Storytellers of the American Narrative
The creators of American reality, those propagators of charades and mirages who dwell inside the hallways of the Ministry of Truth - otherwise known as the Corporate Media - continue their dance of deception and whitewash, festering in their offices of propaganda, directing the narratives and the epics hundreds of millions of Americans consider truth. Much like the disappearance of warmth giving way to the crispness of cold arrives with each annual changing of leaves, so the remarketing of American reality is altered by the changing faces of circumstance. Today, this change is the complete disaster that is the occupation of Iraq, an endeavor whose initial fruition could not have taken shape without the blitzkrieg marketed incessantly into every home and mind in America by the Department of Propaganda, the Ministry of Truth and its army of pseudo-journalists.
With the complete and utter failure of America's experiment with hubristic imperialism outside its hemisphere, with the complete collapse in confidence by the people of the government and its leaders, with the fictional war on terror losing muster, with the American people questioning the Iraq debacle in growing numbers, the masters and lords comprising the Establishment have been forced to alter direction and appease the minds of the masses. Inside the Ministry of Truth the decision has been made, therefore, to open the curtains, if only minimally, to a small manifestation of truth and fact that has for three years been kept hidden from the people and that sheds light on the Iraq War and its horrific reality.
In the upper echelons of the Establishment's pyramid and the corporatist power structure, there has arrived a realization that Iraq is and will remain lost, a miserable failure turning more putrid every day, forever becoming a gash that will not heal, a ghost whose lack of placidity will for decades haunt the psyche of America. The Bush Crusade, once seen by the elite as a harbinger of empire and hegemonic power, an excursion becoming the genesis of perpetual wealth and richness, has instead transmuted itself into the greatest strategic disaster in the history of the Pax Americana. In the span of three years, Iraq has surpassed Vietnam, in the totality of the circumstances, as a perpetual burn whose scab will continue to be pulled off by the shame of what America did to Iraq, by the embarrassment of such apparent failure, by the geopolitical suicide it committed in Mesopotamia and by the severed image of the nation in the eyes of the world.
For the American masses, meanwhile, a great discomfort at the disaster unfolding and the failure apparent has been born, as if the growing number of rotting corpses throughout Iraq have exported their terrible stench across the Atlantic to the far reaches of America, finally arriving to wake from the doldrums of comfort and laziness the minds of millions of American people. Yet these millions of Americans grow disquieted not because of the genocide committed by their military, not because of the death of 655,000, or the displacement of 1.5 million, but because of the complete failure in not succeeding and winning, because of the death of almost 3,000 occupying soldiers, for creating a new memory of debacle, quagmire, defeat.
The narrative so-meticulously concocted and crafted by the Ministry of Truth, of an America destined by the Christian deity for greatness, incapable of defeat, always triumphant in victory, forever carrying the torch of goodness, chosen to fight the forces of evil, a beacon of freedom and liberty to the world, has been shown as the sham that it is, a fantasy laced with the glazed sugar coating of Hollywood perfection and brainwashed delusions. The aura of arrogance, the spirit of invincibility, the confidence of victory, the manifest destiny of America has taken a severe and humiliating blow at the hands of a mosaic of "rag tag," "sub-human," "third-world," "dark-skinned," "Arab and Muslim" resistance fighters, or mujahadeen. The glorious mirror of fables of American prominence that has for decades been used to condition and brainwash the masses has been blasted into pieces by a war of choice and by a cabal of mass murder and criminality.
The job has thus fallen to the Ministry of Truth and its agents of propaganda to once again reassemble the many pieces of the smoking mirror and reconstruct in the mind of the American masses the fantasy and fiction of an America that only exists in the thoughts of the brainwashed and the easily manipulated. The mirror of American preeminence, splendor and greatness that has been used for decades to make servants of the population must be refurbished, lest the people wake from their hypnotized stupor to see that the American Dream is but one more charade, one more level of control over their lives, one more fantasy injecting fog and haze into myopic eyes, one more mirage whose true nightmare remains hidden by the warm glow of the television.
The reality of American life, with its elaborate system of chains and shackles that clandestinely enslave millions to the elite through the mechanisms of predatory capitalism, together with the true nature of America's domination over the planet, destroying Earth, pillaging resources, ruining nations, birthing enormous suffering, killing millions, enraging billions, must never be allowed to penetrate past the firewalls of propaganda that have since birth been implanted inside the mind of the American masses. The Delusion of the American Dream must remain steadfast and firm so that the Earth's Nightmare may be allowed to continue. Disastrous endeavors that dispel the self-aggrandizement inherent in America's delusions attack the basic core of the American people's conditioned minds, creating the mechanisms by which the citizenry begins to question the fiction they have lived all their lives.
If leadership can be so incompetent as to give birth to debacle and utter failure, even with the greatest military and resources the world has ever known, then how can it govern the rest of the nation's problems? If defeat, eventual retreat and loss of nearly 3,000 troops, along with the maiming, of both body and mind, of countless tens of thousands more, is the result of an adventure that was supposed to end with flowers and candy thrown at our feet, signifying a marvelous, heralded victory proclaiming American greatness, then what has happened to the only nation blessed by the Christian deity? What does a humiliating withdrawal from Iraq do the American psyche when years of brainwashing seemingly disallow the reality now experienced from ever rising? With the Iraq failure - much like the Vietnam example before - firmly impressed upon the precepts and beliefs the system inculcates into our minds, contradicting that which we have been taught about ourselves, at odds with the fictions hammered into our psyche, an audacious challenge to the constructs of what the state and the corporation say is our reality is issued, making millions breathe above the murky water of lifelong conditioning, oftentimes for the first time.
For in the American narrative, the invincible American military, the most moral and virtuous in the entire world, fighting evil wherever it may rise, protecting humanity from evildoers, is not supposed to struggle against dead-enders, dark-skinned sub-humans or third-worlders. It is not supposed to get trapped in quicksand or quagmire, fighting for survival against an army of resistance fighters, most of whom were simple peasants before occupation. It is not supposed to become that which it has been sent to fight, yet transformed into terrorists and torturers and rapists and mass murderers has it become, dispelling the fallacies of the Dream we all believe to be real and true. In times of disaster and unwinnable war, where frustration and discontent grows, where unsettling facts become the thorns bursting the bubble of infallibility, the fantasy of what we think we are and the reality of what we truly are clash in a fiery battle for truth, unleashing in the mind of the less gullible the beginning sprouts of doubt, forging the genesis of what is a vortex of uncomfortable epiphanies and awakenings.
It is when the Dream jousts with Reality that awakenings to truth emerge, as always after violent storms of thought penetrate a brainwashed mind that refuses to pull its anchors from the draining harbors of control. Like two armies engaged in hand to hand combat, the Dream conditioned and Reality experienced meet on the battlefield of thought, creating volatile and uncomfortable conundrums tearing a mind that has never been confronted with a challenge to what it thinks is truth and reality. In times beset by inevitable questioning of the state and the so-called leaders of the people, when decisions and policies lead to defeat and failure and debacle, leading to embarrassment and deep collective introspection, millions of citizens will confront the dark Dream, wondering why its tenets and axioms have not held firm, finally seeing the light, realizing that the Dream they lived no longer corresponds with the Truth they now see, in the process shattering the smoke-filled mirrors that surrounds them and becoming aware of what has been done them, and who is responsible.
Rewriting the Iraq Script
What strategic defeats such as Vietnam and Iraq do is to plant doubt and uncertainty in the minds of Americans regarding the fictions taught and inculcated from cradle to grave. What wars that are not won and incompetent occupations accomplish is to irrigate the fields of slumbering minds with the enriching fluids of emancipation, if not throughout the population then certainly in the realities of tens of millions, enough for a movement to grow and a momentum to infiltrate into the collective conscious of the American people. Thus, the danger to the Establishment of the Iraq War disaster is that if it is allowed to fester and continue hemorrhaging, just as its momentum dictates that it will continue to do, the American mind may indeed sprout forth the reason and logic and cognitive thinking that has been appropriated for decades by the system, creating the necessary mind shock and thought tempest that might spring in the masses the enlightenment and renaissance that the elite are frightened to death of.
This reality is the danger both to the system that has worked to perfection for decades - which has served to virtually enslave and make surfs of the masses - and to the Establishment that is its chief custodian. A debacle of the Establishment's own making, granted life through its own hubris and incompetence and complete manipulation of the People, the Iraq War now threatens the very group that collaborated to give it wings. The Establishment pushed for war and invasion and occupation, using its vast tools of propaganda and manipulation to set the country on the path towards war. The Establishment allowed lies and deceptions and blatant manipulations of falsity to pass through its barriers and gatekeepers, granting the green light for complete acceptance by the People of a war known to be immoral and illegal before it was even begun.
Today, what the ruling class of America helped birth has become a Frankenstein unleashed and unchained, threatening to eviscerate both the American bubble granting the elite control and its delicate yet omnipresent Dream that although strongly threaded, remains a fragile concoction of fantasy, brainwashing and perpetual conditioning, from the cradle to the grave. Having become a monster that has taken on a life of its own, albeit after succeeding in the complete looting of America's treasury in favor of the elite, though now threatening the interests of its masters and the power of Establishment, the Iraq War must therefore be injected with a cocktail of the elite's antibiotics, made to be reborn, recreated and remarketed so as to appease the growing rumblings and discomfort of the American people, so as to prevent disgruntled frustration from mutating into vociferous opposition. Its reality must be reigned in, controlled and spun according to the interests of the elite, before it spins out of control, out of the reach of the ruling class' tools of mass manipulation. It must be contained before it spirals beyond even media repair, becoming the spark that launches a challenge of the system by the people.
For the Establishment, damage control using its Ministry of Truth and its army of pseudo-journalists must be meticulous, surgical and rapid, like a barrage of artillery fired upon the American populace, altering the perception of a losing adventure, creating a new fiction arranged within the parameters of the American Dream. It must be enveloped with the sugar coating inherent with the American narrative, with the fable of greatness and virtue so as to reclaim millions of minds lost, so as to prevent the erosion of millions more. And so the manufacturers of American reality, those whose job it is to create the perception millions believe is the real world, have been assigned with the task of launching a new campaign of smoke and mirrors, trying to reclaim an eroding Dream and a lost war of choice.
The repackaging of the debacle in Mesopotamia, which will be done by spinning and manipulating its realities and truths in such a way as to maintain dormant the awakened mind of the citizenry, thus preventing the lower classes from ever rising to challenge power, will of course be implemented with the Establishment's weapons of mass deception and manipulation, namely, the Corporate media, both on camera and in print. In order to freeze a rapidly boiling pot of anger at the war itself and thereby assuring, at least for a few decades more, the domination of the many by the few through the hypnotizing catatonia of the masses, the Establishment will bombard the airwaves and the printed opinion pieces with the propaganda of a perceived victory in Iraq, of an honorable handover of power, of competence defined and honor triumphant. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.
The Iraqi government will be made the incompetent, the warmongers, the corrupt, the institution that cannot establish security or peace, even though it never stood a chance at governance, being born with two arms fused behind its back, inheriting a debacle of historic proportions that even history's best leaders could not salvage. The new Iraqi government will be blamed for civil strife, sectarian violence and the continuing decline in security and standard of living, even though it was the Americans who sowed what the Iraqi government must now reap.
The American media, being the always reliable stenographers of the state and the Establishment, will concoct the fiction blaming the continuing catastrophe on the fledgling government, for in the American narrative, where the Dream must stick to its Hollywood script, the American government, as always saturated and controlled by the elite themselves, perpetually filled to the rafters with Establishment figures and minions, will in the end triumph over evil, fighting virtuous and honorably for a victory that although difficult, is nonetheless real. In the continuing narrative, the Establishment will be made the heroes of the epic, competently battling those alien barbarians from Arab lands, gallantly protecting our security and ways of life, yet struggling to reign in the few bad apples within its ranks that made the Iraq war more difficult than it should have been.
For the Iraq War will never be seen as illegal, immoral or as the catastrophe it has become; it will never be seen as a failure created by the Establishment itself, which of course it is. Erased from American reality will be the role the elite and its media whores had in cooking up and serving on a hot plate a war of choice that was always fated to end in disaster. The decision made by America's Establishment will never be given the aura of predestined failure, which it was, but instead will be marketed as a triumphant struggle made all the more difficult by the arrogance and incompetence of a few bad apples that deviated away from the steadfast leadership of the elite. It will be said that the war became what is has turned into not for failure to learn or apply history's lessons but because it was badly managed by who else but by a few bad and seemingly notorious apples who failed to listen to the sage advice of who else but the Establishment. As with any Hollywood production, fall guys and patsies must be and will be sacrificed, and this narrative will offer no divergent plots from any previous incarnation.
The Iraqi resistance, or mujahadeen, will never be given the credit objective history will invariably give them, nor the respect earned on the field of battle. They will never receive commendation for outthinking, out-planning, outsmarting and outmaneuvering the occupying forces and its leadership. The American people will never know Iraqi freedom fighters outstrategized the occupying military, though America's future military leaders certainly will, for they will be made to study the tactics, thought processes and strategies of the resistance, only clandestinely acknowledging respect to the mujahadeen by absorbing the lessons it taught America in Iraq. Inside the Ministry of Truth, hard at work implementing the American narrative, Iraq's freedom fighters will have their triumph erased from American memory, their success never given light, its curtain of reality never lifted for the masses to see.
Instead, peasants, sons and fathers, the meat of the Iraqi resistance, at one time average people like you and me, most fighting for their nation, their resources, their honor and their way of life, dong what millions of Americans would do if it was invaded and occupied, will always be known inside America as Al-Qaeda, as the terrorists we had to fight over there so we would not have to fight them over here. Of course to the rest of the world the truth will always be known, the resistance will always be acknowledged, its victory will always be real. In America, however, resistance and freedom fighters will have never existed in the cities and towns of Iraq, for to the American narrative, good always triumphs over evil and, since America has the exclusive monopoly over good, then certainly Iraqi resistance must be labeled as evil, though international law and opinion would beg to differ.
In the American Dream, since America is always victorious and good always triumphs over evil, it naturally follows that America is never evil and always good, which consequently implies that it never suffers defeat at the hands of evil. Logically, therefore, its invasion and brutal occupation, its torture, rape, dehumanization and mass genocide, its disappearances and false imprisonments, its pillaging of resources and its looting of Iraq's finances, its decimation of Iraqi society, the displacement of 1.6 million Iraqis, the chaos and anarchy and civil war are all deemed products of good, for America is the catalyst and oftentimes the enabler of all that has afflicted Iraq and its people. The forces fighting against this supposed evil, trying to rid their land and cities and neighborhoods of the American pestilence, must therefore be considered evil, and by consequence defeated by America's military.
In the black and white script of the American narrative - since those are the only colors we are allowed to dream in - the battle of good versus evil is thus determined by the constructs of an America that cannot do bad against a force that cannot possibly be considered good, no matter what the rest of the world thinks. The easiest way for the Ministry of Truth to erase the valid guerilla war waged by the Iraqi resistance against the American occupiers, and erase any thoughts of the people considering the resistance in positive language, therefore, is to label freedom fighters as member of Al-Qaeda, the always reliable bogeyman and barbarian whose usefulness to the Establishment does not seem to diminish with time.
If every resistance movement on Earth can be labeled as belonging to a terrorist organization, imputed to the dreaded image of Al-Qaeda by the simple act of resisting the wrongs of governance, the devastating exploitations of the ruling class or the crimes of a nation's elite, then naturally the interests of the ruling class can better be protected. Conditioning the masses to detest and fear those movements battling the crimes and corruptions of the world's ruling classes - particularly those affiliated with or belonging to the American Establishment - with those movements oftentimes fighting for the interests of the masses themselves, succeeds in eliminating a massive group of potential sympathizers and erodes any potential for fraternity and solidarity between freedom fighters and the masses.
The fear and insecurity spawned by the term Al-Qaeda instantly rewires all circuits in the American mind that connect to logic, reason and critical thinking, allowing the state and the ruling class to better control the people. Any valid grievances or causes freedom fighters in Iraq or any other nation might have that would excuse their resistance are thus ignored, becoming a lost echo in the dark chambers of the American mind. By marketing Iraq's freedom fighters as Al-Qaeda terrorists, when American intelligence has found that only 5 percent of fighters are from outside Iraq, with only a small fraction of that fraction sympathetic to Al-Qaeda, the American people, already conditioned like Pavlovian dogs to tremble in fear at the mere mention of the name, will instantly develop barricades inside their minds, disallowing any deviance beyond what they have been brainwashed to believe.
Thus, a freedom fighter waging guerilla war to expel a brutal occupier will never be seen as a valid movement. A people forced to expel an occupying power intent on stealing its resources, dehumanizing its citizens and destroying its society, oftentimes by no other choice but by killing and maiming American soldiers, will never be seen in the American narrative as anything other than terrorists and barbarians and sub-human, dark-skinned Arabs. The conditioning into black and white, good versus evil thinking has been as methodical as it has been perpetual. The job assigned to the Ministry of Truth is therefore made much easier.
All Hail the Ministry of Truth
The elite's interests will of course be protected and defended by the Ministry of Truth and its hordes of presstitutes, for the Corporate media is and always has been the tool of the Establishment, over the years having become its undying weapon against the masses, its always reliable firewall of brainwashing and conditioning. As has always been the case since the inception of television, he who controls the media controls the masses, and he who controls television controls American reality. Since it controls the perceptions of America's reality, and since the Establishment is the master of the Ministry of Truth, then naturally everything aired, voiced or imaged through the monitor will inevitably have as goal the protection and expansion of the ruling class' interests.
The Ministry of Truth is the reason why the American people have only members of the ruling class to elect into higher office. It is the reason government has for decades furthered the interests of the Establishment at the expense of the People. It is the reason the masses vote, without fail, against their own interests, every election given a choice of the lesser of two evils belonging to the same two-headed hydra, both almost mirror images of the other, both designed to protect and expand the power of the elite and the corporate world. The differences between the two parties are today slim and marginal, with one mutating towards fascist ideologies and tendencies while the other, once progressive and liberal, caring for the interests of the people, has since 9/11 shifted center right, becoming what the Republican party used to be, a conservative amalgam of ruling class incompetents.
Because the Establishment is itself best served through conservative-based ideology, thriving off the structures of predatory capitalism, through greed, selfishness and the mechanisms of corporatism, finding sustenance through the exploitation of the working and middle class, creating control through organized religion based on primitive thought, and increasing its grip over America through the perpetual dumbing down of its people, it follows that the corporate media, the Ministry of Truth, must itself be molded from conservative ideology. It must enable the dumbing down of America to continue, afflicting each and every new generation of citizens, each made more ignorant than the previous generation. As such, the fictions that the Ministry of Truth disseminates and that invariably become America's reality are conservative-based, right-wing in nature and corporatist in belief.
The appearance must be made, and the manipulation of ideas must be engendered, as to make the People's visions and goals the same vision and goals sought by the Establishment. The people must be made to believe that by pursuing and expanding the Establishment's interests their own lives will be made better. This, of course, is but a farce, for the interests of one group are incompatible and mutually exclusive of the other. This explains in part the dominance of conservative thought by a majority of Americans, and of America itself, which includes centrist dogma and much left-of-center ideology, most of which is considered center-right in the more progressive, and by consequence enlightened, nations of the world. In fact, most progressive, liberal ideology in America today does not even begin to touch or compare with the mainstream, progressive, liberal belief system of many western European nations. Those views would be and are in fact considered radical and extreme in America, yet they are the evolving ideologies of the world's most progressive societies.
Indeed, where one would expect a more progressive, educated and secular society (with all three being intertwined and correlated) due to the vast wealth in resources and human capital, where there is enough treasure to make enormous investments in education, the complete opposite is true. America is one of the most conservative nations in the developed world, even as the wealthiest nation of all. Certainly the systemic conditioning by the Ministry of Truth over the masses is one reason for this truism. Certainly the highly influential guidance of the corporate media of both our society and our culture should be burdened for a major share of fault in the virtual halt in evolving progressive thought in the wealthiest nation the world has ever seen. In this conditioning of the People of conservative thought are the interests of the Establishment thus protected and furthered, after all.
Inside the Ministry of Truth, America's departments of smoke and mirrors are hard at work, busy creating and re-creating the perception of reality of 300 million American citizens that must never be allowed to see beyond the bubble of the Dream. It is in these dark rooms where marketers and public relations gurus and spin masters and damage control experts and media executives and political Machiavellis gather, where America's fantasy-laden reality is engendered and molded, where the strategies and campaigns conditioning Americans how to think are given life, to be disseminated through the airwaves and in print, penetrating minds and lives, making us the mere servant class of the elite. What can we expect, after all, out of an institution which has since its inception been financed and supported by the Establishment? What interests will be furthered and powers expanded by the corporate media when it is owned and operated by the corporate world, itself owned by the ruling class? What is to be expected when the Ministry of Truth is pregnant with the pretenders and contenders of elitism, the wanna bees of the ruling class, its placenta bursting with the elite's sons and daughters and heirs to the thrones of propaganda and the Establishment? In the end, what can be expected when the hand that feeds the Ministry of Truth is part of the same body whose other hand exploits and oppresses the working and middle classes?
When it is understood who the Ministry of Truth works for, whose interests it has always pursued, then it becomes obvious whose version of reality we will forever see and be conditioned to accept. The Ministry of Truth does the bidding for the ruling class, doing its dirty work, concocting the excuses to wage war, the cataclysmic events needed to mobilize an entire population, the manipulations needed to create the citizenry's acceptance. The Iraq war was allowed to transpire because of the direct role of the Ministry of Truth and all who work inside its bowels. Its lies and deceptions were flaunted while its truths and realities were purposefully hidden. The voices of dissent and debate were made extinct while those of warmongers and pro-war talking heads were granted an audience. The entire mechanisms of the corporate media were used to sell war to the American people, in the end succeeding in making Iraq and Iraqis the equivalent of Al-Qaeda. After that was accomplished, war was a foregone conclusion.
It was and still is the Ministry of Truth that terrorizes the masses with the state's propaganda of fear, using every opportunity to wage psychological warfare against an entire population. It is the Ministry of Truth that whitewashes and suppresses vital documents and findings and the voices of whistleblowers, choosing to keep America in the dark even as the world entire sees the light. So much of the Iraq war has been swept underneath a rug of silence, for the Establishment knows that it was video and audio from Vietnam that gave birth to mass opposition to war. It was the Ministry of Truth that helped end the quagmire in Vietnam, which is why the Iraq war has been lived inside the vacuum of a black hole. The ruling class, it seems, learned their lesson well, which is why Americans are clueless about a war that seems to not exist within the confines of our borders and shores. It is the reason a complete media blackout exists, with only media embeds acting as the state's stenographers allowed to report a fraction of what is occurring.
The ruling class' decision to invade and occupy Iraq, done knowing the enormous profits and wealth that was about to be created, could not have happened without the instruments of the Ministry of Truth working in unison to make sure it indeed happened. If one thinks about it, the task was monumental, yet it was achieved with triumphant success. Dissent, protest and debate had to be silenced and erased while the lies, deceits, fictions and manipulations needed to give life to an illegal and immoral war were allowed to blossom, without even a whisper of questioning or debate, without so much as a hint of objectivity. War was decided upon, and war was what America was going to get. The entire engine of propaganda and perception-based reality was thus greased with the lubricant of Iraqi blood, flowing in obvious recognition of what transpired inside the Ministry of Truth, yet made invisible to the millions of eyes dependent on the corporate media for information.
Collaborators of Catastrophe
For five years now, the corporate media, along with its legions of presstitutes, pseudo-journalist hacks, government stenographers, talking heads, think tank pretenders, editor minions, executive servants and paid lackeys that comprise the acidic gases inside the bowels of the Ministry of Truth have collaborated in the giant productions called the Iraq War and the Psychological Warfare against the American People. These individuals are collaborators of catastrophe, collaborators to war crimes and crimes against humanity, granting life to genocide, rape, torture and perpetual suffering. Through their cameras and pens fear has hijacked America; through their oftentimes idiotic jingoism America has mutated to an authoritarian enclave; through their voices the greatest strategic disaster in American history has been allowed to fester; through their silence crimes of unspeakable criminality have been allowed to be perpetrated. It is because of their whitewashes and spinning and silent disregard of truth and reality that the nation finds itself threatened by enemies of democracy, liberty and freedom, not by enemies from abroad, but by those internal and entrenched, a much more dangerous cabal of terrorists than anything conjured up by the Ministry of Truth's most creative fiction story-tellers.
These sons and daughters of nepotism, incestuous relationships, favorable opportunity and ethnic/religious correlation have been promoted into the Ministry of Truth not because of merit or talent or greatness but because of who they know, what they are and where they come from. They possess the passports of promotion, the keys to becoming gatekeepers, the signs and stars granting them access beyond the glass ceiling. They are sons and daughters of privilege and nepotism, born with the adequate religious background or the royal bloodlines of parentage. They are hired because they care nothing for reporting truth, lacking the integrity and honor much more talented individuals possess.
They are hired because they protect the interests of the mother country and those of the ruling class, easily selling out to money and greed and fame, sacrificing truth to the whips of fiction and suppression and evisceration of reality. They are, quite simply, tools and instruments set in motion to maintain millions in eternal ignorance while enhancing the interests of their masters. For this they have no remorse, nor for the devastation of truth they help maintain. Their job is the genesis of American reality, of becoming the front lines against the assault on the American people, their job the enhancement of a fictional Dream that keeps millions passive, apathetic and acquiescent. It is this group of pseudo-journalists, gatekeepers and executives that possess the magic ticket the rest of the population will never acquire, regardless of talent, ability and potential greatness. All that is needed to join this exclusive club is the right sign, star and lineage, the right connections, religion and ethnicity, as well as a willingness to both abandon truth for the Almighty Dollar and imprison the American people inside the dungeons of concocted reality.
In the real world, in places where truth prevails and reality thrives, where actual journalism lives and flourishes, where real democracy is a reality and not a fantasy, there exists in just one or two or three or four web pages or websites more talent than the entire lot of America's corporate media, blossoming to grant sustenance and life back to editing, writing, reporting and journalism. It is inside the digital domain of the Internet where opportunity is still a reality, where talent and ability still matter, where the love of journalism can be seen and appreciated. For while the presstitutes have abandoned truth for greed and integrity for fame, on the Internet the only gains are love of journalism, love of truth, love of justice and love of knowledge.
Once again, through the Internet, We the People have truth, reality, a voice, true democracy and empowerment. In it we have found a paradigm where there is no glass ceiling, no discrimination, no nepotism and no alteration of truth. In this realm, the talent is omnipresent; the ability mesmerizing; the opportunity as open and as wide as the Pacific Ocean. The diversity of opinion and talent and brainpower has exploded onto the world stage, making pseudo-journalists the laughingstock of millions. To those working inside the Ministry of Truth, your gig is up, the Internet has arrived, taking your viewers, your readership and your revenues. When you collaborate to lie, deceive and manipulate a nation towards war, when you ignore truth and criminality as if it does not exist, when you choose selling out rather than standing up, you know the end is near. In this world, the Internet is the future; the corporate media, a thing of the past.
Enslaved to masters and pimps and sugar daddies, this group of war collaborators has helped to give birth to the greatest strategic disaster in the history of the United States. Their spin, bull manure, cover-ups, whitewashes, protection of authority, failure to seek accountability, dissemination of propaganda, silence in the face of blatant lies and failure to expose truth has made them all accomplices to what America has done in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention what Israel has done in Palestine and Lebanon. They are as guilty as the criminals and murderers in office.
Perhaps sensing the changing winds of discontent, perhaps fleeing from the losing side of history, perhaps unable to sleep at night guilt ridden with their failure as journalists, perhaps even sensing the shifting balance of power, this group of pseudo-journalists has begun to gently tear apart the bubble of infallibility that once surrounded the Iraq war. They have begun to offer glimmers of light where darkness once prevailed. Only Fox News, it seems - that putrid bastion of fascist and extremist right wing thought and propaganda - remains lost in the delusions and deceptions only the thoroughly brainwashed, or authoritarian stenographers, cling on to. Yet only Keith Olberman has decided that truth and reality and journalism are worth saving, worth standing up to. As the nation plummets into despotism, only Olberman has decided to do his job. Among journalists, he is the one true patriot; the one true American.
Suddenly, as if with a wave of the magician's wand - or through the gate-keeping approval of editors and executives - the curtains containing long-held truths about the Bush Crusade have been allowed to rise, if only minimally, finally offering America's masses glimpses of a war that since its inception has been sequestered from the beautiful minds of the populace. A prism of light has finally been turned on in the vacuum of nothingness that is the locked closet of Mesopotamia, opening up to inspection black corners and unexplored crevices, allowing glimmers of reality and rays of translucence through into the eyes of the masses. Today, when it is finally convenient, when it is finally popular, when it is finally profitable, when the debacle and the disaster and the failure can no longer be spun or hidden or manipulated, the Ministry of Truth has shifted course, spinning their collaboration away, making it disappear from the reality of America. The time to protect the system and the Establishment from the People has arrived, and the Ministry of Truth will in the next few years try to erase from memory, reality and history its role in the Iraq failure, not to mention the Establishment's disastrous policies over the last six years. Yet America's population must remember who it was that lit the path towards war, who it was that heated up the engine of America's military might. We must remember the failure of journalism and the corporate media at a time when they were most needed.
Journalists and the corporate media have become collaborators to authoritarianism, abettors to the coming police state, disseminators of the propaganda spewed by authoritarians. No amount of spin or distortion can change these facts, nor the Ministry of Truth's role in the war against the American people. A few bones and crumbs thrown our way in order to silence and appease us will not work, for we are aware of the guilt of collaborators to catastrophe.
Today real news is hidden from view, fake news is given prominence, truth is suppressed and fiction is promoted. Government and those in power are protected while those deemed enemy of the state are smeared. Myths and fables are granted attention while truths and realities are made to disappear, forever sent to the locked vaults of hidden fact where they will never see the light of day. The role of the fascist media is to protect the fascists, to smear those exposing truths, to ignore movements seeking truth to criminality, to enable the activities of the Bush cabal and to grant life to the manipulative mechanisms of the state. Its role is to keep the masses obedient, ignorant and subservient to the state, made unaware that every day their rights and freedoms evaporate, that every day they resemble the servants of the past and the serfs of the future.
That is today the role of the corporate media, the Ministry of Truth, using the television to brainwash and condition the masses, using its alluring glare to alter the brain function of human beings, from cradle to grave, using its tools to manipulate and lie to the public, all for the service of the fascist state, all for the sake of corporatism and its handlers. For what is the corporate media, with its legions of pseudo-journalists, hacks, spin masters, talking heads and untalented pretty faces dependent on airbrushes and layers of makeup, but the propagandists of today's evolved fascist state? What are the keepers at the gate, whether from the right or the left, but the sons and daughters of Joseph Goebbels, bastard children of totalitarian thought, nursed from the bosom of history's greatest propagandists, keeping authoritarian brainwashing alive and well, becoming the gatekeepers of tyranny, the destroyers of truth and reality.
Original
Comment on this Editorial
The picture comes from a
story on the "overhead costs" of reconstruction projects, based on a report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, who found astonishing amounts of waste and cost overruns by the crony contractors who came to feast on the carcass that Bush killed for them. Two main points emerge from the report.
First, that the IG's catalogue of gouging, feather-bedding and other profitable
forms of war-profiteering is by no means complete, because "the United States has not properly tracked how much such expenses have taken from the $18.4 billion of taxpayer-financed reconstruction approved by Congress two years ago." In
fact, the IG's office was only able to examine only $1.3 billion of the contracts.
In other words, as oft reported here (and here and here), much of that money has simply disappeared -- into corporate coffers, into copious baksheesh for the Bush-backed Iraqi government, into kickbacks for Congressional vultures, and doubtless into slush funds both for covert ops (including perhaps the Bushists' deliberate fomenting of terrorism and arming of militias)
and domestic politics. We are most likely seeing the fruits of some of this
blood money wash up on American screens at this very moment, as the GOP's last-ditch "Smear and Fear" campaign goes into hyperdrive. The second salient point is the fact that most of this "overhead" is not
going toward security costs. Apologists for the Dear Leader's war crime have
been quick to answer any criticism of the woeful dearth of "reconstruction" --
and the fact that the Iraqi people now have lower levels of electricity, fuel,
health care, sanitation, etc. than before the invasion -- by blaming the colossal
waste and fraud on the insurgents. But the Inspector General -- appointed by
the Bush Administration itself -- tells us that the war-crime apologists are
dead wrong:
The report said the prime reason was not the need to provide security, though those costs have clearly risen in the perilous environment, and are a burden that both contractors and American officials routinely blame for such increases. Instead, the inspector general pointed to a simple bureaucratic flaw: the United States ordered the contractors and their equipment to Iraq and then let them sit idle for months at a time. The delay between "mobilization," or assembling the teams in Iraq, and the start of actual construction was as long as nine months.None of this is surprising. War profiteering by favored corporate cronies was one of the primary benefits envisaged by the Bush Regime as it drove so relentlessly and deceitfully toward the baseless and unprovoked attack. This "waste" and "overhead" was and is a key part of the whole operation. Certainly, the betterment of Iraqi lives was far down the list of priorities for the "reconstruction" program. As we noted here last week, the whole war has been a cash cow that will swell the personal fortunes and fuel the partisan agenda of the Bush Faction players, even if they are turfed out of office in 2008. Thus it was inevitable that the $18 billion boondoggle would produce results like this:
"The government blew the whistle for these guys to go to Iraq and the meter ran," said Jim Mitchell, a spokesman for the inspector general's office. "The government was billed for sometimes nine months before work began."
The findings are similar to those of a growing list of inspections, audits and investigations that have concluded that the program to rebuild Iraq has often fallen short for the most mundane of reasons: poorly written contracts, ineffective or nonexistent oversight, needless project delays and egregiously poor construction practices.
"This report is the latest chapter in a long, sad and expensive tale about how contracting in Iraq was more about shoveling money out the door than actually getting real results on the ground," said Stephen Ellis, a vice president at Taxpayers for Common Sense in Washington. "These contracts were to design and build important items for oil infrastructure, hospitals and education, but in some cases more than half of the money padded corporate coffers instead," he said.
The latter finding on KBR is "news" on the order of "sun rises in the east" or "pigs eat swill." In fact, Halliburton's unconscionable gulping of blood money -- and the fact that Dick Cheney still receives huge annual sums from the company -- are so well-established now that they pass almost unnoticed. "Halliburton, Cheney, yeah, everybody knows that. Even Leno's stopped telling jokes about it." This stark corruption -- an unprecedented scandal in American history: a sitting vice-president openly taking cash from a war industry during a war of which he himself is a prime instigator -- has almost lost its power to shock.The report provided the first official estimate that, in some cases, more money was being spent on housing and feeding employees, completing paperwork and providing security than on actual construction. Those overhead costs have ranged from under 20 percent to as much as 55 percent of the budgets, according to the report.... On similar projects in the United States, those costs generally run to a few percent.
The highest proportion of overhead was incurred in oil-facility contracts won by KBR Inc., the Halliburton subsidiary formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root, which has frequently been challenged by critics in Congress and elsewhere.
(Of course, KBR played a very similar role during the Vietnam War, when huge wads of its massive war profits were certainly kicked back to serving politicians like Lyndon Johnson and others in the then-Democratic majority, as well as to key Republicans. But in those days, bought pols had the decency to trouser their bribes on the QT, not serve openly on the payroll. Here, as in so many things, the Bush Regime is openly embracing -- and often codifying in law -- dark practices once thought shameful to acknowledge. I suppose we must at least admire their refreshing candor in being so forthrightly corrupt, bloodthirsty and belligerent.)
The IG's report is devastating: but again, all this waste was built into the system from the start. Halliburton and the other swill-swallowers were given "cost-plus" contracts (many of them simply handed out like Halloween candy, without any of that silly-billy nonsense about competitive bidding). This means that they are guaranteed a certain set profit, no matter how far their costs balloon. There is simply no incentive for them to even try to bring a project in at cost -- or indeed, to even complete it at all. There's just too money to be made by running up the meter, throwing away material and buying it again, cutting lucrative side deals with suppliers (and re-suppliers), mercenaries, local officials, etc.
This ethos of Original Before you read this, I will tell you what happened Monday to my uncle: He was going to his work in the morning with his friend and a driver (he works for one of the ministries, I can't say which one). Four cars blocked their car, and 16 gunmen stepped out asking my uncle and his friends to come with them, so the gun men started to kick him force him to rid with them but he kept resisting tell them if you want to kill me then do it here, at least my body can be found and identified. Then came two police cars, to his surprise the police were shaking hands with the gunmen asking them to hurry up because roads are getting very crowded with people going to their works. With my uncle keep reinstating to go with them and totally covered with blood they left him and his friends, saying there will a next time. If you want to understand what's behind the story then, Islammemo obtained this document and I translated it to check by yourself how bad it is. --------Start Reading-------- To / Gen Ghassan Albaoui-police chief of Diyala Under the slogan of [the Shiites are the Winners] In a few days a battalion of [200] fighters from the "Mahdi army" loyal to the Shiites religious authorities, will enter the province of Diyala, to clean it from the Sunni terrorists, especially from these regions [Names of districts in Baquba - Diyala province]. We have prepared a plan and it is ready for the full implementation, our sources collected valuable information from the areas mentioned above, we ask your cooperation with us as much as possible with thanks and appreciation. Explain the steps below you plan to get rid of the Sunnis: Our force will come in cars and Humvee'st of the Iraqi Army, ambulances and police vehicles, wearing Iraqi army and police uniforms. - We will block the mentioned areas to arrest the terrorists and destroy their homes and rape their wives, as Muqtada al-Sadr said in one of his valuable speeches [kill them wherever you find them]. - The duration of the operation is three days after that we will take the detainees into the Army intelligence and integrate them to lose attention from regular citizens and then in the night we will take them to Baghdad "to do the rest". Thank you
waste,
corruption and utter disregard for the money of the American people -- and
the lives and well-being of the Iraqi people -- is characteristic
of the entire malevolent enterprise. A war of aggression launched without any
justification whatsoever beyond the greed and power-lust of a band of corrupt
authoritarian militarists -- led by two men who squirmed and weaseled mightily
to avoid combat in their youths but have no compunction whatsoever about sending
other people off to kill and die -- was bound to produce the
moral horror that we see in Iraq today. And
make no mistake -- despite all the White House PR about "timetables" and strategy
shifts, despite the rising hopes of ousting Bush's bootlicking rubberstamps
from control of the Congress, the stark truth (which
I noted here in May) remains: There
is no good solution to the hell Bush has wrought in his
arrogance and folly. There is only blood and horror all the way down.
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Editorial: The Military Commissions Act - Question & Answers
The Center For Constitutional Rights
10-24-6
What New Powers does the Military Commissions Act give to the President? What other objectionable provisions does it include?
- It authorizes the suspension of habeas corpus for non-citizens, including legal permanent residents, in U.S. custody - It authorizes the President to detain anyone, including U.S. citizens, without charge by designating them enemy combatants or unlawful enemy combatants - It authorizes the President to determine what constitutes torture. - It authorizes the use of evidence obtained by coercion - It authorizes the use of hearsay - It authorizes retroactive immunity for U.S military and intelligence officials for abuses that occurred at sites such as, Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, Bagram and secret CIA facilities. - The definitions of rape and sexual assault are narrower than under international law and have higher thresholds for proof.
How does the Military Commissions Act violate the law?
- It violates the Suspension Clause of the Constitution by denying non-citizens any meaningful opportunity to challenge the legality of their detention - It violates the 6th Amendment by allowing classified evidence which the accused can only see in summary - It violates the 4th Amendment by allowing evidence obtained by coercion or without a warrant or probable cause - It violates the Geneva Conventions by watering down humanitarian law protections of Common Article 3 and by effectively granting a retroactive amnesty to U.S. officials who have tortured detainees
What is the Writ of Habeas Corpus?
- Habeas Corpus, which has it origins in the Magna Carta of 1215, is the "Great Writ" that protects people from arbitrary arrest, disappearance and indefinite detention without charge. The cornerstone of Western justice, it is essential to the idea that laws-not individuals, be they Presidents or kings-govern a land.
What will happen to the cases of detainees who have already petitioned a court for a writ of Habeas Corpus?
- While it is unclear how the government will seek to apply the new law, or what impact it will have on pending cases, the laws states that the suspension of habeas corpus is retroactive
- This challenge will most likely occur first in the Al Odah v. United States of America and Boumediene v. Bush, consolidated cases brought on behalf of 53 Guantánamo detainees, which are pending before the Court of Appeals in Washington, DC. - It is likely that the Government will ask for these cases to be dismissed shortly after the MCA is signed
What is the basis for challenging the "habeas stripping" provision of the MCA?
- The habeas-stripping provision of the MCA (section 6) violates the Suspension Clause of the U.S. Constitution by denying non-citizens any meaningful opportunity to challenge the legality of their detention. - The Suspension Clause specifically permits a suspension of habeas corpus only when "in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 2. If Congress intends to suspend habeas corpus, it must do so with unmistakable clarity. Congress has not made any finding that this is a time of invasion or rebellion in which the public safety may require a temporary suspension of habeas. Even Ken Starr acknowledged that this is not such a time in his recent letter to Congress opposing the habeas-stripping provision in the MCA. - There are additional constitutional challenges to the MCA, including a possible equal protection challenge since it treats citizens and non-citizens differently.
Does the suspension clause cover non-citizens?
- Yes. Where the Constitution applies, it protects everyone equally. Indeed, it forbids the government from denying individuals the equal protection of the laws based on their citizenship. Nor as a matter of policy should we have two tiers of laws for people in this country.
What are the details of the two new cases CCR filed on behalf of detainees before the bill was signed into law?
Mohammed v. Rumsfeld - There are an estimated 500 men detained in U.S. custody at Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan. Though some have been held for years, none of these men has ever received a hearing of any sort. Bagram has been the site of notorious examples of abuse - including abuses that led to the December 2002 deaths of two Afghan detainees - On October 2, CCR filed a habeas corpus petition in federal court in Washington, D.C. on behalf of 25 people being held at Bagram. Mohammed v. Rumsfeld directly contests the MCA's denial of due process to non-citizens held in U.S. custody. - Mohammed v. Rumsfeld is a natural extension of the Supreme Court's decision in Rasul v. Bush, which held that Guantánamo detainees have the right to challenge their detention in the federal courts through habeas corpus Khan v. Bush - On October 3, 2006, CCR filed a habeas corpus petition in the D.C. District Court in Washington, D.C., on behalf of Majid Khan (Khan v. Bush), one of the 14 'ghost detainees' President Bush recently transferred to Guantánamo. The petition challenges the constitutionality of denying non-citizen detainees the right of habeas corpus. - Mr. Khan was imprisoned in secret CIA detention for 3 1/2 years and subjected to "alternative interrogation methods" that amount to torture. He has never been formally charged with a crime or declared an enemy combatant. - Khan v. Bush squarely challenges the legality of the CIA's secret prisons, and the likely torture and abuse of the detainees who "disappeared" and were held in those prisons overseas for several years.
These cases were filed before enactment of the MCA in order to preserve any possible legal arguments that our clients might have to challenge the retroactive application of the law, including, for example, challenges to the new expansive definition of "unlawful enemy combatant" and the purported suspension of habeas corpus for any non-citizen detained by the United States anywhere in the world.
- As far as we know, everyone at Guantánamo has had a CSRT except for the fourteen detainees who were transferred there from the CIA secret prisons. - CSRT's were established under the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA) and provide extremely limited review of CSRT determinations and are not an adequate substitute for habeas corpus. - A CSRT is a "non-adversary" hearing conducted pursuant to rules and procedures that are unfair in design and biased in practice. For example, under the CSRT rules and procedures, every detainee is: (a) Denied access to counsel; (b) Denied the right to see the evidence against him; (c) Denied the right to confront, or even know the identity of, his accusers; (d) Denied the right to call witnesses; (e) Denied the right to present evidence; (f) Denied the right to know how the military collected evidence; and (g) Denied an impartial tribunal because the CSRT must presume that evidence against a detainee (which he has not seen) is genuine and accurate.
- The DTA only allows challenges to (1) whether the military complied with its own flawed CSRT procedures for making enemy combatant determinations, and (2) whether those procedures comply with the Constitution and laws of the United States. But President Bush claims that our laws do not protect detainees, and the MCA even goes so far as to authorize him to hold detainees who "awaiting designation" as enemy combatants.
The CSRT rules and procedures further allow for the consideration of hearsay evidence and/or evidence obtained by torture or coercion. These rules and procedures in practice and effect virtually compel the CSRT conclusion that the detainee is an "enemy combatant."
- In addition, the CSRTS are incapable of determining who is or is not properly detained by the government as an "enemy combatant." Even where a CSRT determines that a detainee is actually innocent of any offense or wrongdoing, that detainee may continue to be held virtually incommunicado, indefinitely, without charge, without access to counsel, and without any meaningful opportunity to challenge the legality of his detention. The government has even held, and continues to hold, detainees who have been determined through the CSRT process to be "no longer enemy combatants" or "non-enemy combatants" without affording them the right to an adequate and meaningful judicial process. (For details see CCR'S report Faces of Guantánamo. http://ccr-ny.org/v2/reports/docs/FACES_OF_GUANTANAMO.pdf
Could American citizens be held as "enemy combatants" or as "unlawful enemy combatants?
Yes. The MCA includes language that states that persons who "materially support" hostilities against the U.S. can be labeled and held as 'unlawful enemy combatants.' This might include, for instance, someone who donates money to a charity in Afghanistan that turns out to have some connection to the Taliban or Al Qaeda, or even the organizer of an anti-war rally, without regard to actual hostilities. The definition also presumptively includes members of the Taliban, Al Qaeda, or "associated forces." - The definition allows Bush or Rumsfeld to establish new secret procedures to detain anyone they themselves deem legally and appropriately classified an enemy combatant.
Will CCR and others who represent detainees be immediately denied access to Guantánamo Bay upon signing of the MCA?
- It is not likely, but we will not know for sure until the MCA is signed by President Bush. Even under the limited review allowed by the DTA and the MCA, access by counsel will be necessary. However, the government may try to place even more restrictions on attorneys' ability to meet and communicate with their clients than already exist.
What happens if the Democrats regain control of Congress? Is there any chance they will revisit the MCA?
- Many Senators have publicly acknowledged what Republican Senator Arlen Specter said about the MCA before it was passed that it is "patently unconstitutional on its face." Unfortunately, he and a majority of others in Congress voted for it. By voting for a law that they knew was unconstitutional, they abdicated their constitutional responsibilities and once again compelled the federal courts to step in and uphold the Constitution. If the Democrats regain control of both houses, we hope they will repeal one of the most egregious pieces of legislation since the Alien and Sedition Acts, which now serve as a stain on Congress and our nation's history.
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Without Conscience in Palestine
Palestine banks walking an economic tightrope
Gulf Daily News
RAMALLAH: Bankers in the Palestinian territories worry less about boardroom battles and more about the daily fight to stay in business.
The threat of US sanctions has stopped banks dealing with the government. Disgruntled state workers, largely unpaid since March, have been vandalising automated teller machines and other bank property. And the economy is in freefall.
Some experts say the chaos threatens the long-term viability of the 11 Palestinian banks operating in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank. A dozen Arab banks with branches here have also been badly hurt.
"Demand for credit is small because investment is shrinking and companies are either downsizing or closing," said independent Palestinian economist Samir Abdallah.
Fearful of being hit with US anti-terrorism sanctions and lawsuits, banks have refused to deal with the Hamas government since the Islamist movement took office in March.
At the same time, tighter credit requirements for government workers, who have not been paid full salaries for around seven months, and a dramatic contraction in economic growth this year, have shrunk other banking business.
The World Bank has estimated growth per capita in the Palestinian territories would fall by 27 per cent this year because of the aid embargo and Israeli restrictions on movement. "Our big concern is to recover our debts and not to give credit," said a senior banker in Jenin.
Despite the crisis, financially banks are fairly sound, said the Palestine Monetary Authority, which acts as a central bank. Its figures show total cash deposits of $4.1 billion in August, compared to $4.2bn last December, the month before Hamas won elections.
While many customers, mainly government workers, have withdrawn their savings, remittances from Palestinians overseas have increased, bank officials say.
The officials say they are encouraging banks to increase their capital as a cushion against further shocks.
Total bank capital has grown to $424 million in the past 18 months from $316m, they added. But economic experts warned that the banks need to be able to build their loan books and earn fees from transactions.
Comment: All according to plan.
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Israel, Germany at odds over Lebanon air incident
Reuters
Oct 25, 2006
Israel denied a German newspaper report on Wednesday that two of its air force planes had fired twice as they flew over a German navy vessel patrolling the Lebanon coast.
Germany's Defense Ministry said an incident had occurred, without giving details.
The German daily Der Tagesspiegel quoted a German junior defense minister as telling a parliamentary committee two Israeli F-16 fighters had flown low over the ship, firing twice.
The jets also activated infra-red countermeasures to ward off any rocket attack, the paper quoted him as saying, in an advance release from Thursday's edition.
"There was no such incident," an Israeli military spokeswoman said.
She said the German statements appeared to refer to an incident that took place on Tuesday. Jets were scrambled when a helicopter took off from a German aircraft carrier close to Israeli waters without identifying itself.
The planes realized the mistake, did not engage the helicopter and returned home, the spokeswoman said.
Germany assumed command of a United Nations naval force off Lebanon 10 days ago, and has sent eight ships and 1,000 service personnel to join the international peace operation in the region.
The naval force is charged with preventing weapons smuggling and helping maintain a ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese Islamic militant group Hezbollah.
Comment: Israel has been known to attack their "allies" before, such as the shameful USS Liberty incident.
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Israeli forces kill two, severely injure one in Gaza Strip incursions
PNN
Palestinian medical sources and eyewitnesses report that Israeli forces killed 20 year old Lami Abu Lehya in Khan Younis early Thursday morning. Israeli incursions took place in the town of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, and Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip.
The sources added that another Palestinian, this time from Beit Hanoun, died as a result of injuries sustained during the morning's incursion. Eyewitnesses say that a Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance took the injured man to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead upon arrival. Another Beit Hanoun resident was severely injured when an Israeli sniper stationed at a checkpoint shot him in the chest. The injured man is currently undergoing surgery and is in "serious" condition.
In related news, Palestinian security sources report that additional Israeli forces have been deployed to the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Israeli bulldozers have begun excavating land near the crossing on the pretext of searching for underground tunnels.
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Recently arrested Palestinians taken to notorious Qadumim Prison
PNN
Thursday, 26 October 2006
Israeli prison authorities have just announced that all Palestinians arrested at Nablus' Hawara checkpoint over the Eid al-Fitr holiday have been taken to Qadumim Prison east of Qalqilia. The prison, which lies inside the illegal Israeli settlement of Qadumim, is notorious for its stories of prisoner abuse and neglect. Lawyer Fayez Alzerba told PNN, "I was surprised to hear that those arrested had been taken to Qadumim."
Alzerba noted that during his last visit to the prison nearly a year ago, the living conditions were deplorable. He stated, "The prisoners being detained in each cell are double that of the cell's capacity. Most cells designed to hold three prisoners were holding six or more."
Mahmoud Khaddrg, a recent prisoner who was held in custodial arrest for more than fifty days, expanded on the situation. He noted, "Many of the prisoners in Qadumim strike because of the harsh living conditions. For example, prisoners were only allowed to go to the restroom only three times a day. Those who had to go more often were forced to urinate into plastic bottles."
Established in the mid-1990s, Qadumim prison is especially notorious for the declining health of its occupants. Prisoners are said to have suffered from scourge, constipation, chronic pain in the abdomen, anemia, and various skin diseases as a result of poor living conditions and neglect and abuse.
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Eid al-Fitr anything but a holiday for some Palestinian residents
(Jenin) Ali Samoudi
PNN
For many Palestinian towns, not a day of Eid al-Fitr passed without some form of arbitrary military action by the Israeli forces. This year's holiday, which marks the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, included Israeli forces storming homes, harassing farmers, and arresting Palestinian young people.
The town of Kabatiya saw several incursions during the holiday festivities. On the eve of the final day of Eid, Israeli forces raided the home of the Barah family. According to family members, the soldiers spent several hours carelessly searching the house and checking the identity of all the household residents. Then, they arrested one of the male family members on the pretext of belonging to Islamic Jihad, and took him to an unknown location.
In another incident in Kabatiya, Israeli forces surrounded the family home of Majdi Alawneh. The troops ordered everyone out of the house and restrained its residents, arresting Alawneh's brother. Next they stormed the house, recklessly destroying furniture and belongings, while giving no explain for their actions.
Similar incidents were commonplace in the northern West Bank town of Tubas over the holiday. On one evening, more than 20 Israeli vehicles rolled into the town, while the soldiers proceeded to raid homes with no excuse or reason. Faris Youssef, an eyewitness to the incursion, told PNN that when he questioned the soldiers about their presence, he was told that the raid was a "gift" for the holidays.
One Tubas resident noted that Israeli forces surrounded his home and began shooting for no apparent reason. He stated, "The children in the house were frightened by the shooting, but not as frightened as they were when the Israeli stormed in to arrest my son Sameeh."
Assaults at Israeli checkpoints were also on the rise during the holiday. In one case, a young man from Jenin named Jamal Moussa was brutally assaulted by Israeli soldiers. He told PNN, "When I reached the checkpoint, one of the soldiers asked me why I was wearing a suit. I told him that I was celebrating Eid al-Fitr. He then threw me on the ground and deliberately tore my clothes."
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Jonathan Cook: Israel's Minister of Strategic Threats
Thursday October 26, 2006
Jonathan Cook
Palestine Chronicle.com
As a coup de grace, Lieberman has recently demanded the execution for treason of any Arab parliamentarian who talks to the Palestinian leadership.
The furore that briefly flared this week at the decision of Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, to invite Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beiteinu party into the government coalition is revealing, but not in quite the way many observers assume.
Lieberman, a Russian immigrant, is every bit the populist and racist politician he is portrayed as being. Like many of his fellow politicians, he harbours a strong desire to see the Palestinians of the occupied territories expelled, ideally to neighbouring Arab states or Europe. Lieberman, however, is more outspoken than most in publicly advocating for this position.
Where he is seen as overstepping the mark is in arguing that the state should strip up to a quarter of a million Palestinians living inside Israel of their citizenship and seal them and their homes into the Palestinian ghettoes being created inside the West Bank (presumably in preparation for the moment when they will all be expelled to Jordan). He believes any remaining Arab citizens should be required to sign a loyalty oath to Israel as a "Jewish and democratic state" -- loyalty to a democratic state alone will not suffice. Any who refuse will be physically expelled from Israel.
And, as a coup de grace, he has recently demanded the execution for treason of any Arab parliamentarian who talks to the Palestinian leadership in the occupied territories or commemorates Nakba Day, which marks the expulsion and permanent dispossession of the Palestinian people in 1948. That would include every elected representative of Israel's Arab population.
These are Lieberman's official positions. Apparently unofficially he wants even worse measures taken against Palestinians, both inside Israel and in the occupied territories. In May 2004, for example, he told a crowd of his supporters, in Russian, that 90 per cent of the country's Arab citizens should be expelled. "They have no place here. They can take their bundles and get lost." His speech could have had second billing with one by Adolf Hitler at a Nuremberg Rally.
Despite Lieberman's well-known political platform, Olmert has been courting him ever since Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel is Our Home) upset the expected three-way struggle between Olmert's Kadima party, Labor and Likud in the March elections. Lieberman romped home with 11 seats in the Knesset, making his party a sparring partner of both Likud and the popular religious fundamentalist party Shas.
According to reports in the Israeli media, Lieberman has not joined the coalition until now because he has been playing hard to get, making increasing demands of Olmert before agreeing to sign up for the government. His hand has grown stronger too: according to opinion polls, he is now the most popular politician in Israel after Binyamin Netanyahu, leader of the Likud party.
In the newly established post of Minister for Strategic Threats, Lieberman -- the avowed Arab hater -- will shape Israel's response to Iran, leading the chorus threats being made by Israel that the country is only a hair's breadth from dropping bombs, possibly nuclear warheads, on Tehran. After that, he will presumably help the government decide what other "strategic threats" it faces.
While Olmert enthuses over Lieberman, most in the Labor party seem quietly resigned to his inclusion. Labor's elder statesman and former leader, Shimon Peres, says he has no objections, so long as Lieberman does not challenge the core policies agreed by Kadima and Labor. This, of course, is precisely what Lieberman is doing -- it was the price of the bargain he struck with Olmert. Lieberman wants no peace overtures to the Palestinians, and favours the hardline neoliberal economic policies pursued by Kadima.
On Wednesday the Labor leader Amir Peretz, a supposed socialist and former head of the Israeli trade union movement, accepted Lieberman's entry to the coalition, as Olmert surely knew he would. In typical Labor style, Peretz bought off his conscience by insisting on a package of modest benefits for Arab citizens, the same Arab citizens Lieberman wants expelled. The last time the government made a similar promise to its Arab minority back in late 2001 -- when the prime minister of the day, Ehud Barak, needed their votes -- the $4 million pledge was broken immediately after the election.
So why are Israel's politicians, of the left and right, so comfortable sitting with Lieberman, the leader of Israel's only unquestionably fascist party? Because, in truth, Lieberman is not the maverick politician of popular imagination, even if he is every bit the racist -- a Jewish Jorg Haider or Jean Marie Le Pen.
In reality, Lieberman is entirely a creature of the Israeli political establishment, his policies sinister reflections of the principles and ideas he learnt in the inner sanctums of the Likud party, a young hopeful immigrant rubbing shoulders with the likes of Ariel Sharon, Binyamin Netanyahu and, of course, Ehud Olmert.
From their political infancy, the latter three were schooled in the minor arts of Israeli diplomacy: feel free to speak plainly in the womb of the party; speak firmly but cautiously in Hebrew to other Israelis; and speak in another tongue entirely when using English, the language of the goyim, the non-Jews.
But Lieberman, who arrived in Israel as a 21-year-old, was not around for those lessons. He imbibed nothing of the principles of "hasbara", the "advocacy for Israel" industry that has its unpaid battalions of propagandists regularly assaulting the phone lines and email inboxes of the Western media. He tells it exactly as he sees it, even if mostly in Russian.
Inside the Likud party, his political training ground, that hardly mattered. He rapidly rose through the ranks to become director-general of Likud from 1993-96 and soon afterwards to head the office of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. For many years he was the darling of the Likud, a party that today exists in two halves: its original incarnation, once again led by Netanyahu; and the renovated, sleeker model, Kadima, founded by Sharon.
But it was in breaking from Likud and founding his own party, Yisrael Beiteinu, in 1999 that Lieberman finally found his voice outside the Likud's smoke-filled rooms. The audience for his message was as untutored in the deceits of Israeli politicking as Lieberman himself.
Lieberman immigrated to Israel from Moldova in 1978, leading the vanguard of a wave of immigration from Russia and its satellite states that reached a peak in the early 1990s as the Soviet empire broke up. By the time most Russian speakers began pouring into Israel, Lieberman was already well esconced in the Israeli political system.
Yisrael Beiteinu's openly racist agenda spoke to the darkest instincts of the one million newly arrived Russian speakers.
Many of them poor and struggling to adapt to Israeli culture, they live far from the prosperous centre of the country in their own neglected ghettos, Little Moscows, where the signs and street language are more than a decade later still in Russian. They feel little affinity for the Jewish state -- apart from a loathing for everything Arab.
The state has found it easy to manipulate these immigrants' emotions. They have little understanding of the historic reasons for Israel's conflict with the Palestinians, and like other Israelis learn almost nothing more at school. With no context for appreciating why the Palestinians might carry out suicide attacks, Russian speakers assume the Palestinians are simply the hate-filled barbarians described to them by their politicians.
When young Russian men do their three years of active duty in the occupied territories, all these prejudicies are confirmed. Now one of the largest blocs of Israel's citizen army, the Russians are assigned some of the toughest spots in the West Bank and Gaza, often their first experience of meeting "Arabs".
When they return home, they find it hard to make sense of Israeli officialdom's lip service in distinguishing between Arab citizens, who have some rights in the Jewish state, and the "Arabs" of the occupied territories, who have none. Many Russian speakers wonder why Israel does not simply kill or expel the lot of them.
And this is where Lieberman steps in. Because usefully this is exactly what he not only believes but also openly declares. Lieberman can tap the support of nearly a million voters, a huge reservoir of support for any prime ministerial hopeful trying to assemble the coalition needed to form a government under the fractious Israeli political system.
Neither Olmert nor Netanyahu can afford to say what is really on their minds: that they want to cleanse the region of as many Palestinians as they can manage -- most certainly those in the occupied territories, and later the even bigger nuisance of the ones who have citizenship and undermine Israel's Jewishness.
But instead they can let a Lieberman, the charismatic leader of a popular party who does dare to say these things, join the government with minimal damage to their own reputations.
They can also let him use the platform provided by a cabinet position to shape a new coarser political language in which ideas of expulsion and transfer become ever more mainstream. Until one day the policies Lieberman advocates, reflections of the values he imbibed during his long years spent in Likud, become acceptable enough that a Prime Minister -- Olmert or Netanyahu or Lieberman himself -- will be able to put them in the government's programme.
Instead of using words like "disengagement", "convergence" or "realignment", Israel's politicians of the near future may simply call for the expulsion of Arabs, all Arabs.
Even now they do little to conceal the fact that such thoughts are uppermost in their minds. Netanyahu, currently Israel's most popular politician and leader of the opposition, has repeatedly called the 1.2 million Arab citizens of the country a "demographic timebomb". Back in 2002, for example, he told an audience of policymakers: "If there is a demographic problem, and there is, it is with the Israeli Arabs who will remain Israeli citizens We therefore need a policy that will first of all guarantee a Jewish majority."
Unlike Lieberman, Netanyahu never spells out what policies he is advocating. But most Israelis understand that in practice, if he felt free to speak his mind, his platform would not look much different from Yisrael Beiteinu's.
Olmert too uses code words readily understood by his Israeli audiences. In late 2004, in an interview with the Haaretz newspaper, he said: "There is no doubt in my mind that very soon the government of Israel is going to have to address the demographic issue with the utmost seriousness and resolve. This issue above all others will dictate the solution that we must adopt." He added that he feared the Palestinians would soon be a majority in the area comprising both the occupied territories and Israel, and that then they could launch a "dangerous" struggle for "one-man-one-vote" similar to the one against apartheid in South Africa. He concluded: "For us, it would mean the end of the Jewish state."
What "solution" was Olmert referring to? Israelis know only too well. Every year since 2000 Olmert, Netanyahu, Peres and other senior policymakers have been meeting at the Herzliya conference, near Tel Aviv, to draw up ideas about how to deal with the demographic threat: the rapidly approaching moment when the Palestinians, either those with Israeli citizenship or the non-citizens living under military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, will outnumber Jews.
The solutions they have proposed have been similar to Lieberman's. Both the disengagement from Gaza and the planned limited withdrawals from the West Bank came out of Herzliya. But so did a range of measures to deal with the country's Arab citizens: land swaps to lose areas of Israel densely populated with Arabs in return for the settlements in the West Bank; loyalty oaths as a condition of citizenship; stripping the Arab population of their right to vote; and forcing all political parties to subscribe to Zionist ideals.
These are not fanciful ideas; they are now firmly in the mainstream. Israel already has legislation requiring all parties running for the Knesset to support Israel remaining a "Jewish and democratic state". Technically, the only non-Zionist parties -- two Arab parties and the small joint Jewish and Arab Communist party -- could quite legally be disqualified from all general elections under the current legislation. They expect that at some point in the near future they will be too.
The two previous prime ministers, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon, both secretly favoured land swaps in which large numbers of Arab citizens would be removed from the Jewish state. Barak proposed such a scheme at Camp David in the summer of 2000, as several participants later confirmed. And in February 2004 Sharon floated the same idea during an interview in the Maariv newspaper. When it caused a storm, he backtracked, but investigations by the paper revealed that he had been formulating a land swap for some time with his advisers and had even consulted the then Labor leader and his foreign minister, Shimon Peres, on its feasibility.
At the top of Lieberman's list of demands before agreeing to enter Olmert's coalition are major changes to Israel's constitution, including the introduction of a presidential system to replace the current parliamentary system. Israel already has a President, currently Moshe Katsav, who is facing a string of rape and sexual harassment allegations, but the post is entirely symbolic.
Lieberman wants a president who has the authority to make major legislative changes, even constitutional ones, without having to make the backroom compromises to keep together the coalition governments that characterise Israel's current political system. The president Lieberman has in mind would be more on the lines of an autocratic ruler.
Olmert is apparently sympathetic to Lieberman's plans to change the political system. It is not difficult to understand why.
Comment: Someone tell us; what is the likely outcome of the current "Middle East crisis" with people like Libermann in power? What is the likely destiny of the American people, with people like Bush and Cheney in power?
It's time to wake up, if only to die on your feet rather than on your knees.
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Israeli army invades West Bank Town, attacks a coffee shop and detains the guests
IMEMC & Agencies
26 October 2006
Israeli forces invaded the West Bank city of Tubass on Thursday at dawn, attacked a coffee shop and detained all the guests inside.
Eyewitnesses reported that army undercover units first stormed the coffee shop and forced everyone on the ground. Troops and army jeeps arrived and detained the guests for several hours. During that time, soldiers strip searched the people, checked their ID cards and interrogated them.
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Israeli Army invades Jenin city and the nearby Qabatiya town, takes two prisoner
IMEMC & Agencies
25 October 2006
The Israeli forces invaded the West Bank city of Jenin and the nearby Qabatiya town on Wednesday morning and took two Palestinians as prisoners.
Troops and army jeeps stormed Qabatiya town opened fire randomly at residents and searched some houses before taking Jihad Nazal and Majdi Alaounah to unknown locations.
In the meantime another force invaded the city of Jenin searched and ransacked a number of houses and fired sound bombs and residents in the streets and left the city without taking prisoners, local sources reported.
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Israeli Army takes prisoner five residents from Abu Deis town near Jerusalem
IMEMC & Agencies
26 October 2006
The Israeli forces took prisoner five residents from the town of Abu Deis near Jerusalem on Thursday morning.
Troops and police officers stormed the town and searched and ransacked residents' houses before taking the five to unknown locations.
The five were known as: Dawod Mohsen, 26, Ramzi Salah, 22, Hamza Salah, 19, Mohamed Salah, 22 and Omer Salah. All are residents of the town.
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Army takes prisoner three Palestinian residents from Tulkarem
IMEMC & Agencies
26 October 2006
The Israeli army took prisoner three residents from the West Bank city of Tulkarem and the nearby Nur Shams refugee camp on Thursday morning.
The three were identified as Ala' Darwish, 21, a Palestinian national security officer, Ashraf Shihada, 21, a Police officer, both from Nur Shams refugee camp, and Ibrahim Hannoun, 22, from the city of Tulkarem.
All detainees were taken to unknown locations after troops searched and ransacked a number of houses in the city and the refugee camp, local sources reported.
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Without Conscience in Iraq
CIA tried to silence EU on torture flights
Richard Norton-Taylor
Thursday October 26, 2006
The Guardian
The CIA tried to persuade Germany to silence EU protests about the human rights record of one of America's key allies in its clandestine torture flights programme, the Guardian can reveal.
According to a secret intelligence report, the CIA offered to let Germany have access to one of its citizens, an al-Qaida suspect being held in a Moroccan cell. But the US secret agents demanded that in return, Berlin should cooperate and "avert pressure from EU" over human rights abuses in the north African country. The report describes Morocco as a "valuable partner in the fight against terrorism".
The classified documents prepared for the German parliament last February make clear that Berlin did eventually get to see the detained suspect, who was arrested in Morocco in 2002 as an alleged organiser of the September 11 strikes.
He was flown from Morocco to Syria on another rendition flight. Syria offered access to the prisoner on the condition that charges were dropped against Syrian intelligence agents in Germany accused of threatening Syrian dissidents. Germany dropped the charges, but denied any link.
After the CIA offered a deal to Germany, EU countries adopted an almost universal policy of downplaying criticism of human rights records in countries where terrorist suspects have been held. They have also sidestepped questions about secret CIA flights partly because of growing evidence of their complicity.
The disclosure is among fresh revelations about how the CIA flew terrorist suspects to locations where they were tortured, and Britain's knowledge of the practice known as "secret rendition". They are contained in Ghost Plane, by Stephen Grey, the journalist who first revealed details of secret CIA flights in the Guardian a year ago. More than 200 CIA flights have passed through Britain, records show.
He describes how one CIA pilot told him that Prestwick airport, near Glasgow, was a popular destination for refuelling stops and layovers. "It's an 'ask-no-questions' type of place and you don't need to give them any advance warning you're coming," the pilot said.
The CIA used planes of Air America, a group of private companies it secretly owned, and a second company, Aero Contractors. A CIA Gulfstream V jet, frequently used for the secret rendition of prisoners, flew to Diego Garcia, the British Indian Ocean territory where the US has a large base, the book says. Grey plans to publish more than 3,000 logs of the CIA flights on the internet this week.
CIA pilots, sometimes using false identities and whose planes regularly passed through Britain, ran up huge bills in luxury hotels after flying terrorist suspects to secret locations where they were tortured. But they revealed their whereabouts and identities by indiscreet use of mobile phones and allowed outsiders to track their aircraft's flights.
On one occasion, CIA pilots and crew lived it up in Majorca after rendering Benyam Mohammed, an Ethiopian brought up in Notting Hill, west London, to Afghanistan where he was tortured. Benyam was detained in Pakistan early in 2002, and then flown to Morocco, where he says he suffered appalling torture. He is being held at Guantánamo Bay.
Benyam has said in a statement to his lawyer that he was tortured for more than two years after being questioned by US and British officials. He says that while in Morocco he was shown photos of people he knew from a west London mosque, and was asked about information he was told was supplied by MI5.
The government has consistently denied it has ever actively cooperated in the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" programme". The Foreign Office said yesterday that the government had "not approved and will not approve a policy of facilitating transfer of individuals through the UK to places where there are substantial grounds to believe they face a real risk of torture".
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Governments say they follow U.S. on jail treatment
By Evelyn Leopold
Reuters
Some countries try to refute criticism over their treatment of prisoners by saying they are only following the U.S. example on handling terror suspects, a U.N. human rights expert said on Monday.
Manfred Nowak, the U.N. investigator on torture, told a news conference that "all too frequently" governments respond to criticism about their jails by saying they handled detainees the same way the United States did.
"The United States has been the pioneer of human rights and is a country that has a high reputation in the world," Nowak said. "Today, other governments are kind of saying, 'But why are you criticizing us, we are not doing something different than what the United States is doing.'"
He said nations like Jordan tell him, "We are collaborating with the United States so it can't be wrong if it is also done by the United States."
Nowak, along with other U.N. human rights officials, has criticized U.S. policies against terror suspects, including secret jails, harsh treatment and the lack of due process. He turned down a visit to Guantanamo Bay because he could not interview detainees and prison officials in private.
He has argued that if there is evidence against detainees, after years in jail, it should be presented to the usually "efficient" and fair civilian courts rather than military tribunals.
Nowak, an Austrian law professor, said the new U.S. law adopted earlier this month, which outlaws rape and most forms of torture, still allows harsh interrogation methods rights advocates say border on torture. And it does not permit appeals in U.S. federal court.
But he acknowledged U.S. difficulties in closing Guantanamo, saying other countries were refusing to accept prisoners and that Washington did not want to send them to countries where torture was certain. In Europe to date, only Albania has offered to accept them.
In Iraq, however, Nowak said there were improvements in U.S.-run jails and those of its allies following the torture scandals at Abu Ghraib. But now prisoners say jails run by Baghdad's Interior Ministry and militia are brutal.
"They would prefer if they are in detention to be in the international detention facilities rather than the Iraqi detention facilities," he said.
Comment: The US, that beacon of freedom and light everywhere. It is becoming more and more obvious that the US is the leader in a descent into darkness, and most everyone is obliged to follow along.
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U.S. troops on active duty call for Iraq withdrawal
Reuters
Wed Oct 25, 2006
WASHINGTON - More than 200 active duty U.S. armed service members, fed up with the war in Iraq, have joined an unusual protest calling for withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country, organizers said on Wednesday.
The campaign, called the Appeal for Redress from the War in Iraq, is the first of its kind in the Iraq war and takes advantage of Defense Department rules allowing active duty troops to express personal opinions to members of Congress without fear of retaliation, organizers said.
"As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq," states the appeal posted on the campaign's Web site at www.appealforredress.org.
"Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home," it adds.
The Web site allows service members to sign the appeal that will be presented to members of Congress. Organizers said the number of signatories has climbed from 65 to 219 since the appeal was posted a few days ago and Wednesday when it was publicly launched. There are 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.
Active duty service members are restricted in expressing personal views publicly. But rules governed by the Military Whistleblower Protection Act give them the right to speak to a member of Congress respectfully while off-duty and out of uniform, making clear they do not speak for the military.
In a conference call with reporters, a sailor, a Marine and a soldier who had served in the Iraq operation said American troops there have increasingly had difficulty seeing the purpose of lengthy and repeated tours of duty since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Their misgivings have intensified this year as the country has edged toward civil war, they said.
"The real grievances are: Why are we in Iraq if the weapons of mass destruction are not found, if the links to al Qaeda are not substantiated," said Marine Sgt. Liam Madden of Rockingham, Vermont, who was in Iraq from September 2004 to February 2005 and is based at Quantico, Virginia.
"The occupation is perpetuating more violence," he said. "It's costing way too many Iraqi civilian and American service member lives while it brings us no benefit."
The campaign's sponsoring committee includes the activist groups Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace and Military Families Speak Out.
Navy Seaman Jonathan Hutto of Atlanta, stationed at Norfolk, Virginia and the first service member to join the campaign, said a similar appeal during the Vietnam War drew support from over 250,000 active duty service members in the early 1970s.
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Hope for Assyrian Christians 'Rapidly Dying,' Says Former Iraqi Minister
Posted GMT 10-20-2006 20:39:49
Michelle Vu
Christian Post
WASHINGTON -- A former Iraqi minister and other rights activists have requested a province for Iraq's Assyrian Christian population as efforts to drive them out of the country intensifies.
"In today's Iraq, all we have is hope," said former Iraqi minister and Assyrian Christian Pascale Warda in a press conference on Wednesday. "For the Assyrian Christians, this hope is rapidly dying. The targeting of our people is something the world cannot ignore and the governments of the world cannot deny."
Warda pointed to the recent beheading of a Syrian Orthodox priest, the abduction and murder of 13 Christian Assyrian women just over a week ago as examples of violence targeted against Christian that is forcing many Iraqi believers from the country.
"The consequence of this situation is clear," said Warda. "The Christian Assyrian population, in all its denominations, is fleeing the country."
Michael Youash, project director of the Iraq Sustainable Democracy Project, a Washington-based think tank focused on the plight of Iraq's most vulnerable minorities, is a supporter of the idea of a province for minorities. He believes the province will help maintain minority voices in Iraq that will be able to provide a voice of compromise in debates about federalism, the constitution and other contentious issues.
Youash noted that the liberation of Iraq did not intend to drive out the Assyrian Christian population, but unfortunately this has occurring.
She cited that the United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees is reporting that 36 percent of refugees are Christians.
"If this continues, Iraq will more and more look like other Middle Eastern countries which lost their Assyrian population decades ago," Warda concluded. "Iraq needs it minorities for democracy.
Warda said she is part of a group of Iraqi trying to create an "administrative unit" for minorities in the Nineveh Plain and specific minority lands in the western part of Dohuk governate. Discussion on the province is still underway but supporters believe it possibly might be the only solution to retaining Iraq's Assyrian population.
The Rev. Dr. Keith Roderick, the Washington representative of Christian Solidarity International, cited from his recent article about the month of Ramadan and persecution against non-Muslims in Iraq.
"Hope in Iraq's future cannot be found in the destruction of minority faith and ethnic communities," concluded Roderick in his article. "It must be discovered in the actions of those right-hearted and --minded persons who have courageously dedicated themselves to the creation of a truly pluralistic multi-ethnic/religious society in Iraq."
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4 U.S. Marines, 1 sailor killed in Iraq
AP
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military on Thursday announced the deaths of five U.S. troops in fighting in
Iraq, raising to 96 the number of American forces killed this month.
The four Marines and one Navy sailor all died in fighting in Anbar province, a hotbed of the Sunni insurgency against U.S. troops and their Iraqi government allies.
The 96 deaths is the highest monthly total since October 2005, when the same number of American forces were killed.
Before that the deadliest months were January 2005, at 107; November 2004 at 137 and April 2004, at 135.
The sailor was assigned to the 3rd Naval Construction Regiment, the military said. Two of the Marines were attached to Regimental Combat Team 5, and two others to Regimental Combat Team 7. All died Wednesday from wounds suffered in attacks that day, it said.
The names of the dead were being withheld pending notification of their families.
Meanwhile, an angry Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki disavowed a joint U.S.-Iraqi raid in the capital's Sadr City slum Wednesday, and criticized the top U.S. military and diplomatic representatives in Iraq for saying his government needs to set a timetable to curb violence in the country.
The U.S. military on Thursday announced the deaths of five U.S. troops in fighting in Iraq, raising to 96 the number of American forces killed this month.
The four Marines and one Navy sailor all died in fighting in Anbar province, a hotbed of the Sunni insurgency against U.S. troops and their Iraqi government allies.
The latest deaths raised to 96 the number of U.S. forces killed in October, the highest toll for any month this year and on course to surpass the October 2005 total of 96.
Before that the deadliest months were January 2005, at 107; November 2004 at 137 and April 2004, at 135.
The sailor was assigned to the 3rd Naval Construction Regiment, the military said. Two of the Marines were attached to Regimental Combat Team 5, and two others to Regimental Combat Team 7. All died Wednesday from wounds suffered in attacks that day, it said.
The names of the dead were being withheld pending notification of their families.
Meanwhile, Al-Maliki spoke at a news conference a day after U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said Iraqi leaders had agreed to set deadlines by year's end for achieving specific political and security goals laid out by the United States, including reining in militia groups.
"I affirm that this government represents the will of the people and no one has the right to impose a timetable on it," the prime minister said.
The prime minister dismissed U.S. talk of timelines as driven by the coming midterm elections in the United States. "I am positive that this is not the official policy of the American government but rather a result of the ongoing election campaign. And that does not concern us much," he said.
Al-Maliki complained that he was not consulted beforehand about the Sadr City offensive. The raid was conducted by Iraqi special forces backed by U.S. advisers and was aimed at capturing a top militia commander wanted for running a Shiite death squad.
"We will ask for clarification to what has happened," al-Maliki said. "We will review this issue with the Multinational Forces so that it will not be repeated."
Mouwafak al-Rubaie, his national security adviser, later told The Associated Press that al-Maliki's anger grew out of a misunderstanding that had since been cleared up with Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.
While the U.S. military said the raid had been cleared in advance with al-Maliki's government,
President Bush acknowledged that al-Maliki himself may not have been consulted.
"We need coordinate with him. That makes sense to me. And there's a lot of operations taking place which means sometimes communications are not as good as they should be. And we'll continue to work very closely with the government to make sure communications are solid," Bush said at his own news conference.
Military action in Sadr City is especially sensitive for the prime minister.
Until Wednesday, U.S. and Iraqi forces had largely avoided the densely populated slum, a grid of rutted streets and tumble-down housing that is home to 2.5 million Shiites and under the control of anti-American cleric Muqtada's al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.
Reining in the Mahdi Army and the other major militia, the Badr Brigades, remains one of the thorniest problems facing al-Maliki. His fragile Shiite-dominated government derives much of its power from the al-Sadr's faction and from the Supreme Council for the Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, which operates the Badr Brigades.
The U.S. military said Mahdi Army militiamen fought back in the Sadr City raid and that the Americans called in an air strike and cordoned the sprawling east Baghdad region.
Late Wednesday the military said it had killed 10 suspected militia fighters and wounded two in the battle. It did not identify the wanted militia leader or say whether he was still at large. Earlier, police and hospital officials said four people were killed and at least 18 wounded.
The military also said it had raided a mosque in Sadr City looking for a missing U.S. soldier and his kidnappers. The soldier was not found but three suspects were detained.
Residents living near Sadr City said gunfire and air strikes began about 11 p.m. Tuesday and continued for hours. The neighborhood was sealed to outsiders before dawn.
Groups of young men in black fatigues favored by the Mahdi Army were seen driving toward the area to join the fight. Explosions and automatic weapons fire were heard above the noise of U.S. helicopters circling overhead firing flares.
Crowds of Shiite men, some carrying pistols and others hoisting giant posters of al-Sadr, swarmed onto the district's streets Wednesday morning, chanting, "America has insulted us."
Throughout the day and into the night, U.S. F-16 jet fighters growled across the Baghdad sky, and at one point the report of tank cannon fire echoed across the city five times in quick succession.
Streets were empty and shops closed, although the district still had electricity from the national power grid.
Well after nightfall, residents said all roads into the slum remained blocked by U.S. and Iraqi forces. U.S. soldiers were searching all cars.
A frustrated motorist waiting at one checkpoint jumped out of his car and called for al-Maliki to resign.
"Where is al-Maliki? It would be more honorable for him to resign. Why is he letting the Americans do this to us," the driver could be heard to scream.
Falah Hassan Shanshal, a lawmaker from al-Sadr's political bloc, said women and children had been killed, although videotape pictures of the bodies from the neighborhood taken at the local morgue showed only male victims.
"If there was an arrest operation, it should have been carried out by the Iraqi authorities, and not like this where air cover is used as if we were in a war zone," Shanshal said in an interview with the government's al-Iraqiya television station.
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Evidence: Militias are working with the Iraqi Police and Army
Roads to Iraq
26/10/2006
Brigadier Mudhafar and Brigadier General Karim Qassem,
Abu Hussein al-Tamimi
Commander of the Al-Mahdi Army
Comment: For more evidence of who is behind the mass murder of civilians in Iraq, see this article.
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US troops mistakenly kill four Iraqi firemen
Reuters
26/10/2006
American soldiers shot and killed four Iraqi firemen after mistaking their fire tender for one hijacked by insurgents, US military headquarters has said.
"After receiving word that a fire truck and its crew were just hijacked, coalition forces pulled over a fire truck matching that description," said a statement describing Monday's incident in the western city of Fallujah.
When the unarmed firefighters got out of the fire tender US soldiers opened fire and killed them, after mistaking them for armed insurgents.
"The suspected insurgents were in fact firefighters responding to a call. The fire truck number did not match the one of the hijacked truck. All four of the firefighters that exited the vehicle died," the statement said.
"Minutes later another fire truck was spotted and pulled over in an area nearby. The occupants fled. It was determined that this truck number did match the truck that was hijacked," it added.
American forces are often accused of using excessive and indiscriminate force in
Iraq, although commanders say the problem is now taken more seriously and the number of wrongful killings has diminished.
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Our Poor Planet
Strong winds, heavy rains lash Portugal leaving one dead
AFP
Oct 25, 2006
Heavy rain and wind lashed Portugal Wednesday, knocking down trees, triggering landslides and causing localized flooding that disrupted road and rail travel and left one woman dead, officials said.
The central city of Pombal, located some 170 kilometres (105 miles) northeast of Lisbon, was especially hard-hit with most of the historic city centre under water, local officials said.
"Part of the city is without electricity, sidewalks were ruined, basements flooded and supermarkets damaged," Pombal mayor Narciso Mota told private television SIC.
A woman in her 80s, who suffered from heart trouble, was found dead in her flooded house in Pombal where she lived alone, he said.
In the nearby farming town of Soure a river burst its banks and swept a school bus carrying around 50 children into a ditch, emergency services workers said. No one was injured but the driver received counseling.
The national civil protection service said it responded to nearly 700 incidents of flooding, 335 fallen trees and 19 landslides across the country since late Tuesday when the storm hit.
Dozens of roads were reported closed, mostly in central and northern areas, due to flooding and debris.
Rail service was suspended in the southernmost province of Algarve, as well as between Lisbon and second-city Oporto in the north, for several hours because of fallen trees or flooding on the track, railway officials said.
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Getting Bad Vibes?
By David Nowak
Moscow Times
Next time you go for an important job interview or take a driving test, check the weather. The space weather, that is.
For years, Russians have looked beyond the confines of the Earth's atmosphere to explain sudden headaches, fatigue, mood swings or their pets going berserk.
What they are looking for is geomagnetic storms, or magnitniye buri. Although little known in the West, these mysterious storms are taken so seriously in Russia that they are forecast along with the rest of the weather on national television channels, radio stations, Internet sites and in newspapers.
And while many Westerners might scoff, recent research seems to support the theory that magnetic storms do affect us, both mentally and physically.
Muscovite Marina Dudko, 50, a science academy graduate, said there was no question that magnetic storms directly affect people.
"Some people react differently, but the main changes are mood swings, headaches and insomnia," she said. "They affect some people in the morning, and some people at night."
Most large celestial bodies, including Earth, are surrounded by magnetic fields known as the magnetosphere. Magnetic storms occur when the magnetosphere is struck by shock waves from the sun, such as solar flares. They usually last for a day, though some magnetic storms have been known to go on for a week.
In the West, magnetic storms' ability to interfere with animals and knock out radio communications has been documented.
It has already been proved that magnetic storms cause migratory animals such as pibecause they have internal "compasses" made of the mineral magnetite that is sensitive to magnetic fluctuations.
Races involving homing pigeons have been ruined by the disappearance of the birds during magnetic storms, leading handlers to request advanced forecasts so they can schedule races around the storms.
Radar systems, satellites and radio stations are among human communications that are frequently disrupted by the storms. Military radar that bounces signals off the ionosphere, which is affected by magnetic storms, is unreliable at that time.
Igor Klanishen, general director of the FOBOS center, a company that supplies weather information to news agencies and web sites, said forecasting magnetic storms was important because Russians believe they can be affected by them.
"I don't know what effects the storms have," Klanishen said, "but people really need this information, so we give it to them."
Repeated calls to the space research center at the Russian Academy of Sciences for an explanation of how the storms can affect the health of an individual went unanswered.
But Russians who traditionally tune in to the magnetic storms forecasts are the elderly and those with heart or circulatory problems. Those affected can take special medicine to help them cope during magnetic storms. And this is why.
"The main danger of the magnetic storms is that rhythmical changes of the geomagnetic field [magnetosphere] occur in the range of 0.5 to 2 hertz," said Elena Baud, a therapist at the Swiss Medical Association in Zurich.
"This is also the frequency at which our heart works. When the rhythm of the sun coincides with the rhythm of a human being it can bring some sad results, especially for people with heart problems."
Dr. Frank Prato, a medical biophysicist and program leader at the Lawson Health Research Institute in London, Ontario, who is at the forefront of research into the effects magnetic fields have on biological systems, agreed. "Frequencies associated with the magnetic field are in the same frequency range as human biological systems," he said by telephone from his clinic. "That interference can reduce heart rate variability."
Heart rate variability refers to the beat-to-beat alterations in the heart rate. Reductions in heart rate variability have been linked with hypertension, or high blood pressure, among other problems.
"There is good scientific literature to back up the theory that periods of changing magnetic activity can have a direct effect on biological systems," other than those of migratory animals, Prato said.
Prato's team conducted tests on mice that displayed different behavior when shielded from and then reintroduced to magnetic fields.
He said research on humans was in its infancy, and that deeper investigations were needed to back up claims by people like Maria.
But worrying about the effects of a magnetic storm may cause more problems than the storm itself.
According to a local news agency, doctors in Perm said more people reported health problems during magnetic storms, but that was because they had been warned about the storms and as a result were worrying too much about their health.
Doctors there also said that now magnetic storm forecasts are published in newspapers less frequently, the storm periods pass practically unnoticed, and the fluctuations in patient numbers are not linked to magnetic activity anymore.
This is complicated by the fact that patients with high blood pressure could be adversely affected by extra concerns over their health that the magnetic storms could in theory cause.
Baud, of the Swiss Medical Association, agreed that the storms could trigger psychosomatic problems.
Years of scientific research may yet uncover the exact manner in which magnetic storms, which cause the dazzling aurora light displays over the poles of the Earth, affect the health and behavior of humans.
Until then and probably beyond, Russians will keep on tuning into the space forecast... which, according to Gismeteo.ru, is all clear for the next two days except for a "slight geomagnetic disturbance" between 3 a.m. and 9 a.m. on Friday.
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Climate change cannot be stopped
26/10/2006 10:45:00
FWi
Climate change cannot be stopped, so the government needs to develop realistic policies that will slow it down, according to one expert.
Speaking at the Tenant Farmers Association's 25th anniversary conference this week, the University of London's Emeritus Philip Stott said media-hype and the lack of a robust energy policy over the past 30 years had been major problems.
"We are walking into danger if we think we can stop climate change - we can't, but we can mess up the British economy. Energy security for Britain is a very serious issue and we need a realistic policy that will slow down climate change. But let's not be conned that we can stop it."
In terms of the effect on the climate, emitting gases and not emitting gases were equally unpredictable, but politically it is not something that is talked about, Professor Stott said.
"Don't be taken in by the current politics around climate change - be very cautious as there are agendas attached. As farmers, the only thing you have to worry about is to adapt. What we want from government policy is flexibility. We don't want to place farming in a straight jacket."
Flexibility is particularly important for tenant farmers considering growing energy crops, or going into other long-term energy projects, he noted.
More important than climate change, water management will be the number one issue in the future, Professor Stott said, suggesting that some form of pricing mechanism will be needed.
"We still treat water as a free good in Britain, and for the past 30 years, we have put-off measures that will help manage water use. We will have to value it for any pricing mechanism to work."
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Volcano's activity increases on Russia's Kamchatka peninsula
09:51 | 26/ 10/ 2006
PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY, October 26 (RIA Novosti) - The Karymsky volcano on the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia's Far East has increased its activity, spewing ash emissions up to an altitude of around 5,000 meters (16,400 feet), a local seismology official said Thursday.
Experts said a total of 450 minor quakes have been registered over the past 24 hours near Karymsky, Kamchatka's most active volcano, in the southeast of the peninsular, which rises to 1,536 metres (5,039 feet) above sea level.
Satellite images show an ash plume 12 kilometers long and four kilometers wide, with a 100-km ash tail stretching southeastwards at a height of 3,500 meters (11,500 feet).
The volcano erupted in February following an 11-year period of normal activity. Ash emissions and about 230 minor tremors were reported last week. Experts say the volcano's activity has been accelerating.
This year more than 1,200 people, including 542 children, were evacuated from the north of the Kamchatka peninsula after a series of earthquakes. The first 7.8-magnitude quake, the strongest in the Koryak Autonomous Area in the north of the peninsular since 1900, injured 31 people on April 21. It also damaged about 380 houses and 25 administrative facilities in four other towns.
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New volcanic eruption at Sicily's Mount Etna
dpa German Press Agency
Published: Thursday October 26, 2006
Catania, Italy- Sicily's Mount Etna, Europe's largest volcano, continued erupting overnight to Thursday with a 2,000 metre- high lava flow streaming into the valley below. The glowing rock mass was flowing, according to vulcanologists in the region, down the southerly face of the mountain. It was unclear whether a new crater had been opened or whether an old one had become active.
The over 3,000-metre-high volcano started erupting on Sunday after a long period of dormancy.
There have been several lava flows, but the eruption poses no risk to people in the region, according to the authorities.
The last major eruption was in 2001.
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Ocean array acts as climate alert
By Mark Kinver
Science and nature reporter
BBC News
Measurements from a network of monitors stretching across the Atlantic Ocean could offer an early warning of "sudden climate change", scientists have said.
Scientists lower monitors into Atlantic (Image: Torsten Kanzow/NOC Southampton)
The monitoring devices provide a detailed picture of ocean changes
Measurements from a network of monitors stretching across the Atlantic Ocean could offer an early warning of "sudden climate change", scientists have said.
Underwater instruments measuring the temperature and salinity of seawater will detect any change to currents that regulate Europe's climate, they said.
A UK-led team of researchers said the data offered the most detailed picture of the ocean's circulation patterns.
The first set of results were presented at a climate conference in Birmingham.
'Heat pump'
The array of 19 "moorings" is positioned at points 26.5 degrees north in the Atlantic Ocean, providing an insight to the Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) that acts as the Earth's "heat pump", distributing heat via the ocean from the equator to northern regions.
The north Atlantic conveyor
Enlarge Image
By the time it reaches the northern latitudes around Greenland and Iceland, the water has cooled so much that it sinks towards the ocean's floor and heads south again, a process known as "overturning".
The process is density driven, so is sensitive to changes in the temperature and salinity of the water.
Computer climate models predict that the overturning may weaken or switch off altogether as freshwater from melting ice sheets flow into the sea.
An increased flow of freshwater makes the ocean less saline and lowers the density, meaning the waters cannot sink and the overturning weakens.
"We have deployed an array to monitor and observe the Atlantic Overturning Circulation," the project's principal investigator, Harry Bryden, said.
Atlantic map. Image: BBC
The Rapid team monitored at roughly 26 degrees north
The array of moorings reaches across the ocean from Africa to the US. Each mooring consists of a wire up to 5,000m long that stretches from the sea floor to about 15m below the surface.
An assortment of instruments are attached to the wire at fixed depths, taking a reading every 15 minutes.
The data is stored until it is uploaded by researchers when the moorings are recovered after 12 months at sea.
The moorings are positioned in three locations: off the coast of west Africa, just south of the Canary Islands; the mid-Atlantic ridge; and to the east of the Bahamas.
"The first year's measurements really established the size of the short-term variability," Professor Bryden told BBC News.
"This is really important because we never knew this before."
Ship's crew prepare for a night-time deployment of equipment (Image: Nerc)
The moorings were first put into position in 2004
Professor Bryden, from the UK's National Oceanography Centre, was the lead author on a paper published in the journal Nature last year that suggested the overturning circulation had declined by 30% over the past 50 years. That was based on a snapshot of data from the array.
The findings were based on five historical "snapshot" measurements of overturning in 1957, 1981, 1992, 1998 and 2004.
"The issue was how big was the variability in the five snapshot measurements, and that was something we needed to know," he said.
Using the first year's data from the array, the researchers were able to adjust their calculations.
"We concluded that there was some evidence of a small decrease but not as big as we reported in the Nature paper last year," Professor Bryden observed.
"But we have had a decrease... in the order of 10% of the overturning circulation in the past 25 years."
Rapid climate change
He said the findings demonstrated that they were able to monitor changes, and act as an alert to any sudden shifts in the ocean circulation that could have a profound impact on the UK's and north-west Europe's climate.
"The ice core records suggest sudden warming or cooling happen on a scale of about a decade. The timescale for temperature change, which are in the order of 5-10C (9-18F), also happen in about a 10-year period," he explained.
The project forms the centrepiece of the Rapid research programme, led by the UK's Natural Environment Research Council (Nerc).
The programme has 36 research projects that will run until at least 2008, and aims to develop a better understanding of the causes of rapid climate change and what might happen in the future.
Professor Bryden presented the UK-US team's findings at a four-day conference, organised by Nerc, where scientists working on the Rapid project discussed the ongoing research.
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Global warming could put New York City at hurricane, flood risk
mongabay.com
NASA researchers are investigating the potential impact of climate change on New York City using computer models to simulate future climates and sea level rise. Their studies, to date, forecast a 15 to 19 inch-increase in sea levels by the 2050s that could put the city at higher risk of flooding during storm surges.
"With sea level at these higher levels, flooding by major storms would inundate many low-lying neighborhoods and shut down the entire metropolitan transportation system with much greater frequency," said Vivien Gornitz, a climate scientist who is part of a team at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and Columbia University.
Gornitz, along with Cynthia Rosenzweig, another researcher on the team, say that higher sea levels put New York city at greater risk of hurricane storm surge. They estimate that in the case of a 1.5-foot-rise in sea level, "surge for a category 3 hurricane on a worst-case track would cause extensive flooding in many parts of the city. Areas potentially under water include the Rockaways, Coney Island, much of southern Brooklyn and Queens, portions of Long Island City, Astoria, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens, lower Manhattan, and eastern Staten Island from Great Kills Harbor north to the Verrazano Bridge."
The researchers note that hurricanes have hit New York City in the past and caused extensive damage.
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Without Conscience in the USA
LA Hospital Dumping People on Skid Row
Sean Bonner
Metroblogging Los Angeles
It turns out there is now some evidence in the practice that many people have been suspecting for quite some time. On Monday LA Voice linked to this LA Times story stating that LAPD officials had photographed and videotaped ambulances from Los Angeles Metropolitan Medical Center allegedly dumping five people on skid row over the weekend and were calling it a major break.
Since then both NPR and CNN have jumped on the story. What's worse is that of the 5 cases from this weekend, at least one of them was not even homeless and other reported they did not want to be taken to Skid Row. From CNN:
In one case, a man dropped off at Skid Row was in fact not homeless, said Smith, the LAPD captain. A police officer took him home and the man's family was "outraged," he said.
"Not only did they not know that he was discharged, but the fact that he had been brought to Skid Row instead of being brought home was what further outraged that family," Smith said at a news conference Tuesday.
The investigation began on Sunday, when an LAPD sergeant saw a patient being left in front of the Volunteers of America homeless services facility.
The sergeant called an LAPD videographer, who over the next few hours recorded four more ambulances arriving at the facility and leaving recently discharged patients.
Fenton said three of the five patients had arrived at the hospital from Volunteers of America or the nearby Lamp Community center, and gave the street addresses on their admission information.
Officials at Lamp and Volunteers of America, however, said they had no record of any of the five patients having been at their facilities. Police also said the patients stated in their interviews that they didn't want to be left there.
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Fla. killer executed for 5 1990 murders
By RON WORD
Associated Press
STARKE, Fla. - Danny Harold Rolling, Florida's most notorious serial killer since Ted Bundy, was executed by injection Wednesday for butchering five college students in a ghastly string of slayings that terrorized Gainesville in 1990.
Rolling, 52, was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. EDT, more than 16 years after his killing rampage at the start of the University of Florida's fall semester.
When asked for a last statement, Rolling sang for two minutes what sounded like a hymn with the refrain "none greater than thee, O Lord, none greater than thee," witnesses and prison officials said.
He appeared to continue singing after prison officials turned off the microphone, finally stopping just before he died.
The bodies of his victims were found over three days in late August, just as the University of Florida's fall semester was beginning. All had been killed with a hunting knife. Some had been mutilated, sexually assaulted and put in shocking poses. One girl's severed head had been placed on a shelf, her body posed as if seated.
The killing spree touched off a huge manhunt and plunged the laid-back college town into panic. Students fled and residents armed themselves.
Belongings that Rolling left at a campsite in the woods and DNA taken after a later arrest for robbery linked him to the slayings. When he came up for trial in 1994, he shocked the courtroom by pleading guilty.
"There are some things you just can't run from, this being one of those," Rolling told the judge.
He later told The Associated Press: "I do deserve to die, but do I want to die? No. I want to live. Life is difficult to give up."
Dianna Hoyt, who stepdaughter was slain, said the execution marked "the final chapter of this book."
"This man brought this outcome to himself, and the law of the land carried through to show us justice," Hoyt said.
Outside the prison, death penalty opponents stood in a circle singing "Amazing Grace" after Rolling was pronounced dead.
Other onlookers supported the execution. "They're doing a good thing," said Randy Hicks, 35, a truck driver and former prison guard who occasionally watched over Rolling. "This guy deserves it. It's very overdue."
Death penalty protesters said the execution only served to provide Rolling additional attention.
"The state of Florida is giving this psychopathic killer just what he wanted," said Mark Elliott of Clearwater, spokesman for Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
The attention surrounding Rolling's execution reopened old wounds in Gainesville and for the families of the victims.
The victims' families ran an advertisement Thursday in The Gainesville Sun, thanking the community for its support: "We hope you will remember August 1990 and the years that followed without any sense of community shame for what has happened here. You turned a blemish into a rose."
Rolling was calm and cooperative ahead of the execution, Corrections Department spokesman Robby Cunningham said. He spent several hours with his brother Kevin and his brother's pastor, officials said.
The gathering of people on a barren cow pasture across from the prison was reminiscent of the crowds that assembled for Bundy's execution on Jan. 24, 1989 in the state's old electric chair. Bundy was suspected in the deaths and disappearances of 36 women across the country.
Bundy died in the electric chair in 1989 in the same death chamber. The case was still fresh in the minds of many when Rolling's killings began the following year in roughly the same area as some of Bundy's crimes.
Rolling, a police officer's son from Shreveport, La., arrived in Gainesville on a Greyhound bus, pitched a tent in the woods near campus and set out to become, as he would say later, a "superstar" among criminals.
The bodies of Sonja Larson, 18, and Christina Powell, 17, were found stabbed to death in a townhouse just off the University of Florida campus. Christa Hoyt, 18, was found decapitated the next morning in her isolated duplex. Tracy Paules and Manny Taboada, both 23, were discovered dead a day later in the apartment they shared.
For months, a task force of local, state and federal agents followed hundreds of leads and took blood samples from dozens of men. They did not know that Rolling was already behind bars for robbing a grocery store.
Then authorities in Shreveport, investigating a triple slaying that they believe Rolling committed, suggested police check out the drifter and ex-con.
Rolling blamed the murders on abuse he suffered as a child and his treatment in prison, and claimed he had good and bad multiple personalities.
But in a letter to The Associated Press in 2002, Rolling wrote: "I assure you I am not a salivating ogre. Granted ... time's past; the dark era of long ago - Dr. Jeckle & Mr. Hyde did strike up & down the corridors of insanety."
He said he killed one person for every year he was behind bars. He served a total of eight years in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi before the killings.
Rolling was the 63rd inmate to be put to death since Florida resumed executions in 1979 and the third this year.
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US imposes biometric entry demand
BBC
A deadline for states with visa waiver agreements with the US to start issuing a new generation of biometric passports to meet US demands has passed.
Under legislation introduced after the 11 September attacks, passports issued in Visa Waiver Program countries after 26 October must contain biometric data.
Face-mapping technology is used to create the image stored in a chip on the passport in a bid to fight fraud.
Some civil liberties campaigners are concerned about the use of biometrics.
About 13 million people travel each year to the US under the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) - which entitles them to apply for entry to the US on a passport for up to 90 days for business or leisure without needing a visa.
If any of the 27 VWP countries issues a passport without the necessary criteria after 26 October, the holder will have to apply for a visa.
Delay
There will be no immediate impact on those travelling on Thursday, as the US will still accept passports issued before that date which have a digital photo and are machine-readable.
Washington initially set a deadline of 26 October 2005 but extended it by a year after the European Union complained many nations would have trouble completing the changeover in time.
The decision to use face technology, as opposed to fingerprint or the more accurate iris systems, was set out by the International Civil Aviation Organization in 2003 - as it was the most developed and widely available of the biometric systems at the time.
The UK Identity and Passport Service has issued more than 2.5m biometric passports since March and claims they are "the most secure passport ever issued by the UK".
Structural dimensions of facial features are taken from an applicant's passport photograph and converted into digital data which is stored on a chip in the document.
The chip also contains the biographical details found on the back page of existing passports. It is hoped they will be more difficult to forge.
David Starkie, of technology firm 3M which provides the passport issuance system, says there is a lot of suspicion around the use of biometrics.
"But if you do clone or copy this, what are you going to do with it, if it is not your face?" he said.
Automated iris recognition systems are being trialled in some countries, enabling pre-registered passengers to avoid passport control, but those travelling to the US will still face a security guard at the port of entry.
Travellers will present their passport to the official, who will swipe it, bringing up the details on a computer. The official can then check that the face scan on the chip matches the photograph on the passport, and the holder.
Next generation
Statewatch director Tony Bunyan says that means the passports are not truly "biometric".
"That is only good for a one-on-one check to confirm the person is who he says he is - but that is no good for a database."
He says the excuse that it will help prevent international terrorism is questionable as you need to know whose face or fingerprints you are looking for in the first place.
He also questions the plans for the introduction of other biometrics - fingerprints and iris scans, which will mean passport applicants having to present themselves at enrolment centres in person.
The EU wants biometric passports to include fingerprints by 2009 - which mean the rolling out of a second generation of biometric passports.
Dr Fred Preston, Director UK Identification and Security for Motorola, says he believes biometric systems will be used more and more to help secure borders.
"Multiple biometrics is the way to go, but following ICAO recommendations for face technology is a great way to start," he said.
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Research looks at students' cheating habits
By Colby Miller
The Pine Log
October 26, 2006
An SFA professor's award-winning research delves into the relationship between cheating in school and subsequent deviance in the workplace.
Sharron Graves, assistant professor of accounting, who recently won the "Best Paper" award at the International Business Research and College Teaching & Learning conferences in Las Vegas, has been studying students' cheating habits for a year and a half.
Graves has been comparing research done by others around the country to results from "a few small sample surveys" she conducted at SFA.
"The sample size is too small to release any official data about our campus yet," Graves said.
But through her studies, she has found a definite connection between students' cheating habits and the likelihood that those students will act unethically in the workforce.
On average, 70 percent to 75 percent of students in this country admit to cheating on exams or on homework in high school and college, compared to only 23 percent in 1941, according to the Center for Academic Integrity.
Graves credits this increase to business professionals who set a bad example by acting unethically and to the increased competition level in schools.
"As an effect, employees are 13 times more likely to be deviant at work than in 1980," she said.
According to Graves, there are two types of corporate deviance: property deviance and production deviance.
Property deviance describes the theft, defacing or destruction of a business's property by an employee. Production deviance, the more common of the two, includes surfing the internet during work, turning in false work hours and taking long lunch breaks.
"Production deviance leads to a loss in a company's production," Graves explained, "which forces it to raise prices. So ultimately, we as consumers pay for employees' irresponsible behavior."
Graves believes the remedy for such behavior is to start early.
"Honor codes should be implemented at schools to engrain ethical work and study values into students at an early age," she said. "What is our goal in college? Making it harder for people to cheat? No, I think it's to change the mind set about cheating. This, in turn, will reduce the amount of cheating."
Implementation of a student honor code is already on the college of business's list of long-term goals.
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Another former altar boy says priest abused him
Capitol Hill Blue
Oct 26, 2006, 8:16:30 AM
Another former altar boy says he was sexually abused in the 1970s by the same retired Catholic priest who acknowledged fondling former congressman Mark Foley when Foley was a teenager, the man's attorney said Wednesday.
The new allegations against Anthony Mercieca were made by a man who lived in North Miami and was an altar boy at St. James Catholic Church, where Mercieca worked, attorney Jeffrey Herman said.
Herman said he plans to file a lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Miami. His client, now 40 and identified in the lawsuit only as John Doe No. 26, says Mercieca abused him when he was about 12 years old.
"He had been thinking about it before Foley came forward, and then when Foley came out and the church encouraged other victims to come forward, he decided to come forward," Herman said.
The man said "all of my nightmares came back" when Mercieca's picture appeared on the news last week amid Foley's allegations that the priest had molested him.
Foley (R-Fla.) resigned amid accusations that he sent sexually explicit electronic messages to teenage boys who had worked as pages on Capitol Hill.
Mercieca, 69, now lives on the Maltese island of Gozo in the Mediterranean. No one answered the phone at his home.
Archdiocese spokeswoman Mary Ross Agosta said: "Any of this type of behavior by Father Mercieca was unknown to the archdiocese and we had absolutely no information to indicate that the father did or would engage in any type of inappropriate or abusive behavior."
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Fishing with a killer
The West Australian
What goes on in the mind of a child killer? This is the fascinating and disturbing question The Fishermen: a Journey into the Mind of a Killer seeks to answer through extensive interviews with child murderer James Ryan O'Neill.
Originally scheduled for screening in April last year, the ABC was forced to pull the program after a lastminute Tasmanian Supreme Court injunction. O'Neill claimed the documentary defamed him and would impact on his reputation but last month the High Court of Australia overturned the ruling because not enough emphasis was given to the significance of free speech.
Strangely enough, O'Neill voluntarily took part in the film, agreeing to let retired detective Gordon Davie film the chats they had at Tasmania's Hayes Prison Farm, where O'Neill is serving life for the rape and murder of a young boy near Hobart in 1975.
He was also charged with another similar crime but it never went to trial and he is Tasmania's longest-serving prisoner for a single offence.
Davie's relationship with O'Neill began after he read a newspaper article on the murderer's comfortable living conditions at the prison farm. Wanting to know more and suspicious about just how many other crimes O'Neill could have been involved in, Davie wrote him a letter.
He replied within a week. Davie went to visit him and the two developed a relationship spanning three years. It was only recently when O'Neill reacted angrily to the film that the two stopped talking.
The casual chats they share at the prison farm are the main feature of the documentary and it is chilling to hear O'Neill lie constantly while, at the same time, come across as honest and charming.
Some of these lies are learnt when Davie goes to the Kimberley, researching O'Neill's time there. Here he told people he was a Vietnam War hero, a drover, a lawyer and even an ASIO agent.
Through Davie's gentle questioning (in his more endearing than annoying monotone voice), we quickly learn that O'Neill is not the sort of person you would expect to see in prison.
He is a well-educated and articulate man who knows when he's being manipulated and is quick to change the subject or speak in code on matters (such as murder) he doesn't want to go into.
The documentary also features interviews with a psychiatrist and criminologist and they discuss with Davie whether O'Neill has traits of a psychopath.
But the most spine-tingling scenes are those that open the film. A woman in tears describes how in 1962, when O'Neill was 15, he allegedly showed her the body of a dead boy in his car and threatened to "shove something up (her) bum-hole and murder and bury" her too.
The Fishermen is an intriguing film but don't expect to find out how O'Neill's mind works. Instead be prepared to ponder some of the many rather disturbing questions it raises.
The Fishermen, tonight, 8.30, ABC.
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Mixed Bag
Maths theory bags lotto jackpot
October 25, 2006 12:07pm
Article from: MX
MOST of us believe winning lotto is down to the luck of the draw.
But a syndicate of university professors and tutors in Britain thought it could also be related to the principles of mathematical probability.
And their theory was spectacularly vindicated this week when they matched all six numbers and scooped the $13 million lotto jackpot.
The syndicate, made up of 17 staff members at Bradford University and College, bagged the big prize by using two boxes, 49 pieces of paper and a large amount of brainpower.
But it was far from an overnight success.
Syndicate leader Barry Waterhouse, 41, who works at the design and printing section of the university, explained that the syndicate had been doing the National Lottery for eight years without conspicuous success after it started in 1994 with each member picking his or her own line.
"We just weren't winning with the numbers being picked that way, so we thought of a different method which would mean all 49 numbers would be used,' Mr Waterhouse said.
The syndicate then set up a computer program to check the numbers every week.
It took four years and a total outlay of $8700, but on Saturday, the formula succeeded.
Matching the winning numbers and the bonus ball, they hit the jackpot.
"We just thought that if all the numbers are in use, we must have a good chance of winning and it has proved so, though you never really think it will happen to you, "Mr Waterhouse said.
Fellow syndicate member David Firth, 63, said: "We have won tenners and the odd 70 quid in the past, but now this is the big one."
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Sick war pictures that put Germany to shame
By ALLAN HALL in Berlin
Daily Mail
25th October 2006
German soldiers have caused international outrage after posing with a human skull in Afghanistan.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has pledged that the troops would be punished for desecrating the dead.
The macabre pictures were printed by Germany's biggest-selling daily newspaper, Bild, which said they showed German peacekeepers near Kabul.
The uniformed men are seen holding up the skull and posing with it on a military vehicle. Another is seen exposing himself next to the skull. Bild's headline declares: 'German soldiers desecrate a dead person.'
Other pictures show soldiers simulating oral sex with the skull, and one shows the troops having secured the skull to their vehicle like a bonnet mascot.
The newspaper said it is unclear where the skull came from, but cited an unidentified serviceman as saying it may have come from a 'mass grave' outside Kabul.
Bild would not identify the source of the photos, which are believed to have been taken in 2003.
It said it is unclear whether the skull belonged to an Afghan or dated back to the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.
The publication of the photos caused a storm of protest, overtheshadowing the announcement that more German peacekeepers will serve across the world, after years of Berlin taking a cautious military role.
While British and U.S. soldiers have borne the brunt of recent fighting in southern Afghanistan, nearly 3,000 Germans are based in comparatively quiet Kabul and in the north of the country.
'We all saw pictures today that are shocking, that are repugnant and that can be excused by nothing,' Miss Merkel said during a speech in Berlin.
'The government will investigate soldiers who play a role and act with full severity.'
Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung added: 'We are conducting the investigation at full steam.'
If the incident is confirmed, he said, those involved will face ' disciplinary or even criminal measures'.
Military chief of staff General Wolfgang Schneiderhan said two possible suspects have been identified and were being questioned.
One of them is still with the military and the other has left the army, he said.
Prosecutors in Potsdam, where the military has its command centrefor deployments abroad, have opened an investigation into possible charges of disturbing the peace of the dead, a spokesman said.
Germany is proud of its post-Second World War military training rules, which urge soldiers to take responsibility for their actions.
Mr Jung said the incident shown in the photos is 'diametrically opposed to the values and ways of behaviour' that German troops are taught in training.
Germany currently has more than 2,800 troops in Nato's International Security Assistance Force, serving in Afghanistan's relatively calm North.
Mr Jung said he hoped the photos would not undermine efforts to win over Afghan civilians.
'So far, the mission we have been carrying out in the north has met with broad approval from the population,' he added.
The publication of the pictures came a week after lawmakers decided to investigate separate allegations that German special forces in Afghanistan abused a prisoner.
Murat Kurnaz, a German-born Turk, claimed that two soldiers interrogated him at a camp near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar in 2002 and slammed his head into the ground.
The Defence Ministry said that soldiers questioned about the allegations recalled the presence of a German speaker among prisoners they helped guard near Kandahar - but that the only contact they remembered was a soldier calling out to the man.
Two Israeli warplanes fired over a German navy ship patrolling the Lebanese coast, the Defence Ministry in Berlin said yesterday.
Der Tagesspiegel newspaper quoted a German defence minister telling a parliamentary committee that two Israeli F-16 fighters flew low over the ship and fired twice.
The jets activated infra-red counter-measures, he said.
The minister did not say when the incident happened, or what had caused it.
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Blowout! Chávez Holds Huge Lead in Venezuela Reelection Bid
October 23, 2006
Venezuelan President Hugo Rafael Chávez Frias enjoys a huge lead in his effort to win reelection to another six-year term as president, a new University of Miami School of Communication/Zogby International poll shows.
Chávez, representing the Fifth Republic Movement, wins 59% support from Venezuelan voters, compared to 24% for Manuel Rosales - the governor of Zulia, representing A New Time party -- and just 2% for Benjamin Rausseo, a Venezuelan comedian endorsed by the "piedra" party, the survey shows.
The controversial world leader, who has built an international reputation for himself in opposing initiatives advanced by the United States, and specifically President George W. Bush, has also pushed for reforms at home to pull Venezuelans out of poverty, and to improve the public health care system in the nation, among other reforms. On the world stage, he has worked to enhance his influence with other nations, particularly in Latin America, leveraging his nation's substantial oil revenue to curry favor. He has built a particularly close relationship with Cuba President Fidel Castro, who long has been a thorn in the side of U.S. leaders.
Chávez's lead in the race stems at least in part from his popularity and job performance - 59% said they have a favorable opinion of him and the same percentage give him positive job performance marks, while 40% had a negative review of his work on behalf of the nation.
In addition, 59% said he deserves to be reelected, compared to 33% who said he does not.
No matter the controversy Chávez engenders on the world stage, 58% of likely voters in his homeland said their nation is headed in the right direction, while 28% said things are off on the wrong track. Another 15% said they were unsure.
Asked what issue was most important in decided whom to support in the election, a plurality (39%) said they were most concerned about bringing change to Venezuelan life. Of those who said that, Rosales held a slim 42% to 38% lead. But Chavez led by huge margins among those who had other top priorities in mind for their president. Among those who said the personality of the candidate was most important, Chavez led Rosales by a 73% to 14% margin.
Chávez, 52, has promoted stronger ties to other Latin American countries as an effort to counter what he calls "imperialism" imposed by the U.S. In a speech last month at the United Nations, he publicly ridiculed Bush, calling him the "devil."
And his attacks on Bush seem to reflect sentiment at home - just 20% of Venezuelan likely voters said they hold a favorable opinion of Bush, compared to 57% who have an unfavorable opinion of the U.S. leader. That compares to 39% who hold a favorable opinion of Castro, and 43% who hold an unfavorable opinion of him. The rest were either unfamiliar with Bush and Castro, or were unsure.
Asked about that U.N. speech, 36% said they were proud of their president's performance in New York City, while 23% said they were ashamed of it. Another 15% said it didn't matter to them, while 26% were either unfamiliar with the speech or were unsure what to think about it.
As a member of OPEC, he has constantly pushed for strict production controls to make sure the price of oil remains high. But the national economy is not the most important issue to Venezuelans - crime is, as 64% identified it as the top issue facing them and their families. Fully 58% said they feel that they or their families are threatened by crime, a far greater percentage than the University of Miami School of Communication/Zogby International series of polling has found in other nations in the region.
Still, 68% said they are making enough money to get by without difficulties, while 32% said they do face either some or significant difficulties because they are not making enough money.
Half of those Venezuelan likely voters surveyed said that they are doing better than they were six years ago when Chávez was last elected, and there is rampant optimism that good times will continue - 71% said they believe they will be better off six years from now.
The University of Miami is the largest private research institution in the southeastern United States. The University's mission is to provide quality education, attract and retain outstanding students, support the faculty and their research, and build an endowment for University initiatives. The school website is: www.miami.edu
For a detailed methodological statement, please visit:
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Argentine fossil points to largest bird ever found
By Robert Lee Hotz
Times Staff Writer
October 26, 2006
Fearsome creature that roamed prehistoric Patagonia was 10 feet tall with a skull larger than a horse's.
A curious teenager in Argentina has discovered the fossil skull of the biggest bird ever found - a swift, flightless predator 10 feet tall that pursued its prey across the steppes of Patagonia 15 million years ago, researchers at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County announced Wednesday.
The skull, tapering to a cruel beak curved like a brush hook, belongs to a previously unknown offshoot of extinct birds known as phorusrhacids - "terror birds."
Weighing perhaps 400 pounds, the bird most likely preyed on rodents the size of sheep that once grazed on the South American savanna.
"It is an unbelievable creature," said paleontologist Luis Chiappe, director of the museum's Dinosaur Institute, who documented the find in the journal Nature. "This is the largest known bird, with a skull bigger than a horse's head."
Measuring more than 28 inches long, the fossil skull is at least 10% bigger than the largest previously known species, Chiappe and his colleagues reported.
An Argentine high school student, Guillermo Aguirre-Zabiala, found the fossil two years ago among the rock outcrops between two houses by the railroad station in his village east of Bariloche.
The young man was so galvanized by his discovery that he changed his course of study from psychology to paleontology and Earth science, Chiappe said. "This discovery has shaped his life."
The fossil also is altering how scientists understand the evolution of South America's largest prehistoric terror birds.
Until now, scientists thought that these unusual flightless birds had become more portly and less agile as they evolved into bigger and bigger carnivores.
The slender leg and foot bones found with the immense skull, however, closely resemble those of a typical running bird, the scientists reported.
"It was a speedy bird," Chiappe said. "I am not saying this animal ran as fast as an ostrich, but it was clearly a good runner."
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London mayor: Veil debate redolent of Nazism
Ynet
25/10/2006
Livingstone tells press conference suggestion that Muslims cause of racial divide in Britain 'echoes very much the demonology of Nazi Germany when Hitler said it was the Jews' fault and the problems were brought upon themselves'
London Mayor Ken Livingstone said Tuesday that the public debate over whether or not Muslim women should be allowed to wear veils is redolent of Nazi Germany.
Livingstone told a press conference at the launch of the first ever report into Muslims living in London that the suggestion that Muslims are the cause of the racial divide in Britain "echoes very much the demonology of Nazi Germany when Hitler said it was the Jews' fault and the problems were brought upon themselves."
"There is a faint echo of that in a lot of the rubbish we have been seeing in the media recently," he said.
The UK veil debate was raised after former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw revealed that he asks Muslim women to remove veils from their faces when they visit his constituency office to seek his help and suggested that the veils be removed permanently. Prime Minister Tony Blair said the veil was a sign of 'division.
Livingstone slammed Straw for his comments, saying, "If you are a powerful man and a person comes to see you for help, I think the majority of people would not be able to refuse (a request to remove their veil). As for not being able to see their face, so much of politics is conducted on the telephone."
The mayor said he had 'never asked a Jew to remove his kippa, a Sikh to remove his turban or a Christian to remove his cross.'
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Iran unlikely to have nuclear bomb before 2015: Germany
Reuters
26/10/2006
Iran is unlikely to be able to develop a nuclear bomb before 2015, the chief of Germany's BND foreign intelligence agency said on Tuesday.
His estimate falls within the 3-10 year range of forecasts given by most international experts.
"It is difficult to give an exact estimate of the time," BND head Ernst Uhrlau told a security conference organized by the Welt am Sonntag newspaper.
"According to the current rate of enrichment, the Islamic Republic will not have sufficient amounts of highly enriched uranium with which to build atomic weapons before 2010. For a nuclear bomb we are looking at around 2015," said Uhrlau.
Iran is OPEC's second biggest oil exporter and denies accusations from the United States and other western nations that it wants to make nuclear weapons.
Tehran is in a standoff with the international community over its program to develop nuclear technology which it says it needs to meet booming energy needs.
Talks between Iran and the European Union to explore a compromise on enrichment to avoid U.N. sanctions have collapsed.
Iran is hoping Russia and China, both major trade partners and Security Council veto holders, will prevent the United States from pushing through anything more than largely symbolic sanctions.
Earlier this month the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to impose financial and weapons sanctions on
North Korea after it conducted a nuclear test.
Comment: No problem then. Even if Iran was a threat to anyone (which it clearly is not for many very obvious reasons), there is no need to rattle the sabers. So why are Israel and the US doing so?
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The Violence of Every Day Life
Woman sues Hammond police over strip search
Associated Press
HAMMOND, Ind. - A woman videotaped during a police strip-search has sued the city, claiming the tape was distributed to others.
The woman is seeking the maximum amount of damages allowed against a municipality, $300,000, and cites the city of Hammond on 10 counts, including intentional infliction of emotional distress, invasion of privacy and violation of the Fourth Amendment.
The complaint was filed Tuesday at Lake Superior Court by the woman's attorney, Todd M. Conover. The woman's name is not included in the complaint.
The lawsuit states that on Oct. 31, 2004, police arrested the woman for shoplifting in Hammond and the she was subjected to an illegal strip search. She was held for more than 24 hours without any charges being filed, and was not able to communicate with her father, the lawsuit says.
It also alleges that the strip search was videotaped or electronically recorded and that the illegal recording was copied and distributed by police officers.
The police officers were cleared after an internal investigation, according to Hammond Police spokesman Michael Jorden. A subsequent FBI investigation into the taping of the strip search determined the taping was accidental, Jorden said.
Officers were unaware that the cell where the strip search was conducted was being videotaped, Jorden said, adding that the search itself was legal. Jorden insists that once the recording was discovered, supervisors were notified "to make sure it didn't happen again."
"It was a serious complaint, and we treated it as such," Jorden said.
Jorden denied that the tape of the strip search was distributed to others.
Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. said he was not aware of the allegations, but said lawsuits against the city are common.
"If it's got merit, we're going to settle, and if it doesn't have merit, we're going to fight it tooth and nail," he said.
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Youths torch two buses near Paris
BBC
Youths in the Paris suburbs have attacked two buses in separate incidents on the eve of the anniversary of rioting among immigrant communities.
In Nanterre, northwestern Paris, about 10 passengers fled a bus as masked youths set it ablaze, police said.
A similar attack happened in Bagnolet, eastern Paris, where a youth held a gun to the bus driver's head while others set it on fire, officials said.
Police report a spate of youth violence ahead of the anniversary.
Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie accused the youths of attempted murder in the latest incidents.
A security services report leaked to a French newspaper this week said that the conditions that led to last year's riots were still in place.
Paris suburbs map
Several hundred youths, of largely African and North African descent, marched to the National Assembly in Paris on Wednesday to present a list of complaints to the government.
They called for more action to tackle discrimination and more jobs and training for the young.
"Lots of people don't believe what we're doing. They don't understand the potential," Abdel Zahiri, one of the marchers, told the Associated Press news agency.
"The risk of violence exists, but hope exists, too," he said.
Election issue
About 9,000 cars were torched in the three weeks of unrest last year, which spread through the country's housing estates - dominated by immigrants and their French-born children.
A police official in Nanterre said the bus was attacked on Wednesday by a gang of youths armed with a flammable liquid.
"There were at least 10 passengers on board, who only just had enough time to get out. Thankfully there was nobody with any handicaps on board, or it could have ended badly," he told the AFP news agency.
Separately, bus routes in the Essonne area, south of Paris, were suspended because of fears of attack.
Law and order have become major issues with presidential elections due next year.
Candidates from the two biggest parties have promised a tough approach to crime.
But according to the BBC's James Read, there has been less discussion of youth unemployment, social alienation and racial discrimination in impoverished suburban estates.
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Niger starts mass Arab expulsions
BBC
Niger's government has expelled a number of Arabs, mostly nomads with their animals, after escorting them to the border with Chad.
Local governor Umaru Yacuba told the BBC that it was implementing in earnest a controversial decision to expel the Mahamid thought to number some 150,000.
The government ordered the Arabs to go back to Chad after accusing them of wrongdoing, including theft and rape.
But an official earlier said it would only expel those without legal papers.
Government spokesman Mohamed Ben Omar told the BBC it was an immigration issues and he estimated that some 3,300 would have to leave.
When asked what the government would do about those who do not have the right papers, but who work as civil servants and in the police - or even as MPs, Mr Omar said they would have to think about it.
On Wednesday, Mahamid leaders told reporters in Niamey they would defend themselves against attack and called on the United Nations to intervene.
They insisted they were citizens of Niger and "have no other country to go to", after being given five days to leave the country.
Many of the Arabs came to Niger from neighbouring Chad following the 1974 drought in Chad.
Others who were fleeing fighting in Chad arrived in the 1980s. Many have since risen to senior positions in the military, local administration and in business.
Arid zone
Earlier this week, the governor of Diffa State, where most of the Mahamid live, told them it was "high time" to pack and return to Chad.
"We have decided, starting today, to expel these nomadic Arab 'Mohamides' to their home countries," Niger's Interior Minister Mounkaila Modi told national television.
"These foreigners have shown no respect to the rights of the natives and they're putting pressure on pastures in this region. We can no longer accept seeing our ecosystem degraded by foreigners."
Mr Modi said the Mahamid possessed illegal firearms and were a serious threat to the security of local communities and that their camels were draining local oases, Reuters news agency reports.
Like the rest of the country, the east of Niger is extremely arid.
It is populated by nomadic cattle herders, whilst the Arabs also own camels. Not surprisingly, one source of the tension between the communities is water.
With the Sahara desert expanding quite quickly there are growing fears that the scarcity of water could spark future problems in many African countries in the region.
The BBC's West Africa correspondent Will Ross says that with the spread of Islam to Africa in the 7th and 8th centuries, Arabs greatly expanded their presence and influence and there are many examples of how the African and Arab cultures have mixed.
For example, some 20% of East Africa's Swahili language comes from Arabic. Arab and non-Arab Africans both had the common goal of opposing European colonialists.
But there have also been areas where the cultures have clashed, one example being Sudan, which has been plagued by conflict between the Arab dominated government in the north and the black African south.
Comment: There appears to be a world wide campaign to make sure that Arabs have no refuge. Everyone else will not be far behind them.
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BAE goes big on 'green' weapons
BBC
Reduced-lead bullets and recyclable explosives are among the developments being put forward by arms manufacturer British Aerospace (BAE) as part of a major investment in ecologically-sound weaponry.
The company, one of the world's biggest arms-makers, says it has been making investments in creating products that reduce the collateral damage of warfare.
"We're looking across a range of all the platforms and areas we produce, and trying to improve all the mechanisms," Deborah Allen, director of corporate responsibility for the company, told BBC World Service's Culture Shock programme.
"Everything from looking at making a fighter jet more fuel-efficient and looking at the materials that munitions are made of and what their impact on the environment would be."
Bang-free bomb
BAE stress that the point of these developments is to make sure that they minimise the wider impact of the weapon's use.
In some cases, the weapons have been changed to reduce collateral damage and to make sure they are as accurate as possible.
In others, the environment has been the key factor. The idea behind the lead-free bullets, for example, is that if they get lodged in the environment, they "do not cause any additional harm".
Ms Allen said that this is partly a response to people becoming more environmentally aware.
"No company, regardless of what they make, can now just make a product, bung it out there, and then forget about it," she said.
"We all have a duty of care to ensure that from cradle to grave products are being used appropriately and do not do lasting harm."
Another of BAE's ideas is what has been described as a "bang-free bomb".
In fact, although the explosion is quieter, the bomb has been re-engineered so the risk to the user of exposure to the bomb's fumes is reduced.
"This is to ensure they are safe to use, that they only go off when they are supposed to go off, and that they do the minimum of collateral damage," said Ms Allen.
"What we have to do is ensure that the person deploying the bomb is not going to be put at extra risk for using it.
"These things are going to be used, and that, unfortunately, is an aspect of the modern world. We just have to make sure that our customer is safe using these things."
Contradictory
Future trends analyst Sarah Bentley told Culture Shock that she thought the changes to the weapons were a "very good thing."
"Unfortunately, as much as we hate the idea of war, it is a reality of life and it does happen," she said.
"I think it's only going to be beneficial if, for example, explosives have a limited shelf life, which does away with the problem of landmines exploding anything up to 20 years after the initial deployment has taken place."
For example, she cited explosives that eventually turn into manure, which essentially "regenerate the environment that they had initially destroyed."
"It is very ironic and very contradictory, but I do think, surely, if all the weapons were made in this manner it would be a good thing."
Comment: You can go to your grave happy in the knowledge that you are being killed in an ecologically sound manner. Hurray! No more do you need worry that the lead from bullets will leach into the soil from your festering body.
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Rogue elephant kills five
Reuters
A ROGUE elephant in eastern Nepal has killed five people and injured three others by trampling houses in night-time attacks in remote villages during the past week, officials said today.
"The elephant, which came from a jungle along the Nepal-India border, killed a 55-year old man in Pakali village on Thursday," said police officer Tej Bahadur Basnet from Sunsari district, 350km east of Kathmandu.
Yesterday, the elephant killed a woman in neighbouring village of Barmatole in the district.
"The animal goes on the rampage at night before disappearing in the jungle," the police officer said.
Three other people were trampled to death and three were injured in nearby Dharan district on Sunday, he said.
"We burnt jute sacks while the locals set off firecrackers to drive the elephant away," the officer said.
Locals had done nothing to provoke the attacks, Mr Basnet said.
Elephants are protected as an endangered species under Nepali law, but there have been instances in the past of tuskers being killed after causing human fatalities.
There are four populations of elephants in Nepal, with a total of around 100 animals, according to the most recent survey undertaken by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in 1998.
Two of the populations migrate between northern India and Nepal, said Basanta Subba, a WWF official in Kathmandu.
Habitat destruction and migratory route disruption could be reasons the elephant has started killing people, Mr Subba said.
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Man charged with crimes against nature
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
By TIM YOUNKMAN
TIMES WRITER
A 44-year-old Saginaw man remains jailed today on charges of bestiality after he was seen engaged in sexual acts with a dead dog, Michigan State Police troopers said.
Ronald Kuch was arrested after police searched the area of Midland and Carter roads Friday for a man who ran away from a Bay County Animal Control officer. The entire incident was within view of a nearby day care center.
At his arraignment on Monday, Kuch demanded a preliminary examination in Bay County District Court. District Judge Craig Alston ordered him to remain jailed in lieu of $500,000 bond pending a hearing on the evidence Nov. 6.
Kuch is charged with crimes against nature and assaulting a law enforcement officer.
Troopers said a woman from the day care center called for animal control because there was a dead dog near the property that had been hit by a car several days earlier.
Before officers could arrive, the man showed up and began engaging in sexual acts with the dog, police said. The animal control officer also reported seeing Kuch involved in the sex act and as he approached him, Kuch shoved him away and ran off.
State troopers searched the area and found the man hiding in the attic of a nearby house.
Officers determined that the house belonged to the man's girlfriend and later learned that the dog, a black Labrador retriever, also belonged to the girlfriend. The dog had been dead for four or five days.
The official charge of crimes against nature carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison. If the person is a repeat offender, the maximum is life in prison.
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Your Health
'There's nothing he wouldn't eat'
Tuesday October 24, 2006
The Guardian
Last month, an inquest was held into the death of Dewi Evans, a 61-year-old man from south Wales. Mr Evans had been a patient at a psychiatric hospital in Pontyclun and was suffering from pica, a rare disorder which makes the sufferer feel a compulsion to eat non-food items. He had undergone surgery twice before, but died this time, after attempts to remove objects including a screw, a pen top, a magnet and some coins from his bowel. At the inquest, the hospital's deputy manager explained how an extra fence had to be erected around the hospital to stop Mr Evans going looking for things to eat, and how staff had to constantly monitor him in case he tried to swallow objects or drink bottles of cleaning fluid.
Common cravings in people with pica include the urge to eat soil, coal, rust, chalk and paper (in the 16th century it was given its name from the Latin for "magpie" due to the sufferer's often indiscriminate eating), although people have been known to ingest anything from animal faeces to bits of metal.
"Pica usually appears in people of a low mental age," says Gregory O'Brien, professor of developmental psychiatry at Northumberland University. "So it affects young kids and people with severe learning difficulties." Professor O'Brien says 1%-2% of people with learning disabilities suffer from extreme pica. "It's really not very common but when it occurs, it can be bad."
It can cause digestive problems - ingesting soil can lead to worm infestations and damage to teeth. It can also have grave consequences if the items consumed are poisonous or, as in Mr Evans's case, cause an obstruction in the intestines.
In 2002, a 62-year-old French man with a history of mental illness went to hospital complaining of stomach pains. An x-ray showed he had swallowed five kilograms of coins, necklaces and needles; his stomach was so heavy it had been forced down between his hips. He died after an operation to remove the objects. In 2000, Edward Cope, a 33-year-old man with autism from Manchester, died from complications after swallowing 10 buttons, a drawing pin, pieces of chain and bone and a large amount of black foam rubber.
People with pica have to be watched constantly. Vivien Cooper founded the Challenging Behaviour Foundation (thecbf.org.uk) to give parents of children with behavioural difficulties information and support. Her son, Daniel, who is now 21, has Cri du Chat syndrome, a genetic disorder that results in a range of learning disabilities and challenging behaviours - one of which is pica. "There is nothing he wouldn't consider eating," she says. "If we go to the beach, suddenly you'll think 'did he put something in his mouth?'. He has eaten sand, pebbles, stones, cigarette ends, pen tops, the ends of plastic razors, string, Sellotape. When he was younger, he drank a bottle of washing-up liquid. If he cuts himself, we can't put plasters on him because he'll eat them. He lives in a residential centre and recently ate some disposable rubber gloves. When he was younger, he learned that he could rip open a teddy and eat the stuffing."
Because Daniel's pica is inconsistent, Cooper says she, and the staff who help look after him, have to be always on their guard. "We have had to take him to hospital many times, mainly just to check something hasn't got stuck if we suspect he has swallowed something. You have to be constantly aware but in a way that doesn't inhibit his life, and you have to make sure his environment is right - he has laminate flooring in his room and an indestructible mattress."
There is no explanation for Daniel's pica. "He was given blood tests for zinc deficiency but nothing showed up."
In one American study, 25% of patients in psychiatric care were found to have pica and it appeared in 60% of people with autism (pica tends to be a symptom of something else rather than a disorder in itself).
There are two main types of the condition, says O'Brien. "Food pica, where what a person eats is edible but is not prepared for eating - for instance, I have had patients who would eat a catering-sized tin of coffee powder or gorge on marmalade or potato peelings - and non-food pica, where people eat anything else. Once it starts, it can be difficult to control."
Pica can also appear in young children who go further than just putting things in their mouths. It is normal for infants and toddlers to put things in their mouths but 20% of children will have pica (identified by eating a non-food item repeatedly for more than a month) at some point. Most will outgrow it but the disorder is commonly associated with autism and other learning difficulties, or in children who have suffered brain damage. "If it appears in young children, for the most part it improves with age," says O'Brien. "By two, they should really have stopped trying to eat non-food items. Most parents will watch them and try to divert them with something else."
It is also more common in severely neglected and deprived children who do not necessarily have a learning disability. "I have seen children in orphanages in the Ukraine and parts of eastern Europe who had been totally lacking in stimulation and some of them showed signs of pica. They would eat fluff off the floor and blankets, anything for a bit of stimulation," says O'Brien.
Some forms of pica can also be cultural. Geophagia (the consumption of earth, typically earth that has a high percentage of clay) is considered healthy in many places because people believe it can cure diarrhoea, stop nausea and remove toxins (kaolin is a clay mineral often used in commercial diarrhoea remedies). In some countries in Africa and south America, clay is sold to pregnant women as a "medication".
Although little research has been done on pica, many doctors believe that in some cases, it can be a sign of deficiency in some nutrients, especially iron, even when the items eaten do not contain the nutrients needed. Anecdotal evidence suggests that prescribing iron supplements can reduce or eliminate pica. Pagophagia is the compulsive consumption of ice and is thought to be a response to anaemia, perhaps because it soothes a swollen tongue, one symptom of low iron.
Pica can also start in pregnancy. Around 40% of pregnant women experience cravings and a small proportion of these will crave non-food items. Doctors and midwives have reported women craving coal, chalk, even cigarette ash. "There is a theory that it is linked to iron deficiency," says Gail Johnson, education and professional development adviser for the Royal College of Midwives. "For most women who have pica, it comes and goes and it usually only happens in the early stages of pregnancy. On the whole, most women are sensible and stick to an appropriate diet even if they do have cravings for odd things - we certainly don't recommend women go out and eat soil".
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Children born after IVF treatment 'face higher health risks'
Ian Sample in New Orleans
Thursday October 26, 2006
The Guardian
Children born to couples who have undergone fertility treatment are more likely to be diagnosed with autism, cancer and other disorders such as cerebral palsy and mental retardation, researchers claimed yesterday.
The higher risk to child health is believed to be caused by medical problems in the parents, such as diabetes and hypertension, damaging the child in the womb, but doctors conducting the study said IVF and other fertility treatments may also play a role. Medical records of children born after their parents sought fertility treatment showed they were four times more likely to have autism than those born to fertile parents. Childhood cancers including leukaemia and brain tumours also rose.
The risk of more minor problems, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, rose by 40%, and other medical conditions affecting hearing and sight nearly doubled. Children had a 30% higher chance of being admitted to neonatal intensive care units and to stay in hospital for more than three days if they were born following fertility treatment, the study found.
The researchers stressed the figures represent relative risks. In July researchers at Guy's and St Thomas' hospital in London reported the prevalence of autism to be 0.39% in the general population, a figure that will include some children born to parents aided by fertility treatment. A fourfold rise in the risk of autism would see a child's chances of having the condition increase to 1.56%.
Mary Croughan at the University of California in San Francisco studied 2,000 women who either gave birth naturally after a long period of infertility, or conceived after a variety of fertility treatments, and compared them with 2,000 fertile mothers who gave birth between 1994 and 1998. More than 19,000 medical records were used to build up a picture of the women's pregnancies and deliveries and the health of their children up to six years of age.
The researchers found infertile women had more complications such as pre-term labour and pre-eclampsia, more delivery difficulties and caesarean sections. Children born to infertile women were 20% more likely to have low birth weights and were twice as likely to show evidence of poor growth in the womb. Speaking at the American Association for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) conference in New Orleans, Dr Croughan said that medical conditions more common in infertile couples may be to blame for the rise in childhood health problems. She said: "The vast majority of children born to infertile couples are healthy, but if a couple has any risk factors that could lead to a child not being born healthy, then those should of course be taken into consideration."
Clare Brown, chief executive of Infertility Network UK, said "continual research" was needed to ensure "treatment is safe for couples and potential children".
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Flu jab safe for babies
Health24
Even the youngest children - those between 6 months and 23 months old - can safely benefit from the flu vaccine, a new study concludes.
The study, which looked at more than 45 000 infants and toddlers from all over the United States, found there were only a few incidents of side effects that required medical treatment as a result of the vaccine, and none was serious.
"This vaccine is very safe in this age group. For me, as a paediatrician and as a parent, it was very reassuring how few diagnoses there were that were associated with this vaccine," said the study's lead author, Dr Simon J. Hambidge, an investigator with Kaiser Permanente Colorado's Clinical Research Unit in Denver.
Results of the study appear in the October 25 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
1 in 5 gets the flu
Annually, as many as one in five Americans gets the flu, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
The best way to prevent the flu is to get the flu vaccination. The CDC recommends that most people get the shot, but specifically advises the following groups of people to receive the flu vaccine every year:
* Children between 6 months and 5 years old,
* Pregnant women,
* People older than 50,
* People who live in nursing homes or other long-term care settings,
* Those with chronic medical conditions, such as diabetes, lung disease and HIV/Aids,
* People living with or caring for young children, nursing-home residents or those with compromised immune systems or chronic medical conditions.
The first time an infant or child receives the vaccine, it must be administered in two separate doses, given one month apart.
Children under 2 have an increased risk of serious complications from the flu. The only people at higher risk are those over 65, according to the study.
Beginning with the 2004-05 flu season, the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices began recommending that children between 6 months and 23 months of age receive the vaccine. However, the largest study that had been done on this age group included fewer than 9 000 vaccinations.
How the study was conducted
So, Hambidge, along with colleagues from the Vaccine Safety Datalink Team and eight other health-care organisations, examined retrospective data for more than 45 000 children who got almost 70 000 vaccinations between January 1991 and May 2003.
The researchers looked only for "medically attended" vaccine complications up to 42 days after immunisation. Minor side effects such as swelling or tenderness at the injection site weren't included in the analysis.
The only statistically significant association they found was for nausea and vomiting. However, Hambidge said these side effects were probably due to exposure to the influenza virus or another virus around the time of vaccination.
Conditions such as asthma, ear infections and the common cold were actually less likely to occur after vaccination, according to the study. The researchers believe these may also be chance findings.
A previous study had found a possible association between the vaccine and febrile seizures (seizures that occur due to high fevers), but this study found no such link, according to Hambidge.
Jab's safety confirmed
"This vaccine was already believed to be safe, and this study backs that up," said Dr David Horwitz, a paediatrician at New York University Medical Centre in New York City.
"This study involved a huge number of children. Generally, a study this large would show any kind of significant adverse reaction that might occur," he added.
The bottom line, according to Hambidge, is that this vaccine "will help protect kids against a nasty illness." - (HealthDayNews)
Comment: Before "jabbing" your baby you may want to seriously consider the research done in the Signs Supplement: The Flu Threat. This particular story appears to be pure propaganda for the pharmacutical companies.
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Woman Claims She Didn't Know Home Was Drug-Dealing Haven
KSAT
SAN ANTONIO -- Carrie Hardaway admits her grandchildren have been arrested on drug charges before and doesn't deny they walk up and down Buena Vista street at all hours of the night.
But the 84-year-old woman claims she never envisioned that her home was a haven for crack cocaine dealing.
"Truly the cars do stop a whole lot," she said. "I don't know what they're getting from them. Most of the time I'm back in my room reading the Bible."
But on Friday, federal agents raided Hardaway's West Side home while she was asleep.
"Only thing I hear was 'Boom! Boom !" she said. "And I said, 'Oh Lord, my house was on fire.'"
Drug Enforcement Agency officials said that there were between 75 and 100 drug transactions occuring at Hardaway's home and two others nearby for nearly 15 years.
"It was drive-through, come up to the fence and take the drugs," said Nancy Sanford of the DEA. "A lot of them would put it in their mouths and leave."
Sanford said the most serious charge Hardaway faces is that of drugs being sold within 100 feet of a school.
Hardaway's home and the two others may also be destroyed, Sanford said.
"We may actually demolish those houses and put in some type of community service education center," she said.
Eight people in all were initially arrested, including Hardaway.
Acting on a tip, law enforcement officials later arrested Leonard Johnson on drug charges.
The DEA is still looking for Christopher Hardaway, 33; Reginald Harrison, 37; and Clarence McAllister, 28.
Comment: For some reason this story seems symbolic for the fundies as a whole.
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Struggling to Make Ends Meet
Tackle climate change or face deep recession, world's leaders warned
James Randerson, science correspondent
Thursday October 26, 2006
The Guardian
Climate change could tilt the world's economy into the worst global recession in recent history, a report will warn next week.
Sir Nicholas Stern, a former chief economist with the World Bank, will warn that governments need to tackle the problem head-on by cutting emissions or face economic ruin. The findings, due to be released on Monday, will turn economic argument about global warming on its head by insisting that fighting global warming will save industrial nations money. The US refused to join the Kyoto protocol, the international agreement on greenhouse gas emissions, because George Bush said it would harm the economy.
The contents of the Stern review into the economics of climate change - commissioned by the Treasury - have been kept secret since the nature of the work was revealed to the world's environment ministers in Mexico this month. But Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser, yesterday gave the Guardian a preview of its main findings.
Speaking at a climate change conference in Birmingham, he said: "All of [Stern's] detailed modelling out to the year 2100 is going to indicate first of all that if we don't take global action we are going to see a massive downturn in global economies." He added: "If no action is taken we will be faced with the kind of downturn that has not been seen since the great depression and the two world wars." Sir David called the review "the most detailed economic analysis that I think has yet been conducted".
The review will highlight the threat of sea level rise. Sir David said: "If you look at sea level rises alone and the impact that will have on global economies where cities are becoming inundated by flooding ... this will cause the displacement of ... hundreds of millions of people."
Sir David's comments mirror those of the foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, on Tuesday. "This is not just an environmental problem," she said. "It is a defence problem. It is a problem for those who deal with economics and development, conflict prevention, agriculture, finance, housing, transport, innovation, trade and health." Sir Nicholas will argue that tackling the problem may not prove as economically painful as some experts predict. Investment in low-carbon technologies could stimulate the global economy. Sir David said: "[Stern's] analysis, I think, will also surprise many people in terms of the relatively small cost of action."
The International Energy Agency predicts that $15 trillion (£8 trillion) of investment in new energy sources will be required over the next 15 years. "The massive investment programme that's ahead of us is an opportunity for us to move towards a zero carbon energy system. The investment process is going to act quite possibly in the opposite direction to an economic downturn," Sir David said.
He told the Rapid Climate Change conference, organised by the Natural Environment Research Council in Birmingham, that achieving global political consensus would be extremely difficult. "In my view this is the biggest challenge our global political system has ever been faced with. We've never been faced with a decision where collective decision making is required by all major countries." The timescale too is unprecedented. "Actions being asked of the political system today are only going to play through into mid-century and beyond. So for the first time we are asking a global political system to make decisions around risks to their populations that are well outside the time period of any election process."
He drew parallels between scientific advice on global warming and advice from seismologists ahead of the Boxing Day tsunami. A month before the disaster a delegation warned governments around the Indian ocean about the extreme danger posed by tectonic activity under the sea. No government chose to act on the advice. "$30m as the cost to install some kind of early warning system presumably looked like a lot of money." But such a system could have saved 150,000 lives.
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Fed seen holding rates steady into 2007
RTÉ Business
October 26, 2006 08:36
The Federal Reserve is set to hold interest rates steady well into 2007 as it awaits a clearer outlook for the flagging US economy.
The central bank last night kept borrowing costs on hold for the third meeting running, arguing that falling energy prices should bring down 'elevated' inflation.
After a two-day meeting, the bank's federal open market committee (FOMC) voted 10-1 to keep its main interest rate at 5.25%. In a statement, the FOMC said economic growth had slowed to reflect a cooling housing market, but was 'likely to expand at a moderate pace' in the future.
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Inflation pressures, while 'elevated' now, should 'moderate over time' thanks partly to falling oil prices, the panel said in its communique, which contained only marginal changes from last month.
US economists said the FOMC seemed poised to keep US rates on hold for some time to come, after calling off a long-running campaign of increases in August. The FOMC's sole dissenting voice was the hawkish head of the Richmond Fed, Jeffrey Lacker, who again wanted a quarter-point rise in rates.
Most analysts still believe the Fed's next move will be to cut interest rates. That would be its first reduction since June 2003, when it lowered the fed funds rate to a historic depth of 1%. For the next year, it kept the rate on hold before starting its long run of hikes in June 2004 which continued until the August pause of this year.
Evidence is mounting that the US economy, after growing robustly since 2001, is now hitting the brakes. US gross domestic product slipped to a second-quarter pace of 2.6%, compared to a blistering 5.6% clip in the first three months of the year.
The first GDP estimate for the third quarter, due out tomorrow, is expected by most economists to show growth slowing further to 2.1%.
But in a headache for the Fed, inflation remains stubbornly high at the same time that growth is slowing. US consumer prices fell 0.5% in September. But that was due to tumbling energy costs, and 'core' prices excluding food and energy rose 0.2%.
Comment: They have to at least hold the economy together until Christmas. All bets are off after ringing in the new year.
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Dow Ends Up Again; Fed Raises Inflation Fears
By TIM PARADIS
AP
Oct 25, 2006
NEW YORK - Wall Street managed a tiny gain Wednesday, enough to give the Dow Jones industrial average another record close, after the Federal Reserve stoked some fears of inflation pressures but implied that it's not intent on raising interest rates.
The Fed's Open Market Committee kept the nation's benchmark rate unchanged at 5.25 percent for a third straight meeting, but it noted in its accompanying policy statement that recent readings on inflation have moved higher recently. Stocks waffled after the Fed's decision was released as investors worried that inflation concerns could prompt the central bank to resume its rate increases in the future.
There may also have been some disappointment on Wall Street because "it's not a sign that the Fed is going to be cutting rates anytime soon," said Drew Matus, senior economist at Lehman Brothers.
Still, the market held up well. There were really few, if any, surprises in the Fed's statement, which described the economy as likely to grow at a moderate pace after more than two years of rate increases.
"I think that the stock market, if it has one mind, is saying the soft landing is in place, that the Fed is on hold for a while," said Jerry Webman, chief economist at Oppenheimer Funds.
"The stock market thinks the Fed just patted them on the back and said, go ahead boys and girls," Webman said.
According to preliminary calculations, the Dow rose 6.80, or 0.06 percent, to 12,134.68. After the Fed announcement, the Dow reach another new trading high of 12,147.97 before pulling back; it also set new trading and closing records the previous session.
Broader stock indicators also closed higher. The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 4.84, or 0.35 percent, 1,382.22, and the Nasdaq composite index rose 11.75, or 0.50 percent, to 2,356.59.
Bonds rallied, with the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note falling to 4.76 percent from 4.82 late Tuesday. The dollar was mixed against other major currencies, while gold prices rose.
Light, sweet crude settled up $2.05 at $61.40 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange after a weekly Energy Department report showed an unexpected drop in crude inventories. Meanwhile, sentiment has grown in recent days that OPEC production cuts might help shore up oil prices. On Friday, oil prices fell to their lows for the year.
As investors try to gauge the health of the economy they also looked at quarterly reports Wednesday from big names like GM and Altria Group Inc. (MO), the parent of tobacco-products maker Philip Morris.
Investors have also paid close attention to economic news as they try to determine how quickly the economy is slowing and whether it can pull off a soft landing. One possible area of concern was a report from the Chicago Fed that showed its National Activity Index fell to its lowest readings in 11 months in August.
The market had little reaction to a report early in the session from the National Association of Realtors that existing home sales declined 1.9 percent to a seasonally adjusted sales pace of 6.18 million units, marking the slowest sales rate since January 2004. Also, the median price of a home registered a sharp drop.
In corporate news, GM fell $1.48, or 4.1 percent, to $34.71, despite reporting that its third-quarter loss narrowed as cost-cutting aspects of its turnaround plan began to take hold and as sales rose about 4 percent. The world's largest automaker said its loss for the quarter fell to $115 million, or 20 cents per share, from $1.7 billion, or $2.94 per share, a year earlier.
Altria rose $2.28, or 2.9 percent, to $82.10 after saying it plans to announce in January plans for a spinoff of Kraft Foods Inc. (KFT) and despite reporting third-quarter results that came in slightly below Wall Street's expectation.
Boeing Co. (BA), like GM and Altria part of the 30 stocks in the Dow, fell $2.73, or 3.3 percent, to $80.86 after the No. 2 commercial aircraft maker behind Airbus saw its third-quarter profit fall 31 percent as the company recorded expenses to discontinue an in-flight Internet service.
Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) advanced $4.05, or 12 percent, to $37.68 after the Internet retailer reported a stronger-than-expected third-quarter profit following a disappointing second quarter.
Taser International Inc. (TASR), which makes stun guns, rose 25 cents, or 2.7 percent, to $9.45 after posting a sharp increase in third-quarter earnings.
Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by about 2 to 1 on the New York Stock Exchange, where volume came to 1.82 billion shares compared with 1.69 billion shares at the same point Monday.
The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies was up 4.72, or 0.62 percent, at 767.15.
Overseas, Japan's Nikkei stock average closed down 0.48 percent. Britain's FTSE 100 closed up 0.52 percent, Germany's DAX index was up 0.28 percent, and France's CAC-40 was up 0.33 percent.
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Exxon profits rise to $10.49B in 3Q
AP
NEW YORK - Exxon Mobil Corp. says its profit rose to $10.49 billion in the third quarter, making it the second largest quarterly profit ever for a publicly traded U.S. company.
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Home sales, prices drop in September
By Martin Crutsinger
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Sales of existing homes fell for a sixth straight month in September and the median sale price dropped on an annual basis by the largest amount on record, further evidence of a soft housing market.
The National Association of Realtors said sales of previously owned homes fell 1.9% in September to a seasonally adjusted sales pace of 6.18 million units, slowest sales rate since January 2004.
The median price of a single-family home fell to $219,800 last month, a drop of 2.5% from the median price in September 2005. That was the biggest year-over-year price decline in records going back nearly four decades.
Housing, which had set sales records for both new and existing homes for five years, has been rapidly losing altitude this year, as consumers were hit by rising mortgage rates, soaring energy prices and a slowing economy.
But economists with the Realtors say they believe the housing decline could be hitting bottom.
"The worst is behind us, as far as a market correction - this is likely the trough for sales," said David Lereah, the Realtors' chief economist. "When consumers recognize that home sales are stabilizing, we'll see the buyers who've been on the sidelines get back into the market."
But analysts say the weakness in housing could last several months more, with a real upturn in sales not coming until spring.
Sales were down in all sections of the country except the South, which posted a small 0.4% rise. Sales fell the most in the Northeast, a drop of 3.7%, followed by the West, where sales were down 3.1%, and the Midwest, where sales fell 2.8%.
The inventory of unsold homes, after climbing to all-time highs, fell for a second month, decreasing 2.4%, to 3.75 million unsold homes at the end of September, which represents a 7.3 month supply at the September sales pace.
Sales of single-family homes dropped 1.6% to an annual rate of 5.42 million units while sales of condominiums fell 3.2% to an annual rate of 763,000 units.
Condominium prices fell 3.2% to a median price of $219,800, matching the median for single-family homes.
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Without Conscience in Afghanistan
Afghan officials say at least 60 civilians killed during NATO operation in Afghanistan
The Associated Press
October 26, 2006
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan At least 60 civilians were killed during NATO operations in a volatile southern area of Afghanistan earlier this week, two government officials and a civilian said Thursday.
A provincial council member, Bismallah Afghanmal, said 80 to 85 civilians were killed in fighting in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar province on Tuesday. A villager, Karim Jan, said 60 to 70 died.
Another government official who asked not to be named because it would "cause him problems" said at least 60 were killed.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force late Wednesday said its forces killed 48 militants in heavy fighting in Panjwayi on Tuesday. NATO also said it had "credible reports" of civilian casualties, though it said it only knew of four civilians who had been wounded.
The clashes targeted militants attacking NATO's development efforts in the area, said Maj. Luke Knittig, a ISAF spokesman. Troops used mortar, artillery and air support, the alliance said.
The Afghan Defense Ministry is heading up an investigation into the matter, NATO said.
But Afghanmal said Taliban fighters ran into civilian homes, which were then targeted by NATO forces.
NATO launched a major military operation in the Panjwayi area in September, and the alliance said it killed more than 500 suspected militants during "Operation Medusa," which the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David Richards, called a "significant success."
However, there has since been heavy fighting in the area.
"The government and the coalition told the families that there are no Taliban in the area anymore," said Afghanmal. "If there are no Taliban, then why are they bombing the area?"
The reports of civilian casualties come less than a week after nine civilians were killed by NATO airstrikes a village in nearby Zhari district of Kandahar province.
President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly condemned civilian casualties, and last week urged NATO to take "maximum caution during military operations to avoid harming civilians."
A spokesman for Karzai declined immediate comment Thursday, and the Interior Ministry said it couldn't confirm reports of civilian casualties.
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan At least 60 civilians were killed during NATO operations in a volatile southern area of Afghanistan earlier this week, two government officials and a civilian said Thursday.
A provincial council member, Bismallah Afghanmal, said 80 to 85 civilians were killed in fighting in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar province on Tuesday. A villager, Karim Jan, said 60 to 70 died.
Another government official who asked not to be named because it would "cause him problems" said at least 60 were killed.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force late Wednesday said its forces killed 48 militants in heavy fighting in Panjwayi on Tuesday. NATO also said it had "credible reports" of civilian casualties, though it said it only knew of four civilians who had been wounded.
The clashes targeted militants attacking NATO's development efforts in the area, said Maj. Luke Knittig, a ISAF spokesman. Troops used mortar, artillery and air support, the alliance said.
The Afghan Defense Ministry is heading up an investigation into the matter, NATO said.
But Afghanmal said Taliban fighters ran into civilian homes, which were then targeted by NATO forces.
NATO launched a major military operation in the Panjwayi area in September, and the alliance said it killed more than 500 suspected militants during "Operation Medusa," which the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David Richards, called a "significant success."
However, there has since been heavy fighting in the area.
"The government and the coalition told the families that there are no Taliban in the area anymore," said Afghanmal. "If there are no Taliban, then why are they bombing the area?"
The reports of civilian casualties come less than a week after nine civilians were killed by NATO airstrikes a village in nearby Zhari district of Kandahar province.
President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly condemned civilian casualties, and last week urged NATO to take "maximum caution during military operations to avoid harming civilians."
A spokesman for Karzai declined immediate comment Thursday, and the Interior Ministry said it couldn't confirm reports of civilian casualties.
Comment: It appears that the desired outcomes for invading Afghanistan are manifesting: killing civilians and increasing drug production.
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NATO admits killing more civilians
PAUL KORING
Globe & Mail
ISAF says it hit legitimate Taliban targets but offers few details on three new strikes
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- NATO warplanes killed and wounded Afghan women and children again during air strikes, the alliance conceded yesterday, although it offered few details of the clashes that it said also killed scores of Taliban fighters.
It was the second recent North Atlantic Treaty Organization air attack that caused civilian casualties, this time in the middle of Canada's area of operations. Each such attack is a setback for the alliance's effort to win Afghan "hearts and minds." After a particularly horrific air strike killed 20 civilians last week, Afghan President Hamid Karzai urged NATO forces "to take maximum caution during their military operations to avoid harming civilians."
NATO's International Security Assistance Force insists it makes every effort to avoid killing civilians. In the three attacks it announced yesterday, the alliance statement suggested that civilians may have been intermixed with Taliban fighters.
"ISAF legitimately engaged attacking and positively identified insurgents," it said. However, the force admitted receiving "credible reports that there were a number of civilian casualties, including women and children."
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At least four wounded civilians were airlifted to the Kandahar air base, ISAF said. Another 10 were treated at civilian medical facilities.
All three clashes occurred in the district of Panjwai, the contested area west of Kandahar where Canadian troops have been battling insurgents. Regular Canadian troops weren't involved in any of the clashes, Canadian spokesman Lieutenant-Commander Kris Phillips said.
ISAF spokesman Major Luke Knittig declined to say which NATO units called in the air strikes and artillery fire against groups of Taliban in three separate incidents, at least one of which resulted in civilian casualties.
Special forces, both Canadian and those of other NATO countries, operate in Afghanistan. Almost all information about such operations is withheld by NATO countries.
ISAF said it "deeply regretted" any civilian casualties, adding that ISAF officers had already met with Afghan officials and tribal elders in the area as an investigation begins.
The first clash -- Tuesday morning -- resulted from an attack by several dozen Taliban fighters who struck an ISAF base near Sperwan Ghar. NATO troops called in air strikes and artillery fire to repel the attack.
In what appears to have been a running battle, the Taliban also attacked an Afghan National Army convoy in the vicinity. NATO again called in air strikes and artillery fire.
The second clash occurred after dusk close to a Canadian forward base called Wilson. Taliban insurgents seen moving south of the base in a vehicle were hit by NATO artillery fire.
Later Tuesday evening, a large group of suspected insurgents were seen close to Sperwan Gar and more air strikes were called in.
Comment: One would have to be seriously delusional to believe that this invasion has anything to do with winning "hearts and minds". Such propaganda is repeated day in and day out so that it sinks in to the brain of the unquestioning.
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60 Civilians Said Killed by NATO in Afghanistan
Thursday October 26, 2006
Associated Press
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) - At least 60 civilians were killed during NATO operations in a volatile southern area of Afghanistan this week, two government officials and a civilian said Thursday.
If confirmed, it would be the highest civilian death toll in an operation involving Western forces since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.
NATO has said its forces killed 48 militants in heavy fighting in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar province Tuesday. The alliance said it only knew of four civilians wounded in the battle but that it had "credible reports'' of other casualties.
Kandahar provincial council member Bismallah Afghanmal said 80 to 85 civilians were killed in fighting. A villager, Karim Jan, said 60 to 70 died. Another government official, who asked not to be named because it would "cause me problems,'' said at least 60 died.
NATO spokesman Maj. Luke Knittig said troops used "precision strikes'' against militants who targeted aid deliveries and reconstruction projects in the area.
"Very sadly, civilians continue to get caught up in these engagements with tragic results,'' Knittig said.
Afghanmal said Taliban fighters ran into civilian homes, which were then targeted by NATO forces.
"With insurgents who regard the population as a form of human shield for themselves it obviously makes life very difficult for us, but it does not stop us from making every effort to ensure that we minimize any problems,'' said Mark Laity, another NATO spokesman.
The Afghan Defense Ministry was investigating, NATO said.
"An investigation has no meaning,'' said Afghanmal. "These kinds of things have happened several times, and they only say 'Sorry.' How can you compensate people who have lost their sons and daughters?''
NATO launched a major military operation in the Panjwayi area in September, and the alliance said it killed more than 500 suspected militants. The top NATO commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David Richards, has called "Operation Medusa'' a "significant success.''
However, there has since been heavy fighting in the area.
"The government and the coalition told the families that there are no Taliban in the area anymore,'' said Afghanmal. "If there are no Taliban, then why are they bombing the area?''
The worst previous reported incident of civilian deaths involving foreign military action took place in July 2002, when a U.S. airstrike in Uruzgan province killed 46 civilians and wounded 117, many of them celebrating at a wedding party.
Last week, NATO strikes killed nine civilians in a village in the Zhari district of Kandahar province.
President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly condemned civilian casualties, and last week urged NATO to take "maximum caution during military operations to avoid harming civilians.''
A spokesman for Karzai declined immediate comment Thursday, and the Interior Ministry said it couldn't confirm that civilians were killed in Panjawayi.
Comment: Liberating the Afghan people from the evil Taleban.
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AFGHANISTAN: Record amount of marijuana seized
25 Oct 2006 17:55:27 GMT
Reuters
KABUL, 25 October (IRIN) - Afghan police and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) seized 9.2 mt of marijuana from a truck in the southern province of Zabul Province, the multi-national force said on Wednesday.
In the largest known seizure of its kind, police recovered the drugs when they stopped the vehicle at a checkpoint on the Kandahar-Kabul road in Qalat city, the provincial capital of Zabul.
Opium cultivation rose by 59 percent this year in Afghanistan. The country produces more than 90 percent of the world's opium, with a record 165,000 ha under cultivation in 2006 compared to 104,000 in 2005, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
Most of the opium produced in Afghanistan is smuggled via Central Asian countries to Russia and western Europe.
On Tuesday, local security forces, with the support of ISAF soldiers in the western province of Farah, seized more than 55 kg of opium from a car and detained the driver and a passenger.
UNODC estimated in 2005 that of the 920,000 drug users in Afghanistan, 520,000 of them were regular users of marijuana. The drug is also exported to neighbouring countries and contributes markedly to overall narcotics production in Afghanistan.
Opium, heroin and marijuana production remain integral to Afghanistan's economy. Some 2.9 million people are involved in growing opium, representing 12.6 percent of the total population. Revenue from this year's harvest is predicted to top US $3 billion, according to UNODC figures.
Tackling the country's burgeoning narcotics problem requires ongoing commitment from the international community, NATO officials said.
"This is a long-term problem which fuels corruption, finances insurgency and undermines law and order. Solving it cannot be done by military means alone, but dealing with it is essential," Mark Laity, a spokesman of NATO, told IRIN in Kabul.
Analysts say the involvement of some high-ranking government officials and regional warlords in the illicit drug trade has undermined ongoing efforts to rebuild the war-ravaged country.
"The involvement of many government officials at every level is distorting the very fabric of the state and feeding local disillusionment," Joanna Nathan, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group (ICG) in Afghanistan, maintained.
In 2005, Afghan security forces seized approximately 150 mt of opium and 35 mt of heroin, shut down 247 clandestine drug processing plants and arrested or detained 50 traffickers, officials said.
Comment: Let's get something straight. Drug production increased after the invasion. It is no accident that more heroin is getting out of the country. Just exactly who is shipping all those drugs out of the war torn country that is under lock down?
Rise in Afghan opium production leading to purer heroin in Europe, U.S. official says
The Associated Press
Published: Tuesday, October 17, 2006
MADRID, Spain -- Skyrocketing opium production in Afghanistan has led to increasingly pure heroin being sold in Europe and prices could fall if the trend continues, a senior U.S. anti-narcotics official said Tuesday...
The US would know.
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