb pierced his chest while he was filming a TV show on the Great Barrier Reef.
"It was a freak accident," said Lighthouse Point acting fire Chief David Donzella.
"It's very odd that the thing jumped out of the water and stung him. We still can't believe it."
Bertakis was conscious when paramedics arrived. Surgeons were able to remove some of the barb, but were not able to locate the rest and feared it may have migrated.
Bertakis suffered a closed chest wound, collapsed lung and may have to undergo open-heart surgery, rescue officials said.
The 1.5-metre wide stingray died on the boat, firefighters said.
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Your Portfolio
Dow cracks 12,000, but Nasdaq dips
By Chris Sanders
Reuters
Wed Oct 18, 2006
NEW YORK - U.S. blue-chip stocks rose on Wednesday, with the Dow industrials briefly topping the 12,000 mark for the first time on the strength of IBM's better-than-expected earnings, but investor concerns about the outlook for technology profits drove the Nasdaq lower on the day.
The Dow pulled back from its lifetime intraday peak of 12,049.51, hit soon after the market opened as shares of International Business Machines Corp. hit a 19-month high in the session. Late on Tuesday, IBM reported a 47 percent profit increase.
Communications chip makers such as Qualcomm Inc. fell and pulled the Nasdaq down after lower-than-expected phone sales at No. 2 cell phone maker Motorola.
But tech stocks will likely rise on Thursday after better-than-expected earnings from Apple Computer Inc. and eBay Inc. lifted their shares in after-hours trading. Falling margins, however, sank Advanced Micro Devices Inc. shares.
"Stocks are not cheap any more. On the tech side, despite some good reports, there are concerns the fourth quarter is not going to be that great and many sell-side firms made unfavorable calls on the sector," said Steve Neimeth, portfolio manager for AIG SunAmerica Asset Management in Jersey City, New Jersey.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 42.66 points, or 0.36 percent, to 11,992.68 -- a fresh record closing high. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index gained 1.91 points, or 0.14 percent, to end at 1,365.96, while the Nasdaq Composite Index fell 7.80 points, or 0.33 percent, to close at 2,337.15.
The broad S&P 500 Index reached an intraday high at 1,372.87, its highest in nearly six years, but then it traded basically flat.
"While it's (12,000) not a meaningful number to many portfolio managers, the publicity has led a number of momentum-oriented traders to sell the rally," said Rick Meckler, president of investment firm LibertyView Capital Management in Jersey City, New Jersey.
In electronic trading after the closing bell, Apple shares rose 6.5 percent to $79.35 from a Nasdaq close at $74.53, while eBay's stock was up 1.6 percent at $28.94 from a close on Nasdaq at $28.49. AMD shares sank 12.3 percent to $21.24 in trading after the bell from a close at $24.23 on the New York Stock Exchange.
APOLLO HURTS NASDAQ
The Nasdaq fell in part due to Apollo Group Inc., whose shares sank 22.9 percent, or $11.13, to $37.55 after the for-profit education company said it might have to restate past financial results.
Meanwhile, Qualcomm shares fell 2.1 percent, or 82 cents, to $38.12 on the Nasdaq. Sentiment in the semiconductor sector also was adversely affected by a drop in Texas Instruments shares, down 2.4 percent, or 79 cents, at $31.57 on the New York Stock Exchange.
Among the big-cap tech companies, though, IBM shares rose 3.3 percent, or $2.87, to $89.82 on the NYSE, off a 19-month high at $92. IBM was the Dow's top gainer and the No. 2 positive weight on the S&P 500, a day after the world's largest technology services company posted stronger-than-expected quarterly profit.
Intel shares rose 1 percent, or 21 cents, to $21.11 on the Nasdaq, a day after the world's biggest chip maker said it sees a price war with rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. easing.
Taking some of the steam out of the stock market's rally on Wednesday was a slump in crude oil futures prices after a government report showed U.S. crude inventories increased more than 5 million barrels last week.
Shares of Exxon Mobil Corp. fell 0.4 percent, or 24 cents, to $69.17. The stock was among the biggest drags on both the Dow and the S&P 500.
Volume was active on the NYSE, where about 1.63 billion shares changed hands, slightly above last year's daily average of 1.61 billion. On the Nasdaq, about 2.22 billion shares were traded, above last year's daily average of 1.80 billion.
Advancers outnumbered decliners on the Big Board by a ratio of about 6 to 5.
On the Nasdaq, though, decliners narrowly outpaced advancers, with 1,551 stocks falling and 1,492 rising.
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