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Signs Editorials
Editorial: Bush Reveals Real Iraq Policy: Mass Slaughter Of Iraq Civilians
Joe Quinn
Signs of the Times
25/10/2006
I used to have a little sympathy for those people who were still sitting on
the fence over the justness of the Iraq invasion. I understood that the US
government and mainstream media talking heads made an effort to imbue their
official claims with a semblance of logic and reason, and that the American
public could, to some extent, be forgiven for sanctioning illegal war and suffering.
They were, after all being deceived.
Not anymore.
It seems that the years of government double-speak and subtle manipulation
have led the Bush administration to feel confident that the ability of the
average American to think critically has now been compromised to such an extent
that they will easily swallow blatant and verifiable fantasy.
The Iraq invasion, we were told, was all about protecting the world against
the threat of Saddam's WMDs, yet it was a claim that was inherently flawed
because the logical response was to attempt to prove or disprove it - either
Saddam had WMDs or he didn't. As we all found out too late, the claim was
little more than the product of the minds of American and British spin doctors.
A few more hours in the spin room however, and they were back on track, but
the back-room boys had learned their lesson, they weren't going to make the
mistake of throwing around allegations that were based on something as empirical,
and therefore provable or disprovable, as the existence or otherwise of WMDs.
This time, it was going to be something much more intangible, like the needs
of the Iraqi people and how much happier they (and the rest of the world) would
be under American style democracy and without the 'tyrant' Saddam.
This second claim had the potential to fool the American people at least a
little longer than the first, appealing as it did to their artificially pumped
egos as well as their morbid fear of the unknown i.e. anything outside America's
borders. After all, look at how happy the American people are! But really look,
not at the details, but the broad panacea of American life, such as it is displayed
in Hollywood movies for but one example. Who would not wish such hedonistic
revelry for the whole world? In the end however, it seems that the true intention
of the Bush cabal towards Iraq is, in its nature, so depraved and far-removed
from their claimed altruism, that its face was never going to take long to
manifest.
That face today is seen in:
the fact that 655,000
Iraqi people have been murdered since the beginning
of the invasion, at least 50% by US forces directly.
that 1.6
million Iraqis have fled the country as a result of the
presence of US troops.
that Iraq's
health service has disintegrated, with even the most basic treatments
unavailable, and that up to half of the aforementioned 655,000 deaths might
have been avoided if proper medical care had been available. 2,000 doctors
and nurses have been killed with 18,000 more choosing to leave the country
in fear of their lives.
the 'Iraqization'
of the conflict, where US-sponsored
deaths squads being run out of the Iraqi interior ministry are murdering dozens
of innocent Iraqi civilians daily in an attempt to twist the root cause of
Iraq's problems - the invasion of a sovereign nation by a foreign aggressor
- and create the appearance of an internal 'sectarian' conflict between rival
Iraqi ethnic and religious factions, when no such serious sectarian strife
has ever existed in recent Iraqi history.
the chilling
report that the Bush government and its
generals are planning to "penalize Iraq if
it fails to stop the violence", violence for which the Bush government
itself is responsible.
Under this last, the US military would launch an
assault on the densely populated neighborhoods of Baghdad, beginning with
Sadr City, the home of some 2 million impoverished Shia and the stronghold
of the anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia,
that is, one of the groups representing the will of the Iraqi people.
In layman's terms, this means that the Bush government has decided that to
"win the Iraq war" and "liberate the Iraqi people", it must wage a wholesale
war on
the Iraqi people in order to coerce them to accept US government
rule over their country and lives. Those that submit will live, those that
do not, will die. It couldn't be more simple. Iraq has been destroyed, not
liberated.
Here, of course, we are a long
way from what "folks back home" believe is being done by their government in
their name. Yet there is no real reason that such should be the case, because
all of the information I present here is freely available in mainstream publications
to the American and 'Western' populations. If there is one
thing lacking, some piece of data that
is preventing many people from fully awakening to the horror and brutality
that is being wrought by their (un)elected officials, then it is perhaps the
hard evidence that not all human beings are like you and I - not all human
beings possess an innate tendency towards the rejection of mass murder of the
innocent. Some of them actively engage in acts of depravity, and seek out positions
of power from which they can give vent to their deviant natures with impunity.
Remembering all I have just said, can you think of anyone, or any group, that
fits this profile?
Take your time.
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Editorial: World silent as fascists join Israel government
Ali Abunimah
The Electronic Intifada
24 October 2006
In a frightening but long expected move, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert has brought the Yisrael Beitenu party into his coalition government. The party's leader, Avigdor Lieberman, is to be vice prime minister and, as "Minister for Strategic Threats," a key member of Israel's "security cabinet" in charge of the Iran portfolio.
Yisrael Beitenu is a dangerous extremist party with fascist tendencies that has openly advocated the "transfer" of Palestinians, including the transfer of Arab towns within Israel to a Bantustan-like future Palestinian entity. It has made clear that a Jewish supremacist state is more important than a democratic one. The party, whose strongest base is among Russian immigrants brought to Israel in the 1990s, surged at the Israeli election earlier this year, taking eleven seats in Israel's 120 seat Knesset.
Last summer, Israel launched a disastrous war of destruction against Lebanon, and continues its siege and onslaught against Palestinians in the occupied territories which has killed nearly three hundred people in three months and left hundreds of thousands without sufficient food, water and electricity. Lieberman has advocated even more harsh and criminal measures against the Palestinians and Israel's neighbors.
It is dismaying that the European Union, a key international actor, seems set to maintain warm, normal relations with this extremist government, thus giving it encouragement and legitimacy.
"You will understand that we cannot interfere with the setting up of a foreign government. This is a matter for which the concerned State alone is responsible," wrote Cristina Gallach, the official spokesperson for Javier Solana, the EU High Representative for foreign policy, in an email responding to a query about whether the EU would impose sanctions on Israel if Yisrael Beitenu joined the government.
Gallach added that "We think that both Israel and the Palestinians are aware of the responsibility they have in creating the favorable conditions for reactivating the Peace Process with the ultimate goal of having two States living side by side in peace and security." Other than such bland and cynical platitudes, Solana's spokesperson offered no hint of EU concern about the horrifying political developments within Israel that are certain to bring about further violence, escalation and needless suffering.
In an interview with an Israeli newspaper in September, Yisrael Beitenu leader Lieberman said: "The vision I would like to see here is the entrenching of the Jewish and the Zionist state...I very much favour democracy, but when there is a contradiction between democratic and Jewish values, the Jewish and Zionist values are more important." (Scotsman, October 23, 2006)
In addition to espousing ethnic cleansing, Lieberman has a long history of inciting discrimination, hatred and violence against Palestinians within the Jewish state and living under Israeli military occupation in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. When he served as minister of transport in a previous government, Lieberman called for all Palestinian prisoners held by the Israeli occupation authorities to be drowned in the Dead Sea and offered to provide the buses ("Lieberman blasted for suggesting drowning Palestinian prisoners," Ha'aretz, July 11, 2002). He has proposed to strip the citizenship of, and expel any Palestinian citizen of Israel who refuses to sign a loyalty oath to the Jewish Zionist state ("A Jewish demographic state," Ha'aretz, June 28, 2002).
In 2002, Lieberman declared, "I would not hesitate to send the Israeli army into all of Area A [the area of the West Bank ostensibly under Palestinian Authority control] for 48 hours. Destroy the foundation of all the authority's military infrastructure, all of the police buildings, the arsenals, all the posts of the security forces... not leave one stone on another. Destroy everything." He also suggested to the Israeli cabinet that the air force systematically bomb all the commercial centers, gas stations and banks in the occupied territories (The Independent, March 7, 2002). And, he has proposed bombing Egypt's Aswan Dam, despite that country's peace treaty with Israel since 1979. What will he propose to do to Iran?
Hebrew University professor Ze'ev Sternhell, a leading Israeli academic specialist on fascism and totalitarianism, was quoted by the Scotsman newspaper as terming Lieberman "perhaps the most dangerous politician in the history of the state of Israel."
 I would not hesitate to send the Israeli army into all of Area A for 48 hours. Destroy the foundation of all the [Palestinian] authority's military infrastructure, all of the police buildings, the arsenals, all the posts of the security forces... not leave one stone on another. Destroy everything. |
Urgent action is needed to stem the growing threat to international peace and security that Israel presents. Rather than do anything of the kind, the office of the EU High Representative has set a new low standard, offering only appeasement and accommodation for Israeli extremism and apartheid. The claim that the EU does not interfere in the internal affairs of foreign governments is just a fig leaf for political cowardice and unwillingness to stand up to Israel or its backers; it is not remotely consistent with past or present practice in other cases.
Most glaringly, since Palestinians under occupation elected Hamas to lead the Palestinian Authority last January, in the Arab world's most free election ever, the EU has interfered in their affairs in the most irresponsible manner, imposing a total siege and cut off of aid that has directly penalized the Palestinian population, causing widespread hunger and deprivation. This siege is explicitly intended to force the Hamas-led authority to abandon the platform on which it was elected, or to force it out of office completely. (The EU claims it wants Hamas to recognize Israel and end violence, even though Hamas has observed a 22-month one-sided truce, halting attacks on Israel, and its leaders have issued repeated statements in favor of reaching a long-term agreement with Israel on the basis of equality and mutual, not one-sided, recognition.) The European Union, under Solana's personal stewardship, orchestrated this gross interference in the development of Palestinian democracy and punishment of those who tried to practice it.
And in 2000, EU countries took the unprecedented measure of imposing diplomatic sanctions on one of their own member states, Austria, after the far-right Freedom Party joined the government following elections. Although many voices criticized the EU for meddling in the internal affairs of a democratic country, one of the most vocal supporters of the sanctions was none other than Javier Solana, who on that occasion declared "I think Europe has given a very good example of how in important things -- things that have to go with principles, with values -- there's no possibility of compromise." ("Sanctions hit Austria," Reuters, February 4, 2000).
But when it comes to EU member states discharging their responsibilities to hold Israel accountable for its escalating violations of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, the Fourth Geneva Convention, numerous UN Security Council Resolutions, and basic human decency, the principles that Solana and many powerful others are so proud to boast of are nowhere to be found.
In this moral and political vacuum, it is ever more urgent to heed the call of Palestinian civil society to join the growing global campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions.
Original
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Editorial: New York Times "military analysis" foreshadows US bloodbath in Baghdad
WSWS.org
24 October 2006
In the midst of intensive strategy sessions between the Bush administration and military commanders and urgent calls from politicians and media commentators for a "change of course" in Iraq, the New York Times has published a "military analysis" that lays bare the core of the various schemes being discussed to salvage the American occupation of the country.
At the center of the crisis talks are plans for a military assault on densely populated neighborhoods in the capital city, where anti-American insurgents and militia are entrenched, beginning with Sadr City, the home of some 2 million impoverished Shia and the stronghold of the anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia.
The commentary, appearing on the front page of Monday's Times and authored by Michael R. Gordon, makes no attempt to disguise the newspaper's support for such an action, which would entail killing on a mass scale. Below the heading "Military Analysis," the headline reads: "To Stand or Fall in Baghdad," followed by a second headline: "For American Commanders, This Is It: Securing Capital Is the Key to Their Mission."
Calling the "Baghdad security plan" the American military's "last hand," Gordon writes: "But military commanders here see no plausible alternative to their bedrock strategy to clear violence-ridden neighborhoods of militias, insurgents and arms caches, hold them with Iraqi and American security forces, and then try to win over the population with reconstruction projects.... There is no fallback plan that the generals are holding in their hip pocket. This is it."
The unstated premise of the article is continued support for the real cause of the nightmare of death and destruction in Iraq-the American invasion and military occupation of the country. As with virtually all reportage and commentary on the war by the Times and the US media as a whole, the American military is presented as a benign force seeking to protect the Iraqi people from "insurgents" and sectarian militias, who are depicted uniformly as hostile forces bent on thwarting the humanitarian mission of the United States.
The deteriorating military and political situation for the US in Iraq now requires the apologists for US imperialism at the Times to justify in advance a massive escalation of American violence.
At the point in his commentary where Gordon defines the US mission, he omits, significantly, any mention of democracy. Citing American generals who speak of the "larger American mission in Iraq," he writes: "Their assessment is that if Baghdad is overwhelmed by sectarian strife, the cause of fostering a more stable Iraq will be lost."
Following the evolving line of the Bush administration, the mantra of a "democratic" Iraq is shelved. Democracy in Iraq has always been a façade to conceal Washington's real war aims: seizing control of the country's oil riches and establishing a subservient client regime and military beachhead in the Middle East.
However, the downgrading of "democracy" as the purported aim of the occupation coincides with high-level discussions among US policymakers about ousting the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki by means of a military coup, should he continue to resist American pressure to disarm Shia militias that are hostile to the US presence.
An earlier article in the Times, published on Sunday ("US to Hand Iraq a New Timetable on Security Role"), cited "senior American officials" who indicated that one of the alternatives under consideration is to "give the Iraqi Army the lead role in domestic security, downgrading the role of police units." A turn to the Army for policing operations would represent a turn to military dictatorship and the enlistment of the traditional Sunni officer corps to attack Sadr and his militia.
Gordon's commentary is typical of the Times' cynical and dishonest coverage of the war. After quoting Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli, commander of American forces in Iraq, as stating, "As Baghdad goes, so goes Iraq," Gordon adds his own comment: "It is hard to see how any Iraq plan can work if the capital's citizens cannot be protected."
Protected from whom? The Times depicts the American military as the protector of the Iraqi people, even as it promotes plans for a massive assault on Baghdad neighborhoods.
As confirmed by polls released last month, a large majority of Iraqis believe that the American military is the main threat to their security and well-being. A poll conducted by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes reported that 60 percent of Iraqis approve the attacks on US-led forces and almost 80 percent say the US military provokes more violence in Iraq than it prevents. The US State Department's own poll, according to the Associated Press, found that two thirds of Iraqis in Baghdad favor an immediate withdrawal of US forces.
Gordon goes on to assert that "the sectarian violence would be far worse if not for the American efforts." How does he know? The US occupation is the basic cause for the eruption of sectarian conflicts, and the US military has promoted these divisions in an effort to pit Iraqis against each other in line with the old colonialist strategy of "divide and rule."
Gordon's article suggests that the Times favors a further increase in American troop strength in Iraq. He writes: "Keeping the Army's Fourth Division in place in Baghdad instead of rotating it home when it is to be replaced by the First Calvalry Division would substantially increase the number of American troops in the city. There have been no indications that such an idea is under serious consideration."
Maliki himself made clear what the Bush administration and the US military are demanding in an interview published October 16 in USA Today. The newspaper quoted him as saying: "We have told the Americans that we don't mind targeting a Mahdi Army cell inside Sadr City. But the way the multinational forces are thinking of confronting this issue will destroy an entire neighborhood."
There is a model for such actions. In November of 2004, the US "secured" the predominantly Sunni city of Fallujah by driving out or killing most of its population of 300,000 and leveling large swaths of buildings and homes. Much of the city was destroyed through an aerial bombardment, which was followed by "clear and hold" operations. When they were finished, Fallujah was transformed into a garrison city, subject to permanent conditions of martial law.
The Times is touting measures that are no different from the type of actions for which Saddam Hussein is presently on trial for his life. He is being tried as a war criminal for carrying out bloody assaults on civilian populations in pursuit of political aims. How is this in any way different from what the American military has already done and what it is preparing to do on an even bigger scale in the coming weeks and months? The Times cheers on the trial of Saddam Hussein even as it endorses even more bloody war crimes by the US.
Gordon's column casts additional light on the newspaper's decision to bury a Johns Hopkins University study released earlier this month that estimates 655,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the American invasion and occupation of the country. The virtual silence of the Times on this staggering and damning scientific study was not a casual editorial decision, but rather part and parcel of the newspaper's support for an escalation of the killing.
The Times articulates in broad terms the outlook of the "liberal" establishment in general and the Democratic Party in particular. Gordon's article makes clear that a Democratic victory in the November congressional elections, or even in the 2008 presidential race, will in no way signal a retreat from the Bush administration's policies of militarism and war. The entire US political and media establishment is implicated in the war and committed to avoiding a defeat for US imperialism in Iraq, regardless the cost in Iraqi as well as American lives.
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Isra-hell
IOF Arrests 12 Citizens in WB
WAFA
BETHLEHEM, October 25, 2006 (WAFA)-Israeli Occupation Forces(IOF) arrested Wednesday at pre-dawn twelve citizens in the West Bank (WB) cities of Bethlehem and Tubas, security sources said.
They told WAFA that Israeli soldiers stormed Beit Fujjar and Al-Ebeidiya towns , south and east Bethlehem and arrested eleven citizens, including three brothers and elders. They were led into an unknown location.
In Tubas, the IOF took position in the roads and entrances of the city, launched a search campaign and arrested a youth Omar Faqha 19, leading him into an unknown spot, witnesses told WAFA.
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Haaretz: "Settlements grow on Arab land, despite promises made to U.S."
Palestine Solidarity
October 25th, 2006
A secret, two year investigation by the defense establishment shows that there has been rampant illegal construction in dozens of settlements and in many cases involving privately owned Palestinian properties.
The information in the study was presented to two defense ministers, Amir Peretz and his predecessor Shaul Mofaz, but was not released in public and a number of people participating in the investigations were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements.
According to security sources familiar with the study, the material is "political and diplomatic dynamite."
In conversations with Haaretz, the sources maintained that the report is not being made public in order to avoid a crisis with the U.S. government.
Brigadier General Baruch Spiegel, assistant to the Defense Minister, retired earlier this month. Spiegel was also in charge of the various issues relating to the territories, which Dov Weisglass, chief of staff in prime minister Ariel Sharon's office, promised Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in writing that Israel would deal with. These commitments included illegal settlement building, improvements in the conditions of Palestinian civilians, and a closer oversight over the conduct of soldiers at IDF roadblocks.
One of Spiegel's tasks was to update the data base on settlement activities. During talks with American officials and non-government organizations such as Peace Now, it emerged that the defense establishment lacked up to date information on the settlements, which was mostly based on data provided by the Civil Administration in the territories.
The lack of updated information stemmed from the fact that the defense establishment preferred not to know what was going on, but was also linked to a number of key officials in the Civil Administration actively deleting information from the data base out of ideological allegiance with the settlers.
Spiegel and his team compared the data available from the Civil Administration to that of the Americans, and carried out dozens of overflights of the territories, using private aircraft at great expense, in order to complete the data base.
The findings of the study, security sources say, show an amazing discrepancy between the Civil Administration's data and the reality on the ground. The data in Spiegel's investigation served as the basis for the report on the illegal outposts prepared by attorney Talya Sasson and made public in March 2005.
"Everyone is talking about the 107 outposts," said a source familiar with the data, "but that is small change. The really big picture is the older settlements, the 'legal' ones. The construction there has been ongoing for years, in blatant violation of the law and the regulations of proper governance."
Three years ago, in talks with the Americans, Israel promised that all new construction in the older settlements would take place near existing neighborhoods. The idea was that construction would be limited to meeting the needs of the settlements' natural growth, and bringing to an end the out-of-control expansion over territory.
In practice, the data shows that Israel failed to meet its commitments: many new neighborhoods were systematically built on the edge of areas of the settlement's jurisdiction, which is a much larger territory than the actual planning charts account for.
The data also shows that in many cases the construction was carried out on private Palestinian land. In the masterplans, more often than not, Palestinian properties were included in the construction planned for the future. These included Palestinian properties to which the state had promised access.
However, exploiting the intifada and arguing that the settlers should not be exposed to security risks, Palestinian farmers were prevented access to their properties that were annexed by Israeli settlements.
In many settlements, including Ofra and Mevo Horon, homes have been constructed on private Palestinian land.
"The media is busy with the outposts, but how many of these are really large settlements like Migron? In most cases, it's a matter of a few mobile homes. Spiegel's study shows the real situation in the settlements themselves - and it is a lot more serious than what we knew to date," one of the sources said.
A senior security official expressed concern that with Spiegel's retirement, the data base will not be updated and the data will be lost.
"The [defense] establishment does not necessarily have an interest in preserving this information. It may cause diplomatic embarrassment vis-a-vis the Americans and cause a political scandal. It is not unlikely that there will be those who will seek to destroy the data," the senior officer says.
Other relevant sources said it is necessary for an objective, external source, like the State Comptroller's office, to intervene in this matter.
A statement issued by the Defense Minister's office in response said that "the matter is being examined internally and staff work will be completed soon, and the parts of the report that can be published will be made available. The Defense Minister will discuss the matter with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert."
Meanwhile, construction in the new outposts has intensified. Sources in the Yesha Council say that since the Lebanon War, "Junior officers on the ground are in our favor and in many instances turn a blind eye regarding mobile homes in place."
Comment: Promises made by Israel to the US in regard to settlements are made with a wink and a nod. It is for public consumption, nothing else.
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BBC: "Harvest Hostilities"
October 24th, 2006
Palestine Solidarity
In the following article the BBC misleadingly writes of "violent clashes" and "frequent clashes" between Palestinian farmers and Jewish settler colonists and the IOF during the olive harvest. However, later in the article the tear gas and live bullets used by the IOF are mentioned with no mention of any violence being used by the Palestinian farmers because there is none. The use of the term "clashes" twice at the beginning of the piece is typical of the biased reporting of Israeli aggression that can be expected from most Western mainstream media.
by Martin Patience, 24th October
Olive harvest sparks tensions
Before dawn, Kanaan al-Jamal, 38, hauls his two young children from their beds and along with his wife they set off to tend the olive groves close to their home.
In olive groves dotted across the rolling West Bank, Palestinian farmers are preparing for the harvest: pruning the trees, collecting spoilt olives, and preparing ground sheets under the trees to catch the fruit.
But the Palestinian farmers are also preparing for violent clashes.
"It's a difficult time," says Mr Jamal, referring to the harvest. "But the olive tree is part of our religion; it is part of our culture."
During the olive picking season, tensions run high between Jewish settlers and the Israeli military on the one hand, and Palestinian farmers on the other.
Access Problems
Many of the West Bank's olive groves lie close to Jewish settlements and there are frequent clashes between the two sides.
For years settlers have been attacking Palestinian farmers and chopping down their trees.
But this olive picking season is set to be different, insists the Israeli army.
The military has finally realised that it has to offer protection to Palestinian farmers.
A two-year court battle led by human rights groups now means that the Israeli army is required to beef up its protection of Palestinian olive farmers and allow them full access to their lands.
Palestinian farmers often require a permit from the army to visit their lands which lie close to Jewish settlements.
Last month, Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz announced that anyone interfering or harassing the farmers during the picking season would be dealt with severely.
Israeli Human rights groups are praising the move but say more needs to be done.
"I think the military has finally realised that it will have to offer some protection for the Palestinian farmers," says Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for the Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem.
"But access often depends on commanders in local areas and on a day-to-day basis."
Mr Jamal, however, says that the Israeli army frequently prevents farmers from his town of Assera Shamiliya - located 5km north of Nablus - reaching their land.
"They say we have to co-ordinate with them," he says. "But it's impossible and it often takes days to get a permit. We don't bother. Why should we? It's our land."
Mr Jamal says that Israeli soldiers riding in military jeeps often appear in the town's groves. The soldiers fire tear gas and live bullets and bark at the villagers through loudspeakers to leave the area, he says.
Bumper Harvest
Some human rights groups accompany the Palestinian farmers to their groves to ensure they can gather their harvest.
Rabbi Ascherman, co-director of Rabbis for Human Rights, insists that the presence of his group helps the Palestinians negotiate with the army and ward off attacks by Jewish settlers.
"But the ideal situation would be if we didn't need to be there," he says. "The ideal situation would be if the farmers could just harvest in peace."
For Mr Jamal and his family the coming weeks mean earlier mornings and harder work. But this is only the start, he says.
Problems arise when Palestinian farmers try and sell their produce because transport restrictions in the West Bank.
"When we start trying to sell the olives it's a whole new battle with the Israeli authorities," says Mr Jamal.
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Palestinians in Nablus lament their "dying" city
By Dean Yates
Reuters
NABLUS, West Bank, - Dying. Dead. A corpse. Isolated from the world.
That is how Palestinians describe the once thriving city of Nablus in the occupied West Bank.
Surrounded by sand-coloured rocky mountains, Nablus is also encircled by Israeli army checkpoints and military bases. For Palestinians, leaving means queuing for hours, unless you are a male aged 16 to 35. Then, exit is prohibited without a permit.
Palestinians brand the Israeli restrictions collective punishment. Israel calls the militant stronghold a "hotbed of terror activity".
A centre for trading olives, soap and other goods for thousands of years, Nablus should be the business hub of the West Bank. Instead, many entrepreneurs have left. Other residents say they want to leave. Depression is common.
At night, gunfire echoes from the ancient Old City: Israeli troops on a raid or rival militant factions settling scores.
"This is a story that should be written with tears," said Hasan Abu Libdeh, head of the Palestinian stock market, which was set up here a decade ago amid optimism about peace.
"Nablus, a magnificent city, is a corpse. It just breaks my heart."
Israel clamped tight restrictions on Nablus, north of Jerusalem, during a Palestinian uprising that erupted six years ago after peace talks collapsed.
The army said there were six checkpoints around Nablus and its 200,000 people, noting that curbs were also in place on young men leaving.
"In many cases, the presence of checkpoints in the area of Nablus has prevented terrorists from entering Israel and killing civilians," the army said in response to questions from Reuters.
The army referred to three recent instances where soldiers at checkpoints had arrested militants carrying explosives.
Inside Nablus, militants are not hard to find.
Standing in a shop in a narrow alleyway of the Old City, a young member of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an M-16 assault rifle slung over his shoulder, watches people passing by. He is reluctant to answer questions.
Outside, posters of gunmen killed in clashes with Israeli troops line the stone walls.
One shows Fadi Qafeesheh, 33, shot dead by Israeli soldiers on Aug. 31. In the picture, Qafeesheh strikes various poses, holding a pump-action shotgun, an assault rifle and a pistol. Some residents said he made vests for suicide bombers.
TIDE OF HISTORY
Nablus has a long biblical history and is important to Christians, Muslims and Jews.
Herbalist Abdulrahman Arafat, 49, says his family's store in the Old City dates back to 1773.
He points to a sketch on the wall of his great grandfather wearing a felt hat called a fez, which was popular under the Ottomans, among the many rulers of Nablus.
Employing a mix of science and tradition, Arafat patiently dispenses herbs, seeds, oils, chamomile lotion and ginger to customers seeking help for their ailments.
His ready smile disappears when he speaks about his city.
"Nablus is a dying city. It is a city in a jail," he said.
Conditions have worsened since Hamas Islamists, sworn to destroying Israel, took over the Palestinian government last March, prompting a U.S.-led aid embargo and a power struggle with moderate President Mahmoud Abbas.
Although there are no statistics available, residents and officials say many businessmen have left to live in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Others to go have included intellectuals and skilled workers. The poor, and young men, remain.
Unemployment is high, investment stagnant.
"Who would dare invest in Nablus? You need two hours just to get out," said Shaher Saed, secretary general of the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions, speaking on the sidelines of a recent meeting in the city.
Maher Abu Zant, a psychologist and head of the sociology and social work department at the city's An-Najah University, said he was concerned by the number of students suffering depression.
Students often came to him wanting to drop out because they were unhappy and saw no point continuing their studies, he said.
"People in Nablus feel they are isolated from the world," Abu Zant said. "Nablus should be the economic capital of Palestine. But it's a dead city. It's very sad."
The Israeli army says it tries to ease passage through checkpoints for Palestinians, especially during busy periods.
"The (army) makes great efforts to ease the daily lives of the Palestinian population but will take the necessary measures to maintain the safety and security of the citizens of Israel," the army statement said.
DECEPTIVE BEAUTY
From a distance, Nablus looks alluring.
Cream-coloured apartment buildings, eight to 10 storeys high, carpet the sides of the two steep mountains that create a valley where the Old City lies.
At night, the peaks provide a vantage point to soak up the atmosphere. Shimmering green lights in minarets show where each of the city's 41 mosques are located.
Up close, Nablus looks less appealing. Vacant lots are strewn with garbage. Many traffic lights don't work. Drivers usually ignore those that do.
"There is no life here. No money, everybody is depressed. I would like to leave," said Nashaat Humidan, 21, an economics student at An-Najah University.
Community leaders said the Israeli restrictions were having a counterproductive effect, playing into the hands of militant groups and fostering hardened attitudes toward the Jewish state.
"I meet Israelis all the time. I say you have to take the risk. By suffocating this city you are creating more fundamentalists, more terrorists," said stock market chief Abu Libdeh, also a former Palestinian government minister.
Abu Libdeh lives in Ramallah, 45 km (28 miles) to the south. He said he could not imagine living in Nablus, and uses a permit to get home via one of the checkpoints each day.
"Every night there is violence. For me, the only headache is crossing the checkpoint," Abu Libdeh said.
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Israeli occupation forces remain in Beit Hanoon after massacre that killed seven Palestinians
PNN, (Gaza City)
Wisam Afifeh
Tuesday, 24 October 2006
The day after the massacre that claimed the lives of seven Beit Hanoon residents and injured scores more, Israeli forces continue to occupy the northern Gaza Strip town. Eyewitnesses report that Israeli occupation tanks surround the town on all sides and that troops have taken to bulldozing nearby agricultural land. In addition, eyewitnesses note that Israeli warplanes have bombed the town's Agricultural College.
The attack killed seven, including a prominent official in the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), and injured over 30 others.
A spokesman for the armed resistance wing of the PRC held a press conference Monday in Gaza City to discuss the killing. He announced a declaration of alert for all armed resistance members, calling upon them to respond to this crime. He also called for Palestinian factions to renounce differences and "guide your weapons to Israel."
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Who are Palestinian refugees?
by Terry M Rempel
The American Muslim
hree-quarters of the Palestinian people are displaced. Approximately one in three refugees worldwide is Palestinian. More than half are displaced outside the borders of their historic homeland.
"By far the most protracted and largest of all refugee problems in the world today is that of the Palestine refugees, whose plight dates back 57 years. The UN General Assembly's Resolution 181 of November 1947 recommending the partition of Palestine led to armed clashes between Arabs and Jews. The conflict, which lasted from November 1947 to July 1949, led to the expulsion or flight of some 750,000-900,000 people from Palestine, the vast majority of them Arabs. The General Assembly's subsequent Resolution 194 of December 1948 stating that those 'refugees wishing to return to their homes and live in peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss or damage to property,' was never implemented. Israel refused to allow the repatriation of Arab refugees, most of whose villages had been destroyed."
"UNHCR's mandate does not extend to the majority of Palestinian refugees by virtue of Paragraph 7 (c) of the organization's Statute which excludes persons who continue to receive from other organs or agencies of the United Nations protection or assistance. A similar provision excludes these refugees from the scope of the 1951 UN Refugee Convention."
The State of the World's Refugees 2006, UNHCR Chapter 5 [1]
Despite international recognition of the gravity of the problem, there remains a considerable lack of popular knowledge and/or misinformation about the world's largest refugee population. A recent study of TV news coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the UK discovered that most British viewers were unaware that Palestinians were uprooted from their homes and land when Israel was established in 1948.
Many of those familiar with the Palestinian case tend, as the authors of a working paper developed by the Refugee Studies Centre for the UK Department of International Development (DFID) noted, "to see them as a case apart from other refugees in the region and, indeed, the global context generally." [2] This can be ascribed, in part, to the contentious debate that envelops this refugee question, particularly the right of return. It is also due to the unique aspects of Palestinian displacement:
- The UN General Assembly Resolution 181 of 1947 recommending the partition of Mandate Palestine into two states contributed to the initial forced displacement of Palestinians.
- The universally-accepted definition of a 'refugee' - Article 1A (2) of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees - does not apply to the majority of Palestinian refugees.
- The UN established separate international agencies (UNCCP and UNRWA - see below) to provide protection and assistance and to seek durable solutions for this refugee population based on principles elaborated in relevant UN resolutions.
- Most Palestinians today are both refugees and stateless persons.
- While voluntary repatriation remains in principle and in practice the primary durable solution for refugees worldwide, Israel - as the state of origin for the majority of the refugees - and key members of the international community, including the US and the European Union, continue to view host country integration and resettlement as the primary durable solutions for Palestinian refugees.
Palestinians and Israelis both make claims about the uniqueness of Palestinian refugees. Many Israelis, for example, claim that the separate regime established for Palestinian refugees (combined with the reluctance of Arab host states to resettle the refugees who cannot exercise their right of return) prevents a solution to the long-standing refugee problem. Palestinians argue that while the UN continues to affirm, in principle, the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes of origin, member states have failed to muster the political and material resources that have made refugee return possible in other contexts.
Root causes of displacement
Israelis and Palestinians, generally speaking, do not agree on the root causes of Palestinian displacement. Many Israelis argue that Palestinians fled during the 1948 war on orders of Arab commanders or that the mass displacement of the local Arab population was simply, in the words of Israeli historian Benny Morris, the unfortunate by-product of a war foisted upon the new Jewish state. Palestinians, on the other hand, describe 1948 as a Nakba (catastrophe) during which they were expelled by Israeli military forces and fled in fear, hoping to return to their homes once hostilities ceased.
The rival nature of Israeli and Palestinian narratives can be explained, in large part, by concerns about future refugee claims. Many Israeli Jews, for example, worry that an Israeli admission of responsibility will strengthen Palestinian demands for a right of return and for housing and property restitution. Nevertheless, archival research by Israeli historians like Morris, Tom Segev, Avi Shlaim and Ilan Pappe has tended to affirm central tenets of the Palestinian narrative of the 1948 war previously documented by Palestinian researchers such as Qustantin Zurayk, 'Arif al-'Arif and Walid Khalidi and in the oral testimonies of Palestinians who lived through the war.
Historical records - corroborated by UN and Red Cross archives - paint a picture of military practices that were, at best, questionable under existing principles governing the laws of war. Just before his assassination by Jewish extremists in September 1948, Count Folke Bernadotte, the UN Mediator for Palestine, reported "large-scale pillaging and plundering, and instances of destruction of villages without apparent military necessity." Even so, Pappe writes that the existence of a master plan to expel Palestinians is irrelevant: what mattered was "the formulation of an ideological community, in which every member, whether a newcomer or a veteran, knows only too well that they have to contribute to a recognised formula: the only way to fulfill the dream of Zionism is to empty the land of its indigenous population."
While the displacement of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip during and after the 1967 war can be ascribed to a similar pattern of violations, the debate about why Palestinians fled in subsequent wars is arguably less contentious because prospective remedies - e.g. return to the 1967 Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) - do not challenge the sovereignty and nature of Israel as a Jewish state. That is not to say that Israelis and Palestinians agree on remedies for refugees from the 1967 war and those displaced by nearly 40 years of military occupation. Israel's quarrel with the July 2004 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice on the legal implications of the construction of the 650 km-long wall/barrier in the West Bank underscores the depth of disagreement between the two parties.
Who is a refugee?
Israelis and Palestinians also do not agree on who is a Palestinian refugee. During numerous negotiation sessions in the 1990s the parties failed to achieve consensus on a refugee definition. While Israel argued for a narrow definition restricted to first generation refugees - those actually displaced in 1948 and in 1967 - Palestinians advocated an inclusive or expanded definition that included children and spouses of refugees, and others in refugee-like conditions, including those deported from the OPT by Israel, persons who were abroad at the time of hostilities and unable to return, individuals whose residency rights Israel revoked and those who were not displaced but had lost access to their means of livelihood.
This disagreement is exacerbated by the fact that there is no comprehensive definition of a Palestinian refugee. The most commonly cited definition is that used by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the UN agency set up in 1949 - two years prior to the formation of UNHCR - to provide relief and assistance to the refugees in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Unlike Article 1A (2) of the 1951 Refugee Convention, however, the UNRWA definition merely establishes criteria for assistance - it does not define refugee status. A UN initiative in the 1980s to issue identity cards to all refugees, irrespective of whether or not they were recipients of international aid, failed due to the lack of cooperation among host states.
In the early 1950s, the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP), which was established by General Assembly Resolution 194(III) to facilitate a solution to all aspects of the 1948 conflict, prepared a working definition of a Palestine refugee to identify those persons in need of international protection. The definition would have covered all persons displaced in Palestine during the 1948 war irrespective of ethnic, national or religious origins. In light of the intractable differences between Israel, the Arab states and the Palestinians, however, the Commission's protection mandate was greatly reduced and the definition was never adopted. The UN failed to provide the UNCCP with the machinery or resources to carry out its mandate in the context of a protracted conflict. The Commission reached the conclusion that it was unable to fulfill its mandate due to the lack of international political will. Today it has no budget and no staff.
Most Palestinian refugees fall under the scope of Article 1D of the 1951 Refugee Convention, which was inserted during the drafting process of the Convention to address the specific circumstances of Palestinian refugees. This took note of the fact that the UN had already set up specific agencies to protect and assist this refugee group. Only those Palestinians displaced for the first time after 1967 fall within the scope of Article 1A (2) of the Convention because they are not covered by the mandate of another UN agency. Nevertheless, Article 1D of the 1951 Refugee Convention is commonly misapplied in Palestinian asylum cases around the world.
How many refugees are there?
Not surprisingly, Israelis and Palestinians fail to agree on the number of Palestinian refugees. This is further complicated by lack of a universally-accepted refugee definition, a comprehensive registration system and frequent migration. But it also relates to security and political concerns in host countries like Jordan and Lebanon, fears about repatriation in the country of origin (Israel) and international concerns about capacity to deliver services and the impact on humanitarian aid budgets and to asylum claims. This explains the vast discrepancy in estimates of the Palestinian refugee population.
Israeli and Palestinian estimates of the total numbers of Palestinians displaced in 1948 range from a low of several hundred thousand upwards to nearly a million. The total numbers of Palestinians displaced for the first time from the 1967 OPT range from just over 100,000 to nearly 300,000. Demographic studies that compare the size of the pre-war Palestinian population to the number of Palestinians that remained after the end of both wars tend to confirm estimates in the higher range. Some estimate that around 20,000 Palestinians were displaced per annum after 1967.
Academic studies and popular media often cite UNRWA registration figures as the total size of the Palestinian refugee population. Latest UNRWA figures cite a total Palestinian refugee population of 4.25 million (Jordan 1.78m; Gaza 0.96m; West Bank 0.68m; Syria 0.42m and Lebanon 0.4m). [3] While UNRWA registration data provides a basic starting point, agency data excludes: 1948 refugees who did not register or meet UNRWA's eligibility requirements; 1967 refugees; those displaced after 1967 and IDPs. UNRWA registration files for IDPs inside Israel became inactive in 1952 and it is yet unclear if UNRWA will be asked to assume responsibility for new IDPs in the OPT.
Additional sources of information include UNHCR statistics for Palestinian refugees outside the five UNRWA areas of operation and in need of international protection, government statistical surveys, [4] independent demographic studies (carried out by organizations such as FAFO Institute for Applied Social Science [5] ) and civil society estimates (such as those by Civitas [6] ). Assuming a broad definition descriptive of the scope of displacement and the number of potential claimants - i.e. not necessarily all persons in need of day-to-day protection and including 1948, 1967 and post-1967 refugees - it is estimated that up to three-quarters of the Palestinian people have been displaced since 1948. The Bethlehem-based BADIL Resource Centre for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights [7] estimates the total number of displaced Palestinians to be over seven million.
Approaches to the Palestinian refugee question
There have been only two periods of official negotiations on the Palestinian refugee issue: early UN-facilitated negotiations in Lausanne (1949) and Paris (1951) and more recent talks held under the auspices of the Oslo peace process. The latter include the Quadripartite talks (1990s) to resolve the question of 1967 refugees and US-guided bilateral talks in Camp David (2000) followed by a short round in Taba (2001) addressing the question of 1948 refugees. All three sets of talks were elite-driven - with only minimal input from civil society - and ended without a solution.
Beginning in the 1990s Palestinian refugees began organising popular conferences, workshops and demonstrations demanding recognition of their rights and a more inclusive process. Recent research has begun to examine places like Bosnia for the problem of abandoned property laws, Guatemala for the experience of refugee participation, and South Africa for truth and reconciliation. Some refugees travelled to places as close as Cyprus and Bosnia and as far away as South Africa to see if anything could be learned from other refugee cases and pursuit of claims for property restitution. Official approaches to find permanent solutions nonetheless still tend to view this refugee group as unique and thus in need of a unique solution. International law and the voices of refugees themselves have been marginalised, if not excluded, by this approach.
Above all the Palestinian refugee case is contentious because of the degree to which it poses a challenge to what Barbara Harrell-Bond refers to as the "tidy system of sovereign states." She argues that refugees represent "a fundamental challenge to sovereignty, by forcing international actors to consider ethical principles and issues of fundamental human rights, which are part of their international obligations." At the heart of this challenge is the question of how to respect the individual rights of Palestinian refugees in the context of Israel's collective demand to maintain its Jewish majority.
This is not just a theoretical or legal question. It is also about fundamentally different Israeli and Palestinian conceptions of the conflict and its solution. "How to overcome this abyss," writes American Professor of International Law Richard Falk, "is a challenge that should haunt the political imagination of all those genuinely committed to finding a just and sustainable reconciliation between Israel and Palestine."
Terry Rempel was a founding member of BADIL where he was Coordinator of Information and Research between 1998 and 2004. An independent consultant, he is completing a PhD at the University of Exeter. Email: t.rempel@exeter.ac.uk . A longer version of this article, containing more detailed endnote references, is online at: http://www.fmreview.org/pdf/rempel.pdf.
More links for further information at original link.
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Report: Israel's Labor party to stay in coalition
www.chinaview.cn 2006-10-25 21:12:00
JERUSALEM, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- The Labor Party led by Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz, a key partner in Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's coalition, decided to stay in the government despite the addition of the extreme-right Israel Beiteinu party into it, Israeli daily Ha'aretz said on Wednesday.
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Israeli officials look into Olmert bribery claims
Last Updated: Tuesday, October 24, 2006 | 9:05 PM ET
CBC News
Israel's attorney general is expected to decide within a few days if there will be a criminal investigation into business dealings involving Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Menachem Mazuz has asked prosecutors to look into whether a full-blown investigation is warranted after receiving information from the state comptroller, a government watchdog agency, ministry spokesman Moshe Cohen said.
"At this stage, no decisions have been made, no criminal process whatsoever is under way, and the Israeli police are not involved," said Cohen.
The suspicion surrounds the government's 2005 sale of controlling interest in Bank Leumi, one of Israel's largest financial institutions.
The allegations are that Olmert, finance minister at the time, interfered on behalf of a tender from two businessmen friends, Daniel Abraham and Frank Lowy.
Lowy, an Australian billionaire, has been represented legally in Israel by a firm headed by Yossi Gross, Olmert's father-in-law.
A government official in the Prime Minister's Office told Haaretz newspaper on Tuesday they were "astonished" to hear about the prosecution's investigation.
"Olmert's involvement in the tender proceedings was apparently very ineffective if he did not manage to cause his friend to win it," the official was quoted as saying.
Abraham is regularly in Forbes magazine's list of richest Americans. The high price he paid for Olmert's Jerusalem home in 2004 has led to allegations the deal wasn't strictly financial in nature.
The attorney who brokered the deal for Olmert has said it was a standard real estate sale.
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Israel 'must open its nuke stockpile to inspectors'
Gulf News
22/10/2006
New York: The UAE has called on the United Nations to make Israel cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) by opening up its arsenal of weapons of mass destruction for inspection.
Abdullah Hassan Obaid Al Shamsi, member of the UAE delegation to the UN, made the call in a UAE address to the UN first committee (disarmament and international security), which held a session here on Friday to discuss a number of global security issues, including the issue of having a nuclear weapon free zone in the Middle East.
He said the Middle East and the Arabian Gulf region was one of the world's most tense regions because of Israel's position and arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear weapons, and the efforts of other states in the region to build nuclear reactors "that was a great source of danger and concern to all."
Condemned
He pointed out the UAE strongly condemned the continued unilateral policy of Israel and appealed to the international community to put pressure on the Israeli government to implement the Security Council and General Assembly resolutions which called for Israel to accede to the non-proliferation treaty as all other states in the region had done.
He also urged the UN to force Israel to cooperate with the energy agency by declaring all its nuclear facilities and accepting the principle of verification and to cease the stockpiling and production of fissile material and all nuclear testing.
He said serious efforts were needed to achieve the alleviation of tension and instability in the region, adding that it was imperative to pave the way for renewing dialogue and returning to the peaceful negotiations process, which could ultimately resolve the question of Palestine and the Middle East.
His full text concluded by saying: "Finally, we hope the working delegations in this committee will support the two draft resolutions on the establishment of a zone free from all weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East and on the risk of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, especially that they reflect the disturbing reality in the Middle East and are in line with the international efforts aimed at achieving comprehensive nuclear disarmament with a view to sparing our people and humanity the destructive scourge of wars."
Comment: Finally, somone in authority has the courage to state the obvious: Israel poses the biggest threat to peace in the Middle East through its agression against Arab nations and the ever-present threat of its nuclear arsenal which stood at approx. 200 nuclear bombs some 20 years ago.
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American Extremes
US embarrassed by terror suspect
Wednesday October 25, 2006
The Guardian
A former CIA operative wanted for trial for acts of terrorism against Cuba is stuck in legal limbo in a Texas jail. Luis Posada, 78, who has allegedly taken part in plots to assassinate Fidel Castro and bomb Havana hotels, is being described as a test case of the US government's commitment to fighting terrorism.
Mr Posada, a Cuban opponent of President Castro who is a naturalised Venezuelan, is in jail in El Paso, Texas. He was arrested in Florida in 2005 on charges of entering the country illegally. He has been accused by Cuba and Venezuela of being part of a 1976 plot to blow up a Cuban airliner en route from Venezuela to Cuba with the loss of 73 lives. Both countries now seek his extradition to stand trial.
The US courts have ruled that Mr Posada should not be sent to Venezuela or Cuba on the grounds that he would not receive a fair trial and may face torture. Mr Posada has denied involvement in the airliner bombing, but has admitted being part of a plot to bomb Havana hotels, which led to the death of an Italian tourist. In addition, he was jailed for an assassination attempt on President Castro in Panama in 2000, although he was later pardoned by the Panamanian authorities.
For the Bush administration, committed to a "war on terror" and opposed to anyone "willing to harbour a terrorist or feed a terrorist", in the president's words, Mr Posada is an increasing irritation.
One solution was for him to leave the US for a country prepared to offer him a home. However, so far seven countries which have been approached - Canada, Mexico, El Salvador, Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, and Guatemala - have all refused. Yesterday his lawyer in El Paso, Felipe Millan, said that situation remains unchanged.
Comment: Weeping Jesus on the cross! Apart from the fact that this article does not make it explicitly clear that Posada was in fact working for the CIA when he carried out his acts of terrorism against Cuba, there is the outrageous verdict from the Bush regime that they cannot extradite him to Cuba or Venezuela because he might be denied a fair trial and tortured!! This from a government that just recently signed into law a bill that officially denies fair trials to people like Posada, and more or less allows torture! Of course, given that Posada is being kept in limbo because the government does not want to release him to tell his story and doesn't want to prosecute him because he is one of their own, we shouldn't be too surprised. Nevertheless, for it's barefacedness, this stands out as one of the more shocking acts of unmitigated duplicity that we have seen from the Bush junta in recent years.
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Protesters dog Bush in North Carolina
By David Dixon
Greensboro, N.C.
Published Oct 25, 2006 1:20 AM
When President George Bush came to North Carolina on Oct. 18, he was met by protesters all through the day.
He came to the predominantly African-American Waldo C. Falkener Elementary School to tout the supposed success of his No Child Left Behind Act. Some 45 people showed up to demonstrate against his policies of endless war, torture, neglect of Rita/Katrina victims, and dishonesty. One protester held a sign that said, "No child left a dime!" to highlight the Bush administration's tax cuts for the wealthy and gutting of social programs for working and poor people.
Afterwards, Bush was greeted by a group of protesters in Randleman, N.C., when he went to the Victory Junction Gang Camp, a camp for children with health care needs.
Then came the real-life nightmare on Elm Street, when Bush returned to Greensboro to attend a private Republican fundraiser in a wealthy enclave near Elm Street and Sunset Drive, where he raised over $900,000. People are so disgusted with Bush and his policies that even some people in the neighborhood joined the protest.
Some 130 people rallied, demanding Bush be jailed for his war crimes and subversion of constitutional rights. It was a lively protest with drummers keeping everyone's spirits and energy up. People chanted to the beat of the drums saying, "There's a killer in the White House, time to drive his ass out," "End the occupation," and "Bush is bananas, b-a-n-a-n-a-s. This war is bananas, b-a-n-a-n-a-s."
When protesters attempted to march into the neighborhood to demonstrate in front of the fundraiser, a line of cops formed. Progressive attorney Louis Pitts, after speaking with police, informed the crowd that their rights were being violated. Police claimed the area was a "secure area" but were allowing cars to drive in, and Bush supporters were visibly on the sidewalk ahead. Demonstrators held an impromptu street meeting to decide what to do next.
Before the discussion ended, police had closed off the entire street, but the rally continued as people marched around the busy intersection. There was a makeshift jail with Bush inside, a towering orange arrest warrant, a hula-hooper for peace, a coffin with "Roe v Wade" painted on the side, and a large pink banner saying "Impeach to support our troops." Several people were able to sneak around the block and protest at the fundraiser.
Almost all the protesters wore an orange ribbon and some dressed in orange to show their opposition to the recently passed Military Commissions Act of 2006, which legalizes torture. The act also strips away the right of habeas corpus to anyone Bush declares an enemy combatant, among many other unconstitutional aspects.
The protest was organized by Greensboro World Can't Wait with the support of Action Center For Justice and Char-Meck Code Pink. People from around North Carolina participated, including the cities of Charlotte, Reidsville, Kernersville, Burlington, Wilmington, Winston-Salem, and Chapel Hill.
The protest was covered by a couple of local news stations and Greensboro's News and Record. As usual, they underreported the number of people and ignored many of the most significant statements and details of this incredible display of opposition to the Bush administration.
Comment: The most important paragraph is the last one:
The protest was covered by a couple of local news stations and Greensboro's News and Record. As usual, they underreported the number of people and ignored many of the most significant statements and details of this incredible display of opposition to the Bush administration.
There can be no social proof that being outraged over the pathocratic takeover of the US is a normal and human response.
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Lawyer: SEC Won't Charge Ex-Hollinger Director Richard Perle
AP
October 24, 2006 10:55 AM ET
CHICAGO The Securities and Exchange Commission has notified former Defense Department adviser Richard Perle that regulators won't bring charges against him in connection with a case involving his service as a Hollinger International Inc. board member, Perle's attorney confirmed on Monday.
Securities regulators had implicated Perle as early as November 2004, when they filed civil fraud charges against Conrad Black, Hollinger's former chairman and chief executive, alleging that Black engaged in undisclosed transactions that benefited him but hurt the newspaper publishing company.
Dennis Block, an attorney for Perle, said Monday that Perle was notified by the SEC early this month that he wouldn't face charges.
In a complaint filed in November 2004, the SEC had accused Black of authorizing a $2.5-million investment in TriReMe, a venture capital fund affiliated with Perle, without the approval of the board's audit committee.
John Nester, an SEC spokesman, declined to comment.
Hollinger International changed its name to Sun-Times Media Group Inc. in July. The company publishes the Chicago Sun-Times and other newspapers and Web sites in the Chicago area. A spokeswoman for the company also declined to comment.
Comment: How does Perle always get away with it? Once again he is caught looting the US. For the neocons, business as usual. Back in 2003, he resigned from the Pentagon Defense Policy Board for accepting money from Global Crossing.
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Search for remains resumes at WTC site
www.chinaview.cn 2006-10-25 06:07:54
NEW YORK, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- The search for human remains at the World Trade Center site resumed Tuesday, after officials let crews off early Monday because of the possibility of toxins released into the air.
The search was suspended two hours ahead of schedule Monday afternoon because officials feared the work may be stirring up toxic dust like asbestos and other pollutants, but air quality tests came back negative, allowing crews to go back to work.
However, workers, mostly forensic anthropologists for the medical examiner's office, will continue to wear masks. No additional human remains were found during in-depth searches Monday.
Many family members of victims are still demanding all World Trade Center construction be stopped so experts can conduct the search.
But New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg insisted that construction needs to continue to build for the future. "We're a hundred percent convinced that we have the expertise and we have experience of how to deal in the city, in building and in the infrastructure," he said.
John McArdle, the retired police lieutenant who oversaw the recovery of remains after the terror attacks, said he wanted to take more time at the site but was overruled.
"I knew that this was going to happen, and they really just wanted us out of there," McArdle said. "There was not a good exit strategy for some of these places, and if there was, it was poorly done."
The project finished months ahead of city officials' year long prediction, and cost about 750 million dollars, just a fraction of the initial multibillion-dollar estimate.
The mayor acknowledged the initial search may have been rushed, but argued that the crews did the best they could under enormous pressure.
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Amnesiac back home in Washington state but past life remains a blank
11:06:11 EDT Oct 24, 2006
Canadian Press
DENVER (AP) - An amnesia sufferer who had been searching for his identity for more than a month was back in Washington state with his fiancee on Tuesday, but he still doesn't remember his past life or what happened, his mother said.
Jeffrey Alan Ingram, 40, was diagnosed in Denver with dissociative fugue, a type of amnesia.
He has had similar bouts of amnesia in the past, likely triggered by stress, once disappearing for nine months. When he went missing this time, on Sept. 6, he had been on his way to Canada to visit a friend who was dying of cancer, said his fiancee, Penny Hansen.
"I think that the stress, the sadness, the grief of facing a best friend dying was enough, and leaving me was enough to send him into an amnesia state," Hansen told KCNC-TV.
When Ingram found himself in Denver on Sept. 10, he didn't know who he was. He said he walked around for about six hours asking people for help, then ended up at a hospital, where police spokeswoman Virginia Quinones said Ingram was diagnosed with a type of amnesia known as dissociative fugue.
People with dissociative fugue typically appear fine but have temporarily lost their sense of identity, are confused and impulsively travel away from home. Experts say it is rare and typically linked to severe stress.
Ingram's identity came to light last weekend after he appeared on several news shows asking the public for help: "If anybody recognizes me, knows who I am, please let somebody know."
"Penny's brother called her right away and told her 'Did you watch this newscast?' and 'I think that's Jeff that they're showing on television,' "
said Marilyn Meehan, a spokeswoman for Hansen.
Hansen had filed a missing person report after Ingram failed to show up at her mother's home in Bellingham, Wash., on his way to Canada, but officials came up empty.
On Monday night, two Denver police detectives accompanied Ingram on a flight to Seattle, where he was reunited with his fiancee.
His mother, Doreen Tompkins of Slave Lake, Alta., was in tears as she talked about the struggle her son and the family still face.
"It's going to be very difficult again, but . . . I can do it," she told CTV news. "I did it before, I can do it again. I'll do it as many times as I have to just so I can have my son."
Ingram had experienced an episode of amnesia in 1995 when he disappeared during a trip to a grocery store. Nine months later, he was found in a Seattle hospital, according to Thurston County, Wash., officials. His mother said he never fully regained his memory.
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Iraq: The Successful Agenda
Iraqis better off under Saddam, says former weapons inspector
Last Updated: Wednesday, October 25, 2006 | 6:35 AM ET
CBC News
The war in Iraq is a "pure failure" that has left Iraqis in a worse state than when they lived under Saddam Hussein, former United Nations chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said in comments published Wednesday.
"Iraq is a pure failure," Blix was quoted as saying in the Danish newspaper Politiken.
"If the Americans pull out, there is a risk that they will leave a country in civil war. At the same time it doesn't seem that the United States can help to stabilize the situation by staying there."
Blix, in comments that were seen as unusually critical for the diplomat, said the U.S. is facing a situation where neither staying to fight nor pulling its troops out of Iraq are good decisions.
Blix said Iraq would have been better off if the war had not happened.
"Saddam would still have been sitting in office. OK, that is negative and it would not have been joyful for the Iraqi people. But what we have gotten is undoubtedly worse," he was quoted as saying.
Blix was in charge of a team of UN inspectors who looked for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the U.S. and its allies invaded the country in 2003. He had asked for more time to allow the weapons inspectors to do their work, but was criticized by Washington for his request.
After his team left Iraq, a coalition of forces led by the U.S. invaded the country. The U.S. and British military forces found no weapons of mass destruction.
Violence in the country is escalating, meanwhile, with Iraqi civilians, government officials, police officers and often U.S. soldiers killed every day. Bodies are frequently found in Baghdad, bound and tortured. Bombings are common.
According to Iraq Body Count, a website that tracks reported deaths of Iraqi civilians, more than 44,000 Iraqis have died in the war.
Comment: Notice the last line referring to the extremely conservative death count estimate from Iraq Body Count. Remember that last week another study had a figure of 600,000.
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Medics beg for help as Iraqis die needlessly
UK Independent
20/10/2006
Reconstruction seen as disaster
More than 2,000 doctors and nurses are killed
18,000 more leave the nation
Even the most basic treatments are lacking
The disintegration of Iraq's health service is leaving its civilians defenceless in the continuing violence that is rocking the country, Iraqi doctors warn today.
As many as half of the civilian deaths, calculated at 655,000 since the 2003 invasion, might have been avoided if proper medical care had been provided to the victims, they say.
In separate appeals, the doctors beg for help to stem the soaring death rate and ease the suffering of injured families and children. They say governments and the international medical community are ignoring their plight.
In the first 14 months after the 2003 invasion almost $20bn (£11bn) was spent on reconstruction by the British and American funds, including hundreds of millions on rebuilding and re-equipping the country's network of 180 hospitals and clinics.
But billions went missing because of a combination of criminal activity, corruption, and incompetence, leaving Iraqis without even the essentials for basic medical care.
The violence for which the Allied forces failed to plan has meant a $200m reconstruction project for building 142 primary care centres ran out of cash earlier this year with just 20 on course to be completed, an outcome the World Health Organisation described as "shocking".
In March, the campaign group Medact said 18,000 physicians had left the country since 2003, an estimated 250 of those that remained had been kidnapped and, in 2005 alone, 65 killed.
Medact also said "easily treatable conditions such as diarrhoea and respiratory illness caused 70 per cent of all child deaths", and that " of the 180 health clinics the US hoped to build by the end of 2005, only four have been completed and none opened".
Writing in the British Medical Journal today, Dr Basssim Al Sheibani and two colleagues from the Diwaniyah College of Medicine in Iraq says that, as the violence escalates, "the reality is we cannot provide any treatment for many of the victims."
"Emergency departments are staffed by doctors who do not have the proper experience or skills to manage emergency cases. Medical staff ... admit that more than half of those killed could have been saved if trained and experienced staff were available."
They say equipment, supplies and drugs are in many cases unobtainable. " Many emergency departments are no more than halls with beds, fluid suckers and oxygen bottles."
They add: "Our experience has taught us that poor emergency medicine services are more disastrous than the disaster itself. But despite the daily violence that is crushing Iraq, the international medical community is doing little more than looking on"
The shortages were graphically highlighted in a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary made by GuardianFilms, and broadcast in February. It revealed that children with diarrhoeal disease were dying of dehydration because hospitals lacked the right sized needles to inject them with fluids.
In Diwaniyah children's hospital, doctors were shown struggling to give drugs by ventilation to a two-day old girl, Zehara, who was born with underdeveloped lungs, because they had the wrong sized plastic mask. Masks costs pennies but, like all other equipment, are in short supply.
Zehara's father was dispatched on to the streets to try to buy Vitamin K on the black market, urgently needed for an injection. But it was too late - by the time he returned, she was dead and her twin brother also passed away shortly afterwards.
In a separate report yesterday, Peter Kandela, an Iraqi doctor who has practised as a GP in Surrey for 30 years, travelled through Jordan and Syria interviewing Iraqi medical staff who had escaped the violence.
"The current Iraqi brain drain is the worst the country has seen in its modern history," he writes
"In the new Iraq there is a price tag linked to your position and status. Those doctors who have stayed in the country know what they are worth in kidnapping terms and ensure their relatives have easy access to the necessary funds to secure their speedy release if they are taken."
He describes a kidney surgeon seized by a group of armed men, despite the presence of security guards who he had hired to protect himself, whose first act was to go through his contacts book for other potential victims. " They had the audacity to suggest that in return for receiving better treatment inn captivity I should recommend others for kidnapping", the surgeon said.
He was released unharmed after a ransom of $250,000 was paid by his wife.
In Baghdad where no one can escape violence, hospitals provided the last refuge. But they are now unsafe and Iraqis are avoiding them. Public hospitals in the city are controlled by Shiia - who have come under suspicion for allowing death squads to enter them to kill Sunnis.
Abu Nasr, the cousin of a man injured in a car bomb who was dragged from his hospital bed and riddled with bullets, told the Washington Post: "We would prefer now to die instead of going to the hospitals. I will never go back to one, never. The hospitals have become killing fields."
Medical notes
34,000 The number of Iraqi physicians registered before the 2003 war.
18,000 The estimated number of Iraqi physicians who have left since the 2003 invasion.
2,000 The estimated number of Iraqi physicians murdered since 2003.
250 The number of Iraqi physicians kidnapped.
34 The number of reconstructive surgeons in Iraq before the 2003 invasion.
20 The number who have either been murdered of fled. 72 per cent of Iraqis needing reconstructive surgery are suffering from gunshot or blast wounds.
164 The number of nurses murdered - 77 wounded.
$243,000,000 The amount of money set aside by US administration to build 142 private health clinics in post-invastion Iraq.
20 The number of such clinics built by April 2006.
$0 The amount of money left over.
$1bn The amount of money the US administration has spent on Iraq's healthcare system.
$8bn The amount of money needed over the next 4 years to fund the health care system
70 the percentage of deaths among children caused by "easily treatable conditions" such as diarrhoea and respiratory illnesses.
270,000 The number of children born after 2003 who have had no immunisations.
HEALTH INDICATORS:
68 per cent of Iraqis with no access to safe drinking water.
19 per cent of Iraqis with sewerage access.
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The Exodus: 1.6m Iraqis have fled their country since the war
23 October 2006
UK INdependent
Iraq is in flight. Everywhere inside and outside the country, Iraqis who once lived in their own houses cower for safety six or seven to a room in hovels.
Many go after they have been threatened. Often they leave after receiving an envelope with a bullet inside and a scrawled note telling them to get out immediately. Others flee after a relative has been killed, believing they will be next.
Out of the population of 26 million, 1.6 million Iraqis have fled the country and a further 1.5 million are displaced within Iraq, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. In Jordan alone there are 500,000 Iraqi refugees and a further 450,000 in Syria. In Syria alone they are arriving at the rate of 40,000 a month.
It is one of the largest long-term population movements in the Middle East since Israel expelled Palestinians in the 1940s. Few of the Iraqis taking flight now show any desire to return to their homes. The numbers compelled to take to the roads have risen dramatically this year with 365,000 new refugees since the bombing of the Shia shrine in Samara in February.
Rich and poor, both are vulnerable. "I'll need more than five bodyguards if I am to live in Baghdad," said one political leader who has left Iraq. "The police came to my antiques shop and drove me around Baghdad," said an antique dealer from the formerly well-off district of Mansur. "They wanted money or they'd charge me with illegal traffic in antiques. I gave them $5,000 [£2,650] in cash, closed my shop and went with my brother to Jordan the same night. I haven't been back."
One well-established consultant doctor escaped his kidnappers in Baghdad and fled to the Kurdish capital of Arbil where he reopened his surgery. Bakers, often Shias, have been frequently targeted. Some now make bread with a Kalashnikov rifle propped against the wall beside them. Many have left Sunni districts in some of which it has become difficult to buy bread.
Former pilots who are Sunni and served in the air force believed they were being singled out by Shia death squads because they might once have bombed Iran; many have fled to Jordan. Jordanian immigration authorities are more welcoming to Sunni than Shia Iraqis. The latter find it easier to go to Syria. Every day heavily laden buses leave Baghdad for Damascus.
All sorts of Iraqis are on the run. But the Christian minorities from Karada and Doura in Baghdad are also fast disappearing. Most of their churches are closed. Many leave the country while the better off try to rent expensive houses in Ain Kawa, a Christian neighbourhood in Arbil.
Nobody feels safe. Some 70,000 Kurds have taken flight from the largely Sunni Arab city of Mosul. Among their cruellest persecutors are Arabs, settled in Kurdish areas by Saddam Hussein over the past 30 years, who were in turn expelled by returning Kurds after the US invasion in 2003. In Basra, the great Shia city of the south, Sunni are getting out after a rash of assassinations.
Baghdad is breaking up into a dozen different cities, each under the control of its own militia. In Shia areas this usually means the Mehdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr. In Sunni districts it means that the insurgents, who are also at war with the Americans, are taking over. The Sunnis control the south and south-west; the Shias the north and east.
The worst slaughter is happening in the towns on the outskirts of Baghdad where Sunnis and Shias live side by side. Shias are fleeing from Mahmoudiyah, 20 miles south of Baghdad, to Suwaira and Kut. The Iraqi army does little to help, and Shias complain that the US is more intent on attacking the Mehdi Army than rescuing villagers. According to one report from the Mahmoudiyah area: after two days of fighting a platoon of Iraqi soldiers "was dispatched from the Suwaira base to break the siege. They turned up for two hours and evacuated some of the women and children to the safe zone of Suwaira, but had to turn back as they were not fully equipped to handle the situation without [US] air support."
The Shias also accuse the US of attacking their own defensive lines. In Mahmoudiyah yesterday, 19 people were killed in a bombing and mortar assault blamed by the main Sunni bloc on the Mehdi Army.
Shias do have relatively safe areas to flee to (so far as any part of Iraq is safe) in east Baghdad or the Shia south of Iraq. But Sunni areas are beset so they may move only a few streets to a house they deem more secure. Otherwise they must leave the country.
Flight often brings a host of difficulties with it. Much of the Iraqi population is unemployed and depends on state-funded rations bought from a single, local grocery shop. A refugee in Baghdad cannot go to another shop even if he has taken up residence elsewhere. The lumbering state bureaucracy only shows flexibility on receipt of a bribe. Sometimes a man may move out of a district but still have his job there which he dare not give up (60 per cent of Iraqis are unemployed); 10 days ago, 14 Shia workers from the Shia town of Balad north of Baghdad were found with their throats cut in the nearby Sunni town of Dhuluiya where they had been working. In retaliation the Shias of Balad hunted down and killed 38 Sunnis.
An e-mail from a Sunni friend in Baghdad that I received in April is worth quoting in full. It reads in shaky English: "Yesterday the cousin of my step brother (as you know my father married two) killed by Badr [Shia militia] troops after three days of arresting and his body found thrown in the trash of al-Shula district. He is one of three people who were killed after heavy torture. They did nothing but they are Sunni people among the huge number of Shia people in the General Factory for Cotton in al-Qadamiyah district ... His family couldn't recognise his face but by the big wart on his left arm."
There is the total breakdown of law and order. Kidnappings are rife. Businessmen pay for the assassination of their rivals. Sunni militants kill women wearing trousers and men wearing shorts.
Rival Shia militias fight pitched battles for control of oilfields. American soldiers often shoot at anything. No wonder so many Iraqis have left their homes or fled their country.
The refugees' stories
MOHAMMED, SUNNI TRADER
Mohammed was living in the al-Jihad neighbourhood of west Baghdad. A self-confident, energetic man who was a small trader in motor parts and a driver, he does not frighten easily. But, two months ago, he decided he had no choice but to leave his pleasant home and is now living with his wife and three daughters in a single cramped room in the house of a friend.
Earlier this year, as sectarian killings increased after the destruction of the al-Askari mosque in February, he and his family fled to Syria for safety. Al-Jihad has four districts, only one of which is Sunni, and Mohammed was living in a Shia district which was increasingly dangerous for him.
Damascus was safe but too expensive. Mohammed went back to Baghdad. But when he got to his house there was bad news. His neighbours said that while he was away the Mehdi Army, the Shia militia, had come to his home. They had asked if he was Sunni or Shia. They were told he was a Sunni. They left a message saying Mohammed must go or he would be killed. He immediately took his family to the solidly Sunni al-Khadra quarter also in west Baghdad where he now lives.
LEILA MOHAMMED, SHIA MOTHER OF THREE
"Be gone by evening prayers or we will kill you," warned one of the four men who called at the house of Leila Mohammed, the mother of three children in the city of Baquba in strife-torn Diyala province north east of Baghdad. She and her family are Shia by religion and Kurdish by ethnic origin.
The men who threatened her were Sunni. One of them offered her children chocolate to find out the names of the men of the family.
Leila fled to Khanaqin, a Kurdish enclave also in Diyala. Her husband, Ahmed, who traded in fruit in the local market, said: "They threatened the Kurds and the Shia and told them to get out. Later, I went back to get our furniture but there was too much shooting and I was trapped in our house. I came away with nothing." He and his wife now live with nine other relatives in a three-room hovel in Khanaqin with no way of making a living.
MOHAMMED AL-MAWLA, REFUGEE IN SYRIA
Mohammed al-Mawla is adjusting to life in his new home as an Iraqi refugee living in Syria. He operates an internet café outside Damascus and sends his two children to Syrian schools. But al-Mawla, 42, fears the comfort he has found in Syria after escaping the violence in Iraq could quickly disappear if the money he has saved runs out, forcing him to leave his new home in search of work.
Comment: Let's stop a moment and think about this. The US invaded Iraq, purportedly to "liberate" it from Saddam (after their initial claim of WMDs was proved to be a lie), yet the result has been the murder of 655,000 Iraqis and the fleeing of 1.6 million. By any streach of the imagination, can this be termed a "good thing"? Has the US government helped the Iraqi people? How much more evidence does the world need before we all join together and condemn the American British and Israeli governments for the psychopaths that they clearly are?
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Judge Orders Release of Abu Ghraib Child Rape Photos
By Greg Mitchell
www.editorandpublisher.com
NEW YORK A federal judge ruled today that graphic pictures of detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison must be released over government claims that they could damage America's image. Last year a Republican senator conceded that they contained scenes of "rape and murder" and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said they included acts that were "blatantly sadistic."
U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein ordered the release of certain pictures in a 50-page decision that said terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan have proven they "do not need pretexts for their barbarism."
The ACLU has sought the release of 87 photographs and four videotapes taken at the prison as part of an October 2003 lawsuit demanding information on the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody and the transfer of prisoners to countries known to use torture.
Gen. John Abizaid, commander of U.S. Central Command, said Thursday that releasing the photos would hinder his work against terrorism. "When we continue to pick at the wound and show the pictures over and over again it just creates the image--a false image--like this is the sort of stuff that is happening anew, and it's not," Abizaid said.
The judge said, however, that "the freedoms that we champion are as important to our success in Iraq and Afghanistan as the guns and missiles with which our troops are armed."
An ACLU release this afternoon said it was getting 70 photos and three video tapes. It also said that the government is being given 20 days to appeal.
What is shown on the photographs and videos from Abu Ghraib prison that the Pentagon has blocked from release? One clue: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress last year, after viewing a large cache of unreleased images, "I mean, I looked at them last night, and they're hard to believe." They show acts "that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhumane," he added.
A Republican Senator suggested the same day they contained scenes of "rape and murder." Rumsfeld then commented, "If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse."
The photos were among thousands turned over by the key "whistleblower" in the scandal, Specialist Joseph M. Darby. Just a few that were released to the press sparked the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal last year, and the video images are said to be even more shocking.
"Today's historic ruling is a step toward ensuring that our government's leaders are held accountable for the abuse and torture that happened on their watch," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. "The American public has a right to know what happened in American detention centers, and how our leaders let it occur."
One Pentagon lawyer has argued that they should not be released because they would only add to the humiliation of the prisoners. But the ACLU has said the faces of the victims can easily be "redacted."
To get a sense of what may be shown in these images, one has to go back to press reports from when the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal was still front page news.
This is how CNN reported it on May 8, 2004, in a typical account that day:
"U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld revealed Friday that videos and 'a lot more pictures' exist of the abuse of Iraqis held at Abu Ghraib prison.
"'If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse,' Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee. 'I mean, I looked at them last night, and they're hard to believe.'
"The embattled defense secretary fielded sharp and skeptical questions from lawmakers as he testified about the growing prisoner abuse scandal. A military report about that abuse describes detainees being threatened, sodomized with a chemical light and forced into sexually humiliating poses.
"Charges have been brought against seven service members, and investigations into events at the prison continue.
"Military investigators have looked into -- or are continuing to investigate -- 35 cases of alleged abuse or deaths of prisoners in detention facilities in the Central Command theater, according to Army Secretary Les Brownlee. Two of those cases were deemed homicides, he said.
"'The American public needs to understand we're talking about rape and murder here. We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience,' Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told reporters after Rumsfeld testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. 'We're talking about rape and murder -- and some very serious charges.'
"A report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba on the abuse at the prison outside Baghdad says videotapes and photographs show naked detainees, and that groups of men were forced to masturbate while being photographed and videotaped. Taguba also found evidence of a 'male MP guard having sex with a female detainee.'
"Rumsfeld told Congress the unrevealed photos and videos contain acts 'that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhuman.'"
The military later screened some of the images for lawmakers, who said they showed, among other things, attack dogs snarling at cowed prisoners, Iraqi women forced to expose their breasts, and naked prisoners forced to have sex with each other.
In the same period, reporter Seymour Hersh, who helped uncover the scandal, said in a speech before an ACLU convention: "Some of the worse that happened that you don't know about, ok? Videos, there are women there. Some of you may have read they were passing letters, communications out to their men ... . The women were passing messages saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened.'
"Basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys/children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. The worst about all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror it's going to come out."
Judge Hellerstein said today that publication of the photographs will help to answer questions not only about the unlawful conduct of American soldiers, but about "the command structure that failed to exercise discipline over the troops, and the persons in that command structure whose failures in exercising supervision may make them culpable along with the soldiers who were court-martialed for perpetrating the wrongs."
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Brother of US athlete-turned-soldier condemns Iraq war, Bush
The News
WASHINGTON: The brother of an American football player who was killed as a soldier in Afghanistan and hailed as a hero for giving up his athletic career to fight the "war on terror" has lashed out at President George W. Bush and the war in Iraq.
The parents of Pat Tillman, who died by "friendly fire" in Afghanistan in April 2004, already have accused US authorities of initially trying to cover up the circumstances of their son's death.
But Tillman's brother, Kevin, who also served in Iraq and Afghanistan along with his brother, spoke out for the first time with an angry condemnation of the rationale for the Iraq war and Bush's leadership.
"Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes," Kevin Tillman wrote in an essay published on a website. "Somehow torture is tolerated. Somehow lying is tolerated.
Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma and nonsense. Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world," wrote Tillman, who gave up his own fledgling career in professional baseball to join the army.
Entitling his essay "After Pat's Birthday," Tillman notes that legislative elections will be held on November 7, a day after his late brother's birthday, and calls for voters to hold Bush's Republican party accountable.
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Target: Your Child
Tesco condemned for selling pole dancing toy
by COLIN FERNANDEZ
Daily Mail
Tesco has been forced to remove a pole-dancing kit from the toys and games section of its website after it was accused of "destroying children's innocence".
The Tesco Direct site advertises the kit with the words, "Unleash the sex kitten inside...simply extend the Peekaboo pole inside the tube, slip on the sexy tunes and away you go!
"Soon you'll be flaunting it to the world and earning a fortune in Peekaboo Dance Dollars".
The £49.97 kit comprises a chrome pole extendible to 8ft 6ins, a 'sexy dance garter' and a DVD demonstrating suggestive dance moves.
The kit, condemned as 'extremely dangerous' by family campaigners yesterday, was discovered by mother of two Karen Gallimore who was searching for Christmas gifts for her two daughters, Laura 10, and Sarah, 11.
Mrs Gallimore, 33, of Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, said yesterday: "I'm no prude, but any children can go on there and see it. It's just not on."
Dr Adrian Rogers, of family campaigning group Family Focus said yesterday that the kit would "destroy children's lives".
He said: "Tesco is Britain's number one chain, this is extremely dangerous. It is an open invitation to turn the youngest children on to sexual behaviour.
"This will be sold to four, five and six-year olds. This is a most dangerous toy that will contribute towards destroying children's innocence."
He added: "Children are being encouraged to dance round a pole which is interpreted in the adult world as a phallic symbol.
"It ought to be stopped, it really requires the intervention of members of Parliament. This should only be available to the most depraved people who want to corrupt their children."
Tesco today agreed to remove the product from the Toy section of the site, but said it will remain on sale as a Fitness Accessory, despite the fact that the product description invites users to "unleash the sex kitten inside".
Also on sale on the Tesco website is a strip poker game, "Peekaboo Poker" which is illustrated by a picture of a reclining woman in underwear.
The card game is is described as a game that "risks the risque and brings a whole lot of naughtiness to the table.
"Played with a unique pack of Peekaboo Boy and Girl playing cards, the aim of the game is to win as many Peekaboo chips as possible and turn them into outrageously naughty fun."
The pole dance kit is the latest item to fuel allegations that major retailers increasingly sell products which "sexualise" young children such as T-shirts with suggestive messages.
In recent years Asda was forced to remove from sale pink and black lace lingerie, including a push-up bra to girls as young as nine.
Next had to remove t-shirts on sale for girls as young as six with the slogan "so many boys, so little time."
And BHS and others came under fire for selling padded bras embellished with a "Little Miss Naughty" logo and t-shirts with a Playboy-style bunny that said "I love boys...They are stupid."
Tesco last night denied the pole dancing kit was sexually oriented and said it was clearly marked for "adult use".
A spokesman added: "Pole dancing is an increasing exercise craze. This item is for people who want to improve their fitness and have fun at the same time."
Comment: Tesco's happens to be one of the largest UK supermarket chains and is also Jewish owned. "So what?" We hear you say. Indeed, no big deal, but it is always interesting to see how the vested interests of religious and political groups end up infiltrating many areas of public life. Consider the following articles for example...
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Flashback: Tesco cooks up Jewish hot star bun for Easter
Telegraph
March 1999
Tesco's will this week launch a range of Jewish hot cross buns for Easter, substituting the cross with a star of David.
The move follows a request from a Jewish group to the Tesco store in Colney Hatch, north London. Talks were held with the Jewish Board of Deputies and officials from the Church of England before the go-ahead was given. The buns will initially be sold only in the north London store but will be introduced to other shops if they prove popular.
A spokesman for Tesco said: "We wanted to make sure it would not offend anybody. The Board of Deputies is fine with the idea as long as we don't sell them during Passover, the weekend of March 31, when it is forbidden to eat anything with leavened bread." The buns will be available before and after that date.
News of the hot star buns received a mixed reaction last night. Officials at the Church of England privately described the the idea as "mad', but Rabbi Pini Dunner, who runs the Saatchi Synagogue funded by the advertising brothers, praised the scheme as "imaginative and innovative". He would not be eating them himself, however, because they were not "kosher".
A spokesman for the Church of England said: "This is a complete waste of time. The point of hot cross buns is that they mark Good Friday when Christ was crucified. Hence the cross. You cannot put a star in its place. There seems to be a trend against faiths having their own traditions."
The Council for Christians and Jews, a group set up to improve relations between the faiths, described the move as "quite inappropriate." Jonathan Gorsky, education adviser, said: "I am utterly bewildered. It seems to me that it is part of Christian life. To pretend otherwise is totally absurd. These have no relevance to Jews. I can see no reason to do such a thing."
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Flashback: Tesco Pull Anti Jewish Publications From Online Bookstore
November 2005
CNN
British retailer Tesco PLC said Friday it was withdrawing several far-right and anti-Semitic publications from its online bookstore after complaints from an anti-fascist magazine.
Searchlight magazine said it was "horrified" to discover books from far-right publishers on the Tesco web site. They included "The Hitler We Loved and Why," "The International Jew" and infamous anti-Semitic tract "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion."
Mark Gardner, director of communications for the Jewish Community Security Trust, said it was "inexplicable and shameful" that Tesco -- one of Britain's biggest supermarket chains -- would sell such material.
In a statement, Tesco said it had removed the books after a complaint from Searchlight.
"Tesco.com has over 1 million book titles covering a wide range of subjects," it said.
"We are unhappy that titles which could cause offense to some customers have found there way on to our site, and took immediate action to remove them once they were brought to our attention."
Comment: Of course, we have to wonder who authorised the inclusion of these titles. After all, it provided the Zionists a great opportunity to promote the bogus claim of a "world-wide rise in anti-Semitism".
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A quarter of British children are living in poverty
Daily Mail
23/10/2006
Almost a quarter of children in the UK live in poverty, according to an official study. In Europe only Poland, Slovakia and Italy has worst child poverty rates.
According to the definition of poverty, a couple with two young children on less than £228 a week after housing costs are deducted are officially poor. The same applies for a single parent with two young children if they live on less than £146 a week.
A 100-page report from public health experts found 22.5 per cent of children in the UK and 27 per cent of children in the capital are from households that survive on less than 60 per cent of the median income - the official definition of poverty. This rises to 41 per cent after housing costs in the capital are taken into account.
In Britain as a whole, 3.4 million children live in poverty. The number had been falling but this has levelled out.
The Indicators Of Child Health report, by the Association of Public Health Observatories, said: "Five of the English regions have significantly more child poverty than the European average."
Today, critics hit out at the Government's failure to tackle child poverty, especially in London, which is often linked to a lifetime of ill health, leading to diseases such as TB.
Dr Bobbie Jacobson, director of London Health Observatory, said: "Lifting children out of poverty provides the route to better opportunities and health. The finding that London is second worst in the European league confirms the picture of London as home not just to the wealthiest but also to the poorest families in Europe."
Lynne Featherstone, Liberal Democrat spokeswoman for London, said: "These figures are a disgrace. It puts paid to the lie that London is somehow rich.î
Colette Marshall, UK director of Save the Children, said: "Children in the capital are missing out on basic needs such as living in a warm home this winter, or eating nutritious food. We have to recognise that poverty is on our doorstep.î
The report also shows children in the UK are more likely than those elsewhere in Europe to get pregnant, be obese and catch measles after not being vaccinated.
On the positive side, they are likely to be breast-fed shortly after birth, probably do not have tooth decay or broken bones and eat plenty of fruit and vegetables.
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Childcare gets robotic
By Alison Godfrey
October 25, 2006 12:00am
JAPANESE engineers have designed a novel solution to childcare - a 38cm robot that can send pictures of your child to your mobile phone on demand.
The new 'humanoid' robot, called PaPeRo - short for Partner-type Personal Robot - has a camera in each eye and uses image recognition technology to remember and identify people. It can move at 20cm per second to track children around the house or nursery.
The futuristic robot also has an inbuilt mobile phone. When a parent calls it will locate the child and start to play with them. Parents can also send text messages and talk to children using PaPeRo's inbuilt microphones and speakers.
As part of a deal between computer giant NEC and Japanese telecommunication company NTT the new service will be trialled in a Tokyo nursery school from this week.
But the company is also marketing the product to busy executives as a personal assistant.
"It checks your email, tunes the TV to your favorite channel, and dances with your children," NEC says on it's website.
"This egg-shaped robot named PaPeRo knows your favorite football team and searches the Internet for the day's lineups and scores when you get home. It will also develop a personality depending on how you treat it. Speak to it nicely and stroke its head sensors and PaPeRo will learn to love you."
NEC's Multimedia Research Laboratories senior manager Yoshihiro Fujita said the robot has been designed to remove typical 'computer' features like keyboards.
"We envision a future with simpler interactions with technology," he said. "You don't need to learn to use PaPeRo like a PC, you just need to talk to it,"
Comment: Ah yes, since most children are already so well adjusted. Another step toward accepting our robotic overlords.
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The War on Conscience
U.S. would win new war but it would be dirtier: Pace
Reuters
Oct 24, 2006
The United States has the capacity to defeat any enemy with overwhelming power, despite the Iraq war, but a new conflict would involve more brute force and civilian casualties, the top U.S. general said on Tuesday.
Asked about any potential threat from North Korea, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he did not know the intent of the Pyongyang leadership but the U.S. military could cope with any potential enemy.
"It is true that our units that are here at home are not fully equipped, as they would be if there wasn't a war going on," Pace told reporters at the Pentagon.
"But none of our potential enemies should miscalculate the capacity of this nation to generate overwhelming combat power, tomorrow, to defend our national interests."
Pace said the conflicts in both Iraq and Afghanistan meant some precision weapons and intelligence systems were already in use and could not be immediately be deployed elsewhere.
"It would be more brute force, wherever we might have to go next, than it would be if we weren't already involved in the war we have going on in Iraq or Afghanistan," Pace said.
"You would end up not having all of the precision weapons that you might otherwise have going into a second theater, wherever it might happen to be, and therefore you would end up using more dumb bombs, so to speak, more brute force, than you would otherwise," he said.
"So you end up with more collateral damage. You end up more like a World War Two, Korean War campaign than you would sitting at home waiting with the war not going on."
But he said that would not affect the capacity of the U.S. military to defeat any enemy.
"It would not be as clean as we would like it to be. But it would certainly be sure. And the outcome would not be in doubt," he said.
The United States has said it wants to use diplomacy to resolve its standoff with North Korea, which escalated when the secretive Communist state conducted a first nuclear test on October 9, but will take no option off the table.
Comment: More brute force? Obviously we can expect even more gruesome and wanton killing of civilians. That is the real goal of these psychopaths.
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LA cardinal urged priest to stay in Mexico or face inquiry
By Robert Jablon
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LOS ANGELES - Cardinal Roger Mahony more than two decades ago warned a priest suspected of abusing children not to return to California or face a possible investigation, referring to the man as a "psychopath," according to letters released Tuesday by a victims' group.
The letters were filed in court as part of a recently settled lawsuit, in which Mahony -- head of the nation's largest archdiocese -- gave a deposition detailing actions to remove the priest from duties at a California diocese, said Mary Grant, spokeswoman for Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
"What we think Cardinal Mahony should have done is said: 'Bring that priest back here right now. He needs to be arrested,'" Grant said at a news conference. "That's what somebody who cares about children does."
Mahony's conduct in handling clergy abuse allegations has been under fire from SNAP for several years.
Mahony, who oversees the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese, was out of town Tuesday and could not be reached for comment, but his spokesman Tod Tamberg said the cardinal "acted decisively and immediately" when informed of allegations against the Rev. Antonio Munoz, a Mexican priest visiting the Diocese of Stockton while Mahony was bishop there.
In a letter dated Sept. 18, 1981, Mahony wrote to Munoz at the Tijuana diocese informing the priest of his dismissal.
"For the spiritual and pastoral good of the people of the Dioceses of Stockton, please remain over there in Mexico," the letter said in Spanish. "If you, sir, would like to visit here for whatever reason, then I would have to inform police and immigration officials."
The letter ends with Mahony urging the priest to obtain "the professional and spiritual help you need."
Mahony also wrote a second letter dated the same day to Msgr. Juan Jesus Pasadas Ocampo of the Tijuana diocese about Munoz.
"It seems best to us that he doesn't return here ever, because there are many parents disposed to inform police about his actions," the letter said in Spanish.
"I hope that Father Munoz is not able to serve in a parish where there is the possibility to find more youngsters. He is truly (a) psychopath, and in reality he needs a lot of professional help."
Munoz could not be located for comment.
The Los Angeles archdiocese faces more than 500 lawsuits from people who allege they were abused by about 200 priests and lay people dating as far back as the 1930s. Settlement talks have been under way in those cases since 2002.
Sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests has cost the U.S. church at least $1.5 billion since 1950.
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Laptops at U.S. border: No privacy rights
By Joe Sharkey
The New York Times
A lot of business travelers are walking around with laptops that contain private corporate information that their employers really do not want outsiders to see.
Until recently, their biggest concern was that someone might steal the laptop. But now there's a new worry: the laptop will be seized or its contents scrutinized at customs and immigration checkpoints upon entering the United States.
Although much of the evidence for the confiscations remains anecdotal, it is a hot topic this week among more than a thousand corporate travel managers and travel industry officials meeting in Barcelona at a conference of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives.
Last week, an informal survey by the association, which has about 2,500 members worldwide, indicated that almost 90 percent of its members were not aware that U.S. customs officials have the authority to scrutinize the contents of travelers' laptops and even confiscate them for a period of time, without giving a reason. Appeals are under way in some confiscation cases, but the law is clear.
"They don't need probable cause to perform these searches under the current law," said Tim Kane, a Washington lawyer who is researching the matter for corporate clients. "They can do it without suspicion or without really revealing their motivations."
Laptops may be scrutinized and subject to a "forensic analysis" under the so-called border search exemption, which allows searches of people entering the United States and their possessions "without probable cause, reasonable suspicion or a warrant," a U.S. court ruled in July.
The association is asking the U.S. government for better guidelines so corporate policies on traveling with proprietary information can be re-evaluated. It is also asking whether corporations need to reduce the proprietary data that travelers carry.
"We need to be able to better inform our business travelers what the processes are if their laptops and data are seized - what happens to it, how do you get it back," said Susan Gurley, the group's executive director.
Besides the possibility for misuse of proprietary information, travel executives are also concerned that a seized computer, and the information it holds, becomes unavailable for a time. A remedy some companies are considering is having travelers encrypt critical information and e-mail it to themselves before entering the country, protecting access to the data, if not privacy.
A U.S. court in California recently went against the trend, ruling that laptop searches were a serious invasion of privacy.
"People keep all sorts of personal information on computers," the court said, citing diaries, personal letters, financial records, lawyers' confidential client information and reporters' notes on confidential sources. In that specific case, the federal court ruled that "the correct standard requires that any border search of the information stored on a person's electronic storage device be based, at a minimum, on a reasonable suspicion."
In its informal survey, the association also found that 87 percent of its members said they would be less likely to carry confidential business or personal information on international trips now that they were aware of how easily laptop contents could be searched.
A lot of business travelers are walking around with laptops that contain private corporate information that their employers really do not want outsiders to see.
Until recently, their biggest concern was that someone might steal the laptop. But now there's a new worry: the laptop will be seized or its contents scrutinized at customs and immigration checkpoints upon entering the United States.
Although much of the evidence for the confiscations remains anecdotal, it is a hot topic this week among more than a thousand corporate travel managers and travel industry officials meeting in Barcelona at a conference of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives.
Last week, an informal survey by the association, which has about 2,500 members worldwide, indicated that almost 90 percent of its members were not aware that U.S. customs officials have the authority to scrutinize the contents of travelers' laptops and even confiscate them for a period of time, without giving a reason. Appeals are under way in some confiscation cases, but the law is clear.
"They don't need probable cause to perform these searches under the current law," said Tim Kane, a Washington lawyer who is researching the matter for corporate clients. "They can do it without suspicion or without really revealing their motivations."
Laptops may be scrutinized and subject to a "forensic analysis" under the so-called border search exemption, which allows searches of people entering the United States and their possessions "without probable cause, reasonable suspicion or a warrant," a U.S. court ruled in July.
The association is asking the U.S. government for better guidelines so corporate policies on traveling with proprietary information can be re-evaluated. It is also asking whether corporations need to reduce the proprietary data that travelers carry.
"We need to be able to better inform our business travelers what the processes are if their laptops and data are seized - what happens to it, how do you get it back," said Susan Gurley, the group's executive director.
Besides the possibility for misuse of proprietary information, travel executives are also concerned that a seized computer, and the information it holds, becomes unavailable for a time. A remedy some companies are considering is having travelers encrypt critical information and e-mail it to themselves before entering the country, protecting access to the data, if not privacy.
A U.S. court in California recently went against the trend, ruling that laptop searches were a serious invasion of privacy.
"People keep all sorts of personal information on computers," the court said, citing diaries, personal letters, financial records, lawyers' confidential client information and reporters' notes on confidential sources. In that specific case, the federal court ruled that "the correct standard requires that any border search of the information stored on a person's electronic storage device be based, at a minimum, on a reasonable suspicion."
In its informal survey, the association also found that 87 percent of its members said they would be less likely to carry confidential business or personal information on international trips now that they were aware of how easily laptop contents could be searched.
A lot of business travelers are walking around with laptops that contain private corporate information that their employers really do not want outsiders to see.
Until recently, their biggest concern was that someone might steal the laptop. But now there's a new worry: the laptop will be seized or its contents scrutinized at customs and immigration checkpoints upon entering the United States.
Although much of the evidence for the confiscations remains anecdotal, it is a hot topic this week among more than a thousand corporate travel managers and travel industry officials meeting in Barcelona at a conference of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives.
Last week, an informal survey by the association, which has about 2,500 members worldwide, indicated that almost 90 percent of its members were not aware that U.S. customs officials have the authority to scrutinize the contents of travelers' laptops and even confiscate them for a period of time, without giving a reason. Appeals are under way in some confiscation cases, but the law is clear.
"They don't need probable cause to perform these searches under the current law," said Tim Kane, a Washington lawyer who is researching the matter for corporate clients. "They can do it without suspicion or without really revealing their motivations."
Laptops may be scrutinized and subject to a "forensic analysis" under the so-called border search exemption, which allows searches of people entering the United States and their possessions "without probable cause, reasonable suspicion or a warrant," a U.S. court ruled in July.
The association is asking the U.S. government for better guidelines so corporate policies on traveling with proprietary information can be re-evaluated. It is also asking whether corporations need to reduce the proprietary data that travelers carry.
"We need to be able to better inform our business travelers what the processes are if their laptops and data are seized - what happens to it, how do you get it back," said Susan Gurley, the group's executive director.
Besides the possibility for misuse of proprietary information, travel executives are also concerned that a seized computer, and the information it holds, becomes unavailable for a time. A remedy some companies are considering is having travelers encrypt critical information and e-mail it to themselves before entering the country, protecting access to the data, if not privacy.
A U.S. court in California recently went against the trend, ruling that laptop searches were a serious invasion of privacy.
"People keep all sorts of personal information on computers," the court said, citing diaries, personal letters, financial records, lawyers' confidential client information and reporters' notes on confidential sources. In that specific case, the federal court ruled that "the correct standard requires that any border search of the information stored on a person's electronic storage device be based, at a minimum, on a reasonable suspicion."
In its informal survey, the association also found that 87 percent of its members said they would be less likely to carry confidential business or personal information on international trips now that they were aware of how easily laptop contents could be searched.
A lot of business travelers are walking around with laptops that contain private corporate information that their employers really do not want outsiders to see.
Until recently, their biggest concern was that someone might steal the laptop. But now there's a new worry: the laptop will be seized or its contents scrutinized at customs and immigration checkpoints upon entering the United States.
Although much of the evidence for the confiscations remains anecdotal, it is a hot topic this week among more than a thousand corporate travel managers and travel industry officials meeting in Barcelona at a conference of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives.
Last week, an informal survey by the association, which has about 2,500 members worldwide, indicated that almost 90 percent of its members were not aware that U.S. customs officials have the authority to scrutinize the contents of travelers' laptops and even confiscate them for a period of time, without giving a reason. Appeals are under way in some confiscation cases, but the law is clear.
"They don't need probable cause to perform these searches under the current law," said Tim Kane, a Washington lawyer who is researching the matter for corporate clients. "They can do it without suspicion or without really revealing their motivations."
Laptops may be scrutinized and subject to a "forensic analysis" under the so-called border search exemption, which allows searches of people entering the United States and their possessions "without probable cause, reasonable suspicion or a warrant," a U.S. court ruled in July.
The association is asking the U.S. government for better guidelines so corporate policies on traveling with proprietary information can be
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'MXit is great, but don't be fooled'
October 23 2006 at 12:12PM
By Sherlissa Peters
When 12-year-old Samuel* first got his cellphone in January, he was the happiest Grade 7 boy on the planet.
All his friends had cellphones and he wanted desperately to become part of a craze that has taken the country's teenagers by storm. Samuel wanted to become a resident of MXit.
So began an experience that has left Samuel emotionally scarred and psychologically damaged, to the extent that he now attends counselling three times a week.
'Traumatic and nasty experience'
The cute, black-haired boy is a shadow of his former bubbly self, according to his concerned mother Vivienne.
"He was such an outgoing, sociable young man. Since having this traumatic and nasty experience on MXit, Samuel has become withdrawn and angry. It has put our family under tremendous strain," Vivienne said.
Samuel began using MXit immediately after receiving his cellphone.
He explained that at first, he used the network to have conversations with his school friends and sports buddies, but soon he became curious about the chat rooms.
"I just wanted to see what the chat rooms were all about. I didn't plan on getting hooked on chatting," Samuel says, his eyes downcast and his voice a mere whisper.
'The anonymity of chat rooms means that trust and intimacy can develop quickly'
Samuel revealed that he soon began chatting with one particular person, a user who was known to him as "Candy 14".
"We started chatting and she told me she was living in Pietermaritzburg and was 14 years old," Samuel said, adding that he was very pleased with himself for finding himself a 14-year-old female friend who described herself as "spunky, cute and sugar-sweet".
"We spoke about everything, our families, our schools, our likes and dislikes. It was so cool. She told me her real name was Claudia," said Samuel.
Samuel divulged that pretty soon, the conversations became more personal, with "Claudia" asking him about girls, his preferences when it came to choosing girlfriends, what turned him on and other topics that Samuel was loathe to confess.
It was after about a month of chatting on MXit that "Claudia" asked Samuel to meet in person.
Samuel readily agreed, eager to put a face to the name and meet his new friend.
The two set up a meeting for a Saturday afternoon at Milky Lane in Scottsville, where Samuel was going to be identified by the black Quicksilver T-shirt and military cargo pants he was wearing.
Samuel informed his parents that he was meeting friends at the movies and was dropped off by his father.
"After about 10 minutes of waiting, I was approached by an old man who had been standing nearby. He asked if my name was Samuel. I did not answer him because I was scared," he said.
The man told Samuel that he was Claudia and wanted to "get to know him better".
"He made a move for my hand and I just bolted," Samuel said, adding that he ran to the public restroom, locked himself in and called his parents.
"I broke down. I told this man such intimate and personal things about myself and my family. I am so ashamed," the young boy said.
MXit has enjoyed phenomenal growth since its launch in May 2005. But the dangers attached to this extremely easy-to-use and attractive service are all too real.
The service can become addictive to certain users and may become a hunting ground for perverse predators intent on luring young, naive children into their clutches.
Statistics released by Clockspeed Mobile, the company that developed MXit reveal that in 2006 45 percent of users fall in the 12-17 age group.
"For this reason", Alex Meiring, director of Clockspeed Mobile and creator of MXit, was reported as saying, "it is up to parents to communicate to their children the importance of using technology responsibly."
Meiring confirmed that to prevent nasty experiences from occurring, profanity filters have been put in place to block bad language and a report abuse function is operational on the website for users to report bad behaviour.
A list of safety tips have also been posted on the website and MXit portal.
MXit is also in the process of a joint venture with ChildLine, allowing for children to receive online counselling should they require it.
Child psychologist Terry Heide said it is imperative for parents to become more involved in their children's technological escapades.
"Often we have parents who are struggling to keep up with technological advances and choose to ignore their children's interest in the cellphone and MXit culture," Heide said.
He explained that most parents have no idea of the faceless dialogues that their children are engaging in, or what sort of personal information they are dispensing.
"The anonymity of chat rooms means that trust and intimacy can develop quickly, allowing predators to take advantage of this anonymity to build relationships with inexperienced, unsuspecting children," said Heide.
Heide advised parents not to prevent their children from using their cellphones or computers, because "we all know forbidden fruit tastes better".
Heide says parents should rather make themselves aware of which chat rooms their children visit and whom they speak to, as well as to monitor the conversation.
Children should be instructed never to divulge any personal information to other users, as well as to never leave the chat rooms to engage in "private" conversations with other users.
"Parents should always maintain a good, open relationship with their children, one in which the child is comfortable enough to approach their parents if anything unpleasant does occur," Heide said.
He said it is important that parents sit down with their children to discuss the dangers of chat rooms and the responsibility that comes with using such a service.
Another MXit user, Danielle, 16, had this to say: "MXit is great. It allows me to chat with my friends and family at minimal cost. But don't be fooled. There are some pervs out there who abuse the service, giving it a bad name.
"That's the downside of groundbreaking technology. There will always be someone out there who will find a way to screw it up."
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Psychopaths in History
German troops in skull photos row
BBC
Photos apparently showing German troops posing with a skull in Afghanistan have caused outrage in Germany.
The tabloid newspaper Bild, which carried the photos, says they show German troops in Afghanistan in 2003.
On one of the pictures, a soldier is seen holding the skull next to his exposed penis, on another - soldiers pose with the skull on their jeep.
German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung expressed disgust at the photos and ordered an immediate investigation.
Two possible suspects have already been identified and are being questioned, said army chief of staff General Wolfgang Schneiderhan.
One of suspects was still with the armed forces and the other had left the army, the general said.
'Repugnance and horror'
Mr Jung pledged "disciplinary or even criminal measures" for those involved, if the story was confirmed.
"These pictures arouse repugnance and horror," the minister said.
"Anyone who behaves this way has no place in the Bundeswehr [German military]," he added.
The story was given wide coverage on German television on Wednesday.
"We can't use such people in our army," Bernhard Gertz, head of the main organisation representing German troops, said on ARD television channel.
"We must investigate exactly how such degeneration and misbehaviour can happen despite good training and good supervision," he added.
Authenticity?
The Bild newspaper did not say how it had obtained the photographs, nor gave any proof of their authenticity.
It is not clear where the skull in the pictures came from, the newspaper admitted, adding that according to a military source it could have been taken from a mass grave.
Germany has about 2,800 troops stationed in Afghanistan within Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf).
Unlike British, American and Canadian troops, who are fighting the Taleban in the south, the Germans are based in the relative calm of the capital Kabul and in the north of the country.
Last month, the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament, voted to extend the mission of the German forces in Afghanistan until October next year because of the worsening security situation there.
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Nazi home movie found in church
BBC
A 10-minute home movie made by Nazi officers during World War II has been found in a church in rural Devon.
It shows members of the SS running a slave labour camp in southern Russia. In the footage, troops force prisoners to work and officers are seen relaxing.
No one is sure how the film came to be stored at Cullompton Baptist Church but historians say it is unique.
One theory is that a man who ran the church film club was given it by friends from eastern Europe.
It looks very much like this is something somebody shot to show where they are working to take home to show the wife and kids
Elayne Hoskin
The film, thought to have been taken by a senior SS officer, shows several scenes.
One shows prisoners-of-war unloading logs from a truck at gunpoint.
Another shows Nazi officers laughing and joking on a veranda, enjoying coffee and cake with their secretaries.
A further scene shows Russian peasant women bringing in a harvest.
SS officers in home movie
SS officers are seen off duty in the home movie
Elayne Hoskin, of South West England Film and Television Archive, said of the harvest scene: "You can't help wondering what were these women feeling like with men with guns standing watching them and a man with a camera smiling and waving.
"It looks very much like this is something somebody shot to show where they are working to take home to show the wife and kids."
Experts at the archive are consulting with historians in Germany and Russia. The Imperial War Museum agreed the images were unique.
Although some think the man who ran the church film club was given the reel, some residents believe soldiers based near the village may have brought the film with them.
The church was used as a base by British troops including the Royal Engineers, the Oxford and Buckingham Light Infantry and the Durham Light Infantry during and after the war.
But experts agree that the footage is very different from the usual slick Nazi propaganda films, showing a side of the Third Reich never seen before.
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Swiss conductor on trial again in Solar Temple ritual deaths
Canadian Press
Published: Tuesday, October 24, 2006
GRENOBLE, France - A Swiss orchestra conductor went on trial again Tuesday for his alleged role in a doomsday cult that lost dozens of members in ritual deaths in France, Switzerland and Canada.
A French court acquitted Michel Tabachnik of "criminal association" in the case in 2001. Prosecutors appealed and, on Tuesday, a court in Grenoble reopened the proceedings. The trial is expected to last two weeks.
Tabachnik is accused of contributing to the deaths of members of the Switzerland-based Order of the Solar Temple. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The criminal association charge carries a maximum 10-year prison term.
While the earlier trial attracted widespread attention, only a half-dozen people attended Tuesday's trial opening. The judge said several witnesses had ignored summonses for the current proceedings.
The Order of the Solar Temple lost 69 members in mass suicides in Switzerland, Canada and France between 1994 and 1995, according to the prosecutor's office. Five others died in a second incident in Canada in 1997.
In October 1994, the bodies of 48 Solar Temple members were found in a burned-out farmhouse and three chalets in Switzerland, while five others were found in a burned-out condominium in Morin Heights, Que., north of Montreal.
They included the cult's charismatic leader, Luc Jouret, a Belgian homeopath, and another leader, Joseph Di Mambro, a Canadian. The others included the former mayor of Richelieu, Que., a Quebec City journalist and a Hydro-Quebec vice-president.
In 1995, French police discovered the charred remains of 14 victims, including three children, in a forest clearing near Grenoble at the foot of the French Alps. The 14 bodies were arranged in a star formation. Two other bodies were found nearby.
Then, in March 1997, five others members of the cult died in a house fire in St.-Casimir, Que..
Four of them died of asphyxiation in the fire, while the fifth died after having ingested a large of dose of a drug found in all the bodies.
Swiss authorities failed to establish any link between the cult and Tabachnik. However, French prosecutor Pierre-Marie Cuny accused Tabachnik of supporting Di Mambo and a French investigating magistrate decided there was enough evidence to put the conductor on trial.
Tabachnik, who studied under conductor Pierre Boulez and composer Iannis Xenakis, has led the Philharmonic Orchestra of Lorraine, France, and orchestras in Canada and in New York.
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Rwanda starts inquiry into French genocide role
ARTHUR ASIIMWE IN KIGALI
Scotsman
A RWANDAN government-appointed commission has launched an inquiry into allegations that French troops supported soldiers behind Rwanda's 1994 genocide and helped to facilitate mass murder.
Rwanda's Tutsi president, Paul Kagame, whose government came to power after the genocide, has accused France of training and arming Hutu militias, who were the main force behind a 100-day slaughter that killed 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
France had replaced former colonial power Belgium as Rwanda's main western backer. When Mr Kagame's Tutsi-dominated rebel army launched its war against the Hutu authorities in the early 1990s, France sent soldiers to Kigali.
France helped stop the advance of Mr Kagame's forces and then stayed on, as military advisers, up to the start of the genocide. Mr Kigali says France backed the government of Rwanda's former president, Juvenal Habyarimana, providing military training for government forces, despite knowing that some within the leadership were planning to use the troops to commit genocide.
France, which sent in soldiers under a United Nations-authorised operation, has always denied any involvement in the killings.
Rwandan officials said a seven-man commission, appointed by the government in April, will hear testimony from 20 witnesses over the next week. The testimony could be used as evidence in any legal action taken by Mr Kigali against France.
"We will summon people like former militiamen who were trained and commanded by the French to kill, as well as female survivors who accuse some French soldiers of rape," said Jean Paul Kimonyo, a member of the commission. "We are also going to invite foreign witnesses, including French nationals, to testify."
A French parliamentary commission in 1998 cleared France of responsibility for the genocide, but said "strategic errors" had been made.
"The French sent troops, weapons, trained killers and manned roadblocks to facilitate murderers in achieving their mission of exterminating Tutsis," Jacques Bihozagara, a former Rwandan ambassador to France, told the commission. Mr Bihozagara, who was part of the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front, which launched its war against the Hutu authorities in the early 1990s, said French officials had warned the group to stop its fight.
"You will reach Kigali to only find all your relatives perished," Mr Bihozagara quoted them as saying. "I wonder whether these French officials were prophets or indeed were part of the planning process," he added.
Chaired by Rwanda's former justice minister, Jean de Dieu Mucyo, the panel is made up of legal experts, historians and a former army commander.
In one case, French soldiers have been accused of facilitating the murder of up to 50,000 Tutsis in Bisesero, a hilltop village, by luring them out of hideouts. Survivors say the Tutsis were abandoned and left vulnerable to militia attacks.
Six genocide survivors filed a complaint in a Paris court last year accusing French soldiers of complicity in crimes against humanity.
Justice for many perpetrators in the genocide is still being meted out through the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Tanzania and village courts known as gacaca.
The ICTR has indicted more than 80 people for genocide-related crimes since its establishment in 1994.
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Shaken, not Stirred
Small quakes reported near Old Faithful
Associated Press
Tue, Oct. 24, 2006
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. - A swarm of more than 70 small earthquakes shook the ground near Old Faithful geyser earlier this month. The largest was a magnitude 2.4, barely enough to be felt. The swarm of 74 quakes lasted several hours Oct. 14, according to information released by the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.
he tight cluster of earthquakes was moderate compared with others in Yellowstone's past, including one in April 2004 in which more than 400 earthquakes were recorded over three days.
"It piques our curiosity, but it's not out of the range of normal behavior," Henry Heasler, Yellowstone's principal geologist, said of the Oct. 14 activities.
Park officials said the earthquakes were more likely caused by the underground movement of hot water and gas, rather than the migration of magma.
The largest swarm recorded in Yellowstone was in the fall of 1985 when about 1,800 earthquakes were registered, ranging in magnitude from 1 to 4.9. Around the same time, the huge Yellowstone caldera stopped slowly rising and began slowly falling.
ON THE NET
Yellowstone Volcano Observatory: http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo/
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Earthquake rocks Japan's remote Ogasawara isles Tue
24.10.2006, 03.58
TOKYO, October 24 (Itar-Tass) - A 6.8-point earthquake occurred on Tuesday approximately 1,000 kilometers south of Tokyo in the area of Japan's remote islands of Ogasawara. The earth jolt was recorded at 06:18, local time.
There has been no word about any victims or damage.
According to forecasts made by Japan's Meteorological Agency, there is no tsunami (devastating oceanic wave) threat.
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Strong earthquake rattles central Indonesia, no reports of damage
(AP)
24 October 2006
JAKARTA, Indonesia - A strong earthquake rattled central Indonesia on Tuesday, a meteorological agency said, but there were no immediate reports of damage or casualties.
The 6.1-magnitude temblor was centered in Sangihe, an island 360 kilometers (223 miles) northeast of North Sulawesi's provincial capital Manado, the U.S. Geological Survey said on its Web site.
It struck at 11:03 a.m. (03:03 GMT) and was the most powerful of six quakes to hit the same region in the last two days.
Local officials said they had no immediate reports of damage or casualties on the remote, sparsely populated island.
Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago, is prone to seismic upheaval due to its location on the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire," a string of volcanos and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.
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New mass extinction theory 'Hell on Earth'
Brian Jackson
DiscoveryChannel.ca
Meteors rained down from the heavens and volcanoes erupted mercilessly for hundreds of thousands of years before one final meteor blow eradicated life on planet Earth...
That's the new theory on Earth's last major extinction, from a Princeton University paleontologist. If correct, her research makes extinct the science community's most common extinction theory.
Current thinking is that the Chicxulub meteor wiped out the final era of dinosaurs. But lead researcher Gerta Keller thinks that was only the beginning of Earth's spiral into chaos.
"The Chicxulub impact could not have caused the mass extinction," says Keller in a statement. "Because this impact predates the mass extinction and apparently didn't cause any extinction."
Researchers drilled at the Mexico crater location and removed marine sediments. These reveal the meteor hit Earth 300,000 years before the mass extinction in question, researchers say. Fossils found in the same area, at about the same age, seem to be undamaged by the impact.
After Chicxulub, a series of meteors assaulted Earth's surface over the next 300,000 years. At the same time, super-volcanoes in India erupted and released a massive amount of greenhouse gases into the air - rapidly raising Earth's temperature and putting life on the brink.
Finally, a massive meteor impact delivered the knock-out punch and drove the dinosaurs to extinction. The evidence it left behind in the fossil record is the anomalous spike in iridium, an alien material that was most likely delivered to Earth by meteor.
Keller will present her new theory at the Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America in Philadelphia this week.
Comment: If it happened once, it could happen again.
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Geologists Are Turning to Ancient Tales to Discover New Earthquake Hotspots
Steve Connor
Independent
Apollo drew his bow and fired arrow after arrow into the deadly pythondragon guarding the sacred ground of Ge, the goddess of the earth. With his victory, Apollo gained the right to call the slopes of Delphi his earthly sanctuary.
It is a beautiful myth. Out of it grew the story of the Oracle of Delphi, a soothsayer who inhaled the breath of Apollo. The Pythia, the priestess who sat on a tripod inhaling fumes from the bowels of the earth, went into trances and muttered incomprehensible phrases, helpfully interpreted by her priestly assistants.
The Oracle at Delphi is one of several myths now being investigated by geologists to see whether such stories have any basis in fact. The relatively new science of ge-omythology could provide rational explanations for mythical events. But studying elements of a myth may also lead to new insights or discoveries in geology - a science that took its name from that same goddess, Ge.
In the case of the Oracle at Delphi, the focus has been on the nature of the fumes that may have influenced the prophecies. For 10 centuries, successive Pythias issued their oracles to the thousands of pilgrims who made their way to Apollo's shrine at Delphi.
The Pythias were real enough, although their prophecies were often ambiguous. But could their trance-like states have had a basis in geological reality? Could there really have been a gas released from under Apollo's shrine that induced transcendental states in someone sitting on a tripod above a fissure in the ground?
An archaeological excavation early in the 20th century found no signs of a real chasm or fissure under the temple at Delphi, but studies over the past decade have revealed the presence of two geological faults that cross each other directly under the shrine.
Luigi Piccardi, a geologist at the Institute for Geosciences in Florence, says recent investigations have revealed that there could indeed have been a gas-exhaling chasm at the oracle site.
If this chasm existed, it has long since sealed itself, Piccardi says. "The oracle site is positioned directly across the surface trace of a seismic fault that could rupture during earthquakes, thus creating a fissure in the ground from which gases such as carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulphate or methane could originate," he says.
Other scientists found traces of ethylene, a central nervous system stimulant, in a nearby spring. Ethylene is known to induce euphoria when inhaled in large enough doses. Was this the source of the Pythias' mystical powers?
This is one of several myths analysed scientifically in a book, Geology and Myths, to be published early next year by the Geological Society of London. Co-edited by Piccardi and Bruce Masse of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, it will be the first set of peer-reviewed scientific papers discussing the geological reality behind some myths and legends.
The volume is an attempt to give the field of geomythology a sound academic grounding, with the aim of providing "a panorama on the study of the geological foundation to human myths".
The details of a legend may also help scientists to learn something new about geology. Piccardi's investigation of one Italian legend has helped geologists to see something they had missed.
The story is the supposed apparition of the Archangel Michael at the sanctuary of Monte Sant'Angelo. The legend, traditionally dated AD493, talks of the ground shaking when Michael appeared. According to the story, God's heavenly guardian left behind "footprints" in the rocks.
Seismologists had not thought this part of Italy to be particularly active, but Piccardi found ample evidence of a major seismic event, including a fault scarp in the floor of the shrine to the apparition - the "footprint", perhaps.
Another ancient myth on the other side of the world has led to fresh insights into a previously unknown seismic risk. The Duwamish people, native Americans who live in the Seattle area of the north- western United States and Canada, have a spirit with the body of serpent and the forelegs and antlers of a deer - an a'yahos. Old folk tell children not to look in the direction of an a'ya-hos because it could shake the ground or turn you to stone. Distinctive boulders and other stone markers at sites around the Seattle area are said to be haunted by a'yahos spirits.
Normally such superstition would not interest scientists, but that changed when images and excavations from a geophysical survey in the early 1990s revealed a hidden fault crossing Seattle and Puget Sound. Studies showed that the fault generated a powerful earthquake 1,100 years ago. But what was really intriguing was the discovery that many of the a'yahos stones were sited either on the fault line itself or at sites where there had been a major landslide.
Ruth Ludwin, a seismologist at the University of Washington, Seattle, published the findings in the journal Seismological Research Letters. She points out that there are dozens of native stories about great waves carrying away coastal villages in this region, often told as tales of mythical battles between thunderbirds and whales. But the reality behind the myth may lie in the actual occurrence of mega-tsunamis generated by undersea earthquakes.
Patrick Nunn, a geoscientist at the University of South Pacific in Suva, Fiji, is one of the growing band of geologists who believe that analysis of some myths may lead to new scientific discoveries. He points to the legend of the people on the island of Kadavu, in Fiji. The inhabitants have a story of a mountain that comes out of the sea - a description, perhaps, of a seabed volcanic eruption.
Nunn investigated the island's volcano in 1998. He first concluded that it had not erupted for 50,000 years, long before the island was first inhabited in about 2000BC. The legend, he believed, must have been imported from another Pacific volcanic region.
Months later, however, excavations for a new road revealed ancient pieces of pottery buried under a metre-deep layer of volcanic ash. Evidently, there had been a big eruption since the island became inhabited. The legend may easily have been homegrown - and taking it more seriously may have provided a vital clue to the island's recent volcanism. "The myth was right, and we were wrong," Nunn says.
The reality behind the folklore
Homer's description of Ithaca, the home of Odysseus in the Odyssey, baffles scholars. It bears little resemblance to the modern Greek island of Ithaki. Some geologists now believe that Ithaca is in fact Paliki, the western peninsula of Kefalonia, which may have been separated by a sea channel that was filled in more than 2,000 years ago. Geologists are testing to see whether Paliki could have been a proper island in the recent past, and so meet all the descriptions laid down in the Odyssey.
There are many legends in West Africa about haunted lakes that rise, sink or blow up despite there being no active volcanism in the region. Some scientists believe the tales may originate from real events similar to that which occurred in 1986 at Lake Nyos in Cameroon ( above). Carbon dioxide bubbling from deep rocks built up in the water over decades before it was released suddenly as a massive eruption that suffocated anyone living near by on lower ground; carbon dioxide is heavier than air and sinks. This could explain local taboos about living close to lakes or on the lower slopes of a mountain.
The biblical flood may have a basis in a real flood that occurred when rising sea levels in the Mediterranean after the last Ice Age topped the Bosporus Strait and poured into the lowlands of what is now the Black Sea. Walter Pitman and William Ryan of Columbia University amassed evidence that the Black Sea may have been created by just such a cataclysmic event that led to the flooding of many towns and villages over a vast area - giving rise to the legend of a vast deluge.
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Science and Signs
Warming link to amphibian disease
BBC
A fungal disease that threatens to wipe out many amphibians is thriving because of climate change, a study suggests.
Researchers studying amphibians at a national park in Spain show that rising temperatures are closely linked to outbreaks of the chytrid fungus.
Chytrid fungus is a major contributor to the decline of amphibian populations around the world, threatening many species with extinction.
Details are published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
"We have found an association between increasing temperatures and amphibian disease in a mountain region in Spain," said Dr Matthew Fisher of Imperial College London.
"This is a global emerging amphibian pathogen which is one of the worst vertebrate infectious diseases found so far. It is causing a huge amount of extinction and disease within amphibian populations."
More than 100 species of amphibians are known to be affected by the chytrid fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis). Some are very susceptible and die quickly while others which are more resistant are carriers of the pathogen.
The disease is already credited with wiping out frogs and toads in large numbers in Australia and South America.
Climate link
Dr Fisher and his Spanish colleagues uncovered an association between the emergence of the disease and global warming while studying changes in the number of midwife toads in Spain's Penalara Natural Park between 1976 and 2002.
The chytrid fungus, or BD as it is sometimes called, infects the skins of amphibians such as frogs, toads, salamanders and newts and interferes with their ability to absorb water.
Dr Fisher said climate change could be worsening the impact of the disease in one of two ways.
Warming temperatures could be reducing the amphibians' ability to mount a successful immune response to the fungus. Amphibians are cold-blooded so their ability to respond to the pathogen could change along with the external temperature.
On the other hand, global warming could be increasing the fungus' ability to grow faster on the amphibian and cause more disease.
"This is a wake-up call that we are losing biodiversity fast," Dr Fisher said. "Climate change appears to be changing patterns of disease and previously resistant species are becoming highly infected - even, in a number of cases, becoming extinct."
The Global Amphibian Assessment has warned that a third of the world's amphibian species are in danger of extinction, many because of the chytrid fungus.
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Scientist bought mammoth from Russian Mafia
BO-MI LIM IN SEOUL
Scotsman
THE disgraced genetic scientist Hwang Woo-suk told a court yesterday that some of the funds he used to produce his falsified stem-cell research went to the Russian mafia to pay for tissue samples from now-extinct mammoths.
The South Korean has previously testified that his team tried to clone mammoths using tissues obtained from glaciers in Russia. He said they had tried three times, but failed.
On Tuesday, Hwang told the court some of the research funds "were used for expenses while in touch with the mafia in Russia", without going into detail about how the money was spent, or how the mafia had helped him to obtain the tissue samples.
Meanwhile, the fallen scientist's lawyers said they planned to seek a court order to retrieve samples of what Hwang claims to be the world's first cloned embryonic stem cells.
Seoul National University deemed the samples to be from mutated eggs, not cloned stem cells, after questions were raised about Hwang's breakthroughs - reported in the journal Science in 2004 - at the university laboratory. The school has since refused to return the samples to Hwang after firing him earlier this year, his lawyer, Jung Keun-hwa, said.
"We have a plan to conduct more tests," Mr Jung told the court, adding that Hwang believed further tests could show that the samples were, indeed, genuine cloned stem cells.
Hwang has maintained that anything that was falsified in his research findings was done by staff at his laboratory who deceived him into thinking the results were real.
In court yesterday, Hwang said allegations that he ordered his researchers to fabricate DNA test results were "a story like a novel". He said: "I didn't even know the means to fabricate DNA tests", adding that "it was very clear" his researchers had lied to prosecutors.
Researchers have testified at previous hearings, however, that they couldn't question or disobey Hwang, who was senior to them.
Hwang is facing charges for allegedly accepting £1.1 million in private donations based on the outcome of the falsified research, and of embezzling about £450,000 in private and government research funds. If convicted, he faces at least three years in prison.
Hwang's claims of world-leading advances in the new field of stem-cell research were discredited after revelations last year of ethics lapses that culminated in him admitting that forged evidence had been used for some of his academic papers.
Despite the scandal over forged research, Hwang resumed work in August at a new private laboratory, where he was expected to focus on animal stem-cell research. A trained vet, he is believed to have succeeded in creating the world's first cloned dog.
At the last court hearing in September, lawyers for Hwang's associates, who are facing similar charges, began their defence.
Hwang's purported breakthroughs, which were published in leading international science journals, thrust South Korea to the fore of stem-cell research, which some scientists believe could help to create innovative new cures for untreatable diseases.
Stem cells are the basic cells that can grow into all kinds of tissue, and cloning them could create a way for patients to be treated with cells matching their own DNA, so minimising the risk of rejection.
Rocky road to recreating a lost giant
SUCCESSFUL cloning of a woolly mammoth has long been a favoured pursuit of scientists working in the field.
Preserved parts of the ancient giants have been found in permafrost at various sites around the world - most notably in Siberia.
Their discovery has led to speculation that the creatures could be recreated to walk the Earth again after around 10,000 years of extinction. However, so far none of the recovered genetic material has been of sufficient quality for scientists to extract the DNA required for a cloning attempt to be made.
Other plans to extract sperm DNA from the remains with which to impregnate a female elephant and produce a hybrid animal have thus far failed to yield results.
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New Experiment To Investigate Effect Of Galactic Cosmic Rays On Clouds And Climate
Science Daily
A novel experiment, known as CLOUD (Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets), begins taking its first data today with a prototype detector in a particle beam at CERN1, the world's largest laboratory for particle physics. The goal of the experiment is to investigate the possible influence of galactic cosmic rays on Earth's clouds and climate. This represents the first time a high energy physics accelerator has been used for atmospheric and climate science.
The CLOUD experiment is designed to explore the microphysical interactions between cosmic rays and clouds. Cosmic rays are charged particles that bombard the Earth's atmosphere from outer space. Studies suggest that cosmic rays may influence the amount of cloud cover through the formation of new aerosols (tiny particles suspended in the air that seed cloud droplets). Clouds exert a strong influence on the Earth's energy balance, and changes of only a few per cent have an important effect on the climate. The CLOUD prototype experiment aims to investigate the effect of cosmic rays on the formation of new aerosols.
Understanding the microphysics in controlled laboratory conditions is a key to unravelling the connection between cosmic rays and clouds. CLOUD will reproduce these interactions for the first time by sending a beam of particles - the "cosmic rays" - from CERN's Proton Synchrotron into a reaction chamber. The effect of the beam on aerosol production will be recorded and analysed.
The collaboration comprises an interdisciplinary team from 18 institutes and 9 countries in Europe, the United States and Russia. It brings together atmospheric physicists, solar physicists, and cosmic ray and particle physicists to address a key question in the understanding of clouds and climate change. "The experiment has attracted the leading aerosol, cloud and solar-terrestrial physicists from Europe; Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom are especially strong in this area" says the CLOUD spokesperson, Jasper Kirkby of CERN. "CERN is a unique environment for this experiment. As well as our accelerators, we bring the specialist technologies, experimental techniques and experience in the integration of large, complex detectors that are required for CLOUD." An example in the present CLOUD prototype is the gas system, designed by CERN engineers, which produces ultra-pure air from the evaporation of liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen. "It's probably the cleanest air anywhere in the world", says Kirkby.
The first results from the CLOUD prototype are expected by the summer of 2007. The full CLOUD experiment includes an advanced cloud chamber and reactor chamber equipped with a wide range of external instrumentation to monitor and analyse their contents. The temperature and pressure conditions anywhere in the atmosphere can be re-created within the chambers, and all experimental conditions can be controlled and measured - including the "cosmic ray" intensity and the contents of the chambers. The first beam data with the full CLOUD experiment is expected in 2010.
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New Imaging Technique Discovers Differences In Brains Of People With Autism
Carnegie Mellon University
October 24, 2006
Using a new form of brain imaging known as diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), researchers in the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging at Carnegie Mellon University have discovered that the so-called white matter in the brains of people with autism has lower structural integrity than in the brains of normal individuals. This provides further evidence that the anatomical differences characterizing the brains of people with autism are related to the way those brains process information.
The results of this latest study were published in the journal NeuroReport. The scientists used DTI - which tracks the movement of water through brain tissue - to measure the structural integrity of the white matter that acts as cables to wire the parts of the brain together. Normally, water molecules move, or diffuse, in a direction parallel to the orientation of the nerve fibers of the white matter. They're aided by the coherent structure of the fibers and a process called myelination, in which a sheath is formed around the fibers that speeds nerve impulses. The movement of water is more dispersed if the structural integrity of the tissue is low - i.e., if the fibers are less dense, less coherently organized, or less myelinated - as it was with the participants with autism in the Carnegie Mellon study. Researchers found this dispersed pattern particularly in areas in and around the corpus callosum, the large band of nerve fibers that connects the two hemispheres of the brain.
"These reductions in white matter integrity may underlie the behavioral pattern observed in autism of narrowly focused thought and weak coherence of different streams of thought," said Marcel Just, director of the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging and a co-author of the latest study. "The new findings also provide supporting evidence for a new theory of autism that attributes the disorder to underconnectivity among brain regions," Just said.
In 2004, Just and his colleagues proposed the underconnectivity theory based on a groundbreaking study in which they discovered abnormalities in the white matter that suggested a lack of coordination among brain areas in people with autism. This theory helps explain a paradox of autism: Some people with autism have normal or even superior skills in some areas, while many other types of thinking are disordered.
Last summer, Just led a team of researchers that found for the first time that the abnormality in synchronization among brain areas is related to the abnormality in the white matter. They discovered that key portions of the corpus callosum seem to play a role in the limitation on synchronization. In people with autism, anatomical connectivity - based on the size of the white matter - was found to be positively correlated with functional connectivity, which is the synchronization of the active brain regions. They also found that the functional connectivity was lower in those participants in whom the autism was more severe.
These studies, along with the latest paper, are providing a comprehensive picture of the autistic brain, whose components operate with less coordination than is normally the case, and which is less reliant on frontal components and more reliant on posterior components. The latest DTI finding shows that some of the frontal-posterior communication fiber tracts are abnormal, consistent with the lower degree of frontal-posterior coordination.
"The brain components in autism function more like a jam session and less like a symphony," Just said.
The latest study was co-authored by Rajesh K. Kana and Timothy A. Keller of the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging. This research was supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
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Changing Currents
Amazon river 'switched direction'
Tuesday, 24 October 2006, 15:27 GMT 16:27 UK
The world's largest river, the Amazon, once flowed from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific - the opposite of its present direction, a study shows.
Sedimentary rocks in the central part of South America contain ancient mineral grains that must have come from the eastern part of the continent.
Geologist Russell Mapes says this must mean that about 145-65 million years ago, the Amazon flowed east to west.
Mr Mapes will present his findings at a geology meeting in Philadelphia.
The age of rocks on the South American continent differs between east and west.
Rocks as old as 2.5 billion years are found on the eastern side of the continent. Because of continual geological activity in the Andes, on the western side, rocks there are much younger.
Changing landscape
If the Amazon had continuously flowed eastward, as it does now, much younger mineral grains would be found in the sediments, because they would have been washed down from the Andes.
"We didn't see any. All along the basin, the ages of the mineral grains all pointed to very specific locations in central and eastern South America," said Mr Mapes, a graduate student from the University of North Carolina (UNC), US.
He explained that these sediments of eastern origin were washed down from a highland area that formed in the Cretaceous Period, when the South American and African tectonic plates broke away from each other.
That might have tilted the river's flow westward, sending sediment as old as two billion years toward the centre of the continent.
Current course
Afterwards, a relatively low ridge, called the Purus Arch, rose in the middle of the continent, running north and south. This divided the Amazon's flow, so that one half flowed eastward toward the Atlantic and the other westward toward the Andes.
In the late Cretaceous, mineral grains younger than 500 million years old began to fill in the basin between the Andes mountains - in the west - and the arch running down the centre of the continent.
After millions of years of build up, the Amazon river finally broke through these sediments and flowed past the Purus arch and into the eastern side of South America. This established the river's current course.
The new data comes from zircons, a type of mineral grain that can be dated in order to determine the age of the sediment.
Previous research has identified a reverse flow, but only in segments of the river. Mr Mapes and his colleague Drew Coleman from UNC traversed about 80% of the Amazon basin, collecting samples of zircon.
Their data supported the previous findings, and illustrate the continent-wide shift of the river's flow over millions of years.
The results will be presented at the Geological Society of America's annual meeting in Philadelphia, which runs from 22-25 October.
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Drought prompts new crime - water theft
By Rob Taylor
October 25, 2006 01:29pm
Reuters
DROUGHT-ravaged farmers heading into summer are facing a new and previously unknown threat: water bandits.
Police at tiny Gundaroo village near Canberra today Wednesday said they were hunting thieves who used crowbars to crack open water tanks and steal the precious contents.
"I came to the tap to get a glass of water and all I got out was mud. I couldn't really believe it had happened," farmer Lindy Hayman said.
In nearby Bungendore, water has been stolen from village dams and tanks, while 50 kilometers away in Yass police have reports of theft from the city's near-dry river.
In the past two weeks, the Government has announced more than $900 million in drought relief as farmers face the driest period for a generation and with the hottest summer months still ahead.
More than 90 per cent of the most populous state of New South Wales is in drought, with many farmers enduring five continuous years of below average rainfall.
The area around Gundaroo and the nearby town of Goulburn have been particularly hard-hit, with Goulburn's main dam having run dry.
Ms Hayman said she and partner Zed Zawalski lost 75,000 litres from their small Gundaroo olive grove and cattle farm while they were out.
Nearby, in the village main street, Kerry Wagstaff said thieves emptied two 30,000-litre water tanks, used to provide water for the house and for their vegetable garden.
"With things the way they are, we are down to asking visiting friends if they really need a shower," Ms Wagstaff said.
Police in the regional Goulburn headquarters said they were investigating several incidents of water theft and advised people to lock their water stores as summer draws closer.
"But I think things are not yet that desperate that it's happening a lot and people need to go round stealing water," Acting Inspector Doug Pilkington said.
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Islands seek help from rising sea
By Paul Tait in Nai
October 25, 2006 03:38pm
news.com.au
AUSTRALIA and the US, major greenhouse gas emitters, have been told they have a moral obligation to help Pacific nations in danger of being swallowed by rising sea levels.
As the rising Pacific Ocean laps at their doorsteps, tiny Tuvalu and Kiribati fear becoming environmental refugees and said aid and scientific groups have warned that millions in the Asia-Pacific region may be made homeless by sea level rises of up to 50cm by 2070.
But Tuvalu, a speck of nine islands with 10,000 inhabitants, said its predicament was even more urgent as the ocean kept rising and threatening to engulf its palm-fringed homes.
"Our islands are very flat, as flat as a table," Paani Laupepa, a Tuvalu delegate at the Pacific Islands Forum in Fiji, said today.
"It will be the whole population, the entire 10,000 people will be affected. We have a right to live in this environment and now we are being forced away," he said.
Tuvalu is upset that regional heavyweight Australia, a major aid donor but also one of the biggest per capita emitters of the greenhouse gases responsible for global warning, has so far spurned advances to help resettle its people.
It is also angry that Australia, already accused of being a regional bully over a diplomatic spat with the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, was unable to arrange even a short meeting between Prime Minister John Howard and his Tuvaluan counterpart Apisai Ielemia.
"Howard has no commitment. We are very frustrated," Mr Laupepa said.
Kiribati, a nation of 33 coral atolls straddling the Equator and of 105,00 people, is in the same situation.
President Anote Tong said Kiribati had unusually high tides in the past two weeks and feared small, low-lying nations like his would be swamped within 50 years.
"If we are talking about our island states submerging in 10 years' time, we simply have to find somewhere else to go," Mr Tong said.
Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and parts of Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu are considered at greatest risk.
A climate change report by Australia's leading scientific research body released two weeks ago found that Micronesia had experienced an annual sea level rise of 21.4mm since 2001.
It said a sea level rise of 30-50 cm would affect hundreds of millions of people across the Asia-Pacific region, slashing economic output, inundating large areas of Bangladesh, India and Vietnam and reducing Kiribati, Fiji and the Maldives to a small fraction of their current land area.
It also called on Australia, which is not a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol to cut greenhouse gases, to do more to combat climate change and to be more open to environmental refugees.
Mr Laupepa said the responsibility for taking in those made homeless by rising sea levels rests squarely with the major greenhouse gas emitters.
"We are deeply concerned. Certainly they have a moral obligation to take responsibility for the problems created by their actions," he said.
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Chinese River Mysteriously Turns Red
AP
A half-mile section of China's Yellow River turned "red and smelly" after an unknown discharge was poured into it from a sewage pipe, state media said Monday.
The incident in Lanzhou, a city of 2 million people in western Gansu province, follows a string of industrial accidents that have poisoned major rivers in China over the last year, forcing several cities to shut down their water systems.
It wasn't immediately clear what was tainting the section of the Yellow River. Environmental protection officials took samples and were trying to determine whether the sewage was toxic, the official Xinhua news agency said.
"Residents were alarmed to see a sewage pipe pouring red water into the country's second longest river" on Sunday between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m., the agency said.
A news photo from the local paper showed a resident in the city center by a stretch of the river - a drinking water source for millions - that was rose-colored instead of the usual milky brown. Other photos showed patches of bright red and pink.
An official from Yellow River Water Resource Committee in Lanzhou confirmed the pollution. He said they were still analyzing the sample and had not determined what caused it. Like many Chinese officials, he gave only his family name, Wang.
Environmental protection has taken on new urgency for Chinese leaders following a November 2005 chemical spill in the Songhua River in northeastern China which forced the city of Harbin to shut down its water supply for days and sent toxins flowing into Russia.
China's cities are among the world's smoggiest, and the government says its major rivers, canals and lakes are badly polluted by industrial, agricultural and household pollution.
Hundreds of millions of people live without adequate supplies of clean drinking water. Throughout the country, protests have erupted over complaints by farmers that uncontrolled discharges by factories are ruining crops and poisoning water supplies.
Said another: "Let the mayor of Lanzhou drink the water and then they will immediately have measures in place to deal with the environmental pollution."
Kang Mingke, an official with the city's environment protection bureau, said there were no chemical plants located nearby, according to Xinhua. He said the red water could have come from central heating companies who dye their hot water to prevent people from diverting it for their own use, the news agency said.
John Hocevar, an oceans specialist for Greenpeace USA, said that the photos he had seen of the spill might indicate a "red tide," a burst of toxic plankton in the water, spurred by the presence of nutrient-rich waste from the sewage spill.
Alternatively, he said industrial toxins could have caused the red color. "It's too early to say what's exactly in this," he said. "It could be just about anything."
Noting that local government officials have said there is no industry in the area, Hocevar said if the discoloration is the result of industrial waste, it would have to come from illegal dumping.
"For a spill this size to have this kind of effect, it would have to be illegal," he said.
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The Globe
Chavez supports Bolivia in seeking UN Security Council seat
www.chinaview.cn 2006-10-25 09:29:18
CARACAS, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Bolivian President Evo Morales said on Tuesday that his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez had agreed to support Bolivia in the race for the non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council, according to reports from the Bolivian capital La Paz.
Morales said that, after talking with Venezuela's ambassador by phone, Chavez had called him to say that he would propose Bolivia as a candidate if Venezuela failed to get the two-thirds majority needed to win the race over U.S.-backed Guatemala.
Venezuela was giving up its candidacy to Bolivia, he said.
"We're candidates for the Security Council," Morales said, expressing his hope that a consensus could be reached.
Commenting on Morales' remarks, Venezuela's ambassador to the UN said it was just one possible solution.
In Caracas, however, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro said his country would continue its efforts to win the rotating seat on the UN Security Council.
"There are... initiatives to seek consensus and we have said that Venezuela will not withdraw its candidacy," Maduro said.
"We can only discuss this other option if Guatemala withdraws," he said.
Maduro called on the United States to "end its disgusting pressure and blackmail on the governments of the region, and... for a transparent process to seek an option that represents the region."
Guatemala and Venezuela are both campaigning for the two-year rotating seat on the UN Security Council for a two-year term as from Jan. 1, 2007, replacing Argentina.
Venezuela, slightly lagging behind Guatemala in almost all the votes, tied the race last week after 35 rounds.
Both countries have fallen short of the majority needed to win, and a 36th round of voting is scheduled for Wednesday.
Analysts say that to propose a compromise candidate might be the best way to break the stalemate.
On Oct. 16, UN assembly members, following an agreed geographical location, elected Belgium, Indonesia, Italy and South Africa to serve as non-permanent members starting Jan. 1, 2007. They will replace Denmark, Greece, Japan and Tanzania when their terms expire on Dec. 31 this year.
The council's five other non-permanent members, whose terms end on Dec. 31, 2007, are Congo, Ghana, Peru, Qatar and Slovakia.
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One year later, French 'banlieues' still smoulder
AULNAY-SOUS-BOIS, France, Oct 25, 2006 (AFP)
A year after one of the most traumatic episodes in modern France, the conditions that touched off three weeks of suburban rioting remain firmly in place and there is widespread fear that a new outburst is only a question of time.
In the seedy "Cite des 3,000" estate in Aulnay-sous-Bois in the northeastern outskirts of Paris -- not far from the starting-point of the riots -- the same idle young men slouch against the walls, smoking cannabis, watching motorbikes make wheelies and eyeing passing cars for police.
Across the dual-carriageway a Renault garage that was burned out on day seven of the disturbances is still in ruins, and several families of gypsies have parked their caravans in the forecourt.
"Has anything changed? Look around you -- we're all still here. Nothing to do -- no jobs, and the police still harassing us," said Kiko, 23, who has just emerged from serving a jail sentence for fraud.
"I don't know when, but something is bound to blow up again. You get to the point where you don't care. It all builds up, and then you burst," said Ahmed, 22.
With the approach of the October 27 anniversary on Friday of the outbreak of the violence, a chorus of voices has been raised to warn of the inertia that still dogs French policy towards the "banlieues" -- the poor out-of-town neighbourhoods where black and Arab-origin communities are concentrated.
Police have raised the alarm over a recent string of ambushes in the Paris outskirts -- the latest on Sunday when a bus was torched -- and say they are increasingly the targets of physical attacks.
"It's like they want to kill," said Bruno Beschizza of the Synergie officers union.
Associations working with young "banlieusards" say their sense of alienation remains as strong as ever, fed by racial discrimination, poor housing and a rate of joblessness that hits 40 percent in some areas.
"Let's be realistic, we are still sitting on a powder keg," said Manuel Valls, the socialist mayor of Evry south of the capital.
Last year the powder keg exploded after the accidental deaths of two teenagers who hid from police in an electrical sub-station. In the following days rioting in Clichy-sous-Bois spread to other Paris suburbs, and then to towns and cities across France.
Day after day France was the top international news story, as audiences around the world watched television pictures of burning cars and schools, dramatic evidence of the failure of the country's "Republican" model of integration.
The violence ebbed after the government of President Jacques Chirac declared a state of emergency -- a measure not enacted since the Algerian war half a century earlier -- but by November 17, when normality resumed, more than 10,000 cars had been destroyed and 300 buildings damaged by fire.
Badly shaken by the crisis, the government promised conciliatory measures such as an extra 100 million euros ($125 million) for local associations, more places on training schemes and a new agency to fight discrimination in the workplace.
In March it pushed through parliament an Equal Opportunities Law enshrining many of these ideas and also including a radical new measure to loosen the conditions under which young people are hired and fired.
The aim of the First Employment Contract (CPE) was to provide jobs in the "banlieues" -- but it was abandoned after a wave of protests by mainly middle-class students who feared it would damage prospects for stable employment.
With six months to go to France's presidential election, the festering situation in the "banlieues" is certain to be one of the main campaign themes.
The opposition Socialist Party accuses Interior Minister and presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy of being part of the problem -- because of his poisonous reputation in the "banlieues" and his uncompromising line on law and order.
Sarkozy retorts that it is left-wing welfare policies of 30 years that have led to the crisis -- and that a liberalised economy combined with positive discrimination is the only way to provide jobs and hope.
In the "Cite des 3000" there is little appetite for a new flare-up of rioting to mark the October 27 anniversary -- but if Sarkozy is elected that could be another matter.
"Sarko is the provocative element," said Kiko. "And if he is elected next year I warn you: people will be killed."
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Final dates set for 2007 French election
PARIS, Oct 24, 2006 (AFP)
The French government on Tuesday fixed Sunday April 22 as the date for the first round of the presidential election, with the second-round decider two weeks later on May 6.
Elections for a new National Assembly - the lower house of parliament - will follow on Sundays June 10 and 17, government spokesman Jean-François Copé announced.
Under the 2000 constitutional reform that reduced the president's mandate to five from seven years, presidential and legislative terms are meant to run more or less concurrently to avoid the risk of so-called 'cohabitation' between opposing parties.
The frontrunners in the presidential race are Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, 51, of the ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) and the Socialist Party's (PS) Ségolène Royal, 53, though neither has yet been formally designated a candidate.
President Jacques Chirac, 73, who has been in office since 1995, has refused to rule out running for a third term, though polls show he would have little chance of winning.
In most French elections, several candidates compete in the first round and if none reaches 50 percent of the vote the two leaders face off in round two.
The PS is to designate its candidate after a vote of some 200,000 party members on November 16 - with a second round on November 23 if none of the three contenders reaches 50 percent.
The UMP is to nominate its challenger - almost certainly Sarkozy - at a party congress on January 13 and 14.
March 20 is the cut-off date for declarations in the presidential race. Candidates have to collect 500 "sponsorships" from elected officials to qualify for the vote. In the 2002 election there were 16 candidates in round one.
The official campaign - when rules come into force on broadcasting time - will start on April 9.
Chirac won the 2002 election by 82.2 percent to 17.8 percent over far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, who surprised the nation when he came in ahead of the socialist Lionel Jospin in the first round.
In the first round of the 2002 vote more than half of those eligible to vote either abstained or chose parties of the far left or right.
Chirac's term officially ends on May 16, 2007.
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Nukes: "Yours" and "Ours"
Iran to expand nuclear enrichment
BBC
Iran says it has taken further steps in developing its nuclear programme.
A report carried by the Iranian student news agency, Isna, says it has installed a second centrifuge cascade for uranium enrichment.
The report says Iranian scientists intend to start injecting uranium gas into it within days.
The UN Security Council set a deadline at the end of August for Iran to stop enriching uranium, threatening sanctions if it did not.
Iran rejects western criticism of its nuclear programme and maintains that it is enriching uranium only to generate electricity.
Capacity doubled
BBC Tehran correspondent Frances Harrison says that while Iran's enrichment activity is still at an early stage, the latest move will be seen as an act of defiance to the United States and its allies.
Iran first produced a small quantity of enriched uranium in February. Scientists were running just one cascade then, made up of 168 centrifuges, the machines that spin uranium gas to enrich it.
Now it has emerged that Iran has doubled its capacity by installing a second cascade two weeks ago.
Some reports had suggested Iranian scientists were experiencing technical difficulties. Others said they were going slow, awaiting the outcome of political talks that have now stalled.
Iran had said earlier that it planned to install three thousand centrifuges at its site in Natanz by the end of this year.
To produce industrial-scale nuclear fuel, tens of thousands of centrifuges would be needed, our correspondent says.
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EU green lights French nuclear power station
BRUSSELS, Oct 24, 2006 (AFP)
The European Commission announced on Tuesday that it had given the green light for the construction of a nuclear power plant in northern France.
"The European Commission has sent the French authorities a favourable opinion on the investment project for the construction of an EPR - an ordinary pressurised water reactor with a power output of 1630 megawatts - at the Flamanville site," the European Union's executive arm said in a statement.
The EPR (European Pressurised Water Reactor) design has been developed since the 1990s by Germany's Siemens and France's Framatome-ANP, which is part of the state-owned nucelar energy group Areva.
The EPR project is aimed at achieving the highest possible level of nuclear safety, environmental protection and economic performance, the Commission said, and uses 17 percent less fuel than the types of reactor currently operating in France. Its expected service life is 60 years.
The reactor will be the first in a planned generation of updated plants for France's ambitious nuclear industry.
France derives around three-quarters of its electricity from nuclear power, the highest ratio of any country in the world.
It has 58 reactors in standard designs of 900, 1,300 and 1,450 megawatts.
They were built under a vast programme, launched 30 years ago during the first oil crisis, aimed at weaning the country off its dependence on imported fuel.
These reactors will start reaching the end of their approximately 40-year design life from 2015, which is why the French authorities are already looking at replacements.
Preparatory work on the new nuclear plant site began in August but construction of the plant itself should begin early next year. The project is estimated to cost EUR 3.3 billion.
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Volatire Network Attacked by Zionists
Voltaire Network Under Attack
Silvia Cattori
24 octobre 2006
To write while keeping up one's morale during these painful years of war and massacres of innocent populations - in Afgthanistan, in Palestine, in Iraq, in Lebanon - has not been an easy task. In fact, to be witness events of such violence that poroduce so many victims and so much suffering for millions of people requires an immense inner force, capable of resisting intimidation, insults, and even death threats.
Writing to be heard in a sincere and disinterested way, the voice of those without voice, is not easy. In the face of human catastrophes of such an ampler, we often feel crushed by a feeling of importence, by a feeling that we didn't know how best to communicate the dramatic situations of which we were witness.
Writing an article sometimes takes weeks and one is left with the horrible impression that one's voice was not heard, that one must start over yet again, and undergo the solitude and sacrifices.
I know of the difficulties undergone recently by the site of the Voltaire Network. It is a site that is particularly threatened because it undertakes investigations on the terrifying activities that the concerned States wish to hide. Its president, Thierry Meyssan, who presented the attacks of September 11, 2001 as the result of a internal plot, continues to be attacked from all sides. I think also of his team of young journalists, whose abnegation and engagement in favour of the oppressed I know well. They do a job that merits our thanks.
The article linked here in French explains the reasons why the Voltaire Network website disappeared for nine days recently.
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Voltaire Network Services Perturbed...but are returning progressively
Votaire Network
19 October 2006
The Voltaire Network publishes about 20 sites in eight different languages. Over the last few weeks, this service was disturbed, including an interruption of nine days. We underwent a number of computer-related attacks during the Israeli offensive against Lebanon. Our technicians managed to stop the intrusions and reestablish the service, each time in under four hours. Nevertheless, one of our sites in Russian was hacked and a disagreeable message from an armed group was placed on the first page. The files in our online store were seriously damaged. Above all, the parameters of one of our Arab language distribution lists were changed in such a way that over 8,000 correspondents received an avalanche of spam filling their in boxes. According to an investigation done by the Lebanese daily As-Safir, these attacks were carried out by the info war unit of the Tsahal.
In early September, the functioning of our central server became chaotic. Finally our servers became desynchronized and the site was blocked. The technical examinations didn't permit us to determine the origin of the failure and whether it was a malfunction or malevolence. We changed out equipment and material: we purchased new better performing machines and switched software. However, a certain amount of our data was lost making the process of getting things back into service more difficult. Our technicians are reinstalling our sites in such a way that our various publications will start up again this weekend. A goodly number of articles are already accessible.
The Voltaire Network offers to over 2,000,000 internauts each month free access to information and analysis of international current events on its main site (voltairenet.org) and on its peripheral sites (911investigations etc). It freely publishes as well internet sites for magazines and press agencies from the Third World.
At the same time, the administrators and journalists of the Voltaire Network face strong adversity. Several of them are barred from entering the United States or the territories occupied by Israel, there names are inscribed on no fly lists for Anglo-Saxon airlines or on lists prohibiting international banking transactions. Some are confronted with serious security problems.
The continuation of the work of the Voltaire Network necessitates the financial means to respond to these challenges. It is your responsibility as a user of this service and as a citizen to participate in this financing. You can make an occasional donation by PayPal, or, even better, you can commit to offering a regular contribution as if you were subscribing. The Voltaire Network is counting on you.
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