- Signs of the Times for Thu, 02 Nov 2006 -



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Editorial: Democracy? Try Oligarcy

Signs of the Times
02/11/2006

It will (or should) come as no surprise to learn that:



1% of the British population own 23% of the wealth. The wealthiest 10% own more than 50% of the entire nation's wealth. About 6% of the wealth in the UK is distributed among the poorest 50% of the population, or 30 million people, which averages out to about £6,000 per person, which explains why they are the poorest.

You see? It's all part of the natural law of survival of the most psychopathic.
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Editorial: Aryan Nations head South

David Neiwert
Orcinus
Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Probably the main reason I write about fascism and its immanations in the United States is because I've seen genuine fascism up close and personal -- particularly the Aryan Nations in northern Idaho and the universe of right-wing extremists it attracted, all settling into the dark backwoods and making themselves at home there.

When you get to know fascists up close, you realize that the stereotypes of them -- either they are poor, uneducated backwoods hick, or vile, monstrous skinheads in black leather -- don't fit very well. For the most part, in fact, they are ordinary-seeming people who live in ordinary homes and go to regular day jobs.

James Aho's landmark study of far-right "Christian Patriots", The Politics of Righteousness, found that in fact, the average Aryan Nations attendee was better educated than the average American. Many of them, in reality, are very intelligent people indeed. Some are marvelously skilled engineers. Others are math whizzes.

In my experience, I found that the notion that these people were simply ignorant didn't jibe with reality. Any number of them, actually, have very detailed and thoroughly thought-out universes that provide them with rationales for their beliefs. What was lacking was a basic Human Decency gear that they seem not have been born with.

But having gotten to know them, I also realized how close they were in reality to the rest of us -- and particularly to ordinary conservatives.

This was in the 1980s and 1990s. And what has been astonishing and disturbing has been watching the differences between those ordinary conservatives and those ordinary fascists gradually shrinking. And shrinking. Until they have nearly vanished.

This is the real problem with pseudo-fascism: It creates an environment conducive to the real growth of genuine fascism. The theocratic rantings of the Reconstruction crowd -- about whom Tristero has been recently writing -- in particular are rife with the themes and "mobilizing passions" that have been the essence of fascist movements throughout history. The danger lies in how these ostensible "conservatives" give public blessing to attitudes that very much lay the groundwork for fascists.

Awhile back, I reported on an outfit called Christian Exodus who announced that they intended to create an all "Christian" homeland in South Carolina.

Now it seems that the Aryan Nations, having been dislodged from their Northwest compound at Hayden Lake, are picking up on the concept themselves.

They held their most recent Congress in Laurens, South Carolina. The gathering, as you might expect, turned into a big ole Klan-meets-neo-Nazis hatefest. The liveliest speaker was a young fellow with tatooed biceps named Ryan, who was so brave he refused to give his last name. Still, he put on a good show:
"You better hope I don't come in your bedroom window," Ryan said to FBI informants he suspected were in the audience. "Warriors kill and break things. We're warriors in waiting."

Ryan, whose biceps were adorned with 8-inch Nazi "SS" tattoos, capped his speech with a dance across the stage, a la Mick Jagger, and a bellowed challenge: "You want to see blood in the streets? I do!"

According to everyone in attendance, the consensus seems to be leaning toward giving up on the five-state Northwest homeland project favored by white-supremacist leaders and shifting everything to the South:
For years, Aryan Nations aspired to have an uprising in the Northwest, and turn five states into, literally, The Aryan Nation. With the group staggering from the double whammy of litigation and factionalism, the new goal is more modest: South Carolina.

Aryan Nations' Washington leader, who gave only his first name, Paul, is 60-ish and has a British accent from 25 years in England. Paul outlined possible strategies for the group: establishing a state in Alaska ("few minorities," he said), or a wholesale "South will rise again." Both of those he discounted as impractical, although certainly worthy.

In the end, Paul observed, the best option is to "look at the secession of South Carolina. Start with this state."

Mind you, the Northwest homeland concept is far from dead. At least one online racist based in Olympia is churning out founding documents [warning: hate site] for a would-be "Northwest American Republic." But the movement seems to be scaling back its ambitions for now, and taking aim at a place where they believe the public will be more receptive.

But I was especially struck by the sidebar to this article in which the author, John Suggs, contemplated the meaning of the AN gathering, and the odds of success for the South Carolina plan:
Then, while Williams cheerfully explained that blacks, Asians and Hispanics were subhuman, and that a race war was his most cherished goal, one of my voices piped up again.

"Yo, John," the voice intoned, "you realize these guys aren't too far outside the mainstream. After all, fringe extremists, our own versions of Iranian Maximum Loon Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have seized the control levers of this country."

I always listen to my voices since, like George Bush, I'm sure it's the Lord speaking directly to me. And that last epiphany made sense.

Racism doesn't exist in a vacuum, whether ranted Hitleresque from a podium or conveyed with a Dick Cheney wink. We hate others of our species because we're in competition with them for land or oil; or we need a scapegoat to blame for our own miserable existence. Often we claim the Celestial Mystery Being has commanded us to commit atrocities in his name.

We come up with fantasies of superiority, myths about the nobility of my ancestors and the degeneracy of yours. In order for me to smite you, I must believe with God-almighty fervor that you're inferior. You're a raghead, a slant, a kike, a nigger, a spic, a white devil, a fag or a bitch -- and if I torture and slaughter you, it ain't really murder. No, sir.

If a whole segment of society agrees with those racial assessments, they become part of the cultural conversation. That's why U.S. Sen. George Allen (R-Uptown Klan) is a veteran at employing the "n" word, although still rather a novice at denigrating folks of South Asian ancestry.

Those sentiments ooze like fetid sewage into what should be the crystal-clean water of public policy. In America, we lived through generations of statutory enforcement of the belief that one race has the right to dominate the other. And, if you conclude such thinking is "history," you're a fool.

It's not just that a few ignorant rednecks believe, in their illiterate confusion, that they're somehow "superior." Rather, it's that we still make laws based on such assumptions. The Republican Party since 1964 has consciously made a "racism is OK" pitch to unreconstructed Southerners.

Even scarier, millions of Americans go to churches where racism is part of the catechism, whether blatantly stated or masked by theological mumbo-jumbo.

And, as he observes at the end, this hate is being fomented at the elite media level by so-called "conservatives":
The New York Times commented last month on similar national voter ID legislation: "The actual reason for this bill is the political calculus that certain kinds of people -- the poor, minorities, disabled people and the elderly -- are less likely to have valid ID."

Bushite bomb-thrower Ann Coulter arrogantly conceded the point, writing this month: "Way too many people vote. We should have fewer people voting. There ought to be a poll tax to take the literacy test before voting."

Coulter is saying ballots should be reserved for right-wing white folks. And that's almost exactly what Pastor Williams believes.

The chief means for the spread of this kind of hatred has been a national media that gives people like Coulter and her junior partner, Michelle Malkin, far more than their 15 seconds of fame. More importantly, the press allows hatemongers in the ranks of movement conservatives to peddle race-baiting and bigotry with references that only the most obtuse can miss -- as with the ugly race-baiting recently thrown Harold Ford's way.

The only way to combat it, in the end, is not to allow race-baiting and sly racial inferences, so common among right-wing pundits and politicians, to go unremarked. It's in not allowing hatemongers like the Minutemen and the assorted anti-immigrant xenophobes -- see particularly Pat Buchanan -- now driving our immigration debate to proceed apace, applauded by Lou Dobbs and Ed Schultz alike.

Unfortunately, we're doing a lousy job of that these days.

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Editorial: The "War against Terror" is a War against the People

By Silvia Cattori
Voltaire Network

In this interview recorded by Swiss journalist Silvia Cattori in November 2005 - more than six months before the war launched against Lebanon by Israeli army in summer 2006 - Youssef Aschkar was warning that the destabilization of Lebanon, Syria and Iran was under way, and that Lebanon was the country most threatened and most vulnerable to the Israeli menace. In the light of the recent developments in the region, the accuracy of his analysis appears impressive and almost prophetic.

What are the source and inspirations of the "war on terror" conducted by Washington? Did they begin in 2001 after the attacks of September 11, or was it already in the making earlier than that? For Lebanese political expert Youssef Aschkar (1), the policy being pursued by the United States in the Middle East is nothing but the application on a larger scale of what Israel has been practicing in Palestine since the 1990s: a war carried out against the people, dismantling societies in order to dominate or eliminate the people. Responding to questions from Silvia Cattori, Mr. Aschkar offers us his point of view on the development of this strategy, and its immediate threat to Lebanon, Syria, and Iran.

Silvia Cattori: We would like to hear your analysis of the regional geopolitical context and its implications for Lebanon, a country which suffered enormously during the fifteen years of its military occupation by Israel. Do you consider Israel, which is carrying out a policy of aggression towards its neighbours, the principal source of the wars in the region?

Youssef Aschkar: Since its creation, Israel has not only been the source of the wars in the Middle East, but it has always acted to turn the Middle East into a catalyst of war(s) for the whole world. War has always been its leitmotif. But by itself the phenomenon of war, both as policy and as act of aggression and violence, does not suffice to explain the distinctive features of the war that Israel is waging and is seeking to propagate, indeed to spread worldwide. The warmongering of Israel does not in itself explain all of Israel's conduct and motivations. Israel is waging a particular type of war in the Middle East, a war which has its own doctrine and which is the principal source of the evils that we are witnessing. This doctrine consists, firstly, in making war not solely upon states but also upon societies, and, secondly, in turning "terrorism" and the war against it into Israel's main weapon.

Silvia Cattori: Could you explain what you mean by "war against society"?

Youssef Aschkar: After the victory won against the Arab countries in 1967, Israel judged that these states - beaten, humiliated, and resigned - no longer presented a danger. It was their peoples alone who still constituted an obstacle to Israel's plans for expansion. So it was necessary to wage a direct war against these peoples. Israel has never hidden its intentions. In a document entitled, "A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties", published in February 1982 by the "World Zionist Organization" in Jerusalem, there was a detailed plan for the operations to be carried out against each of the peoples of the region.

The internal struggles and wars that the Middle East has known in recent decades fall within the context of this doctrine of warmongering. The war waged by Israel against Lebanon showed this well, but the agony of the Palestinian people remains the clearest example of this policy of constant and methodical ethnic cleansing which Israel is carrying out against peoples. The war currently being waged in Iraq by the United States is unfolding according to this same doctrine of the destruction of peoples long advocated by Israel.

As for the terrorism of which this state is perpetually claiming to be a victim, it has always been nourished, manipulated, and put into practice by all of the Israeli administrations that have succeeded each other. Terrorism has always been its principal weapon, and became its strategic weapon once the "terrorist doctrine" had been made official in 1996.

Silvia Cattori: Was this doctrine inscribed into what was called, during those years, the "peace process"?

Youssef Aschkar: Exactly. At Madrid and Oslo, there had been discussion of a "peace which would ensure security." But at the summit of Charm el-Sheikh in 1996, they spoke of a "security that would ensure peace." It is there that the terrorist doctrine of the "war against terrorism" was born. Since then, it is this new strategy that has imposed itself and changed the whole psychological and geopolitical climate, in the region and in the whole world. This so-called war "against terrorism" has shown itself to be much worse than a simple war of occupation.

The heads of the Arab states have found themselves forced to wage this war against liberation movements, which are labelled "terrorist organizations" in accordance with the formula adopted by Israel and the United States. What's more, the Arab states themselves were labelled as "sources of terrorism", and threatened with wars in the future.

Silvia Cattori: So the situation has been reversed? They are once more attacking the victims for Israel's profit?

Youssef Aschkar: Yes, exactly. In basing itself on this doctrine of war against "terrorism", Israel has taken up again its image as a victim of aggression. The Arab states remain on the defensive, charged with ensuring "the security of Israel" as a preliminary condition for any "peace negotiation." It is a never-ending litany invented not just to deny them peace, but to favour terrorism in this so-called "war against terrorism."

The gravest element in this radical change is the fact that the United States has also adopted this war doctrine of Israel's. Once the Charm el-Sheikh summit was over, President Clinton and his advisors flew off to Israel. Israeli-American teams worked for three days to draw up plans that would put this new doctrine into practice.

A very significant sign is this: between 1996 and September 11, 2001, the culture of hate and fear was spread to the United States by the publication of thousands of books and articles on the subject of terrorism. From that time onward, "Islamic terrorism" became the new Evil Empire, the subject of all public discussion. The vision of a war against "terrorism", which itself would inevitably spawn terrorism, had already invaded the world and raised itself to the level of a universal charter.

Silvia Cattori: So you believe that the starting point for the war against "terrorism" was not September 2001, but that it had already been built into the "peace process", which in fact turned out to be a "war process"?

Youssef Aschkar: Precisely. The so-called "peace process", which came out of the talks at Madrid and Oslo, was simply the putting into practice of the war doctrine formulated by Aba Eban in 1967-68 and adopted by Israel.

"Make Peace with States, Make War against the People" (2) is the title of an essay on this war doctrine that I presented at a colloquium at the University of Bordeaux. There I analyzed the principles of the foreign policy, or rather the global strategy that Aba Eban had spelt out in the 1970s. These principles were taken up again by Mr. Shimon Peres and Mr. Yitzhak Rabin in the 1990s and presented in the form of a "peace doctrine", though the doctrine remained what it had always been, a "war doctrine" thought up to be applied against their Arab neighbours and, at the same time, to be exported. As for this alleged "terrorism", Israel has always labelled the Palestinians as "terrorists", even well before the doctrine of the "war against terrorism" was adopted officially in 1996. Therefore September 11, 2001, represented nothing but a success for this doctrine and a new point of departure.

Silvia Cattori: So we are not talking about a colonial war?

Youssef Aschkar: No, this is not a colonial war. It is a war for the destruction of societies, a war which destroys the life of peoples. The occupation, as such, is the least of the evils. In a colonial war, it is in the interest of the colonizer that there continues to be a people to exploit. But for the Israeli occupier, the objective is to eliminate the people. It's completely different from a colonial war! A colonial war normally means the occupation of the land and not - as we see in Palestine - the ethnic cleansing of a people. We have to stop seeing it as a simple occupation, because in Palestine the Israeli occupier is committing ethnic cleansing. It is urgent that this is exposed, and that the murderers perpetrating this crime are forced to stop.

Silvia Cattori: During the years when the so-called "peace" process was keeping all the diplomats and summits busy, did you have a feeling that Mr. Yasser Arafat was leading his people down a dead-end, and that Israel would profit from it in order to consolidate its gains?

Youssef Aschkar: Yes, that was clear. Mr. Yasser Arafat was a traditional leader who was called upon to face an exceptional situation. Faced with a strategy which effectively undermined the foundations of life in Palestinian society, he pursued the policy of a politician, a policy more concerned with laying the foundations of the Palestinian Authority than with defending the interests of his people.

At the very moment when Mr. Yasser Arafat was negotiating with Israel the setting up of the Palestinian Authority on a small portion of Palestinian territory, this same territory was being divided up: the colonies were multiplying, and the roads for exclusive Israeli use which crisscrossed the territory were designed to render any authority powerless to ensure the survival of the Palestinians.

Silvia Cattori: How can we explain, then, the submission of many Arab leaders to the wishes of the United States, whose objective is to weaken them in order to better strengthen the position of Israel and that of America?

Youssef Aschkar: The submission of the majority of Arab leaders is nothing new. They have always counted on an external power - or on the global balance of power - to consolidate their own power, and consequently they have always been insensitive to the expectations of their peoples. Lacking popular support, they have always sought to reconcile their own interests with the interests of the influential states, considering their submission to these states as a safeguard that these states would protect them and maintain them in power.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, almost all the Arab leaders submitted to the United States. And this for two reasons: for lack of an external alternative, and because of rising internal pressures. Sort of like fleeing forward. But this flight cannot last forever, since in the present context their submission does not truly protect them any longer. That is because the role of the United States in the world, and notably in our region, has changed. Firstly, the United States no longer limits itself to ensuring the security of Israel, but now considers itself responsible for carrying out Israel's plans. Secondly, the conventional interests of the United States no longer serve as a criterion making U.S. policy understandable. That is because the power of the neoconservatives - who constitute a state within a state - follows interests that are fundamentally divergent, if not opposed.

Silvia Cattori: Has this essential change escaped the Arab leaders allied with the United States?

Youssef Aschkar: Yes, it has escaped them. They continue to present themselves as guarantors of stability, even while the plans of Israel backed by the United States have no other aim than to destabilize the region. They feel themselves more and more disoriented. But they will never come out of it until they realize that resistance is more profitable than submission, and also that submission is costlier than resistance, whatever the sacrifices that resistance might entail.

Silvia Cattori: For the Arab leaders, isn't it an insane policy for them to act as though they didn't know what the whole world knows - that is, that the United States and Israel want to weaken them and keep them from living in peace - and instead go on making up with them?

Youssef Aschkar: The Arab leaders are hypocrites. They pretend not to see certain signs; they refuse to recognize that it is useless, indeed dangerous, to make up with the United States and Israel. If they had any illusions before the Madrid and Oslo conferences, the experience of the last ten years should have opened their eyes. And the war against Iraq, which laid bare the nature of the threat, should have set the alarm bells ringing. That said, I do not think that everyone knows what is truly going on in Palestine or Iraq, or what is being prepared against Lebanon, Syria, and other countries of the Middle East. The doctrine of "Israeli war" - which, I repeat, consists in destroying societies and not simply dominating them - always escapes the understanding of political leaders and political experts in general.

How many leaders in the world know, or recognize, that what Israel is doing in Palestine - under the pretext of so-called "security" operations - is systematic ethnic cleansing? Or that the war that the United States is waging in Iraq is methodically destroying the life of the Iraqi people? Or that the Middle East is presently an experimental plot for "creative chaos", a monstrous mechanism of planetary suicide?

Silvia Cattori: For Israel and the United States, doesn't it become easier to destroy the Palestinian and Iraqi peoples when states such as Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia compromise with them?

Youssef Aschkar: In fact, the Arab states take part in this destruction, since they accept this state of affairs, in the meantime providing the illusion that one day there will be some kind of peace, or some kind of Palestinian state. No Arab leader has ever acknowledged that there is ethnic cleansing going on in Palestine since 1948.

Silvia Cattori: So, according to you, the expansion of the war that we are seeing now was planned well in advance, and might have been exposed or opposed by these states?

Youssef Aschkar: I worked on this question from 1996 to 2001. I reached the conclusion that the authorities in the United States were waiting for some big incident. They were doing nothing to stop it, but instead were getting everything ready in order to be able to exploit it afterwards. That is the subject of my book, which was at the printers when the attacks of September 11 took place.

Silvia Cattori: In 1990 - when Bush Senior, wishing to convince the world that his Gulf War was justified, let it be understood that the war would also, once Saddam Hussein had been overthrown, permit the setting up of a "new world order" and the concluding of a peace in Palestine - did you have a foreboding that these were simply hollow words, that once this logic of war had been endorsed no one would be able to stop it, and that the Arab countries participating in it would go forward toward disaster?

Youssef Aschkar: The Arab states were forced to follow that machination. Besides, at that time the United States had not yet shown all its cards. It had talked about a war that would force Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait. But the Americans had not spoken of sanctions. Now, this war was designed so that matters would not end there, but that the war would be followed by sanctions and new wars. By sanctions which, between 1990 and 2001, killed almost a million Iraqi children and caused physical and psychological after-effects in other four or five million children. An entire society was destroyed, and came out of it very badly.

Silvia Cattori: In that context, did the destabilization of Lebanon and Syria that was provoked by the assassination of Hariri serve the interests of those whose goal is to continue the war against other peoples?

Youssef Aschkar: What is taking place in Syria and Lebanon is closely linked to what is going on in Iraq. There are two strategies at work in Iraq. There is the official American strategy, which is perhaps an imperial strategy for the domination and control of natural resources. And there is another strategy, which is the strategy of the gang of monsters who are called "neoconservatives", who dictate their plans to the Pentagon and to the State Department. This "gang" (Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas J. Feith, among others) have their own plan; they are the ones who have advocated destroying not only the state of Iraq, but the whole of Iraqi society. The entire network that the neocons control circumvents the generals of the Pentagon, and circumvents American military command. It has infiltrated itself into all the high offices of the United States, and has infiltrated itself also into society, into the American media, and into religious organizations. It is a state within a state.

This was shown clearly during the scandal of the torture at Abu Ghraib prison. The General who was in command of the prisons came out of her office one day and was stunned: "But who are these people going around in the hallways?" Her bodyguard replied to her, "These are the men who carry out the interrogations." This General, in charge of the prisons, knew nothing about any of this.

Silvia Cattori: Does that mean that whenever the neo-conservatives consider themselves to have achieved an objective, this success of theirs might in fact represent a defeat for the troops of the American army?

Youssef Aschkar: Exactly. That's because there are two plans at work. There is the official plan of an army of occupation that might withdraw, boost its forces, or find itself cornered. And then there is the plan of the neocons, who dictate their own strategy to the American army, who have 45,000 mercenaries at their disposal, and who have more clout than even the American army. These neocons, in fact, are satisfied, and see their mission in Iraq as accomplished, since they judge that they have attained all the goals for the war that they had assigned to their forces: dragging all of Iraqi society into an impasse from which it can never escape, and replacing a centralized dictatorship with a multitude of totalitarian religious communities that will be in permanent conflict among themselves. So they feel ready to move on to the destabilization of Lebanon, Syria, and Iran.

Silvia Cattori: Yet some analysts believe that America cannot wage two wars at the same time, that the U.S. is unable to venture elsewhere while its army is tied down in Iraq.

Youssef Aschkar: The neocons don't care about any of that: their plan was to destroy Iraqi society and nothing was able to stop them. They will take hold of some other formula in order to find fault with Syria or Iran. What is going on is extremely serious. Perhaps someone will say to me, "But that's a nightmare! You're just imagining these things!" I say, let us carry out an investigation to see whether what I am saying about them is true or not.

Silvia Cattori: An investigation on what, exactly?

Youssef Aschkar: On the neocons who rule the Pentagon and are the cause of so many humanitarian disasters! On what really happened on September 11, 2001! On who is really running the war in Iraq! Is it Mr. Bush, or is it these monsters at the Pentagon who use mercenaries to carry out secret operations in the Middle East?

Silvia Cattori: Do you think that the prosecutors who are holding an inquiry on the assassination of former Prime Minister Hariri, for instance, will be unable to establish the truth?

Youssef Aschkar: It is the resistance that should carry out this inquest. I call for the setting up of a "resistance inquiry". Before September 2001, it was not possible to investigate and stop the neocons because their names were not known. Now, nothing can stop them because their machine is already in motion, but at least we can hold an inquiry on their crimes and indicate them by name.

Silvia Cattori: The French government was clearly opposed to the intervention of Bush and Blair in Iraq. Does its recent realignment surprise you?

Youssef Aschkar: France's position on Iraq raised great hopes in the Middle East, when it opposed the folly of the American neocons. By dissociating itself from the U.S., France had everything to gain on the domestic level, the European level, and the world level.

Unfortunately, its position has changed since June 2004. In that month four decisive events took place: the transatlantic summit between Europe and the U.S., the NATO summit in Istanbul, the G8 at Evian, and the famous meeting at the United Nations. At these four meetings the U.S. succeeded in imposing its logic of war. Mr. Chirac and his team did not present any vision that would be suited to the interests of France, Europe, and the world. France stood aside to give way to the mere search for a "reconciliation" with the United States.

It is France that took it upon itself to prepare Resolution 1559. France gave the illusion of having become a "partner" in the plan for the region and a major actor on the Lebanese scene. But in reality, once the resolution had been submitted, France became nothing but a pawn on the chessboard of the neocons, whose plan is clear: to exploit in order to destabilize, and not just Syria and Iran, but first of all Lebanon.

The French leaders gave way to the vision of the neocons. They committed an error of judgment. If they hadn't lapsed into opportunism, they would have been able to stand firm and obtain more. In 2003, France was the winner in London when Mr. Dominique de Villepin, in his historic address on the world situation, presented a vision based on true political will and which resisted the monsters of the Pentagon. Whereas, now, France is losing on all levels.

In situations that are exceptional, miserly conventional calculations do not pay. Clearly Mr. Chirac agreed, on the moral level, to damage the image of France, and, on the ethical and functional level, to entrust to France the dirty role of destabilizing the region, particularly Lebanon, and of tricking the Lebanese about their future.

I would like to pose, here, some questions for Mr. Chirac. What is his plan for this region? What control is he able to exercise over the American project that is already in place? Does he think that France and Europe come out winners by associating themselves with this project of destabilization, or rather of setting the region on fire?

Silvia Cattori: So, in your view, France is now completely on board with the anti-Arab policy of Mr. Bush and Blair?

Youssef Aschkar: France abandoned its position of strength; it renounced its special role which consisted in opening up a new path with the Third World, both for France and for Europe. The Third World ought to be France's natural partner, in the spirit of a mutually favourable and humane partnership. To be credible, that spirit would have to manifest itself not just in relations within Europe, but also with respect to the outside world, particularly the Third World. Unfortunately, France decided not simply to align itself with the United States, but also to sign on to the war doctrine of the neocons. This positioning won for France nothing but a background role and isolation. This isolation comes out on three levels: that of Jacques Chirac within France, that of France within Europe, and that of Europe in the world. A great hope has evaporated, leaving the world in the hands of the new order of fear and hatred.

Silvia Cattori: So are the people of the world in the hands of irresponsible leaders who no longer control anything?

Youssef Aschkar: It is not that simple with political leaders, even if usually they do show themselves guilty of irresponsibility, opportunism, and lying. The core of the problem lies elsewhere: finding out who holds true power. In the "new world order", this power is in the process of shifting from the territorial authority of states to the uncontrolled authority of a line of new masters. I am not talking about the multinational corporations, the transnational financial institutions, and the process of economic privatization. The new masters are of a different kind: they are connected to the monstrous team of the neocons, who act in all four corners of the globe by means of their networks and their mercenaries. The economic sphere is in full submission to their project. Privatization is nothing more than a simple economic measure, mainly an ideology which consists in privatizing and monopolizing the public space - especially politics and security - in order to exploit the other sectors. It is nothing less than a monstrous planet-wide coup d'état.

The political leaders more and more end up overwhelmed and manipulated. They suffer less from personal incompetence and technical clumsiness than from a lack of vision or moral worth: they are as cowardly as they are ignorant, not seeing, or not wanting to see, the new reality.

Our authorities do not want to respond to this challenge, at least as long as they are not subject to public pressure which would force them to change tack. So our mission ought to be to provoke an awakening of the public which would force a change in policy. This public pressure would have to be stronger and more convincing than the pressure that our authorities currently receive from the United States.

Silvia Cattori: In Lebanon, does the public suspect that perhaps, since the assassination of Hariri, they are the target of manoeuvring not by Arabs but by Westerners?

Youssef Aschkar: The Lebanese are very troubled about their future. But the daily manipulation carried out by the networks of saboteurs acting in secret often prevents them from seeing clearly. I believe a large part of the Lebanese people is conscious of these criminal manoeuvres, but they are neither unified nor prepared to respond to these manipulations in an effective manner, whereas those doing the manoeuvring are able to exploit all the weaknesses of the partisan politics which are traditional in Lebanon, and take advantage of the confessional differences to divide the people. The fact that Lebanon is composed of different communities, which those doing the manoeuvring take advantage of, deprives the citizens of their common and rational landmarks, all the more so because the plans of those who would destabilize the society are meticulously prepared.

We have before us a great task of awareness-raising if we want to prevent the situation from worsening and becoming irreversible. Time is short.

Silvia Cattori: Is it possible that Western intelligence agencies may have financed those who carried out the assassination of Hariri? But to what end? To make Lebanese society explode?

Youssef Aschkar: Without a doubt: infiltration is not just a weapon but an entire strategy. It is the intelligence agencies' stock in trade. These agencies have an unrivalled ability to create unlikely scenarios and exploit them to the full. Making Lebanese society explode forms part of their principal plan. As for their timetable, that remains unclear. Our immediate task is to act in time in order to thwart their terrifying plan.

Silvia Cattori: So you are very anxious about the future?

Youssef Aschkar: If events continue along their present course, then it will be terribly serious. All the direct neighbours of Israel, and this entire region that is considered a "vital space" by Israel, are directly menaced by Israel, and are being subjected to destabilization.

In the strategic and geopolitical context of the "Greater Middle East and North Africa", the stakes have been set by the Israelis and Americans. Pressure is being exerted on all fronts and in all directions. The pressure is being exerted very openly against Iran and Syria, but in a camouflaged fashion against Lebanon. And that leaves Lebanon hanging in suspense, divided between those who spin for themselves illusions regarding democracy, freedom, and prosperity - the poisoned bait offered by the Israelis and the Americans - and those who have no illusions about their intentions.

Lebanon is at one and the same time the country most threatened and the country most vulnerable. The Lebanese Christians, some of whom imagine themselves to represent a safeguard that shelters Lebanon from the Israeli menace, are in fact the prime target of Israel's plans.

Silvia Cattori: Does it surprise you to see that in the West - under the influence of the propagandists of the "clash of civilizations", who use the mainstream media as their soapbox - the public has for the most part accepted the idea that believers in Islam are "fanatics" and "terrorists"?

Youssef Aschkar: The propaganda agencies of the neocons succeed very well in manipulating the facts and the media, and by this means they are able, unfortunately, to trick most people and to disorient even progressives. They work to discredit Muslims on the one hand by manipulating and financing the mercenaries who carry out terrorist attacks, which subsequently get blamed on the resistance, and on the other hand by triggering a process of fanaticization. The latter method consists in creating situations of conflict by means of provocations of a religious character, conflicts which mix up the reference points, provoke demonstrations, and discredit Islam (This interview took place before the affair of the Danish cartoons broke out).

Led into error by these repeated provocations, the progressives end up disoriented: as humanists they cannot defend acts of violence, but as secularists they cannot tolerate fanaticism. So those progressives who are not conscious of the manipulation carried out by the neocons find themselves caught up in pointless disputes.

In fact, the attacks that generate numerous civilian victims are remote-controlled by this gang in the Pentagon, who, by means of their networks, create and finance phantom organizations that terrorize each side in the name of the other side.

I should point out here that the ideology of the neocons, such as we see it played out on the ground, is the first and only ideology in history that seeks to produce opponents rather than adherents, leaving to its opponents the job of supplying it with its adherents.

Let me explain. This ideology works to produce opponents by pushing them towards fanaticism in such a way as to stir up and nourish every fanaticism on earth, including Muslim and Arab fanaticism, and this enables Muslims to be given a very negative image, so that in the end - and this is the goal - hostile reactions are produced towards Muslims. Even staunchly secular people, on both sides, will imperceptibly find themselves led to question their own secularity, and to see in "the Other" someone who cannot be lived with. That is what is going on now, and what is in the process of destabilizing Europe, of causing a cleavage between the two shores of the Mediterranean basin, and of sabotaging and wrecking the Barcelona projects for a Mediterranean partnership.

If this cleavage worsens, voices will be heard - even in Europe - calling for people to sign on to the neocons' doctrines of "war against terrorism" and "Muslim fanaticism". Only at that point will the neocon ideology have accomplished its mission: having helped to provoke the growth of fanaticism among Muslims, it will also have stirred up in the West, in return, adherents to its thesis of a "clash of civilizations". And Europe, stubborn up to that point, will finally align itself with the ideology of the neocons. Progressives and politicians in general are unaware of these manoeuvres.

Silvia Cattori: What can be done in time in order to change this tragic course of events?

Youssef Aschkar: Any effort must begin by creating an awareness of the realities carefully camouflaged by this web of lies which is working to twist the critical faculties of the entire human race. Only a "global inquiry" can respond to this global threat and lay bare the manoeuvrings that sustain it. The awareness must come about on two levels: on the level of states and on the level of individual citizens. This "global inquiry" must be started with all urgency; it ought to become both the highest priority action of the resistance and also the unifying factor of the resistance. All the resisters and militants in the world must unite, and must oppose, in advance of everything else, this global war, whatever may be the particular causes that they are defending or the particular misfortunes they are suffering from and fighting against. That is because this war aggravates all of their particular misfortunes, and renders the struggle of peoples under occupation that much more difficult. "Axis for Peace" came together with that idea in November 2005 for a conference in Brussels. The participants, who are fighting for different causes, realized how the theme of this conference unified them. We must make it our very first priority to do battle against this war that attacks societies, because that will aid the cause common to all of us and serve equally to alert governments as to the significance of this war that will certainly affect them sooner or later. To the extent that this threat is not grasped and considered the highest priority by popular forces, governments will persist in going in directions that are inappropriate for facing this exceptional threat.

Silvia Cattori: Isn't that a profoundly depressing picture that you are painting for the peoples of the Middle East, indeed for all of us?

Youssef Aschkar: Certainly. If things do not change radically, I would be extremely pessimistic. We are talking about, in the Middle East, an existential threat of which public opinion is not fully aware, but also of a global threat about which the peoples and states of the world - especially the major powers - are not adequately alarmed. But optimism or pessimism will depend on our future action. Everything will depend on whether something gets done in time, and on whether the resistance can unite and focus its efforts on the right target. United forces, of people engaged in action, are humanly superior to the forces of the monsters of the Pentagon, no matter how huge their material and logistical means may be.

(1) Formerly president of the PSNS, Lebanon's secular social political party, Youssef Aschkar is a Lebanese historian and anthropologist. http://www.aschkar.org

(2) Faire la paix avec les États, faire la guerre contre les peuples, by Youssef Aschkar, Voltaire, June 19, 2003. http://www.voltairenet.org/article9882.html

Original


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Fascist Fun


Maine activist arrested while wearing terrorist costume, carrying toy gun

Jerry Harkavy, Canadian Press
Published: Wednesday, November 01, 2006

SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine (AP) - The lawyer who divulged President George W. Bush's drunken-driving arrest days before the 2000 election was arrested
Tuesday after he was spotted on a highway overpass wearing an Osama bin
Laden Halloween costume and holding a toy gun.

Tom Connolly, 49, was charged with criminal threatening, a misdemeanour,
and was released after posting US$500 bail. He said he intends to plead not
guilty.
"There was a First Amendment this morning when I woke up. I don't know how it evaporated with the dawn," Connolly, an unsuccessful Democratic
candidate for governor in 1998, told reporters after his release.

Police said the costume included plastic dynamite, grenades and a replica
of an AK-47 assault rifle.

"The whole thing is just incredibly bizarre," said Police Chief Ed Googins.
"It just crossed the line."

The chief said there was no way to tell from a distance whether the gun was
real or fake.

Connolly also was carrying a sign that said "I love TABOR," a reference to
the Taxpayer Bill of Rights on the Maine ballot, but at least one person
who saw it thought it said "I love the Taliban," Googins said.

The Portland lawyer is known for wearing costumes to make political
statements, often donning a Bush mask and dancing for passing motorists.

His wife has described him as "marvelously eccentric."

In 2000, Connolly acknowledged that he tipped off reporters about Bush's
24-year-old misdemeanour drunken driving charge at Kennebunkport.
Republicans said the release of the information before the election was a
Democratic dirty trick.




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Britain is 'surveillance society' CCTV camera

BBC News
02/11/2006

Fears that the UK would "sleep-walk into a surveillance society" have become a reality, the government's information commissioner has said.

Richard Thomas, who said he raised concerns two years ago, spoke after research found people's actions were increasingly being monitored.

The Surveillance Studies Network report said there are up to 4.2m CCTV cameras - about one for every 14 people.

Other techniques are used to record work rate, buying habits and movements.

Surveillance will increase in the next decade, the report added.

'Looser laws'

The report's co-writer Dr David Murakami-Wood told BBC News that, compared to other industrialised Western states, the UK was "the most surveilled country".

"We have more CCTV cameras and we have looser laws on privacy and data protection," he said.

"We really do have a society which is premised both on state secrecy and the state not giving up its supposed right to keep information under control while, at the same time, wanting to know as much as it can about us."

The research says surveillance ranges from the US national security agency monitoring all telecommunications traffic passing through Britain to key stroke information used to gauge work rates and global positioning satellite information tracking company vehicles.

The report also highlights "dataveillance" - the combination of credit card, mobile phone and loyalty card information for marketing purposes.

Mr Thomas called for a debate about the risks if information gathered is wrong or falls into the wrong hands.

"We've got to say where do we want the lines to be drawn? How much do we want to have surveillance changing the nature of society in a democratic nation?" he told the BBC.

"We're not luddites, we're not technophobes, but we are saying not least don't forget the fundamental importance of data protection, which I'm responsible for.

"Sometimes it gets dismissed as something which is rather bureaucratic, it stops you sorting out your granny's electricity bills. People grumble about data protection, but boy is it important in this new age.

"When data protection puts those fundamental safeguards in place, we must make sure that some of these lines are not crossed."

'Balance needed'

The report will be presented to the 28th International Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners' Conference in London on Thursday, hosted by the Information Commissioner's Office.

The office is an independent body established to promote access to official data and to protect personal details.

The Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) said there needed to be a balance between sharing information responsibly and respecting the citizen's rights.

A spokesman said: "Massive social and technological advances have occurred in the last few decades and will continue in the years to come.

"We must rise to the challenges and seize the opportunities it provides for individual citizens and society as a whole."

Graham Gerrard from the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) said there were safeguards against the abuse of surveillance by officers.

"The police use of surveillance is probably the most regulated of any group in society," he told the BBC.

"Richard Thomas was particularly concerned about unseen, uncontrolled or excessive surveillance. Well, any of the police surveillance that is unseen is in fact controlled and has to be proportionate otherwise it would never get authorised."

Comment: "Sleepwalked"? The UK and US populations have not sleepwalked into their current fascist states, they have been, scared, manipulated and coerced. All is by design.

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"There has never been an American army as violent and murderous as the one in Iraq"

By Martin Lukacs
The McGill Daily

"The bad news," investigative reporter Seymour Hersh told a Montreal audience last Wednesday, "is that there are 816 days left in the reign of King George II of America."

The good news? "When we wake up tomorrow morning, there will be one less day."
Hersh, a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine, has been a thorn in the side of the U.S. government for nearly 40 years. Since his 1969 exposé of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, which is widely believed to have helped turn American public opinion against the Vietnam War, he has broken news about the secret U.S. bombing of Cambodia, covert C.I.A. attempts to overthrow Chilean president Salvador Allende, and, more recently, the first details about American soldiers abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

During his hour-and-a-half lecture - part of the launch of an interdisciplinary media and communications studies program called Media@McGill - Hersh described video footage depicting U.S. atrocities in Iraq, which he had viewed, but not yet published a story about.

He described one video in which American soldiers massacre a group of people playing soccer.

"Three U.S. armed vehicles, eight soldiers in each, are driving through a village, passing candy out to kids," he began. "Suddenly the first vehicle explodes, and there are soldiers screaming. Sixteen soldiers come out of the other vehicles, and they do what they're told to do, which is look for running people."

"Never mind that the bomb was detonated by remote control," Hersh continued. "[The soldiers] open up fire; [the] cameras show it was a soccer game."

"About ten minutes later, [the soldiers] begin dragging bodies together, and they drop weapons there. It was reported as 20 or 30 insurgents killed that day," he said.

If Americans knew the full extent of U.S. criminal conduct, they would receive returning Iraqi veterans as they did Vietnam veterans, Hersh said.

"In Vietnam, our soldiers came back and they were reviled as baby killers, in shame and humiliation," he said. "It isn't happening now, but I will tell you - there has never been an [American] army as violent and murderous as our army has been in Iraq."

Hersh came out hard against President Bush for his involvement in the Middle East.

"In Washington, you can't expect any rationality. I don't know if he's in Iraq because God told him to, because his father didn't do it, or because it's the next step in his 12-step Alcoholics Anonymous program," he said.

Hersh hinted that the responsibility for the invasion of Iraq lies with eight or nine members of the administration who have a "neo-conservative agenda" and dictate the U.S.'s post-September 11 foreign policy.

"You have a collapsed Congress, you have a collapsed press. The military is going to do what the President wants," Hersh said. "How fragile is democracy in America, if a president can come in with an agenda controlled by a few cultists?"

Throughout his talk Hersh remained pessimistic, predicting that the U.S. will initiate an attack against Iran, and that the situation in Iraq will deteriorate further.

"There's no reason to see a change in policy about Iraq. [Bush] thinks that, in twenty years, he's going to be recognized for the leader he was - the analogy he uses is Churchill," Hersh said. "If you read the public statements of the leadership, they're so confident and so calm.... It's pretty scary."



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De Menezes officers in new fatal shooting

Thursday November 2, 2006
The Guardian

Police marksmen who were involved in the shooting of Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes on the tube last year took part in an undercover operation in Kent this week in which another man was shot dead.


The Met last night confirmed that the CO19 team at Kent included officers at Stockwell, but would not comment on a report in the Daily Mail which said that one of the officers who fired on De Menezes shot the man.
Police marksmen who were involved in the shooting of Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes on the tube last year took part in an undercover operation in Kent this week in which another man was shot dead.

The officers are members of Scotland Yard's CO19 firearms unit, who were supporting Flying Squad detectives attempting to stop a suspected armed robbery at a building society bank branch in New Romney on Tuesday evening.

Last night, police would not last night go into detail about the incident, although the unnamed man, 42, reportedly opened fire first with a shotgun. The Independent Police Complaints Commission has begun an investigation after taking over an initial inquiry by Kent police.

Three men were arrested as part of the Kent operation and last night were being questioned by detectives.

De Menezes, a 27-year-old electrician, was shot several times at point blank range at Stockwell tube station, south London, when he was mistaken for a suicide bomber the day after attempted bombings in the capital.

The Met last night confirmed that the CO19 team at Kent included officers at Stockwell, but would not comment on a report in the Daily Mail which said that one of the officers who fired on De Menezes shot the man.

The firearms officers were placed on restricted duties after De Menezes's death but after being told this summer they would not face criminal convictions they were restored to their previous roles.

The Met described the Kent operation as "proactive", and designed to "prevent and apprehend" those believed to be carrying out an attempted armed robbery of the building society.

Comment: Psychopaths among us, but "thank god for non-ricochet bullets".

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U.S. Soldier Killed Herself After Objecting to Interrogation Techniques

Editor and Publisher
November 2, 2006

The true stories of how American troops, killed in Iraq, actually died keep spilling out this week. On Tuesday, we explored the case of Kenny Stanton, Jr., murdered last month by our allies, the Iraqi police, though the military didn't make that known at the time. Now we learn that one of the first female soldiers killed in Iraq died by her own hand after objecting to interrogation techniques used on prisoners.
She was Army specialist Alyssa Peterson, 27, a Flagstaff, Az., native serving with C Company, 311th Military Intelligence BN, 101st Airborne. Peterson was an Arabic-speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at our air base in troubled Tal-Afar in northwestern Iraq. According to official records, she died on Sept. 15, 2003, from a "non-hostile weapons discharge."

She was only the third American woman killed in Iraq so her death drew wide press attention. A "non-hostile weapons discharge" leading to death is not unusual in Iraq, often quite accidental, so this one apparently raised few eyebrows. The Arizona Republic, three days after her death, reported that Army officials "said that a number of possible scenarios are being considered, including Peterson's own weapon discharging, the weapon of another soldier discharging or the accidental shooting of Peterson by an Iraqi civilian."

But in this case, a longtime radio and newspaper reporter named Kevin Elston, unsatisfied with the public story, decided to probe deeper in 2005, "just on a hunch," he told E&P today. He made "hundreds of phone calls" to the military and couldn't get anywhere, so he filed a Freedom of Information Act request. When the documents of the official investigation of her death arrived, they contained bombshell revelations. Here's what the Flagstaff public radio station, KNAU, where Elston now works, reported yesterday:

"Peterson objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners. She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage. Army spokespersons for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Alyssa objected to. They say all records of those techniques have now been destroyed...."

She was was then assigned to the base gate, where she monitored Iraqi guards, and sent to suicide prevention training. "But on the night of September 15th, 2003, Army investigators concluded she shot and killed herself with her service rifle," the documents disclose.

The Army talked to some of Peterson's colleagues. Asked to summarize their comments, Elston told E&P: "The reactions to the suicide were that she was having a difficult time separating her personal feelings from her professional duties. That was the consistent point in the testimonies, that she objected to the interrogation techniques, without describing what those techniques were."

Elston said that the documents also refer to a suicide note found on her body, revealing that she found it ironic that suicide prevention training had taught her how to commit suicide. He has now filed another FOIA request for a copy of the actual note.

Peterson's father, Rich Peterson, has said: "Alyssa volunteered to change assignments with someone who did not want to go to Iraq."

Alyssa Peterson, a devout Mormon, had graduated from Flagstaff High School and earned a psychology degree from Northern Arizona University on a military scholarship. She was trained in interrogation techniques at Fort Huachuca in Arizona, and then sent to the Middle East in 2003.

The Arizona Republic article had opened: "Friends say Army Spc. Alyssa R. Peterson of Flagstaff always had an amazing ability to learn foreign languages.

"Peterson became fluent in Dutch even before she went on an 18-month Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints mission to the Netherlands in the late 1990s. Then, she cruised through her Arabic courses at the military's Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif., shortly after enlisting in July 2001.

"With that under her belt, she was off to Iraq to conduct interrogations and translate enemy documents."

On a "fallen heroes" message board on the Web, Mary W. Black of Flagstaff wrote, "The very day Alyssa died, her Father was talking to me at the Post Office where we both work, in Flagstaff, Az., telling me he had a premonition and was very worried about his daughter who was in the military on the other side of the world. The next day he was notified while on the job by two army officers. Never has a daughter been so missed or so loved than she was and has been by her Father since that fateful September day in 2003. He has been the most broken man I have ever seen."

An A.W. from Los Angeles wrote: "I met Alyssa only once during a weekend surfing trip while she was at DLI. Although our encounter was brief, she made a lasting impression. We did not know each other well, but I was blown away by her genuine, sincere, sweet nature. I don't know how else to put it-- she was just nice.....I was devastated to here of her death. I couldn't understand why it had to happen to such a wonderful person."

Finally, Daryl K. Tabor of Ashland City, Tenn., who had met her as a journalist in Iraq for the Kentucky New Era paper in Hopkinsville: "Since learning of her death, I cannot get the image of the last time I saw her out of my mind. We were walking out of the tent in Kuwait to be briefed on our flights into Iraq as I stepped aside to let her out first. Her smile was brighter than the hot desert sun. Peterson was the only soldier I interacted with that I know died in Iraq. I am truly sorry I had to know any."



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Texas Senate Candidate In President's District Jailed

By W. Leon Smith, Editor-In-Chief
The Lone Star Iconoclast
Tuesday, October 31, 2006

WAXAHACHIE - While most candidates for public office are knocking on doors, attending "meet the candidates'" events, debating, and speaking to constituents, the Libertarian candidate for State Senate, District 22 - which includes the President's ranch - has for nearly three weeks been virtually incommunicado in a jail in Ellis County, the northern segment of the 10-county district that includes Bosque, Coryell, Ellis, Falls, Hill, Hood, Johnson, McLennan, Navarro, and Somervell.
Late Monday, following inquiries by the press and pressure from his daughter, mother, and girl friend, Phil Smart was released.

Smart, 49, of Palmer, a Certified Public Accountant, was arrested on Oct. 10 on charges of assault - causing bodily injury, a probation violation, and running a stop sign, an official at the Wayne McCollum Detention Center in Waxahachie told The Iconoclast on Saturday. At that time, Smart had not been arraigned and bond had not been set, nor had his attorney visited with him during the extended incarceration.

On Saturday, detention center personnel denied The Iconoclast access to Smart to discuss with him his stance on pertinent issues regarding his campaign, but his girl friend, Donna Watson, was able to visit with him that evening and asked Smart a few questions on behalf of the newspaper.

Watson said that she had been concerned for Smart's well-being, since he takes prescription drugs for health conditions, such as high blood pressure, and had been denied them for several days during his incarceration.

Michelle Shinghal, a journalist for Hammer of Truth, who on Sunday contacted the detention center housing Smart, was told by officials there that Smart was arrested on Oct. 10, but the charge of running the stop sign was listed as occurring on Oct. 19, while Smart was in jail. After having her inquiry transferred to the booking department, Shinghal said that officials could not confirm the dates for the assault charge or the stop sign violation, but said that the assault charge was actually a probation violation and a misdemeanor charge, but that Smart could not be released until seen by a judge. Shinghal said she was told that it could take a month or more for Smart to see a judge.

But things changed Monday, when his daughter picked him up at the detention center.

In an interview with The Iconoclast, Smart said that there was actually only one charge, running a stop sign, which he says he did not do. He claims the stop is just another in a series of strange events that happen when he runs for political office, which he did in 2004, for county commissioner of Precinct 1 and was likewise arrested during the waning weeks of the campaign and was let out after the election was over.

On Monday night, Smart told The Iconoclast that on the day of his arrest he knew he was being followed by a traffic cop and was driving carefully.

"It's not all that unusual to have a cop behind you, but, like most people, I exercised extra caution. When I came to the stop sign, he was right behind me. I turned on my right turn signal and let a car pass that I needed to let pass, then waited for a second car to pass. It did.

"I made the turn and then after he (the cop) turned, he stopped me."

Smart continued, "He claimed that I failed to stop at the stop sign, which is absolutely false.

"I've got a cop riding my butt and I'm not going to stop at the stop sign?

"When he pulled me over, he said, 'Can I search your vehicle?'

"I said, 'No.'

"He said, 'Why can't I search it?'

"And I said, 'I don't have to let you search it.'

"Then he said, 'You're under arrest' then he searched my car. He found some prescription sleeping pills in my car.

"I said, 'You can't arrest someone for not stopping at a stop sign,' and he said, oh yes, he can. He told me they can arrest you for any kind of traffic stop except for speeding. It didn't make any sense to me."

Smart said, regarding the probation charge, that he was already in jail when the judge signed the order.

"It was some kind of thing they created."

Smart said that as far as he knows, the alleged traffic violation is the only charge pending.

"The only thing they would tell me when I checked out of that jail, or book in or book out, whatever you want to call it, they told me 'You have a traffic ticket out of Red Oak for $80, a fine, and if you don't pay that, you could end up right back here."

Smart says he intends to pay the ticket although he feels he is completely innocent of the offense, "or they will have something, that ticket. If I were to get stopped, they could say they've got a warrant out of Red Oak for $80, and that means, well, you could spend the rest of your life in jail for $80."

While in the detention center, Smart says he was in a cell by himself, with lights left on, no clocks, no windows.

"The only way you could tell the time of day was to count food trays for a period and try to find out what was on them, so you could tell if this was lunch and this was dinner. With the lights always on, I think I stayed awake at least three days or four days when I got there, till I couldn't do it any longer," he explained.

"I wasn't physically abused, other than to say that I was in solitary confinement. You can't look outside, you don't know what day it is. Eventually, anyone is going to lose their mind in that environment. I said, when I get out, I'm not going to forget about the people in here. I wasn't the only prisoner down there. There are people who have been there so long and they don't even know what they've been charged with. They say, 'I'm charged. I don't know why. I'll get out when they tell me.'

"It's all a matter of keeping the jail full. In other words, if they didn't have anyone coming in, they wouldn't let anybody out. If they had people coming in, they could say, well, you can get rid of two of yours and you can get rid of one or two of yours, whatever. People say they get $300 a piece for every inmate from the state. For every day they have you they get $300, so that's a money thing there."

Regarding his campaign, Smart said, "I didn't know if I would be out of jail before Nov. 7. What I was doing before was going out and talking to strangers and asking them, 'What's important to you? What are you concerned about? And the reception I got was very good, overwhelming. It was so positive, unbelievable. So that gave me a lot of encouragement."

Smart says that a big issue in this district is eminent domain and the Trans-Texas Corridor. He noted that his opponent, Republican Kip Averitt, will support the Trans-Texas Corridor if he gets re-elected, "for the party."

"I've talked to a lot of people and everyone is against it. I don't want it. This might die on its own, but the trouble is there would be a lot of damage done, people losing their property, their houses, and their land. But when you think about it, why would anybody be for it?"

Joey Dauben, a former investigative reporter for The Ellis County Press who now works as a coordinator for the Republican Party of Ellis County and publishes online, described Smart as a conscientious individual who dislikes corruption and is fast to voice his opinion against it. He noted that in 2004, Smart had run for county commissioner of Ellis County, only to be jailed then, too, a few weeks prior to the election and released after the election.

Dauben said that Ellis County is well known for governmental corruption and that Smart has been quick to criticize it.

Dauben noted that Smart's home has been ransacked, he's been accused of being a terrorist since he collects antique guns, and he has been harassed by law enforcement personnel who regularly follow him. Smart also collects antique cars, explained Dauben.

The former reporter appeared on a BBSRadio.com program, The Spiritual Politician, hosted by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster Friday night where he was interviewed from Republican headquarters in Ellis County. (right-click here and choose Save Target As to download Friday's program)

Said Dauben during the interview, "Philip Smart noticed graft and corruption and wanted to take a vital part in exposing it."

Dauben explained that in 1999 the county had constructed a $7 million three-story government center building in downtown Waxahachie after the initiative had been turned down twice by voters. Later, deemed shoddily built, it was torn down.

"That's just one of the things that Phil Smart got really big on," said Dauben.

"His downside was that he came out against what everyone knew was the truth, that Ellis County is corrupt," continued Dauben. "He came out against the very powers that have a stranglehold on what goes on in this county."

Dauben added, "For all the bad things that people say about him, being a loose cannon, he's an accountant, and, honestly, he doesn't strike you as the type of guy that would go to SMU and graduate as an accountant, but the guy's brilliant. He really is a smart guy. He's very involved with the church, being an accountant, helping people with their taxes, but he wants things running smooth, and the right way."

The former Press reporter said that Smart often comes across as "bombastic" and some say he's offensive, very blunt.

"He's the type of guy who is brutally honest and would say, yeah, it's a crock. We've got to change it. Right now,"said Dauben.

The Republican coordinator noted that the current State Senator, Kip Averitt, has only a 30-40 percent conservative rating on conservative organization report cards that have been put out, where Smart is near 100 percent. "Phil Smart's message was get back to the Constitution."

Dauben said to the people of Dallas-Fort Worth, "Yeah, Phil Smart was arrested, but at the same time, there's a huge story behind the headline."

He explained that Smart is a disciple of the Constitution, and is for clean government, no matter what it costs him and "that is a high understatement."

Members of the Libertarian Party at the national level are concerned that their candidate was jailed for nearly three weeks without arraignment during an important campaign timeframe and feared that the county would attempt to use the cancellation of habeas corpus to justify holding him without due process, perhaps making Smart's case a test for whether Americans still have the protection of the Fourth Amendment and if the tenure of his prolonged confinement could constitutes his being a political prisoner.



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Probe into Bush govt climate-change 'gag'

02/11/2006
AP

Two US government agencies are investigating whether the Bush administration tried to block government scientists from speaking freely about global warming and censor their research, a senator says.

Two US government agencies are investigating whether the Bush administration tried to block government scientists from speaking freely about global warming and censor their research, a senator says.

Democrat Frank Lautenberg said he was informed that the inspectors general for the Commerce Department and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) had begun "co-ordinated, sweeping investigations of the Bush administration's censorship and suppression" of federal research into global warming.
"These investigations are critical because the Republicans in Congress have ignored this serious problem," Lautenberg said.

Republicans have controlled Congress for most of Republican president George Bush's five years in office.

Lautenberg said the investigations "will uncover internal documents and agency correspondence that may expose widespread misconduct". He added: "Taxpayers do not fund scientific research so the Bush White House can alter it."

Kristen Hellmer, a spokeswoman for the White House Council for Environmental Quality, said early today that the administration had supported the scientific process in its approach to studying climate change.

"We have in place the most transparent system of science reporting, and claims that the administration interfered with scientists are false," she said.

"Our focus is on taking action and making real progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The nearly $2bn (€1.6bn) worth of climate science we publish annually leads the world and speaks for itself."

Carbon dioxide and other gases (primarily from fossil fuel-burning) that scientists say trap heat in the atmosphere have warmed the Earth's surface an average one degree over the past century.

The White House has committed to reducing the "intensity" of US carbon pollution, a measure of the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per unit of economic growth.

But the total US emissions, now more than seven billion tons a year, are projected to rise 14% from 2002 to 2012.

In February, Republican Sherwood Boehlert, chairman of the Science Committee in the House of Representatives, and other congressional leaders asked Nasa to guarantee scientific openness.

They complained that a public affairs officer changed or filtered information on global warming and the "Big Bang" theory of the creation of the universe.

The officer, George Deutsch, a political appointee, had resigned after being accused of trying to limit reporters' access to James Hansen, a prominent Nasa climate scientist, and insisting that a web designer insert the word "theory" with any mention of the Big Bang.

A report last month in the scientific journal Nature claimed administrators at the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration blocked release of a report that linked hurricane strength and frequency to global warming. Hansen had said in February that NOAA has tried to prevent researchers working on global climate change from speaking freely about their work.

NOAA has denied the allegations, saying its work is not politically motivated.



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One-faith prisons

Dateline: Monday, October 30, 2006
Freedom From Religion Foundation

MADISON, WIS. - In response to a legal challenge by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the Federal Bureau of Prisons quietly canceled its plan to open at least five "single faith" programs at federal penitentiaries.

The Bureau in late May had suspended calls for solicitations to run "single-faith" programs at as many as six federal prisons. The Foundation filed suit on May 4. The Bureau posted a short announcement at its website yesterday [October 26] that "it is determined to be in the best interest of the government to cancel" the plan.
"We agree that setting up single-faith prison programs is certainly not in the best interests of our secular government - or of prisoners," comments Annie Laurie Gaylor, Foundation co-president. "Secular, practical education is the answer in our prisons, not proselytizing a captive audience of prisoners, most of whom are already religious!"

"Our lawsuit has averted an egregious First Amendment violation, but the federal prisons are still engaging in unconstitutional activity," Gaylor added.

The Foundation lawsuit will proceed, since it is still challenging the constitutionality of ongoing "multifaith" programs set up by the Bureau.

The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court, Western District of Wisconsin, names Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales; Federal Bureau of Prisons director Harley G. Lappin, and Clay Johnson III, director, Office of Management and Budget. Plaintiffs include the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a national state/church watchdog group of freethinkers (atheists and agnostics), co-presidents Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker, and founder Anne Nicol Gaylor.

The Bureau of Prisons' 18-month Life Connections Program, instigated by the Department of Justice Task Force for Faith-based and Community Initiatives, has been operating since at least 2003. Created by Bureau Chaplain Kendall Hughes, it was designed as a faith-based model based "on the premise that inmates should pursue, nurture and commit themselves to religious faith."

Implemented by the Religious Services Branch of the Bureau of Prisons, Life Connections is operating in at least five federal institutions: the Federal Correctional Institution at Milan, Mich.; the US Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Ks.; the Federal Medical Center at Carswell, Texas; the Federal Correctional Institution at Petersburg, Va., and the Federal Correctional Institution at Victorville, Calif.

The Life Connections Facilitators hired by the Bureau of Prisons must have a degree with a major in religious studies, religious education or related curriculum. The facilitator coordinates all components of the Life Connections Program.

The Foundation contends the program goes far beyond accommodation, and instead exists to encourage and promote faith among inmates.

Such activities "violate the fundamental principle of the separation of church and state by using Congressional taxpayer appropriations to intentionally support activities that endorse religion."

The lawsuit further alleges that the Office of Management and Budget engages "in activities that create an atmosphere intended to cause federal agencies to increase their contracting with faith-based organizations merely because the organizations are faith-based." The complaint points out that the Office of Management and Budget gives a "report card" to each major federal agency, which apparently grades the agencies on the extent to which they have disbursed or increased their appropriations to faith-based agencies.

The Foundation seeks a judgment declaring that the Congressional taxpayer disbursements for the Life Connections Program violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, an order enjoining the defendants from continuing such appropriations, and an order requiring the defendants to establish regulations and oversight to ensure future funded activities do not include religion as a substantive integral component.

Freedom From Religion Foundation v. Gonzales, Case No. 06-C-0244-S, has been assigned to Judge John Shabaz, US District Court, Western District of Wisconsin. http://ffrf.org/news/2006/singlefaithvictory.php

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, based in Madison, Wis., is a national association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics) that has been working since 1978 to keep church and state separate. Read the Complaint at the address below.

Related addresses:

URL 1: ffrf.org/legal/gonzales_complaint.html



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Liquids ban relaxed on flights

Press Association
Thursday November 2, 2006
Guardian Unlimited

A ban on carrying liquids on board flights will be relaxed next week under new rules that will apply across Europe.
Passengers are to be allowed to carry small bottles of toiletries as long as they are contained in a clear resealable plastic bag from next Monday, the Department for Transport (DfT) said today.
Baggage rules have been tightened at UK airports since August 10 when police and the government said they had thwarted a plot to blow up planes.

The restrictions have since been eased gradually, but the ban on liquids has remained - although passengers leaving UK airports for non-US destinations have been allowed to take items such as toothpaste on board, as long as they are bought after passing through security.

Under new arrangements being introduced across the European Union from next week, passengers will be allowed to carry small quantities of liquids within separate containers.

The rules restrict each of the individual items to 100ml, the typical size of a bottle of perfume. Such items must be brought to the airport contained in a single, transparent, resealable plastic bag - itself no more than a litre in capacity, or the size of a freezer bag.

Security experts believe that liquid explosive in such small quantities would not be enough to blow up a plane.

Other arrangements covering items such as medicines, baby foods and musical instruments will remain as before.

The DfT said that essential medicines and baby food were permitted in larger quantities above the 100ml limit, and large musical instruments can be taken on board in addition to the one item of cabin baggage.

A statement from the DfT said: "The security measures introduced at UK airports in August were in response to a very real and serious threat.

"We have always said that we would keep these measures under review, and in September we introduced changes which increased the permitted size of cabin baggage that passengers could take on board.

"Following consultations with industry and international partners, we can now introduce a change to the ban on taking liquids through the security checkpoint, to add to passenger convenience while continuing to maintain rigorous security."

Passengers travelling before November 6 were warned that the current restrictions would remain in place.



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Iran Calling the Shots?


Borderless friendship will save world: Khatami

IRNA-London
1 Nov 06

The world should wake up and question the reasons for the current violence across the globe and the
re-emergence of religious wars, says Mohammed Khatami, former Iranian president and founder of the International Institute for Dialogue among Civilizations and Cultures (IIDCC).

"We should get to know how come we talk of crusades at the beginning of the third millennium and in the name of civilization and human rights," Khatami said on Tuesday evening.

"We should learn why seven centuries after nonsense bickering and debates we are reckoning that 'our religion' is the faith of Logos and compassion and 'their religion' is one of violence and insanity," he said in an address to Scotland's oldest university.
The IIDCC director was speaking after being conferred an honorary doctor of laws at St Andrews University on the northeast coast of the British Isles and east coast of Scotland in recognition of "his efforts to encourage inter-faith dialogue."

He said that the world was being threatened by all kinds of conflicts, but warned that the calamity of human suffering will not be solved "by reducing religion to a social institution or through simplistic individualist assertions."
"We get to know and delineate the world by discovering the relationship between cause and effect, by realizing the mechanism of activity and by understanding the relationship between objects and the way they affect one another," Khatami said.

"Borderless friendship will save the world," he suggested in repeating his call for dialogue between civilizations to bring about peace and stability.

"Numerous generations to come should take unrelenting efforts in order to increase the possibility of diluting the thick walls that separate the different worlds of humans, and help sounds and messages to pass through this thick and condensed wall," he said.

It was while he was president of Iran that Khatami launched his Dialogue among Civilizations in 1999 that was adopted by the United Nations.

Since then he has established the Foundation for Dialogue among Civilizations based in Geneva and Tehran with outreach offices in Paris and Vienna.

In an interview with the university's student newspaper 'The Saint', Khatami spoke further about the importance of establishing dialogue between the East and West.

"This century has seen suffering for both the East and West, which experienced two world wars in the first half of the century and a couple of decades of the Cold War, which was, in my opinion, even much more disastrous than the world wars themselves," he said.

In the last years of the century and the past decade, Khatami added, there had been a "bitter experience with terrorism and extremism" and this showed tht the current paradigm in human life is "not a proper one" and needed to be changed.

"If the paradigm instead of dialogue is pushing forward to have force and violence, we must replace misunderstanding with understanding, collaboration, and cooperation rather than face each other as opposites," he suggested.

Presenting the honorary doctorate, Vice-Chancellor of St Andrews University Professor Michael Bentley said the career and intellect of Khatami "offer hope that trans-cultural communication should not be seen as an idle aspiration."
"What we can and should offer is acknowledgement of a courageous stand against insularity and congratulations on real and persistent efforts to reach out and engage with nations of the West who often cleave to aspirations very different from his," the professor said.

"In a world racked by fear, suspicion and terrorism it becomes more important, not less, to discover dialogue and to recognize the achievement," he said.

Prior to his speech, Khatami was invited to inaugurate a new Centre for Iranian Studies at the university, which was established in 1410 and is the third oldest in Britain after Oxford and Cambridge.

During his five-day visit to the UK, Khatami will also be addressing the Royal Institute of International Relations at Chatham House in London and St Anthony's College at Oxford University.

Meetings are also being scheduled with Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and other bishops in the House of Lords amongst other discussions on inter-faith dialogue.

Before leaving, Khatami will also hold discussions with British Muslim leaders at the London Islamic Centre in Whitechapel, east London, as well as meetings with members of the Iranian community.



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Russian, U.S. military chiefs of staff sign plan for military cooperation

Associated Press
October 30, 2006

"I came to listen and learn about ways we can do good military-to-military for both Russia and the United States," Pace said before the delegations began their meeting in an ornate room at the Defense Ministry.
MOSCOW The top Russian and U.S. military officers met in Moscow on Monday to discuss bilateral military ties and signed a plan for cooperation in the coming year.

It was U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace's first visit to Russia since being named chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff last year.

"I came to listen and learn about ways we can do good military-to-military for both Russia and the United States," Pace said before the delegations began their meeting in an ornate room at the Defense Ministry.

Russian-U.S. military cooperation is "good and getting better," Pace told Vesti-24 television after the talks. He said he and his Russian counterpart, Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, signed a document laying out plans for joint activities in 2007, saying it provided for a series of exercises that should further boost cooperation.

No details of the cooperation plan were made available.

Earlier, Pace lay a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier, and he called the experience "a very poignant reminder to me of the very special relationship our two nations have had for many years."

Baluyevsky quoted a proverb he said he had heard during a trip to Japan. "The strong one never unsheathes the sword."

"We represent the militaries of the two strongest nations of the world: Russia and the United States," Baluyevsky said. "I hope we will resolve all problems with this good proverb in mind."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the Cold War foes bear the brunt of responsibility for 'supporting strategic security in the world. "This is a unique responsibility, and other countries look to us with the hope that we will continue to support it," Russian news agencies quoted him as saying after meeting with Pace.

Baluyevsky said the Russian and U.S. analysis of many issues was "very close" but he also said the two top military officers would discuss "problems to which ... we must find solutions and adopt these solutions as quickly as possible."

Neither Baluyevsky nor Pace would elaborate on those problems in front of reporters but the American general said he had no doubt that "together we can find proper solutions."

"I am anxious for military-to-military cooperation to show through its transparency the potential for our two nations to walk into the future hand in hand," Pace said.

Russia has been highly critical of the U.S.-led campaign in Iraq, while the United States has criticized Russia's cooperation with Iran despite that country's alleged nuclear weapons program. Russia has also objected vociferously to U.S. plans to deploy missile defenses in NATO nations in Eastern Europe.

Comment: Hmmm... not too long ago the U.S. was quite at loggerheads with Russia because Russia was supporting Iran and rejecting sanctions demanded by Israel. At the same time, we notice that Neocon sources report that Condi Rice has backed down on her attacks on Iran and Chavez. Then, there was Amadinejad's chat with the CFR back in September... Looks like something is up.

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Flashback: Hold the Boos for Khatami

Council on Foreign Relations
Ray Takeyh, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies
17 June 2005

"Employing his electoral mandate, Khatami compelled the all-powerful supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and an influential segment of the conservative bloc to support his progressive foreign policy initiatives."
June 17, 2005
International Herald Tribune

As President Mohammad Khatami of Iran prepares to leave office, his tenure is routinely being described as an utter failure.

Khatami neither realized his goal of ushering in an Islamic democracy, nor did he succeed in normalizing relations with the United States. As with most things in Iran, however, the reality is much more complex than a cursory look would indicate. A judicious assessment of Khatami's tenure would give him credit for some major accomplishments.

Despite the power of hard-line clerics and Iran's factionalized politics, Khatami managed to engineer a transformation that no previous politician or movement had achieved. The reformers' electoral triumphs realigned Iran's politics by making the public the indispensable actor of the nation's future.

The hard-liners may have imprisoned reformers and shuttered newspapers, but they could not prevent the Iranian people from asserting their rights and demanding a voice in the deliberations of the state. They could send vigilantes to break up student demonstrations, but they could not long constrain the restive ambitions of Iran's post-revolutionary generation, who make up 85 percent of its population.

Khatami's advocacy of civil society and rule of law led the Iranians to believe that they have rights that cannot be infringed. Should the political process remain unresponsive, this sentiment is likely to assert itself through protest and defiance.

Whatever the shortcomings of Khatami's strategy, he has ensured that the Islamic Republic cannot sustain itself by relying on stale dogma and coercion.

In foreign relations, Khatami's accomplishments were even more momentous. For Washington, the only essential barometer of change in Iran seems to be the extent of its support for Hezbollah. Moving beyond American parochialism, however, one sees that it was during Khatami's tenure that Iran normalized relations with key international actors, namely the European community and Saudi Arabia.

Employing his electoral mandate, Khatami compelled the all-powerful supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and an influential segment of the conservative bloc to support his progressive foreign policy initiatives.

It is important to recall that when Khatami assumed the presidency in 1997, there were almost no European Union ambassadors still in Iran. The European policy of "critical engagement" had turned much more critical after the death sentence imposed on Salman Rushdie in 1989 and the sporadic killing of Iranian dissidents.

It was Khatami who finally revoked the fatwa against Rushdie and ended the assassinations of Iranian exiles in Europe. Although today Tehran is engaged in delicate negotiations with Berlin, London and Paris over its nuclear status, the nature of relationship between the two parties has fundamentally improved. European trade delegations, diplomats, scholars and tourists are now routine sights in Iran.

Beyond Europe, Khatami instituted a significant shift in Iran's Gulf policy. Although many have often focused on Iran's hostility toward the United States and Israel, during the first two decades of the revolution, the state that was subject to most pernicious of Iran's machinations was Saudi Arabia.

Khatami keenly appreciated that Iran could not harmonize relations with the Gulf sheikdoms so long as it did not come to terms with the most important of the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia. In a reversal of two decades of animosity, Khatami managed to reconcile with the House of Saud shortly after assuming power.

After much backroom negotiation and pressure, Khatami once more secured Khamenei's essential backing for his "good neighbor" diplomacy, ending Iran's debilitating isolation in a region critical to its strategic and economic vitality.

During his tenure, Khatami ushered in a foreign policy that focused expanding trade, cooperative security measures and diplomatic dialogue. Ideological dogma and propagation of revolutionary Islam were not only seen as inconsistent with the reformist perspective but of limited use in an age of globalization.

After his eight years as president, Khatami is leaving an Iran fundamentally different from the one he inherited. As the famed dissident journalist Akbar Ganji conceded, "The genies are out of the bottles and the bottles that once contained them are cracked." And it was Khatami who first broke the bottles.

Comment: Another Neocon source that suggests something is going on behind the curtain...

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Flashback: The Rising might of the Middle East super power

Council on Foreign Relations
Ray Takeyh, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies
11 Sept 2006

Today, as Iran's leaders gaze across the Middle East, they see a crestfallen American imperium eager to exit its Arab predicament, an Iraq preoccupied with its simmering sectarian conflicts and a Gulf princely class eager to appease Iranian power. As with China, Iran sees itself as a leading regional power that is key to the Middle East's conflicts. There can be a solution to neither Iraq's civil war nor the chaos in Lebanon without active Iranian participation. As such, the guardians of the theocracy no longer feel compelled to offer concessions for the sake of US participation or European munificence.
As the cycle of United Nations Security Council conclaves begins, Iran's nuclear ambitions seem to be surging without restraint-no longer subject to either diplomatic mediation or coercive resolution. And a unique confluence of events ensures that Iran will sustain its defiant posture.

The calls from Washington and European capitals for suspension of Tehran's nuclear activities may seem reasonable but miss the remarkable changes in Iran in the past year. A combination of bitter experience and Islamist ideology animates the country's new regime. More than any other factor, it is Iran's own war with Iraq that continues to condition the strategic assumptions of Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, Iran's president, and his allies. A pronounced suspicion of the US and the international community that tolerated Saddam Hussein's war crimes against Iran characterises the perspective of those who fought on the frontlines of that war. The lesson for these veterans was that Iran's independence and territorial integrity could not be safeguarded by international legal compacts and western benevolence.

After decades of tension with America, Iran's reactionaries perceive that a nuclear capability may be the only way to safeguard Iran's interests. However, it is too simplistic to suggest that fear of America is driving Tehran to acquire the bomb. The Ahmadi-Nejad regime seemingly believes that nuclear weapons are critical for consolidating Iranian hegemony in the Gulf region.

Moreover, the unfolding external changes have only reinforced Iran's defiance. Since the US invasion of Iraq, the Middle East has undergone a steady transformation. Among the unintended consequences of the war is Iran's emerging empowerment. The traditional alliances and rivalries that have balanced and contained Iran's influence simply no longer exist. Iraq is a broken country while the Gulf monarchies are eager to accommodate-as opposed to confront-Iran's power. In the meantime, Washington's missionary zeal to promote democratic change in the Middle East is only empowering Islamist parties. In spite of the baffling claim by George W. Bush, US president, that the conflict in the Middle East is between forces of freedom and agents of tyranny, elections in places as varied as the Palestinian Authority and Iraq are bringing to power Islamists with long-standing ties to Tehran.

Lebanon's recent tribulations have furthered Iran's claims to regional leadership. When the incumbent Sunni Muslim regimes of Saudi Arabia and Egypt initially criticised Hizbollah's daring raids, Iran stood by its protégé. The crisis only unfolded to Iran's advantage, as its client managed to reverse decades of Arab military humiliation, surviving the Israeli onslaught.

Hizbollah defended its villages far better than lions of Arab nationalism such as Gamal Abdul Nasser and Mr Hussein defended Cairo or Baghdad-the seats of Islamic civilisation. In a region accustomed to military capitulation, Hizbollah has captured the public imagination. Iran, which created and nurtured the lethal Lebanese party, is basking in its glory.

Western leaders can be forgiven for insisting that Iran suspends its programme before negotiations can begin. After all, Iran did cease its nuclear activities before as a price for talks with European powers. However, the Islamic republic that acquiesced to such arrangements was a state ruled by reformers eager for integration into global society. It was also an Iran negotiating from a position of vulnerability, as it feared growing US power.

Today, as Iran's leaders gaze across the Middle East, they see a crestfallen American imperium eager to exit its Arab predicament, an Iraq preoccupied with its simmering sectarian conflicts and a Gulf princely class eager to appease Iranian power. As with China, Iran sees itself as a leading regional power that is key to the Middle East's conflicts. There can be a solution to neither Iraq's civil war nor the chaos in Lebanon without active Iranian participation. As such, the guardians of the theocracy no longer feel compelled to offer concessions for the sake of US participation or European munificence.

In coming weeks, the UN will issue further invocations condemning Iran, sanctions may be contemplated and the US will issue its veiled threats of military strike. Iran's nuclear plans will meanwhile continue apace, as the theocratic regime is impressed with neither America's crass military intimidation nor European offers of inducements.

Comment: Coming from a Neocon think-tank, this almost sounds like they are getting cold feet about playing "Chicken" with Iran.

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Flashback: Ahmadinejad Talks to U.S. Think Tank

he Associated Press
September 21, 2006

NEW YORK -- Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad broke away from events at the U.N. General Assembly to hold an informal question-and-answer session with high-powered members of America's most prestigious foreign policy think tank _ despite objections from some Jewish groups and the Bush administration.

The Council on Foreign Relations said afterward that Ahmadinejad had engaged in a "protracted punch and counter-punch" with 19 members for about 90 minutes in the conference room of a New York City hotel late Wednesday.
But it said the controversial Iranian leader had offered no new policies or opinions other than those he has aired widely on issues raging from his country's disputed nuclear program to the Holocaust.

"I'm not sure we learned anything new," CFR president Richard Haass said in a statement after the meeting. But Haass added that the Iranian leader may have learned about American attitudes from those who he sparred with _ some of them Jewish panelists who had visited former concentration camps in Poland.

Ahmadinejad has engaged in a media blitz during his trip to New York to attend the General Assembly _ giving interviews to Time magazine and CNN, among others.

But the trip to the think tank was controversial, provoking protests from Jewish groups and the Bush administration.

The New York Times, which had a reporter who is a CFR member at the private meeting, said Ahmadinejad spoke "with a tone that oozed polite hostility." He entered with "a jaunty smile, a wave and an air of supreme confidence" and ended the evening by asking Council members "whether they were simply shills for the Bush administration," the newspaper reported. It said there were no introductory handshakes before the talk began.

The newspaper also reported that the group's invitation to Ahmadinejad to talk had stirred objections from Bush administration figures and prominent Jewish leaders. It did not specify if the Bush administration had actively sought to stop the meeting.

Some Jewish leaders responded to invitations to the event by asking whether the council would have invited Hitler in the 1930s, and considered resigning from the group en masse, the Times reported. They decided not to resign after the event was changed from a dinner to a meeting, it said.

"It is more offensive to break bread with the guy," Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, told the Times. "I thought dinner was crossing the line."

Ahmadinejad has frequently called the Holocaust a "myth" and has demanded more research to determine whether six million Jews really perished in World War II.

CFR chairman Peter G. Peterson told him Wednesday that the majority of Americans _ Jews and non-Jews alike _ were "horrified" by his assertions, CFR said in a statement.

Ahmadinejad replied that he doubted that was the case for all Americans, it said.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told the General Assembly session that the international community must stand up against Iran, which she claimed is pursuing nuclear weapons to destroy Israel.

"There is no greater challenge to our values than that posed by the leaders of Iran," Livni said Wednesday. "They deny and mock the Holocaust. They speak proudly and openly of their desire to wipe Israel off the map. And now, by their actions, they pursue the weapons to achieve this objective, to imperil the region and to threaten the world."

The United States is embroiled in a confrontation with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. Tehran claims its goal is to generate electricity, but the U.S. says Iran aims to produce nuclear weapons.

The U.S. was required to grant Ahmadinejad a visa to travel to the General Assembly in New York this week, under an agreement with the United Nations.

The foreign policy group is filled with the country's government elite: Haass worked at the State Department under President Bush's first term while member Brent Scowcroft served as national security adviser under Bush's father, and Robert D. Blackwill directed Iraq policy at the White House. All attended the event, the Times said.

Comment: Even though the CFR here says that Amadinejad had nothing of interest to say, some of the other events on the global stage suggest otherwise.

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Flashback: Rice Retreats on Iran/Osama/Chavez

by Scott Sullivan
The Conservative Voice
September 29, 2006

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice in an unprecedented series of interviews with the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post signaled US defeatism, retreat, and appeasement as the main guidelines for the US "war" on terrorism. These interviews clearly establish that overall control of the terrorism policy has passed from the Pentagon to the State Department, especially to the Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns.
Secretary Rice's favorite line is that the Middle East is in a "Transformational Era" (never defined beyond this vacuous slogan) and the US should therefore not look for "quick victories" in the war on terrorism.

Madam Secretary, the US has had troops in Iraq longer than it had troops in the field against Hitler. Quick victories over Iran and Osama, and more than a few, are precisely what the US needs! Instead, Osama and Iran are making dramatic gains, beginning in Iraq, where the US holds the overwhelming military advantage.

In brief, Iran is taking Shiastan (essentially southeastern Iraq) and the port city of Basra from Iraq, which will provide Iran with effective control over the supply lines for US troops in Iraq. Iran is taking Shiastan via Iraqi parliamentary action, so far encouraged by the US, permitting southeastern Iraq and Basra to secede from the Baghdad government.

Meanwhile Osama is taking Iraq's Anbar province, which constitutes 30% of Iraqi territory and borders on Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria, and which is connected to Baghdad. Osama intends to use Anbar province to mount attacks on US troops in Iraq and to spread terrorism into Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria.

Osama's victory in Iraq is in addition to Osama's victory in Pakistan, where the Musharraf government has just turned the province of Waziristan over to pro-Taliban warlords, who intend to use the province to mount attacks on US and NATO troops in Afghanistan.

If you are looking for clues on how the US could recoup in Iraq and against Osama, don't waste time on Rice's breezy interviews, which are permeated with defeatism, especially on sanctions (i.e. a western gasoline embargo on Iran "won't work"). To take another example -- Rice pays lip service to the idea of containing Iran but never mentions the visas granted to Khatami and Ahmadinejad which provided a propaganda windfall for Iran. Also, Rice does not mention President Bush's extensive interview with the Washington Post's David Ignatius that favored a US-Iran strategic partnership. This is containment?

Instead, if you want to learn how to stop Osama and Iran in Iraq, look up the interview with Syria's President Bashar al Assad in the current issue of Der Spiegel ("America Must Listen"). Assad is attentive to threats from Iraq because Osama and Ahmadinejad intend to finish off his secular socialist regime once they consolidate in Iraq, with at least passive US support. Assad presents a detailed rationale for shoring up Iraq's central government to limit inroads by Osama in Anbar province and Iranian access to Shiastan.

That's right. Syria's President Assad is more attentive to US security requirements in Iraq than Secretary Rice, who mentions Iraq only in passing, and who fails to mention Osama and Iran as threats in Iraq.

Secretary Rice also downplays the threat posed by Hugo Chavez, which is already substantial and growing. Chavez is making a major bid for power in Ecuador, which hosts at Manta the core of US counter-narcotics programs in South America. A Chavez-supported candidate is now favored to win Ecuador's presidential election in October.

Chavez is also making a major bid for power in Bolivia, where Evo Morales is imposing a personal dictatorship. From Bolivia, Chavez and Morales would be able to export revolution directly to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Paraguay. Fortunately, Bolivia has a strong opposition, although the State bureaucracy is pro-Morales and Chavez.

Moreover, Chavez is making a major power play in the UN by prevailing over Guatemala for one of the 15 rotating seats of the UN Security Council, where he could vote in support of Iran. The odds now favor Chavez.

Despite her criticism of Chavez, Rice fails to mention the Ahmadinejad-Chavez-Castro Axis, which is becoming active in South America and the Caribbean. Rice also ignores Chavez's arms buildup, which is a threat to regional stability. The bottom line is that Rice and the State Department do not have a strategy for winning on the issues of Ecuador, Bolivia, and the UN seat. By the way, State also gave Chavez a visa for the UN propaganda session against the US.

In short, Osama, Ahmadinejad, and Chavez have the US on the run. The fault lies with State and with Secretary Rice personally, who has pushed Secretary Rumsfeld out of the loop on terrorism issues. In fact, the word is that DoD is no longer consulted on Iran policy, which is monopolized by State (Nicholas Burns and other State Department bureaucrats) and NSC. This is no way to win a war.

Comment: This is a Neocon source, which makes the report of Rice's retreat on these issues all the more interesting. What are they hiding now?

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Iraq - It Really Is That Bad


U.S. denies Iraq moving toward chaos

www.chinaview.cn 2006-11-02 05:27:47

WASHINGTON, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- The White House denied on Wednesday that Iraq was moving toward chaos as demonstrated in a classified military chart published by The New York Times the same day.

"If you got the same report last week, you would have found out the national sectarian incidents from the 21st to the 27th (of October) dropped 23 percent; casualties nationwide dropped 23 percent; incidents of sectarian violence in Baghdad dropped 23 percent; sectarian killings in Baghdad dropped 41 percent," White House spokesman Tony Snow told a news briefing.
The Times reported Wednesday that a one-page slide, prepared by the Central Command for a Oct. 18 briefing, showed Iraq was edging toward chaos.

The slide, which included a color-coded bar chart used to illustrate an "Index of Civil Conflict," showed a sharp escalation in sectarian violence since the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February, and tracked a further worsening in October despite a concerted American push to tamp down the violence in Baghdad.

Snow said the military conducted briefings on Iraq regularly that the slide, published by the Times, "was a snapshot taken at the height of the Ramadan violence."

"You had a snapshot at a single point; when it was violent," he said.

The Times report said that in fashioning the indexes, the military was weighing factors like the ineffectual Iraqi police and the dwindling influence of moderate religious and political figures, rather than more traditional military measures such as the enemy's fighting strength and the control of territory.

The conclusions the Central Command had drawn were not encouraging, the report said. The slide showed Iraq as moving sharply away from "peace," an ideal on the far left side of the chart, to a point much closer to the right side of the spectrum, ared zone marked "chaos."



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"There has never been an American army as violent and murderous as the one in Iraq"

By Martin Lukacs
The McGill Daily

"The bad news," investigative reporter Seymour Hersh told a Montreal audience last Wednesday, "is that there are 816 days left in the reign of King George II of America."

The good news? "When we wake up tomorrow morning, there will be one less day."
Hersh, a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine, has been a thorn in the side of the U.S. government for nearly 40 years. Since his 1969 exposé of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, which is widely believed to have helped turn American public opinion against the Vietnam War, he has broken news about the secret U.S. bombing of Cambodia, covert C.I.A. attempts to overthrow Chilean president Salvador Allende, and, more recently, the first details about American soldiers abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

During his hour-and-a-half lecture - part of the launch of an interdisciplinary media and communications studies program called Media@McGill - Hersh described video footage depicting U.S. atrocities in Iraq, which he had viewed, but not yet published a story about.

He described one video in which American soldiers massacre a group of people playing soccer.

"Three U.S. armed vehicles, eight soldiers in each, are driving through a village, passing candy out to kids," he began. "Suddenly the first vehicle explodes, and there are soldiers screaming. Sixteen soldiers come out of the other vehicles, and they do what they're told to do, which is look for running people."

"Never mind that the bomb was detonated by remote control," Hersh continued. "[The soldiers] open up fire; [the] cameras show it was a soccer game."

"About ten minutes later, [the soldiers] begin dragging bodies together, and they drop weapons there. It was reported as 20 or 30 insurgents killed that day," he said.

If Americans knew the full extent of U.S. criminal conduct, they would receive returning Iraqi veterans as they did Vietnam veterans, Hersh said.

"In Vietnam, our soldiers came back and they were reviled as baby killers, in shame and humiliation," he said. "It isn't happening now, but I will tell you - there has never been an [American] army as violent and murderous as our army has been in Iraq."

Hersh came out hard against President Bush for his involvement in the Middle East.

"In Washington, you can't expect any rationality. I don't know if he's in Iraq because God told him to, because his father didn't do it, or because it's the next step in his 12-step Alcoholics Anonymous program," he said.

Hersh hinted that the responsibility for the invasion of Iraq lies with eight or nine members of the administration who have a "neo-conservative agenda" and dictate the U.S.'s post-September 11 foreign policy.

"You have a collapsed Congress, you have a collapsed press. The military is going to do what the President wants," Hersh said. "How fragile is democracy in America, if a president can come in with an agenda controlled by a few cultists?"

Throughout his talk Hersh remained pessimistic, predicting that the U.S. will initiate an attack against Iran, and that the situation in Iraq will deteriorate further.

"There's no reason to see a change in policy about Iraq. [Bush] thinks that, in twenty years, he's going to be recognized for the leader he was - the analogy he uses is Churchill," Hersh said. "If you read the public statements of the leadership, they're so confident and so calm.... It's pretty scary."



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U.S. Soldier Killed Herself After Objecting to Interrogation Techniques

Editor and Publisher
November 2, 2006

The true stories of how American troops, killed in Iraq, actually died keep spilling out this week. On Tuesday, we explored the case of Kenny Stanton, Jr., murdered last month by our allies, the Iraqi police, though the military didn't make that known at the time. Now we learn that one of the first female soldiers killed in Iraq died by her own hand after objecting to interrogation techniques used on prisoners.
She was Army specialist Alyssa Peterson, 27, a Flagstaff, Az., native serving with C Company, 311th Military Intelligence BN, 101st Airborne. Peterson was an Arabic-speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at our air base in troubled Tal-Afar in northwestern Iraq. According to official records, she died on Sept. 15, 2003, from a "non-hostile weapons discharge."

She was only the third American woman killed in Iraq so her death drew wide press attention. A "non-hostile weapons discharge" leading to death is not unusual in Iraq, often quite accidental, so this one apparently raised few eyebrows. The Arizona Republic, three days after her death, reported that Army officials "said that a number of possible scenarios are being considered, including Peterson's own weapon discharging, the weapon of another soldier discharging or the accidental shooting of Peterson by an Iraqi civilian."

But in this case, a longtime radio and newspaper reporter named Kevin Elston, unsatisfied with the public story, decided to probe deeper in 2005, "just on a hunch," he told E&P today. He made "hundreds of phone calls" to the military and couldn't get anywhere, so he filed a Freedom of Information Act request. When the documents of the official investigation of her death arrived, they contained bombshell revelations. Here's what the Flagstaff public radio station, KNAU, where Elston now works, reported yesterday:

"Peterson objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners. She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage. Army spokespersons for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Alyssa objected to. They say all records of those techniques have now been destroyed...."

She was was then assigned to the base gate, where she monitored Iraqi guards, and sent to suicide prevention training. "But on the night of September 15th, 2003, Army investigators concluded she shot and killed herself with her service rifle," the documents disclose.

The Army talked to some of Peterson's colleagues. Asked to summarize their comments, Elston told E&P: "The reactions to the suicide were that she was having a difficult time separating her personal feelings from her professional duties. That was the consistent point in the testimonies, that she objected to the interrogation techniques, without describing what those techniques were."

Elston said that the documents also refer to a suicide note found on her body, revealing that she found it ironic that suicide prevention training had taught her how to commit suicide. He has now filed another FOIA request for a copy of the actual note.

Peterson's father, Rich Peterson, has said: "Alyssa volunteered to change assignments with someone who did not want to go to Iraq."

Alyssa Peterson, a devout Mormon, had graduated from Flagstaff High School and earned a psychology degree from Northern Arizona University on a military scholarship. She was trained in interrogation techniques at Fort Huachuca in Arizona, and then sent to the Middle East in 2003.

The Arizona Republic article had opened: "Friends say Army Spc. Alyssa R. Peterson of Flagstaff always had an amazing ability to learn foreign languages.

"Peterson became fluent in Dutch even before she went on an 18-month Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints mission to the Netherlands in the late 1990s. Then, she cruised through her Arabic courses at the military's Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif., shortly after enlisting in July 2001.

"With that under her belt, she was off to Iraq to conduct interrogations and translate enemy documents."

On a "fallen heroes" message board on the Web, Mary W. Black of Flagstaff wrote, "The very day Alyssa died, her Father was talking to me at the Post Office where we both work, in Flagstaff, Az., telling me he had a premonition and was very worried about his daughter who was in the military on the other side of the world. The next day he was notified while on the job by two army officers. Never has a daughter been so missed or so loved than she was and has been by her Father since that fateful September day in 2003. He has been the most broken man I have ever seen."

An A.W. from Los Angeles wrote: "I met Alyssa only once during a weekend surfing trip while she was at DLI. Although our encounter was brief, she made a lasting impression. We did not know each other well, but I was blown away by her genuine, sincere, sweet nature. I don't know how else to put it-- she was just nice.....I was devastated to here of her death. I couldn't understand why it had to happen to such a wonderful person."

Finally, Daryl K. Tabor of Ashland City, Tenn., who had met her as a journalist in Iraq for the Kentucky New Era paper in Hopkinsville: "Since learning of her death, I cannot get the image of the last time I saw her out of my mind. We were walking out of the tent in Kuwait to be briefed on our flights into Iraq as I stepped aside to let her out first. Her smile was brighter than the hot desert sun. Peterson was the only soldier I interacted with that I know died in Iraq. I am truly sorry I had to know any."



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Depleted uranium Cancer risk 'ignored'

November 1, 2006
BBC News

UK and US forces have continued to use depleted uranium weapons despite warnings they pose a cancer risk, a BBC investigation has found.

Scientists have pointed to health statistics in Iraq, where the weapons were used in the 1991 and 2003 wars.

A report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2001 said they posed only a small contamination risk.

But a senior UN scientist said research showing how depleted uranium could cause cancer was withheld.
The UK Ministry of Defence said that there was no evidence linking depleted uranium use to ill health.

Depleted uranium is extremely dense and hard, and is used for armour-piercing bullets or shells.

Fears over health implications led to a study by the WHO in 2001.

Dr Mike Repacholi, who oversaw work on the report, told Angus Stickler of BBC Radio Four's Today programme that depleted uranium was "basically safe".

"You would have to ingest a huge amount of depleted uranium dust to cause any adverse health effect," he said.

'Risk from particles'

But Dr Keith Baverstock, who worked on the project, said research conducted by the US Department of Defense suggested otherwise.

He described a process known as genotoxicity, which begins when depleted uranium dust is inhaled.

"The particles that dissolve pose a risk - part radioactive - and part from the chemical toxicity in the lung," he said.

Later, he said, the material enters the body and the blood stream, potentially affecting bone marrow, the lymphatic system and the kidneys.

The research was not included in the WHO report, and Dr Baverstock believes it was blocked.

Mr Repacholi said the findings were not collaborated by other reports and it was not WHO policy to publish "speculative" data. He denied any pressure was brought to bear.

But other senior scientists have pointed to worrying health statistics in Iraq, which show a rise in cancer and birth defects.

Prof Randy Parrish of the Isotope Geosciences Laboratory in the UK said environmental and health assessments were needed in Iraq to establish the facts.

Iraqi scientists trained by the UN are seeking to carry out such an assessment, but Henrik Slotte of the United Nations Environmental Programme said without clear information from the US on what was used and where, it was "like looking for a needle in a haystack".

He said there was "no indication" this information was forthcoming from the US.

A spokesman for the UK's Ministry of Defence, meanwhile, told the BBC that there was "no scientific or medical evidence" to link depleted uranium use to sickness in Iraq.

He said the MOD was aware of recent research into the effects of depleted uranium at cellular level, but that it had to be guided by "the professional advice of the Health Protection Agency and the International Commission on Radiological Protection".




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Flashback: Horror Of US Depleted Uranium In Iraq Threatens World

James Denver
29/04/2005

American Use Of DU is "A crime against humanity which may, in the eyes of historians, rank with the worst atrocities of all time." US Iraq Military Vets "are on DU death row, waiting to die."

The information which some governments are concealing is presented here.

'I'm horrified. The people out there - the Iraqis, the media and the troops - risk the most appalling ill health. And the radiation from depleted uranium can travel literally anywhere. It's going to destroy the lives of thousands of children, all over the world. We all know how far radiation can travel. Radiation from Chernobyl reached Wales and in Britain you sometimes get red dust from the Sahara on your car.'
American Use Of DU is "A crime against humanity which may, in the eyes of historians, rank with the worst atrocities of all time." US Iraq Military Vets "are on DU death row, waiting to die."

The information which some governments are concealing is presented here.

'I'm horrified. The people out there - the Iraqis, the media and the troops - risk the most appalling ill health. And the radiation from depleted uranium can travel literally anywhere. It's going to destroy the lives of thousands of children, all over the world. We all know how far radiation can travel. Radiation from Chernobyl reached Wales and in Britain you sometimes get red dust from the Sahara on your car.'

The speaker is not some alarmist doom-sayer. He is Dr Chris Busby, the British radiation expert, Fellow of the University of Liverpool in the Faculty of Medicine and UK representative on the European Committee on Radiation Risk, talking about the best kept secret of this war: the fact that, by illegally using hundreds of tons of depleted uranium (DU) against Iraq, Britain and America have gravely endangered not only the Iraqis but the whole world. For these weapons have released deadly, carcinogenic and mutagenic, radioactive particles in such abundance that - whipped up by sandstorms and carried on trade winds - there is no corner of the globe they cannot penetrate - including Britain. For the wind has no boundaries and time is on their side: the radioactivity persists for over 4,500,000,000 years and can cause cancer, leukaemia, brain damage, kidney failure, and extreme birth defects - killing millions of every age for centuries to come. A crime against humanity which may, in the eyes of historians, rank with the worst atrocities of all time.

These weapons have released deadly, carcinogenic and mutagenic, radioactive particles in such abundance that there is no corner of the globe they cannot penetrate - including Britain.

Yet, officially, no crime has been committed. For this story is a dirty story in which the facts have been concealed from those who needed them most. It is also a story we need to know if the people of Iraq are to get the medical care they desperately need, and if our troops, returning from Iraq, are not to suffer as terribly as the veterans of other conflicts in which depleted uranium was used.

A dirty Tyson

'Depleted' uranium is in many ways a misnomer. For 'depleted' sounds weak. The only weak thing about depleted uranium is its price. It is dirt cheap, toxic, waste from nuclear power plants and bomb production. However, uranium is one of earth's heaviest elements and DU packs a Tyson's punch, smashing through tanks, buildings and bunkers with equal ease, spontaneously catching fire as it does so, and burning people alive. 'Crispy critters' is what US servicemen call those unfortunate enough to be close. And, when John Pilger encountered children killed at a greater distance he wrote: 'The children's skin had folded back, like parchment, revealing veins and burnt flesh that seeped blood, while the eyes, intact, stared straight ahead. I vomited.' (Daily Mirror)

The millions of radioactive uranium oxide particles released when it burns can kill just as surely, but far more terribly. They can even be so tiny they pass through a gas mask, making protection against them impossible. Yet, small is not beautiful. For these invisible killers indiscriminately attack men, women, children and even babies in the womb - and do the gravest harm of all to children and unborn babies.

A terrible legacy

Doctors in Iraq have estimated that birth defects have increased by 2-6 times, and 3-12 times as many children have developed cancer and leukaemia since 1991. Moreover, a report published in The Lancet in 1998 said that as many as 500 children a day are dying from these sequels to war and sanctions and that the death rate for Iraqi children under 5 years of age increased from 23 per 1000 in 1989 to 166 per thousand in 1993. Overall, cases of lymphoblastic leukemia more than quadrupled with other cancers also increasing 'at an alarming rate'. In men, lung, bladder, bronchus, skin, and stomach cancers showed the highest increase. In women, the highest increases were in breast and bladder cancer, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (.1)

On hearing that DU had been used in the Gulf in 1991, the UK Atomic Energy Authority sent the Ministry of Defence a special report on the potential damage to health and the environment. It said that it could cause half a million additional cancer deaths in Iraq over 10 years. In that war the authorities only admitted to using 320 tons of DU - although the Dutch charity LAKA estimates the true figure is closer to 800 tons. Many times that may have been spread across Iraq by this year's war. The devastating damage all this DU will do to the health and fertility of the people of Iraq now, and for generations to come, is beyond imagining.

The radioactivity persists for over 4,500,000,000 years killing millions of every age for centuries to come. This is a crime against humanity which may rank with the worst atrocities of all time.

We must also count the numberless thousands of miscarried babies. Nobody knows how many Iraqis have died in the womb since DU contaminated their world. But it is suggested that troops who were only exposed to DU for the brief period of the war were still excreting uranium in their semen 8 years later and some had 100 times the so called 'safe limit' of uranium in their urine. The lack of government interest in the plight of veterans of the 1991 war is reflected in a lack of academic research on the impact of DU but informal research has found a high incidence of birth defects in their children and that the wives of men who served in Iraq have three times more miscarriages than the wives of servicemen who did not go there.

Since DU darkened the land Iraq has seen birth defects which would break a heart of stone: babies with terribly foreshortened limbs, with their intestines outside their bodies, with huge bulging tumours where their eyes should be, or with a single eye - like Cyclops, or without eyes, or without limbs, and even without heads. Significantly, some of the defects are almost unknown outside textbooks showing the babies born near A-bomb test sites in the Pacific. Doctors report that many women no longer say 'Is it a girl or a boy?' but simply, 'Is it normal, doctor?' Moreover this terrible legacy will not end. The genes of their parents may have been damaged for ever, and the damaging DU dust is ever-present.

Blue on blue

What the governments of America and Britain have done to the people of Iraq they have also done to their own soldiers, in both wars. And they have done it knowingly. For the battlefields have been thick with DU and soldiers have had to enter areas heavily contaminated by bombing. Moreover, their bodies have not only been assaulted by DU but also by a vaccination regime which violated normal protocols, experimental vaccines, nerve agent pills, and organophosphate pesticides in their tents. Yet, though the hazards of DU were known, British and American troops were not warned of its dangers. Nor were they given thorough medical checks on their return - even though identifying it quickly might have made it possible to remove some of it from their body. Then, when a growing number became seriously ill, and should have been sent to top experts in radiation damage and neurotoxins, many were sent to a psychiatrist.

Over 200,000 US troops who returned from the 1991 war are now invalided out with ailments officially attributed to service in Iraq - that's 1 in 3. In contrast, the British government's failure to fully assess the health of returning troops, or to monitor their health, means no one even knows how many have died or become gravely ill since their return. However, Gulf veterans' associations say that, of 40,000 or so fighting fit men and women who saw active service, at least 572 have died prematurely since coming home and 5000 may be ill. An alarming number are thought to have taken their own lives, unable to bear the torment of the innumerable ailments which have combined to take away their career, their sexuality, their ability to have normal children, and even their ability to breathe or walk normally. As one veteran puts it, they are 'on DU death row, waiting to die'.

Whatever other factors there may be, some of their illnesses are strikingly similar to those of Iraqis exposed to DU dust. For example, soldiers have also fathered children without eyes. And, in a group of eight servicemen whose babies lack eyes seven are known to have been directly exposed to DU dust. They too have fathered children with stunted arms, and rare abnormalities classically associated with radiation damage. They too seem prone to cancer and leukaemia. Tellingly, so are EU soldiers who served as peacekeepers in the Balkans, where DU was also used. Indeed their leukaemia rate has been so high that several EU governments have protested at the use of DU.

The vital evidence

Despite all that evidence of the harm done by DU, governments on both sides of the Atlantic have repeatedly claimed that as it emits only 'low level' radiation DU is harmless. Award winning scientist, Dr Rosalie Bertell who has led UN medical commissions, has studied 'low level' radiation for 30 years.(2 )She has found that uranium oxide particles have more than enough power to harm cells, and describes their pulses of radiation as hitting surrounding cells 'like flashes of lightning' again and again in a single second.(2) Like many scientists worldwide who have studied this type of radiation, she has found that such 'lightning strikes' can damage DNA and cause cell mutations which lead to cancer. Moreover, these particles can be taken up by body fluids and travel through the body, damaging more than one organ. To compound all that Dr Bertell has found that this particular type of radiation can cause the body's communication systems to break down, leading to malfunctions in many vital organs of the body and to many medical problems. A striking fact, since many veterans of the first Gulf war suffer from innumerable, seemingly unrelated, ailments.

In addition, recent research by Eric Wright, Professor of Experimental Haematology at Dundee University, and others, have shown two ways in which such radiation can do far more damage than has been thought. The first is that a cell which seems unharmed by radiation can produce cells with diverse mutations several cell generations later. (And mutations are at the root of cancer and birth defects.) This 'radiation induced genomic instability' is compounded by 'the bystander effect' by which cells mutate in unison with others which have been damaged by radiation - rather as birds swoop and turn in unison. Put together, these two mechanisms can greatly increase the damage done by a single source of radiation, such as a DU particle. Moreover, it is now clear that there are marked genetic differences in the way individuals respond to radiation - with some being far more likely to develop cancer than others. So the fact that some veterans of the first Gulf war seem relatively unharmed by their exposure to DU in no way proves that DU did not damage others.

The price of truth

That the evidence from Iraq and from our troops, and the research findings of such experts, have been ignored may be no accident. A US report, leaked in late 1995, allegedly says, 'The potential for health effects from DU exposure is real; however it must be viewed in perspective... the financial implications of long-term disability payments and healthcare costs would be excessive.('3)

Clearly, with hundreds of thousands gravely ill in Iraq and at least a quarter of a million UK and US troops seriously ill, huge disability claims might be made not only against the governments of Britain and America if the harm done by DU were acknowledged. There might also be huge claims against companies making DU weapons and some of their directors are said to be extremely close to the White House. How close they are to Downing Street is a matter for speculation, but arms sales makes a considerable contribution to British trade. So the massive whitewashing of DU over
the past 12 years, and the way that governments have failed to test returning troops, seemed to disbelieve them, and washed their hands of them, may be purely to save money.

The possibility that financial considerations have led the governments of Britain and America to cynically avoid taking responsibility for the harm they have done not only to the people of Iraq but to their own troops may seem outlandish. Yet DU weapons weren't used by the other side and no other explanation fits the evidence. For, in the days before Britain and America first used DU in war its hazards were no secret.(4 O)ne American study in 1990 said DU was 'linked to cancer when exposures are internal, [and to] chemical toxicity - causing kidney damage'. While another openly warned that exposure to these particles under battlefield conditions could lead to cancers of the lung and bone, kidney damage, non-malignant lung disease, neuro-cognitive disorders, chromosomal damage and birth defects(.5)

A culture of denial

In 1996 and 1997 UN Human Rights Tribunals condemned DU weapons for illegally breaking the Geneva Convention and classed them as 'weapons of mass destruction' 'incompatible with international humanitarian and human rights law'. Since then, following leukaemia in European peacekeeping troops in the Balkans and Afghanistan (where DU was also used), the EU has twice called for DU weapons to be banned.


Yet, far from banning DU, America and Britain stepped up their denials of the harm from this radioactive dust as more and more troops from the first Gulf war and from action and peacekeeping in the Balkan and Afghanistan have become seriously ill. This is no coincidence. In 1997, while citing experiments, by others, in which 84 percent of dogs exposed to inhaled uranium died of cancer of the lungs, Dr Asaf Durakovic, then Professor of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine at Georgetown University in Washington was quoted as saying, 'The [US government's] Veteran Administration asked me to lie about the risks of incorporating depleted uranium in the human body.' He concluded, 'uranium... does cause cancer, uranium does cause mutation, and uranium does kill. If we continue with the irresponsible contamination of the biosphere, and denial of the fact that human life is endangered by the deadly isotope uranium, then we are doing disservice to ourselves, disservice to the truth, disservice to God and to all generations who follow.' Not what the authorities wanted to hear and his research was suddenly blocked.

During 12 years of ever-growing British whitewash the authorities have abolished military hospitals, where there could have been specialized research on the effects of DU and where expertise in treating DU victims could have built up. And, not content with the insult of suggesting the gravely disabling symptoms of Gulf veterans are imaginary they have refused full pensions to many. For, despite all the evidence to the contrary, the current House of Commons briefing paper on DU hazards says 'it is judged that any radiation effects from...possible exposures are extremely unlikely to be a contributory factor to the illnesses currently being experienced by some Gulf war veterans.' Note how over a quarter of a million sick and dying US and UK vets are called 'some'.

The way ahead

Britain and America not only used DU in this year's Iraq war, they dramatically increased its use - from a minimum of 320 tons in the previous war to at minimum of 1500 tons in this one. And this time the use of DU wasn't limited to anti-tank weapons - as it had largely been in the previous Gulf war - but was extended to the guided missiles, large bunker busters and big 2000 pound bombs used in Iraq's cities. This means that Iraq's cities have been blanketed in lethal particles - any one of which can cause cancer or deform a child. In addition, the use of DU in huge bombs which throw the deadly particles higher and wider in huge plumes of smoke means that billions of deadly particles have been carried high into the air - again and again and again as the bombs rained down - ready to be swept worldwide by the winds.

The Royal Society has suggested the solution is massive decontamination in Iraq. That could only scratch the surface. For decontamination is hugely expensive and, though it may reduce the risks in some of the worst areas, it cannot fully remove them. For DU is too widespread on land and water. How do you clean up every nook and cranny of a city the size of Baghdad? How can they decontaminate a whole country in which microscopic particles, which cannot be detected with a normal geiger counter, are spread from border to border? And how can they clean up all the countries downwind of Iraq - and, indeed, the world?

So there are only two things we can do to mitigate this crime against humanity. The first is to provide the best possible medical care for the people of Iraq, for our returning troops and for those who served in the last Gulf war and, through that, minimize their suffering. The second is to relegate war, and the production and sale of weapons, to the scrap heap of history - along with slavery and genocide. Then, and only then, will this crime against humanity be expunged, and the tragic deaths from this war truly bring freedom to the people of Iraq, and of the world.



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UN Human Rights Body Declares Saddam Detention And Trial Illegal As A Violation Of Human Rights Law

Arno Develay
02/11/2006

A United Nations expert on human rights law body has declared the trial of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein before an Iraqi special court is illegal because it violates the right to fair trial under international law.
In the decision hand down on 1 September 2006, but not provide to the former Iraqi President's lawyers until just a few days ago, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that the "deprivation of liberty of Mr. Saddam Hussein is arbitrary, being in contravention of article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political rights to which Iraq and the United States are parties."

The Working Group-which consists of legal experts from Iran, Algeria, Paraguay, Spain and Hungary-spent more than two years collecting information and reviewing the case before making its decision. The Working Group's decisions are based on its interpretation of international treaties, primarily the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights. In this case the Working Group found article 14 of the International Covenant to have been violated in numerous ways.

On 30 November 2005, the Working Group had issued a Preliminary Opinion and requested the United States and Iraq to remedy the situation. Since then, as a second trial began, another defence lawyer has been killed, the United States government has continued to fail to provide adequate security, a relative of one of judges has been killed, the defence lawyers have been threatened to the extent that they can no longer safely participate in proceedings, and the violations of due process in the courtroom have continued.

"The decision of the UN Working Group is not surprising. Anyone who has been following the trial knows that it has been a gross abuse of law. The Working Opinion vindicates what I and other international legal experts have been claiming for months. The ball is now in the United States' court. Together with the occupation government it have installed in Iraq, the United States government must decide if it will respect international law or whether it continue to act with disrespect for this law," said Dr. Curtis F.J. Doebbler, a professor law at An-Najah National University and the lawyer for the former Iraqi President who filed the case.

Doebbler added, "If the United States continues to so blatantly violate international law, the rest of the international community must impose very serious consequences. If they do not, we will have lost the war to all those who say that law does not count and that violence is the only way forward. Is this the message George Bush wants to send? It is the message he is sending."

The Working Group lacks authority to enforce its decisions, however, states that act contrary to the decision of the Working Group have been viewed a pariah state in the international community and often been subjected to sanctions, restrictions on the travel of their officials, and boycotts.



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The Evil Of Zionism


3 more Palestinian Civilians Murdered By The Israeli Army In Gaza, death toll rises to 11

IMEMC & Agencies
02 November 2006

Three Palestinian residents were killed in Beit Hannoun on Thursday morning by the Israeli army in the ongoing military operation that started on Wednesday bringing the death toll in Gaza to 11, Palestinian medical sources reported.

The sources identified the three as, Issam Abu Odeh, 29, Diab Al Bassuni, 65, and Yousif Akel, 23. Both Odeh and Bassuni were killed by a sniper shot in the head.

Palestinian sources in a Gaza hospitals reproted that 80 residents were injured, 15 of them seriously.
Ambulance staff in Beit Hannoun reported that Randah Abu Odeh, 16, resident of Beit Hannoun was unable to get medical care due to the military operation in the town.

Abu Odeh suffers kidny failure and needs dialysis on daily bases, however the army opebned fire at the ambulance who arrived to evacuate her to the hospital, ambulance teems added.

Israeli military spokesperson said the army will continue with the military offensive against Beit Hanoun, while Palestinian resistance groups said they will continue to fire the home-made qassam sheslls at Sderot and asked the residents of Sderot to evacuate their houses to avoid being harmed by the Qassams.

Death toll rises to eight in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday
Saed Bannoura - IMEMC & Agencies 2006-11-02 02:39

Palestinian medical and security sources in the Gaza Strip reported that the death toll rose to eight on Wednesday as the Israeli army continued its strikes in Beit Hanoun, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. Dozens of residents, including several children were injured.

On Wednesday at night, one Palestinian was killed and at least three were seriously injured after the Israeli air force shelled an area in Beit Hanoun where several residents were gathering, while under cover forces of the Israeli army attacked several residents.

The resident was identified as Mohammad Khalil Fayyad, a local engineer. Eyewitnesses reported that Fayyad was shot by the under-cover forces while he was in his house.

The death of Fayyad rises the death toll in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday to eight.

Medical source in the Gaza Strip identified the casualties as; Husam Ibrahim Abu Harbeed, 18, Ahmad Sa'adat, 18, Tareq Nasser, 22, Mohammad Al Masry, Khalil Nasser Hamad, 24, Ahmad Zuheir Adwan, 21, and Mohammad Zweidi, 27.

Zweidi was a member of the Palestinian National Security Forces, while Abu Harbeed is one of the bodyguards of the Palestinian Minister of Refugees, Atef Adwan, security sources reported.

Dozens of residents were injured during the ongoing military offensive while medical sources in Beit Hanoun said that the death toll could rise because the soldiers are blocking access to a building where an undefined number of additional injured residents are located.

The fierce clashes erupted in Beit Hanoun before dawn on Wednesday after the Israeli soldiers, supported by tanks and armoured vehicles, invaded the town. One soldier was killed during the operation.

The number of residents injured on Wednesday arrived to fifty-six, including several children and women.

At least five Palestinian houses were totally demolished by the army during the offensive.

In spite of the ongoing military offensive, Palestinian resistance factions fired several homemade shells at the Israeli Negev town of Sderot, Israeli sources reported.

At least nine homemade shells were fired at Sderot, causing damage to several constructions and one youth was reportedly injured.

Comment: Make no mistake, under the excuse of "stopping rockets being fired from Gaza", the Israeli government, by way of its military, is engaging in the deliberate murder and terrorization of innocent Palestinian civilians.

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Press despair over Gaza raid

Thursday, 2 November 2006, 11:51 GMT

Israel's latest raid into the Gaza Strip in which at least 10 Palestinians and an Israeli soldier have died has hit a raw nerve in the region's press.

Anger is the predominant sentiment in Palestinian newspapers, with one commentator describing Ehud Olmert as "the most stupid and corrupt prime minister since the establishment of the Hebrew state".

In Israel, the press is pessimistic, doubting that the operation will put an end to attacks on Israeli territory by Palestinian militants, and one commentator calls for the reoccupation of the Gaza Strip.
EDITORIAL IN PALESTINIAN AL-QUDS
What is happening in the Gaza Strip can be described without any exaggeration as a limited war in which Israel is using tanks, war planes, artillery and infantry. The scope of destruction and injuries is great... The international community is required to make a serious move because the tragedy that has been going on for so long cannot continue indefinitely.


MAHMUD AL-HABBASH IN PALESTINIAN AL-HAYAT AL-JADIDAH
There is nothing to make us think there is any chance of achieving peace with the stupid [Israeli] government that is being led by the most stupid and corrupt prime minister since the establishment of the Hebrew state. These empty-headed people think that they can impose their conditions, visions and existence on the region through the use of unjust military force. So they do not shy away from committing all kinds of crimes against the Palestinian people.


ABDALLAH AWWAD IN PALESTINIAN AL-AYYAM
The Hebrew state has never stopped its war of multi-faceted aggression and will never stop it... What is happening in the Gaza Strip is a repeat of the old occupation with some adjustments here and there, including the occupation of the border area between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. The indirect occupation of that area will turn into a direct one.


EDITORIAL IN PAN ARAB AL-QUDS AL-ARABI
Slaughter in Beit Hanoun... The Israeli government has been carrying out a war of ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip since the abduction of [Israeli soldier] Gilad Shalit last July... The most shocking thing is that the world remains totally silent, as if these actions are legitimate and Israel is above all laws.


HAGAY HUBERMAN IN ISRAEL'S HATZOFE
Let us assume that we have "cleansed" Beit Hanoun of all weapons - then what? Who will prevent the terrorists from building anew their arsenal of rockets after we leave? There is only one solution for the firing of Qassams: Israeli security control of the Gaza Strip, rebuilding the settlements that were destroyed and leaving the Palestinian Authority as an independent authority dealing with Palestinian civil issues in their territory. There is no other way.


EDITORIAL IN ISRAEL'S YEDIOT AHARONOT
Neither the government, nor the defence minister and certainly not the army harbour any illusions: The Israeli operation will perhaps make things difficult, perhaps even stop the smuggling for some time and perhaps, perhaps reduce the number of Qassams. But in the words of the song: "My God, my God, this will never stop." This is the unpleasant truth.


ISRAEL'S JERUSALEM POST
This might be the largest operation in the Strip, with a brigade-size force, since disengagement, but no one is under the illusion that this is what will end the Qassam threat once and for all... The army, like the whole country, is only just emerging from the Lebanon trauma... Those in the government and the military who were also involved in last year's disengagement are determined not to allow the IDF back into Gaza for anything more than a few days. A reoccupation would be a final public admission that the withdrawal was a colossal mistake.



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Zionists seek to silence critics of US policy toward Israel

WSWS.org
1 November 2006

Prominent Zionist groups and individuals in the US are conducting a campaign of intimidation against liberal and left-wing critics of the Israeli regime and Washington's policy toward Israel.

Tony Judt, a noted historian and the director of New York University's Remarque Institute, was to have spoken in New York earlier this month at a meeting called by a nonprofit organization that had rented space from the Polish Consulate. After telephone calls from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Jewish Committee, his lecture on "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy" was cancelled barely an hour before it was scheduled to begin.
Judt, a liberal academic who writes frequently for the New York Review of Books, was born and raised in Britain. He lost many members of his own family in the Holocaust, but has aroused the ire of the Zionist public relations machine because of his sharp criticisms of Israeli policies and his charge that the Israel lobby has stifled debate on the Middle East in the US.

The modus operandi of Zionist organizations such as the ADL and the American Jewish Committee is by now a familiar one. "Inquiries" are made by one or another of these groups. The message is clear.

As the Polish Consul General said in connection with the contacts made in regard to Judt's scheduled appearance, "The phone calls were very elegant but may be interpreted as exercising a delicate pressure. That's obvious-we are adults and our IQs are high enough to understand that."

Abraham Foxman of the ADL cynically insisted that he hadn't requested that the event be shut down, but added, "I think they made the right decision." He then spelled out the brazenly anti-democratic and thuggish attitude of himself and his organization toward anyone who criticizes Israel's policies and Washington's support for those policies. "He's taken the position that Israel shouldn't exist," Foxman said of Judt. "That puts him on our radar."

To clarify his position toward Israel, Judt remarked, "The only thing I have ever said is that Israel as it is currently constituted, as a Jewish state with different rights for different groups, is an anachronism in the modern age of democracies."

The cancellation of Judt's lecture is only one in a series of similar incidents. Judt was also forced to cancel another speech, at Manhattan College in the Bronx, on the topic "War and Genocide in European Memory Today," after he was asked by the event's sponsors to censor himself by avoiding direct references to Israel.

Less than a week after the episode at the Polish Consulate, an almost identical incident took place, this time at the French Embassy. British-based author Carmen Callil had been scheduled to attend a reception on October 10 in honor of her forthcoming book, Bad Faith, an account of the Vichy official who arranged the deportation of thousands of French Jews to their deaths in the Holocaust.

This event was also canceled at the last moment, apparently because of complaints over a sentence written by the author in the postscript to the book. She wrote of becoming anxious, while researching the "helpless terror of the Jews of France," to see "what the Jews of Israel were passing on to the Palestinian people." She continued, "Like the rest of humanity, the Jews of Israel 'forget' the Palestinians. Everyone forgets."

Zionist attempts at censorship have a long and distasteful history, especially in New York City. They are not always successful, but not for lack of trying.

Just a few months ago the New York Theatre Workshop cancelled its production of My Name is Rachel Corrie, the play about the American student killed by an Israeli military bulldozer in 2001 as she attempted to stop the destruction of the home of a Palestinian family. The production was halted after similar "inquiries" from Zionist circles. My Name is Rachel Corrie finally opened in Manhattan this month and was met with warm responses from critics and the public.

The ADL, the American Jewish Committee and other Zionist organizations disingenuously claim they are not part of a "lobby." That is supposedly limited to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the organization whose specific aim is to influence the US government on behalf of Israel. In reality, all of these organizations devote themselves to the defense of Israel and its diplomatic and political interests. They are free to do so, but their attempts to silence their critics and smear their opponents as anti-Semites demonstrate their reactionary character.

The censorship attempts have extended onto university campuses. Campus Watch, a right-wing web site established by Daniel Pipes several years ago, has drawn up a blacklist that targets professors of Middle Eastern studies for alleged "bias" because they have dared to criticize Israel and defend the Palestinians. Supporters of Campus Watch have encouraged the sending of hate mail and threats to these professors, along with calls for their removal from their academic positions.

The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913 to fight against anti-Semitism, has long since betrayed any commitment to civil liberties and academic freedom when it comes to critics-including Jewish critics-of the policies and foreign policy interests of the state of Israel.

Even limited opinion polling reveals the growing opposition among American Jews to the decades-long Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, but this doesn't stop the ADL and similar groups from speaking in the name of all Jews. The power of these unelected spokesmen is magnified many times by their wealthy sponsors and their long-established ties to dominant sections of the corporate, financial and political establishment in New York and Washington. They have succeeded over many years in propagating the myth that Judaism and Zionism are identical, and that anti-Zionism is therefore anti-Semitism.

It should be noted that the kind of criticism that Foxman of the ADL says cannot be voiced in New York City is frequently expressed within Israel itself. Israeli newspaper columnists, writers, academics and others spoke out during the recent Israeli aggression in Lebanon. Are they also to be branded anti-Semites and silenced?

As Judt himself declared, "This is serious and frightening, and only in America-not in Israel-is this a problem. These are Jewish organizations that believe they should keep people who disagree with them on the Middle East away from anyone else who might listen."

The Zionist organizations involved in such witch-hunting and censorship utilize the issue of anti-Semitism as a red herring. They are really concerned with the foreign policy interests of the Israeli government, and specifically the maintenance of the longstanding alliance between Israel and Washington.

The alliance between American imperialism and Zionism was fully cemented some 40 years ago, in the wake of the Six Day War of 1967. Over the past several decades American defenders of the Israeli state have secured the ironclad support of both major capitalist parties, from the most liberal Democrats to the neo-conservatives in the Republican Party and the Bush Administration.

Big business politicians have vied to demonstrate their loyalty to Israeli policies, and the occasional maverick who deviates from pro-Zionist orthodoxy, like Republican Congressman Paul Findley some years ago, is usually purged at the next election with the help of millions of dollars in campaign funds from the Zionist lobby.

In the recent period, however, public criticism of the existing US policy toward Israel has begun to emerge within American foreign policy and academic circles. To some extent, the feverish campaign to silence all critics of Israel is an expression of the nervousness within American Zionist circles over this emerging policy debate.

While the US-Israel alliance has never been closer than during the administration of George W. Bush, there are signs of a possible shift. The disaster facing the US ruling elite in Iraq, along with the deepening external and internal crisis facing Israel, exemplified by its recent debacle in Lebanon, is emboldening those within the American foreign policy establishment who argue that US policy is tied too closely to that of Israel.

American Zionist organizations are acutely sensitive to these tremors, hence their attacks on John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard University. Mearsheimer and Walt authored a paper earlier this year which charged that the Israel lobby had distorted US foreign policy and sought to intimidate its critics.

An article by Mearsheimer and Walt in the London Review of Books was entitled, "The Israel Lobby: Does it Have too Much Influence on US Foreign Policy?" The lobby was defined as "the loose coalition of individuals and organizations who actively work to steer US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction."

Mearsheimer and Walt articulate the views of a section of the American ruling elite which has concluded that Washington's virtually uncritical support for Israeli foreign policy has produced a diplomatic and political disaster for US interests in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world.

The publication of these views was followed by hysterical charges of anti-Semitism against the authors, who were accused of stoking up anti-Semitic notions of an international Jewish conspiracy.

Socialist opponents of Zionism and imperialism do not take sides politically between Mearsheimer and Walt and their Zionist critics. The policy shift they propose, while it enrages the Zionists, has nothing to do with the interests of the international working class or the democratic rights of the Palestinians, and they are opposed to a struggle against both the Israeli and Arab bourgeois elites to unite Jewish and Arab workers on the basis of a democratic and socialist program.

We have no hesitation, however, in denouncing the crude charges of anti-Semitism leveled against Mearsheimer, Walt, Judt and similar critics of Israel.

There are, of course, anti-Semites among the opponents of the Israeli state, and they repeat the old anti-Semitic slanders. There are also a large number of anti-Semites among Israel's supporters. Richard Nixon, whose virulent anti-Semitism was exposed on White House tapes in the wake of the Watergate scandal, had no difficulty aligning himself with Israel. Today the Zionists welcome the support of Christian fundamentalists who would like nothing more than the establishment of a right-wing theocracy in the US.

As far as the Zionist establishment is concerned, the main enemy is not anti-Semitism, but anti-Zionism. When it suits its purposes, it is perfectly prepared to recognize this vital distinction and "overlook" the anti-Semitism among its own supporters. Hence the warm accolades from the Israel lobby to such figures as Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian prime minister, who received an award from the Anti-Defamation League in 2003 just days after expressing nostalgic sympathy for the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

To the extent that anti-Semitism has gained a new lease on life in the Middle East and elsewhere, this is largely the responsibility of Zionism itself. The anti-Semitic pronouncements of such figures as Iranian President Ahmadinejad are essentially the mirror image of Zionist propaganda, accepting the claim of the Israeli state to speak for all Jews and the interests of the Jewish people.

In fact, for the first half-century of its existence, Zionism was a distinct minority opinion within world Jewry. Its main opposition historically came from the left-from the socialist and internationalist opponents of all forms of nationalism and chauvinism. The attempt to smear left-wing critics as anti-Semites is one of the most despicable techniques of the Zionist propaganda machine.

The current attacks on even relatively mild critics of Israel are a sign of weakness. Longstanding Zionist myths are being increasingly exposed to the light of day. The fraudulent charge of anti-Semitism is beginning to backfire against those who level it.

The flagrant character of the Zionist intimidation campaign is such that even some committed Zionists have been forced to question it. The current issue of the New York Review of Books contains a letter entitled, "The Case of Tony Judt: An Open Letter to the ADL."

The letter, signed by more than 100 writers, journalists and academics, criticizes the ADL's actions in connection with the planned meeting at the Polish Consulate, declaring that "we are united in believing that a climate of intimidation is inconsistent with fundamental principles of debate in a democracy . . . the rules of the game in America oblige citizens to encourage rather than stifle public debate. We who have signed this letter are dismayed that the ADL did not choose to play a more constructive role in promoting liberty."

Among the signers are Peter Beinart, Franklin Foer and Leon Wieseltier, all of the New Republic, one of the most vociferous defenders of the Zionist state.

The intimidation campaign raises the obvious question of why the Zionists fear open debate. An open debate would provide the opportunity to expose the false promise of Zionism to provide a haven for the Jewish people, as well as to demonstrate the necessity of the struggle for the unity of Jewish and Arab workers in the fight for a democratic and socialist Middle East.



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Syria denies Lebanon plot claim

Thursday, 2 November 2006, 13:27 GMT

Syria has denied White House claims that, together with Iran and Hezbollah, it is planning to try to topple the Lebanese government.
The "rumours" spread by the US were wrong, the foreign ministry said.
A Syrian government newspaper described the comments as "pure vilification".

The US believes Syria may be aiming to block a tribunal over the killing of Lebanese ex-PM Rafik Hariri, in which Syria has been implicated.

On Wednesday, White House spokesman Tony Snow said the Bush administration was "increasingly concerned" by "mounting evidence" of a plan to bring the Lebanese government down.

He did not give further information, saying it was classified.

Damascus rejected the claims in a foreign ministry statement.

"The rumours put about by the US administration according to which Syria, Iran and Hezbollah are seeking to destabilise the situation in Lebanon are wrong," the statement said.

And an editorial in the government Baath newspaper said: "This pure vilification is meant to raise turmoil in Lebanon and cause fallout with Syria."

Veto fears

Hezbollah is backed by Syria and Iran, and has two ministers in Lebanon's government.

The BBC News website's world affairs correspondent Paul Reynolds says the White House statement appears to result from the tense situation in Lebanon, where Hezbollah is demanding one third of cabinet seats, thereby giving it a veto over decisions.

Such a veto would enable it to block approval of the international tribunal to try suspects in Mr Hariri's assassination, our correspondent says.

The Hezbollah leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, has threatened street demonstrations in support of his demand.

The US is concerned that this instability could result in the fall of the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

UK mission

The claim from the White House came as Britain held its highest level talks with Syria since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Prime Minister Tony Blair's foreign policy adviser, Nigel Sheinwald, met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and senior ministers.

Few details were given of the discussions, but the Financial Times newspaper reported that the visit was aimed at pressing Syria to cease its support for radical groups.

As well as its relationship with Hezbollah, Syria is thought to have influence on some of the insurgent groups operating in Iraq.

"Syria had always faced a choice: it can play a constructive role in international affairs or it can continue to support terrorism," Mr Blair's official spokesman said. "The key question is what choice does it make?"

Hariri tribunal

A UN team has been investigating who was behind the death of Mr Hariri in a massive blast on Beirut's seafront in 2005.

Popular protests in response to the death led to the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon after a 29-year presence.

The UN Security Council has approved the formation of an international tribunal to try those accused of involvement in the murder of Mr Hariri.

The UN sent a draft plan for the tribunal to Lebanese authorities on 21 October but it has yet to be approved by Lebanon's cabinet and parliament or by the UN Security Council.

The assassination has been widely blamed on Syria, but Mr Assad has repeatedly denied that his country had anything to do with the killing.



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Abbas, Haneya slam Israel's new round of Gaza offensive

www.chinaview.cn 2006-11-01 21:11:41

GAZA, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haneya slammed on Wednesday separately a fresh Israeli raid into northern Gaza Strip where six Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded.

Abbas described the Israeli operations as "a circle of dangerous and ignoble series because Israel is considering systematic operations in Gaza Strip without any reason." Israeli army confirmed on Wednesday morning that the Israel Defense Force (IDF) is conducting a large-scale operation in Beit Hanoun, northern town of the Gaza Stripe.
Six Palestinians had been reported as being killed and over 20 others injured in the operation.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Haneya also condemned the Israeli operation in Gaza at a news conference held outside his office in Gaza.

He said that the Israeli operation came as part of a pressure campaign exerted against the Hamas-led government and the Palestinian people.

Attributing the action to the inclusion of an ultra-nationalist politician into Israel's government, Haneya said that "The massacre committed today in Beit Hanoun is a result of the Israeli government's move to include a radical minister."

He warned that the inclusion of Avigdor Lieberman, chairman of the extreme-right party Yisrael Beiteinu, into the Israeli cabinet"would affect the nature of the Israeli escalation against the Palestinian people."

On Monday evening, Israeli Knesset (parliament) voted and approved the addition of extreme-right party Yisrael Beiteinu into the government coalition, drawing criticisms from Israel's left parties and Palestinian side.

Haneya also called on the international community and the Arab League to intervene immediately and put an end to the Israeli offensive, while urging the Palestinian people to unite and shelve their differences.

The Islamic Jihad (Holy War) movement also condemned the Israeli military operations in Gaza Strip, saying the Israeli army"tries to recover its dignity lost in the recent war in Lebanon."

Islamic Jihad's leader in Gaza, Khaled al-Batsh, told reporters that Israel "was seeking a fake victory in Gaza."

He also said the operations "are a gift to the ultra-nationalist bigot Avigdor Lieberman who joined the government to expand aggression and terrorism."

Meanwhile, Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said the Israeli escalation "became intolerable."

Calling on the international community to bear responsibility and intervene, Erekat said that the Palestinian National Authority(PNA) had repeatedly called for the European countries'intervention, but the Israeli aggression, however, continued.

Erekat expressed hope the Middle East Quartet would move to revive the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians,adding the release of the Israeli soldier and forming a new Palestinian government would pave the way for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.



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Peretz approves the transfer of 5000 rifles to Abbas' presidential guard

IMEMC & Agencies
01 November 2006

Israeli Defense Minister, Amir Peretz, approved on Wednesday that transfer of 5000 rifles from Jordan to the Palestinian Authority's presidential guard, and is currently weighing the possibility of allowing Badir brigades, that belongs to the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), into Palestine.

The Badir brigades are loyal to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and part of the PLO.

Israel has objected in the past to allowing members of the Jordan-based Bader brigade into the Palestinian areas, before but it is now seriously considering approving the entry of these forces to bolster Abbas.
On Wednesday morning, the Political-security Ministerial council of the Knesset decided to adopt the plan of U.S General Kate Dayton which he presented to the Quartet Committee in London.

The plan aims at arming and training the Palestinian Presidential Guard forces, loyal to Abbas, in order to be able to counter "possible clashes with the Hamas forces in the Gaza Strip".

According to the plan, Egypt, the United Kingdom and possibly Jordan will arms and train these forces.

Last week, Israeli online daily Haaretz, reported that Israel is weighing a Palestinian request to allow an armed brigade that belongs to the Palestinian Liberation Organization into the Gaza Strip.


Israel considering Abbas request for entry of PLO Bader Brigade into Gaza
Saed Bannoura - IMEMC & Agencies, Sunday, 29 October, 2006; 02:02

Israeli sources reported on Saturday at night that senior Israeli officials were discussing a request made by the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, to Israel to allow the entry of the Bader Forces, based in Jordan, into the Gaza Strip. Bader force is under the control of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

The request was made by Abbas two weeks ago, but Israel officials said that Israel needs to consider the request. Israeli has rejected in the past the entry of these forces into the Palestinian areas.

The sources added that after the clashes intensified between Fateh and Hams gunmen in the Gaza Strip, Israel started considering the entry of Bader force.

The force is composed of several thousands of Palestinians, most of them long-time PLO activists.

Israeli Defense Minister, Amir Peretz, said that the request of Abbas is under consideration, but "Israel did not reach a decision on the issue".

On Friday at night, a coordination committee of all Palestinian factions, including the rival Fateh and Hamas, agreed to end all sorts of public display of arms. According to the agreement, only uniformed policemen and security members will be allowed to bear arms.

Meanwhile, Palestinian policemen wearing blue and white uniforms deployed around the parliament building in Ramallah, in the northern part of the West Bank. Security personnel were also deployed outside the parliament, the Prime Minister Office and the Ministry of Education.

Comment: Most of the ground work of creating the necessary conditions in Palestine under which a Zionist government can claim that "civil war was breaking out among Palestinian factions" has already been done. All that is left is some manufactured crisis where one of the many "Arab lookalike units" of the IDF or Israeli intelligence can kill either Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas or Palestinian Prime Minister and Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyya, and then help to ignite and carry out large scale killing of Palestinian faction members.

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The State Of America - Something Rotten


US Treasury Secretary re-activates secretive support team to prevent markets meltdown

UK Telegraph
02/11/2006

Judging by their body language, the US authorities believe the roaring bull market this autumn is just a suckers' rally before the inevitable storm hits.

Hank Paulson, the market-wise Treasury Secretary who built a $700m fortune at Goldman Sachs, is re-activating the 'plunge protection team' (PPT), a shadowy body with powers to support stock index, currency, and credit futures in a crash.

Otherwise known as the working group on financial markets, it was created by Ronald Reagan to prevent a repeat of the Wall Street meltdown in October 1987.

Mr Paulson says the group had been allowed to languish over the boom years. Henceforth, it will have a command centre at the US Treasury that will track global markets and serve as an operations base in the next crisis.
The top brass will meet every six weeks, combining the heads of Treasury, Federal Reserve, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and key exchanges.

Mr Paulson has asked the team to examine "systemic risk posed by hedge funds and derivatives, and the government's ability to respond to a financial crisis".

"We need to be vigilant and make sure we are thinking through all of the various risks and that we are being very careful here. Do we have enough liquidity in the system?" he said, fretting about the secrecy of the world's 8,000 unregulated hedge funds with $1.3trillion at their disposal.

The PPT was once the stuff of dark legends, its existence long denied. But ex-White House strategist George Stephanopoulos admits openly that it was used to support the markets in the Russia/LTCM crisis under Bill Clinton, and almost certainly again after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

"They have an informal agreement among major banks to come in and start to buy stock if there appears to be a problem," he said.

"In 1998, there was the Long Term Capital crisis, a global currency crisis. At the guidance of the Fed, all of the banks got together and propped up the currency markets. And they have plans in place to consider that if the stock markets start to fall," he said.

The only question is whether it uses taxpayer money to bail out investors directly, or merely co-ordinates action by Wall Street banks as in 1929. The level of moral hazard is subtly different.

Mr Paulson is not the only one preparing for trouble. Days earlier, the SEC said it aims to slash margin requirements for institutions and hedge funds on stocks, options, and futures to as low as 15pc, down from a range of 25pc to 50pc.

The ostensible reason is to lure back hedge funds from London, but it is odd policy to license extra leverage just as the Dow hits an all-time high and the VIX 'fear' index nears an all-time low - signalling a worrying level of risk appetite. The normal practice across the world is to tighten margins to cool over-heated asset markets.

The move is so odd that conspiracy buffs are already accusing SEC chief Chris Cox of juicing the markets to help stop the implosion of the Bush presidency.

As it happens, I used to eat Mexican enchiladas with Mr Cox 20 years ago at a dining club in Washington, where California Reaganauts gathered to plot the defeat of Communism. Die-hard Republican he may be, but I can think of nobody less likely to betray the public trust in such a way.

So one is tempted to ask if Mr Paulson and Mr Cox know something that we do not: whether other hedge funds are in the same sinking boat as Amaranth Advisers and Vega Asset Management, keel-hauled by bets on natural gas and bonds.

Or whether currency traders with record short positions on the Japanese yen and the Swiss franc are about to learn the perils of the Carry Trade, a high-stakes game of chicken where you bet against fundamentals with high leverage to make a quick profit. Everybody knows it will blow up if the dollar goes into free fall.

They had a fright last week when US growth for the third quarter came in at just 1.6pc, and new house prices plummeted 9.7pc year-on-year in the sharpest drop since the property crash of 1981.

The dollar dived from 119.65 to 117.57 yen in a heartbeat. With $2.9trillion of derivatives now trading daily on the currency markets alone - according to the Bank for International Settlements - is this the start of the most vicious short squeeze ever seen?

The futures markets have priced in a 77pc chance of a flawless soft-landing for America's obese economy, now living 7pc of GDP beyond its means off foreign creditors. They are counting on moderating oil prices, and - a contradiction? - another year of torrid world growth. Nice if you can get it.

They have not begun to price in the risk of recession, typically entailing a drop in the S&P 500 stock index of 28pc from peak to trough. Evidently, the equity markets assume the Fed can and will rescue them by slashing rates in time, if necessary.

They should examine a recent report by the New York Fed warning that whenever the yield on 10-year Treasuries has fallen below 3-month yields for a stretch lasting over three months, it has led to each of the six recessions since 1968.

The full crunch hits 12 months later as the delayed effects of monetary tightening feed through, even if the Fed starts easing frantically in the meantime. By then it is too late. "There have been no false signals," it said.

As of last week, the yield curve was inverted by 29 basis points, was continuing to invert further, and had been negative for over three and a half months. If the Fed is right this time, the recession of 2007 is already baked into the pie. Those speculative positions may have to be unwound very fast.



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2 Sued for Downloading Over 1,000 Songs

By JIM FITZGERALD
Associated Press
Nov 2, 2006

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. -- Patricia Santangelo wouldn't concede in her fight with record companies that accused her of pirating songs over the Internet. Now the companies are hoping for an easier tussle against her kids.

Five record companies, represented by the Recording Industry Association of America, filed a lawsuit in federal court in White Plains on Wednesday against Santangelo's son and daughter.
It said Michelle Santangelo, 20, has acknowledged downloading songs on the family computer and that her brother, Robert, 16, had been implicated in statements his best friend made. It accuses the two of downloading and distributing over 1,000 songs, including "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)" by the Offspring, "MMMBop" by Hanson and "Beat It" by Michael Jackson.

"In short, each of the defendants participated in the substantial violations of plaintiffs' copyrights at issue and then concealed their involvement, standing idly by as Patricia Santangelo repeatedly protested their innocence and chastised plaintiffs for filing allegedly frivolous litigation," the complaint said.

The Santangelos' lawyer, Jordan Glass, disputed the recording industry's allegations and said he was at Michelle Santangelo's deposition and does not recall her "admitting or acknowledging downloading."

Patricia Santangelo, who a federal judge called "an Internet illiterate parent," drew attention last year when she denied downloading songs and refused to settle with the recording industry, which she said demanded $7,500 to keep her name out of a lawsuit for illegally downloading music.

Defenders of Internet freedom helped pay for her attorney. She proclaimed her innocence on TV. But the question remained whether her children had done it. Santangelo said she had no knowledge of them downloading and, if they did, the blame lay with computer programs, not with her or the children.

The industry is requesting an injunction, unspecified damages for each download and court costs.

The record companies have sued thousands of people, including many minors, for allegedly pirating music through file-sharing computer networks, most of which have been forced out of business.



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Vermont poised to elect America's first socialist senator

Julian Borger in Washington
Thursday November 2, 2006
The Guardian

Amid the furious debate over Iraq and the speculation that George Bush may be a lame duck after next Tuesday's mid-term elections, an extraordinary political milestone is approaching: a cantankerous 65-year-old called Bernie looks set to become the first socialist senator in US history.
Bernie Sanders is so far ahead in the contest for Vermont's vacant seat for the US Senate that it seems only sudden illness or accident could derail his rendezvous with destiny, after eight terms as the state's only congressman. His success flies in the face of all the conventional wisdom about American politics.
He is an unapologetic socialist and proud of it. Even his admirers admit that he lacks social skills, and he tends to speak in tirades. Yet that has not stopped him winning eight consecutive elections to the US House of Representatives.
"Twenty years ago when people here thought about socialism they were thinking about the Soviet Union, about Albania," Mr Sanders told the Guardian in a telephone interview from the campaign trail. "Now they think about Scandinavia. In Vermont people understand I'm talking about democratic socialism."

Democratic socialism, however, has hardly proved to be a vote-winning formula in a country where even the word "liberal" is generally treated as an insult. Until now the best showing in a Senate race by a socialist of any stripe was in 1930 by Emil Seidel, who won 6% of the vote.

John McLaughry, the head of a free-market Vermont thinktank, the Ethan Allen Institute, said Mr Sanders is a throwback to that era. "Bernie Sanders is an unreconstructed 1930s socialist and proud of it. He's a skilful demagogue who casts every issue in that framework, a master practitioner of class warfare."

When Mr Sanders, a penniless but eloquent import from New York, got himself elected mayor of Burlington in 1981, at the height of the cold war, it rang some alarm bells. "I had to persuade the air force base across the lake that Bernie's rise didn't mean there was a communist takeover of Burlington," recalled Garrison Nelson, a politics professor at the University of Vermont who has known him since the 1970s.

"He used to sleep on the couch of a friend of mine, walking about town with no work," Prof Nelson said. "Bernie really is a subject for political anthropology. He has no political party. He has never been called charming. He has no money, and none of the resources we normally associate with success. However, he learned how to speak to a significant part of the disaffected population of Vermont."

Mr Sanders turned out to be a success as mayor, rejuvenating the city government and rehabilitating Burlington's depressed waterfront on Lake Champlain while ensuring that it was not gentrified beyond the reach of ordinary local people. "He stood this town on its ear," said Peter Freyne, a local journalist.

"I tried to make the government work for working people, and not just for corporations, and on that basis I was elected to Congress," Mr Sanders said. He has served 16 years in the House of Representatives, a lonely voice since the Republican takeover in 1994. He has however struck some interesting cross-party deals, siding with libertarian Republicans to oppose a clause in the Patriot Act which allowed the FBI to find out what books Americans borrowed from libraries.

He says his consistent electoral success reflects the widespread discontent with rising inequality, deepening poverty and dwindling access to affordable healthcare in the US. "People realise there is a lot to be learned from the democratic socialist models in northern Europe," Mr Sanders said. "The untold story here is the degree to which the middle class is shrinking and the gap between rich and poor is widening. It is a disgrace that the US has the highest rate of childhood poverty of any industrialised country on earth. Iraq is important, but it's not the only issue."

In a state of just over 600,000 people he also has a significant advantage over his Republican opponent, Rich Tarrant, a businessman who has spent about $7m on his campaign. "Sanders is popular because even if you disagree with him you know where he stands," said Eric Davis, a political scientist at Vermont's Middlebury College. "He pays attention to his political base. He's independent and iconoclastic and Vermonters like that."



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US divided on existence of God - Disbelief Seems to be Increasing

The Age
Washington
November 1, 2006

Nearly half of Americans are not sure God exists, according to a poll released today that also found divisions among the public on whether God is male or female or whether God has a human form and has control over events.

The survey conducted by Harris Poll found that 42 per cent of US adults are not "absolutely certain" there is a God compared to 34 per cent who felt that way when asked the same question three years ago.
Among the various religious groups, 76 per cent of Protestants, 64 per cent of Catholics and 30 per cent of Jews said they are "absolutely certain" there is a God while 93 per cent of Christians who describe themselves as "Born Again" feel certain God exists.

When questioned on whether God is male or female, 36 per cent of respondents said they think God is male, 37 per cent said neither male nor female and 10 per cent said "both male and female."

Only one per cent think of God as a female, according to the poll.

Asked whether God has a human form, 41 per cent said they think of God as "a spirit or power than can take on human form but is not inherently human."

As to whether God controls events on Earth, 29 per cent believe that to be the case while 44 per cent said God "observes but does not control what happens on Earth".

The survey was conducted online between October 4 and 10 among 2,010 US adults.

AFP



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US Blockade of Cuba: Blind, Deaf and Mute

Havana, Nov 1 (Prensa Latina)

While the United States radicalizes its blockade on Cuba, opposition and resistance to this measure grow on the island and world criticism mounts.

Although the economic, trade and financial siege is a failed policy, Washington insists on making it persist beyond 47 years with new laws like the recent "Bush Plan." Initiated a few months after the revolutionary victory on January 1, 1959, the siege has cost over $86 billion to Cuba, but it has not fulfilled its aim of reverting the country"s social process.
Although the Caribbean nation has carried out its social-economic development in a rocky field, it has been successful in health, education and sports, and today is world renowned in these areas.

But it is undeniable that the blockade is generating shortages and important needs in the daily life, and recently Cubans are holding meetings of reflection to examine the real impact of the US siege.

A recent event organized by the UN Cuban Association, attended by representatives from 138 non-governmental organizations, termed President George W. Bush"s government genocidal.

In the closing ceremony of this event, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque made a detailed analysis on the group of punitive measures applied by the northern nation to asphyxiate the country"s economy and condition a subsequent armed invasion.

All this popular debate is generated by the island"s report entitled "Need to end the US-imposed economic, trade and financial blockade on Cuba," to be discussed by the 61st UN General Assembly on November 8, as it has over the last 14 years.

In the 2005 voting, 182 states spoke out that US authorities must unconditionally lift the blockade, in a clear example of the most generated international rejection.



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Guatemala, Venezuela choose Panama for UN seat

www.chinaview.cn 2006-11-02 09:46:46

UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- Guatemala and Venezuela agreed to support Panama as a consensus candidate for a non-permanent seat of the UN Security Council, Ecuador's UN Ambassador Diego Cordovez announced Wednesday evening.
They agreed to give up their own bid for the seat and supported Panama as a compromise candidate for the 35-member Latin American and Caribbean group, said Cordovez, who hosted two rounds of talks between Guatemalan Foreign Minister Gert Rosenthal and his Venezuelan counterpart Nicolas Maduro.

Cordovez said the two ministers will present the choice to a meeting of the Latin American and Caribbean group on Thursday for approval. After that, the UN General Assembly must vote.

Guatemala and Venezuela were vying for the Latin American seat that Argentina will vacate on Dec. 31. Guatemala, backed by the United States, led Venezuela by about 25 votes in all but one of the 47 rounds of balloting that started on Oct. 16. But Guatemala fell short of a required two-third majority to secure the seat.

Earlier on Wednesday, the assembly decided to suspend a new round of voting scheduled for Wednesday afternoon and postponed the balloting to next Tuesday.



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Science And Nature


In the land of death, scientists witness the birth of a new ocean

Xan Rice in Afar, Ethiopia
Thursday November 2, 2006
The Guardian

In Ethiopia's arid Afar region eruptions and earthquakes have created an open-air laboratory

The nomads were terrified. For a week the ground had shuddered violently. Cracks opened up in the soil swallowing goats and camels. Sulphur-laced smoke rose out of the dark slits. After retreating to the hills, the nomads saw chunks of obsidian rock burst through the Earth's crust "like huge black birds" and fly 30 metres into the air.
A mushroom cloud of ash dimmed the sun for three days. At night the new crater breathed flashes of fire.

"They had experienced earthquakes before but never anything like this," said Atalay Ayele, a seismologist at Addis Ababa University, who interviewed the Afar tribespeople soon after the volcanic eruption 13 months ago in this remote corner of north-eastern Ethiopia. "They said that Allah must have been angry with them."
But Dr Ayele, 37, and his colleagues wanted a scientific explanation. They knew the area was geologically unstable, but the number of earthquakes - 162 measuring more than four on the Richter scale in just two weeks - made them suspect that something extraordinary had happened deep underground.

They asked a team of British-based scientists with access to satellite technology for help. When the results came back it seemed as unlikely as birds flying out of the ground. Here in the Afar desert, one of the hottest and driest places on earth, the tribe had witnessed the birth of a new ocean. Images from the European Space Agency's Envisat satellite showed that a huge rift, 37 miles long and up to eight metres (26ft) wide, had opened deep in the Earth's crust. The tear, the largest observed since the advent of satellite monitoring, was created by a violent lateral rush of molten rock, or magma, along the fault line separating the Nubian and Arabian tectonic plates.

Tim Wright, a geologist at the University of Leeds who interpreted the satellite results, was astonished by the images and what they pointed to.

"The process happening here is identical to that which created the Atlantic Ocean," said Dr Wright during a recent research expedition in Afar. "If this continues we believe parts of Eritrea, Ethiopia and Djibouti will sink low enough to allow water to flow in from the Red Sea."

The findings caused a stir in the scientific community. This year teams from the UK, France, Italy and the US mounted expeditions to Afar, a region described by the British explorer Wilfred Thesiger as a "veritable land of death".

From above you can see vast black tongues of lava lapping at the desert sands, and rust-coloured volcanos with their lids long blown off.

There are so many fissures and faults where the ground has opened and slipped that the Earth's skin looks like elephant hide.

The lunar geography reflects what lies beneath. Afar stands at the junction of three tectonic plates, which form the outer shell of the Earth and meet at unstable fault lines. The Nubian and Somali plates run along the Great Rift Valley, which spreads south from Afar. Branching out like a funnel to the north is the Arabian plate.

Tectonic plates across the globe are constantly shifting - though slowly, usually by a few centimetres a year - with the magma beneath the crust. The plates can collide, forcing the crust upwards and creating mountain ranges - as happened with the Himalayas. They can also slide past one another, as occurs along the San Andreas Fault, in California, a notorious earthquake zone.

The plates can also pull apart causing continents to break up and oceans to form. Early in this process, at the plate margins, the Earth's crust stretches and thins in the manner of toffee. Magma rises up, eventually cracking the crust and helping the plates drift apart. Between the fault lines the crust, now heavy with cooled magma, sinks to form a valley and then allows water from a nearby sea to rush in.

This is how the Atlantic was formed, separating Africa and Eurasia from the Americas. And this is what scientists believe is happening in Afar as the Arabian and Nubian plates pull apart. Parts of the region have already sunk to more than 100 metres below sea level, and only the highlands around the Danakil depression stop the Red Sea from rushing in.

Analysis of the new rift is providing an insight into the role of magma injection in cracking the Earth's crust and the pace at which continental break-up occurs. The last big "ocean spreading" occurred in Krafla, Iceland, in the mid 1970s, along the boundary of the North American and Eurasian plates that forms the Atlantic's mid-ocean ridge.

But it took nine years to achieve what has occurred in Afar in a few weeks.

"We are looking at a huge open-air laboratory here," said Gezahegn Yirgu, a geologist from Addis Ababa University, as he peered out of a military helicopter swooping low over the Afar region.

In recent months there has been more instability in Afar. After a series of earthquakes in June the rift widened by a further two metres. Hundreds of Afar nomads are still seeking refuge in a town 25 miles from the main fault zone, too afraid to go home. They may be wise; the scientists say there could be more violent earthquakes and eruptions.

The new sea is predicted to be formed within about a million years. The separation of the Nubian and Somali plates along the Great Rift Valley could take 10 times as long. But that will be even more dramatic - for then Africa will eventually lose its horn.

"Some people think that extreme natural phenomena happened only in historical times," said Cindy Ebinger, an American geologist leading the research in Afar. "But here we can see them happening right now."



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New flu strain revives pandemic fear

Venkatesan Vembu
Wednesday, November 01, 2006 21:41 IST

New strain which virologists say could be resistant to vaccines, was first isolated in Fujian province last year

HONG KONG: A new strain of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, which has spread out from southern China to South East Asia, has revived fears of a pandemic, and refocused attention on the lack of transparency among Chinese officials about the disease in China.
The new strain, which virologists say may have become resistant to vaccines, was first isolated in Fujian province in March 2005, and has surfaced in several provinces in China since October 2005, and elsewhere in the South East Asian region, including Hong Kong, Laos Thailand and Malaysia.

"It is likely that this variant has already initiated a third wave of transmission throughout Southeast Asia and may spread further in Eurasia," according to three researchers who have published an article on the "Fujian-like virus" in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a scientific journal.

The researchers - University of Hong Kong virologists Guan Yi and Malik Peiris, and US-based Robert Webster - said that the controls now in place were probably "ineffective" in dealing with H5N1's evolutions. The scientists had collected bird faecal samples from poultry markets in six provinces from July 2005 to June 2006; about 1,300 of these samples tested positive for H5N1.

However, in other samples, collected from October 2005, they found that the Fujian strain had become predominant. A research team member said one reason for the predominance may be that it has remained immune to bird flu vaccines.



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Cot death caused by brain defect say scientists

November 02, 2006

HUNDREDS of babies are killed each year by a condition called sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). And scientists may have finally found the underlying cause of the mysterious deaths.

US researchers found that SIDS, also known as cot death, could be due to a brain abnormality that prevents victims from detecting insufficient oxygen levels in the body, reported The Times.
Because of this, babies who suffer from SIDS can suffocate on their own clothes or bedsheets, especially if they are sleeping on their tummies.

Scientists from the Boston Children's Hospital studied post-mortem samples from the brainstems of 31 infant victims of SIDS and compared them to 10 babies who had died of other causes.

TOO MANY RECEPTORS

The new study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that the cot-death babies examined had twice as many brain cells that manufacture serotonin compared to babies that died of other causes.

However, they had fewer receptors for the chemical.

Serotonin is a chemical that is best known for regulating mood but, in the brain stem, it is believed to help coordinate breathing, blood pressure and sensitivity to carbon dioxide by relaying messages from one brain cell to the next.

And it is this defect in the serotonin system that may explain why some babies die suddenly in their sleep.

Dr Hannah Kinney, one of the study's authors, explained that when babies sleep face down, or have their faces covered by bedding, they are thought to re-breathe carbon dioxide instead of fresh oxygen.

Nerve cells in the brain stem then react to the lack of oxygen and stimulates breathing and arousal centres in the brain to prevent suffocation.

'A normal baby will wake up, turn over, and start breathing faster when carbon dioxide levels rise,' Dr Kinney said.

But with a baby who suffers from SIDS, the defects in the serotonin system may impair the brain's ability to sense the build-up of carbon dioxide.

Hence, the baby is not roused from sleep and suffocates to death.

The study also showed that boys who died from cot death had significantly fewer serotonin receptors than girls, which would explain why male infants die from the condition twice as often as female infants.

The researchers added that the brain abnormalities likely develop during the early phases of foetal development.

SMOKING COULD BE CAUSE

Environmental factors such as smoking or alcohol use by the mother may negatively affect the development of the baby's brain stem.

However, they suspect that if the babies survive their first six months to a year after they are born, their brains should develop sufficiently to react normally to low oxygen levels.

Dr Kinney hopes that this discovery will help to reduce future incidences of SIDS.

'These findings provide evidence that sudden infant death syndrome is not a mystery but a disorder that we can investigate and some day may be able to identify and treat,' she said.



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Scientist says large coral disappearing

By MAT PROBASCO
Associated Press
Wed Nov 1, 2006

CHARLOTTE AMALIE, U.S. Virgin Islands - Large species of coral that form underwater reefs and create rich habitat for marine life are disappearing from around the U.S. Virgin Islands, Jamaica and elsewhere in the Caribbean, a leading researcher said Tuesday.

The larger species are being replaced by smaller varieties, which don't grow high enough to protect the fish, lobster and other sea life that rely on the underwater reefs, said Peter Edmunds, a biology professor at California State University, Northridge.
Abnormally warm weather, coupled with pollution and overfishing, have contributed to a rapid decline in large coral, Edmunds said during a talk at the University of the Virgin Islands.

Species such as the boulder star coral, which stretch several yards across, take hundreds of years to grow. Edmunds predicted the boulder star coral could be gone from much of the U.S. Virgin Islands in less than 50 years. In Jamaica, the species has almost been replaced by mustard hill coral, a smaller species unable to make large reefs, he said.

"The big guys are becoming rarer. The small guys are becoming more common," said Edmunds, who recently began projects near Tahiti and Taiwan, where he plans to compare Pacific data with that gathered in the U.S. Caribbean territory.

Mark Eakin, director of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Coral Reef Watch, said the coral study documents an even more widespread phenomenon.

"That's a general pattern we have seen in other places as well," Eakin said, referring to the Caribbean. "The remaining large coral, such as star coral, is dropping away" and the smaller coral is moving in.

A vital building block of marine life, coral grows and reproduce best at about 81.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the Caribbean, said Edmunds, who has studied Virgin Islands coral for two decades.

Edmunds said his research suggests coral in warmer water grows more slowly.

U.S. government scientists also warned for a second time this year on Tuesday that sea temperatures around Puerto Rico have exceeded healthy levels for coral, saying the fragile undersea life could become more susceptible to damage and disease during overheating.

Seas reached 85.3 degrees Fahrenheit, temperatures at which coral can be damaged if waters do not cool after a few weeks, Eakin said.

The U.S. atmospheric administration issued a similar warning in September, when seas reached 85.5 degrees Fahrenheit around the U.S. Virgin Islands and 85.1 degrees Fahrenheit in waters off Puerto Rico.

After hot summers, sea temperatures usually cool in late October, Eakin said in a telephone interview.

"We'd expect it to start cooling down soon," he said. "Hopefully we're right."

The government warning urges scuba-dive operators and underwater researchers in the U.S. Caribbean territories to look for coral damage and use caution around the fragile reefs, which are easily damaged by physical contact.

At the Coral Reef Task Force's biannual meeting in St. Thomas last week, top researchers backed an Australian study that said up to 60 percent of the worlds coral reefs could die by 2030.



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Scottish Watchdog warns of flood peril to seaside properties

Scotsman
02/11/2006

NEW flood-risk maps of Scotland, showing storm water covering Edinburgh's multimillion-pound waterfront development, parts of Glasgow city centre and other major urban areas, were unveiled yesterday.

The online maps prepared by the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) allow people to enter their postcode and discover whether they live in an area at risk from a nearby river or the sea.
Click to learn more...

Property experts warned there was the potential for homes to lose up to 40 per cent of their value in the worst affected areas, where the cost of insurance might also rise.

About 160,000 homes and 13,000 businesses in Scotland are thought to be at risk of flooding and the problem is set to get worse, with sea levels rising and river flows increasing by 60 to 90 per cent in many parts of the country over the past 40 years.




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Language Center of the Brain Is Not Under the Control of Subjects Who "Speak in Tongues"

Mon 30-Oct-2006, 18:15 ET
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine

Newswise - Glossolalia, otherwise referred to as "speaking in tongues," has been around for thousands of years, and references to it can be found in the Old and New Testament. Speaking in tongues is an unusual mental state associated with specific religious traditions. The individual appears to be speaking in an incomprehensible language, yet perceives it to have great personal meaning. Now, in a first of its kind study, scientists are shining the light on this mysterious practice -- attempting to explain what actually happens physiologically to the brain of someone while speaking in tongues.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have discovered decreased activity in the frontal lobes, an area of the brain associated with being in control of one's self. This pioneering study, involving functional imaging of the brain while subjects were speaking in tongues, is in the November issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, the official publication of the International Society for Neuroimaging in Psychiatry.

Radiology investigators observed increased or decreased brain activity - by measuring regional cerebral blood flow with SPECT (Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography) imaging - while the subjects were speaking in tongues. They then compared the imaging to what happened to the brain while the subjects sang gospel music.

"We noticed a number of changes that occurred functionally in the brain," comments Principal Investigator Andrew Newberg, MD, Associate Professor of Radiology, Psychiatry, and Religious Studies, and Director for the Center for Spirituality and the Mind, at Penn. "Our finding of decreased activity in the frontal lobes during the practice of speaking in tongues is fascinating because these subjects truly believe that the spirit of God is moving through them and controlling them to speak. Our brain imaging research shows us that these subjects are not in control of the usual language centers during this activity, which is consistent with their description of a lack of intentional control while speaking in tongues."

Newberg went on to explain, "These findings could be interpreted as the subject's sense of self being taken over by something else. We, scientifically, assume it's being taken over by another part of the brain, but we couldn't see, in this imaging study, where this took place. We believe this is the first scientific imaging study evaluating changes in cerebral activity -- looking at what actually happens to the brain -- when someone is speaking in tongues. This study also showed a number of other changes in the brain, including those areas involved in emotions and establishing our sense of self."

Newberg concludes that the changes in the brain during speaking in tongues reflect a complex pattern of brain activity. Newberg suggests that since this is the first study to explore this, future studies will be needed to confirm these findings in an attempt to demystify this fascinating religious phenomenon.

This preliminary study, done only at Penn, examined five subjects in a laboratory setting. The study, set for publication in the November issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, can now be accessed on-line at http://www.sciencedirect.com. The article is titled, "The Measurement of Regional Cerebral Blood Flow During Glossolalia: a Preliminary SPECT Study." Co-authors include: Nancy Wintering, Donna Morgan, and Mark Waldman.

PDF of the study and images available upon request.
Suggested caption: "From a new brain imaging study at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, SPECT scans were taken of subjects while worshiping versus speaking in tongues. The speaking in tongue images primarily show a decrease of brain activity in the frontal lobes, which is what normally makes us feel as if we're in control. There was also a decrease in activity in the left basal ganglia, which is involved with focusing attention and emotional responses. Finally, the thalamus activity increased during speaking in tongues which supports it is an active state of the brain."
Please courtesy images: "Courtesy: University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine."

Dr. Newberg is the director of the new Center for Spirituality and the Mind at PENN. To learn more, go on-line to: http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/radiology/CSM/index.html or email mindreligion@uphs.upenn.edu. Through the collaboration of distinguished scholars from the University of Pennsylvania, the interdisciplinary group works to promote future research and scholarly dialogue on the mind, religion and ethics.

PENN Medicine is a $2.9 billion enterprise dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, and high-quality patient care. PENN Medicine consists of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (founded in 1765 as the nation's first medical school) and the University of Pennsylvania Health System.

Penn's School of Medicine is ranked #2 in the nation for receipt of NIH research funds; and ranked #3 in the nation in U.S. News & World Report's most recent ranking of top research-oriented medical schools. Supporting 1,400 fulltime faculty and 700 students, the School of Medicine is recognized worldwide for its superior education and training of the next generation of physician-scientists and leaders of academic medicine.

The University of Pennsylvania Health System includes three hospitals, all of which have received numerous national patient-care honors [Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania; Pennsylvania Hospital, the nation's first hospital; and Penn Presbyterian Medical Center]; a faculty practice plan; a primary-care provider network.



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La France


Sarkozy lampooned in comic book

Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
Thursday November 2, 2006
The Guardian

In a French presidential race where candidates are ridiculed for their looks, height or appearance in swimwear, the interior minister and presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy is to have his sense of humour put to the test once again.
First his diminutive, bushy-haired puppet in the French equivalent of Spitting Image was considered so irreverent that the intelligence services issued a report on it for the centre-right minister's office. Then columnists lampooned his supposed obsession with his height, which at 165cm (5ft 5in) allegedly makes him shorter than Napoleon.
Now Mr Sarkozy faces the launch of a 150-page comic book of his life, depicting him as a tracksuit-clad exercise freak obsessed with his TV ratings. La Face Karchée de Sarkozy, published next week, takes its title from Mr Sarkozy's comments at a troubled housing estate during the Paris riots last year, when he vowed that "the louts will disappear" and the suburbs would be cleaned with a Kärcher, a brand of power-hose.
Mr Sarkozy is the first French politician to be turned into a comic strip. The authors, a journalist, lawyer and cartoonist, described it as a "comic book investigation" based on documents and interviews, although Mr Sarkozy, currently at the top of the opinion polls, did not cooperate.

The story starts in 2098 when a student writes a thesis on the "fascinating political phenomenon" of Sarkozyism. From his ambitious teenage years to his "vow to crush all opposition" on the right, his life is retraced. At one point he is depicted as a Napoleonic despot in crown and robes standing on a chair and holding court as friends in the media serve as his generals.

"It's sometimes dark, often funny and all true," said the left-leaning Libération.



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France criticizes Israel on Lebanon overflights

BEIRUT, Oct 31, 2006 (AFP)

Israeli warplanes carried out intensive mock air raids at low altitude over Beirut and south Lebanon Tuesday despite mounting international pressure to respect an August ceasefire.

Both the United Nations and France, which commands the UN peacekeeping force overseeing the Security Council truce resolution, called on Israel to halt the overflights which they said were a violation of its provisions.
The overflights began in early morning, concentrated over the capital's impoverished Shiite southern suburbs that were devastated by Israel's summer war with Hezbollah, and lasted around 45 minutes.



In the south, where the French-commanded peacekeeping force is policing the ceasefire resolution that came into force on August 14, the warplanes also carried out low-altitude mock raids, police said.

A number of aircraft also made sonic booms over the southern port city of Tyre, an AFP correspondent reported.

An Israeli military spokesman in Tel Aviv declined to comment on the continuing overflights. "We do not elaborate on operational activity," he said.

A statement released in the name of the UN special envoy condemned the persistent violations of Lebanese air space.

"Geir Pedersen expresses his serious concern at the continuing overflights by Israel which constitute a breach of Lebanese sovereignty and specifically of Security Council Resolution 1701," it said.

"The UN Interim Force in Lebanon has reported some eight air violations over the past two days which they have observed over their area of operation."

France too spoke out against the overflights.

"We consider them contrary to the spirit and the letter of Resolution 1701," a foreign ministry spokesman said.

Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz has insisted that the overflights will continue until the Shiite militants of Hezbollah halt what he says is arrant arms smuggling in defiance of the UN truce resolution.



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US, France in fierce debate on role of NATO

BRUSSELS, Nov 1, 2006 (AFP)

A fierce debate is raging in the heart of NATO, with the United States and France in opposing corners, ahead of a summit in Riga, Latvia this month.

The disagreement centres on the future role of the North Atlantic military alliance, especially over transforming it into a global force.
That row became very public on Monday with the publication of a plea from French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie against diluting NATO's role into that of a global partnership engaged in ill-defined missions.

On the same day US ambassador to NATO, Victoria Nuland voiced much wider aspirations for the military alliance.



"We want NATO to be able to demonstrate that we have an alliance that is taking on global responsibilities, that it increasingly has the global capabilities to meet those challenges and is doing it in concert with global partners," Nuland said.

The French view was encapsulated in a bylined opinion piece by Alliot-Marie published in the French daily Le Figaro.

"Nowadays some people talk of the possibilities to extend NATO missions in two directions," she wrote, "one is geographic, developing new partnerships with countries, the other functional, operating in the civilian domain, notably in the reconstruction of countries emerging from crisis".

For Alliot-Marie, whose article was entitled "NATO should remain a Euro-Atlantic organisation," the contribution of countries such as Australia and Japan in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) under NATO command in Afghanistan should be recognised.

But that "should not change the fundamental nature of NATO which should be... a Euro-Atlantic military alliance".

The development of global partners for NATO will "dilute the natural solidarity between Europeans and North Americans," and give the impression of "a campaign ... of the West against those who don't share its views".

Her views contrast sharply with those held in Washington which wishes to hand NATO reconstruction missions in Afghanistan. This tactic, the French minister said, meant replacing "organisations which are competent to carry them out, in particular the UN and the European Union".

"To transform NATO into an organisation whose mission is to reconstruct economies and democracies all at once does not correspond to its legitimacy or its means," she added.

This year ISAF forces have been involved in fierce fighting with Taliban militiamen in Afghanistan, particularly in the south of the country. NATO has called on its allies to provide reinforcements, to relieve British, Canadian and Dutch troops, but without much success due to operations elsewhere.

US NATO ambassador Nuland, in her comments just hours after the publication of the Figaro article, opined that between now and the November 28-29 summit in Riga "allies are going to spend a lot of time on wrestling and mud wrestling about the words that we use in our NATO documents and communiques".

"This is going to be a tense conversation," Nuland warned, recognising the differing opinions between the United States and some of its European allies, which she did not name.

"I would argue that the reality of what's going on in NATO is outstripping our ability to encapsulate in the NATO doctrine and theory here in NATO headquarters," she continued, during a conference at the Centre for European

Policy Studies.

The situation on the ground is "outstripping theory most importantly where it counts, in Afghanistan", said Nuland, describing the situation there as NATO's most challenging and most important undertaking.

"So as we struggle at NATO headquarters to reflect in communique language our global partnership ideas, remember that global partnership is a reality and out-of-area is a reality today in Afghanistan."



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Paris airport bars 70 Muslim workers

Guardian Unlimited
Thursday November 2, 2006

More than 70 Muslim workers at the main airport in Paris were today stripped of their security clearance after authorities claimed they posed a risk to passengers.

A number of those affected, who work at Charles de Gaulle airport, are alleged to have taken part in extremist training camps in Afghanistan or Pakistan.

Jacques Lebrot, the deputy prefect of the Seine-St-Denis district in which the airport is located, said 72 employees suspected of having links with people who rejected "France and our values", or who were suspected of travelling to Pakistan and Afghanistan, had had their passes revoked.
Mr Lebrot told the New York Times that one employee was discovered to have been a friend of Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomber who tried to blow up a flight from Paris to Miami in 2001. Reid is now serving a life sentence in the US.

Sixty-eight more people had been investigated and cleared, Mr Lebrot added. Around a dozen other workers had been notified that they were considered security risks, but remained in their jobs pending questioning.

The unions representing them said some were still cleaning planes and handling baggage.

French authorities have declined to say what the evidence against the workers is, claiming it would compromise security sources, the New York Times reported.

Unions have filed a discrimination lawsuit over the revocations, and at least 10 airport workers who lost their jobs have sued separately to regain their security clearance.

Muslim organisations and human rights groups have accused the authorities of waging an anti-Muslim campaign in a presidential election year.

The crackdown on airport security was apparently stepped up after the publication of a book by the politician Philippe de Villiers in May.

He alleged that clandestine prayer rooms had been set up beneath airport runways and Islamists were poised to put the premises under Muslim Sharia law.

The politician, who opposes Muslim immigration, claimed to have based the book - called The Mosques of Roissy - on intelligence reports.

Last month, the French interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, said 43 baggage handlers at Charles de Gaulle airport had had their security passes withdrawn. He said he "cannot accept that people with radical practices" work in an airport, adding that it was his "duty to ensure that [workers] do not have any kind of links with radical organisations".

Mr Sarkozy said officials had also closed "seven Islamist, clandestine and illegal prayer rooms" at Charles de Gaulle and at the second Paris airport, Orly.



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Study: Red wine may be key to longer life

www.chinaview.cn 2006-11-02 11:00:39

BEIJING, Nov. 2 (Xinhuanet) -- A natural substance found in red wine can extend life and counter the negative effects of an unhealthy high-fat diet, researchers at the Harvard Medical School and the U.S. National Institute of Aging said.

Researchers have discovered that a compound in red wine called resveratrol caused lab mice to live longer. Not only that, the mice also experienced a reversal in genes associated with heart disease, diabetes and other weight-related maladies.
They carried the study out on mice fed on a diet so high in saturated fats that it was equivalent to eating a cream cake with every meal. Mice on the fatty diet became obese, suffered health disorders such as liver and heart disease and died significantly earlier than mice on normal diets.

But when a second group of mice on the high-fat diet were given resveratrol, a plant extract found in grapes, their health and longevity were almost indistinguishable from normal mice, although they still became obese.

Resveratrol has already been identified as the chemical behind the so-called French Paradox, the phenomenon in which French people have low rates of heart disease even though their diet is traditionally high in meat, cheese and bread.

"What we really would like to be the final answer, and can't quite say yet, is that resveratrol will mimic the effects of calorie restriction - that it's going to trick your body into thinking that you're eating less calories by activating the same enzymes that get activated if you did eat less calories," said Joseph Baur of the team of Harvard.

For 70 years, scientists have shown that animals can live longer if fed fewer calories.



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Coming Home to Roost


Nearly 400 charged with terror offences in UK

IRNA
London
31 Oct 06

Nearly 400 people have been charged with terrorist offences during the past five years, the home secretary, John Reid revealed Tuesday.

Speaking at a conference for business leaders in London, Reid said that that since the 9/11 attacks in the US, 387 suspected terrorists or sympathisers had been charged under the Terrorism Act and other criminal legislation.

Of those, 214 had since been convicted and another 98 were awaiting trial. This, he said, was an "indication of the scale of the threat that we face."
"In response to it, the struggle has to be on every level and with every person. It is easy to forget just how deep and ongoing the struggle is."

The home secretary argued that at the core of the struggle was a battle of ideas and he called for the public, private and voluntary sectors to work with the government to "advance our values of guarded openness and liberty in defiance of the terrorist menace".

With regard to business involvement, he proposed setting up a new "innovation forum" to boost cooperative work between the different sectors.

"It is vital that our enterprises sustain the delivery of innovation at a pace that outstrips our adversaries," Reid told the conference organised by a technology company, Smiths Group.

He told business leaders that they played a vital role in creating the security and resilience required to defeat terrorism.



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Court action to force UK ministers to answer questions

IRNA
30 October 06

A British MP Monday launched a legal challenge to the standard of replies given by government ministers to parliament.

John Hemming, a Liberal Democrat, was seeking a judicial review of the government's performance in giving quality ministerial answers, which he said "is often way below par."
"The prime minister has not taken steps to ensure ministers answer questions properly, and the Speaker has said that it is not a matter for him to rule on," Hemming said.
"I have accordingly asked the courts whether they can force ministers to answer questions properly," he said in making his application to the High Court in London.

The hearing will focus on the issue of whether the courts can, in principle, force ministers to answer questions, according to the parliamentary news service epolitix.com.

Hemming, who taught himself law, was arguing that while oral parliamentary questions form part of official proceedings and are immune from judicial review under the 1688 Bill of Rights, written ministerial answers to parliamentary questions are not.

In his evidence, he also pointed out that under the ministerial code, it is "of paramount importance that ministers give accurate and truthful information to parliament."
The Lib Dem MPs was expected to present a dossier he has collated as examples of questions badly answered which he is asking the court to examine.

He said that he has had to resort to the courts because neither the prime minister nor the cabinet secretary have dealt with the issues he has raised despite repeated requests.



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Beckett denies Iraq war was a mistake

IRNA
London
30 Oct 06

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett Monday denied that the Iraq war was a mistake and that Prime Minister Tony Blair should resign over the decision.

Beckett also insisted that the decision to commit British forces to military action in Iraq back in 2003 was taken by the Blair cabinet and that as such all ministers abided by "collective responsibility."
"No, we did not 'toe the line,'" she said in reference to reports that Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown only backed the invasion after the prime minister threatened to otherwise sack him.

"We took the decision after much painful consideration and in good conscience on the basis of the evidence before us. And I believe it was the right decision," the foreign secretary told the Independent newspaper in response to readers' questions.

She declined to say whether she felt any sense of "guilt" about the tens of thousands of innocent civilians who have been killed as a consequence of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but said that any death is of "immense concern."
Despite growing calls, including from military leaders, for withdrawal of British troops, Beckett still insisted that the UK's armed forces, currently numbering some 7,000, "will stay until the job is done" when Iraqis can take full responsibility for security.

Asked whether the invasion of Iraq will be judged as a success, she said that "no one can predict what judgment history will make about Iraq."
"But if we are able to put it back on its feet and to leave it with an elected government which is at the service of the people, that will be for the first time almost in living memory," she added.

In the interview, the foreign secretary also denied that she remained silent in the face of the Israeli regime's month-long bombardment of Lebanon in July, saying that she called "on every occasion for a cessation of hostitilies."
"We argue consistently to defend democracy and freedom in every part of the world," she also said in response to accusations of double standards in the UK's foreign policy.

Beckett, who suddenly replaced Jack Straw as foreign secretary in May, admitted that she did not expect to be appointed to the post and had resorted to the use of "less than diplomatic language out of sheer surprise" when she was told by Blair.

Comment: Hmmm... seems like the current British government is trying to do fast damage control. Wonder what is up with that?

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Blair on Iraq hot seat, seeks to stave off inquiry vote defeat

IRNA
London
31 Oct 06

There will be "very real consequences" for British troops in Iraq if MPs defeat the government over calls for an inquiry into the war, Prime Minister Tony Blair's Office claimed Tuesday.

"Everyone knows what the headlines would be if the motion were carried... 'Government forced to concede'," Blair's official spokesman said ahead of a parliamentary vote, calling for an independent inquiry into the Iraq was and its disastrous aftermath.
His warning came as the British government was seen risking defeat in the first substantial debate on the Iraq war since MPs narrowly supported deploying troops to joining the US-led invasion over three-and-a-half years.

The Scottish National Party (SNP) and the Welsh Plaid Cymru were leading calls for a committee of seven senior MPs to review "the way in which the responsibilities of government were discharged in relation to Iraq" from the build-up and invasion in March 2003.

But in an amendment to the motion, the government appealed that there had already been four committees of inquiries already into various aspects related to the war and that it "declines at this time invasion" to set up an independent review panel.

At his daily briefing to domestic and foreign journalists, Blair's spokesman warned that an inquiry now would be seen by the enemy as a sign of weakness.

"Of course we continue to learn the lessons all the time and there is no doubt that at the end of our period there people will want to look back," he said.

The spokesman said that the time to deal with it "is then, not now." This, he warned, is "not a theoretical debate. It is a very real debate with very real consequences for our soldiers on the ground."
But opening the debate, Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price, who has led moves to impeach Blair over the Iraq war, said the issue was "not about revisiting old ground."
"It is an urgent attempt to restore the balance of power between Parliament and the executive; and of the utmost contemporary relevance if we are to prevent such tragedies from happening again," Price said.

SNP leader Alex Salmond said the vote "offers MPs a second chance to re-establish parliamentary accountability over an executive which has led the country into a bloody quagmire."
"If this motion carries - or indeed even if it records a substantial shift in opinion since the vote which took us to war - Mr Blair's time in Downing Street will be numbered in days, not weeks or months," Salmond said.

Reports suggested that the government was facing possible defeat due to the number of anti-war Labour MPs who were likely to support calls for a review unless Blair was able to reach a compromise.

The main opposition Conservatives indicated that some kind of face-saving deal may be in the offering in its amendment, calling for the review to start within a year after an expected major withdrawal of British troops from Iraq.

Shadow foreign secretary William Hague has said that if such an inquiry was announced, the Conservatives would abstain from the crucial vote on setting up an immediate review, by that they would put the government "under increased pressure" if not.

"A responsible government should want all possible lessons to be learned from the efforts to bring order and reconstruction to Iraq, and should not be afraid of giving these issues the most searching examination," Hague said on BBC radio.

He distanced the Conservatives continuing support for the war, saying that whatever one's view about the rights and wrongs of the invasion of Iraq, it is "very important to learn about what's happened since then."
"Most of us supported the invasion of Iraq and many of us still consider it was the right thing to do... but this is a separate issue," the shadow foreign secretary said.

The Liberal Democrats, who have always opposed the war, also insisted that it was "entirely legitimate" to ask questions of ministers, without undermining troops' morale.

"We want to know that the government actually have a proper plan for Iraq that's got milestones, that's got benchmarks, that actually recognises we cannot be there indefinitely," the Lib Dems foreign affairs spokesman Michael Moore said.

"The US authorities responded to the failure of the current strategy by initiating the Baker review. The time has come for the British government to do the same," he added.

Comment: Better that the current British government be defeated than the British nation lose everything. Why can't those jokers figure that one out?

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Iran - To Bomb Or Not To Bomb


Iran test fires longer-range missile

AP
02/11/2006

Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards test-fired dozen of missiles, including the long-range Shahab-3, during the first hours of new military manoeuvres, Iranian state-run television said today.

The report said several kinds of short-range missiles were also fired in a central desert area of Iran during the manoeuvres, which came two days after US-led warships finished an exercise in the Gulf that Tehran described as "adventurist".

"We want to show our deterrent and defensive power to trans-regional enemies, and we hope they will understand the message of the manoeuvres," said the head of the Revolutionary Guards, Gen Yahya Rahim Safavi, in an apparent reference to the US and other western powers.

The general said the 10-day manoeuvres, named Great Prophet, would take place in the Gulf, the Sea of Oman and several provinces of the country. He did not specify how many troops were involved.

The Shahab-3 missile is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and is believed to have a range of more than 1,250 miles. It can reach Israeli and British forces in the Middle East.
The state-run TV said that among the other weapons tested during the manoeuvres was the Shahab-2, which Iran says has a cluster warhead that can send 1,400 bomblets at the same time.

Solid-fuel Zalzal missiles also were launched, as were guided missiles as well as Scud-B, Zolfaghar-73 and Z-3, it said.

The manoeuvres came as the UN Security Council considered sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme, which Tehran says is purely geared at civilian use but that the US and other western powers fear could hide research on an atomic bomb.

Iran has said that the US-led six-nation drills this week in the region would not improve security in the Gulf waters, through which about 20 percent of the world's oil passes.

It also called on Gulf nations to set up their own regional security arrangements.

The US-led manoeuvres focused on surveillance, with warships tracking a ship suspected of carrying components of illegal weapons.

The nations that took part were Australia, Bahrain, Britain, France, Italy and the United States.

Iran regularly holds large manoeuvres, often using them to test weapons developed by its arms industry.



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Russian FM criticizes European draft resolution on Iran sanctions

www.chinaview.cn 2006-11-02 04:11:04

MOSCOW, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that a European draft resolution imposing sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear program would isolate Iran.

"We cannot support those measures which in fact aim to isolate Iran from the outside world, including the isolation of the people who are charged with leading negotiations on the nuclear program," the Interfax news agency quoted Lavrov as saying.
He was referring to a draft UN Security Council resolution tabled by Britain, France and Germany, which seeks to punish Iran for its defiance of a UN demand it halt uranium enrichment activities.

"The EU3 draft resolution goes far beyond the framework of agreements" among the six major nations that have offered Iran a package of incentives and multilateral talks in exchange for a freeze on its enrichment work, Lavrov said. But he added: "We are working on the text of the resolution."

The United States is seeking to impose sanctions on Iran through the UN Security Council on the grounds that Tehran is developing a nuclear-weapons program under the garb of a civilian-use program. Iran, however, says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

Lavrov said last month that Russia will oppose any attempts to use the UN Security Council to punish Iran for its nuclear program.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a telephone conversation on Monday that Moscow favored further talks on Iran's nuclear program.

Tehran has said it wants talks with the major nations, but will not suspend its nuclear work as a prerequisite.

Iran, which failed to meet a UN Security Council deadline for suspending its enrichment work by Aug. 31, said on Friday it had fed gas into a second cascade of centrifuges at a uranium enrichment facility.



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Iran fires off ballistic missiles in military maneuver

www.chinaview.cn 2006-11-02 15:14:42

TEHRAN, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Iran on Thursday launched several types of missiles at the start of a large-scale military maneuvers, including the Shahab-3 ballistic missiles with a range of more than 2,000 km, the state television reported.

"The Shahab missiles carrying cluster warheads have a range of 2,000 km, they were fired from the desert of Qom," a city 120 km south of Tehran, the television reported.
"Besides Shahab-3, the Shahab-2 whose warhead can send 1,400 bomb lets at the same time, as well as some other short-range missiles, such as Zolfaghar-73, Scud B, Fath-110 and Zelzal were also launched in the presence of General Seyed Yahya Rahim Safavi, and other high-ranking commanders, said the report.

It was the first time for Iran to test Shahab-3 in military exercises and top officers have said they would employ other "new equipment" during the drills.

Earlier on Wednesday, Major General Safavi, Commander-in-Chief of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), said the 10-day maneuvers dubbed "The Great Prophet 2" would be carried out in the Gulf waters, the Sea of Oman and 14 of the country's provinces. But he didn't disclose how many Iranian troops participated in the drills.

"The foremost goal of the maneuvers is to show Iran's firm determination to defend the country against any possible threats," Safavi said, adding the war games are not a threat to neighboring countries.

He made the remarks after the U.S.-led warships staged a two-day maneuvers in the Gulf waters aimed at blocking smuggling of nuclear weapons material and arms proliferation.

Commenting on the U.S.-led maneuvers, Safavi said, "It is a propaganda and political maneuver without military value."

"If forces from out of the region want to endanger Iran's security and interests, the Revolution Guards and the Basij (volunteer militia) will use all their capabilities to strike their enemies and their interests," he added.

Iranian government spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham also said on Monday that foreign military forces should not damage Gulf peace, saying durable peace and security would be restored through collective cooperation of all countries of the region.

This is the third large-scale military exercises held in Iran this year. The Islamic Republic in August launched a large-scale military maneuver named "Zolfaghar Blow", and in April also staged "The Great Prophet 1" drills, during which Iran said it tested advanced weapons including missiles and torpedoes.



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