We The People Foundation
2458 Ridge Road
Queensbury, NY 12804
On Monday, November 6, 2006, "V" visited security check points at the White House, the main Treasury, IRS and Justice Department Buildings and the Capitol. "V's" purpose was to deliver the People's Petitions for Redress of Grievances relating to the Government's violations of the war powers, tax, privacy and money clauses of the Constitution, and to inform key Government officials that at least 100 more "Vs" would be at their doorstep on November 14th expecting a response to the Petitions.
At the White House about a dozen Secret Service agents appeared on foot, bicycles and car to meet "V." While virtuously assuring the security of the state, they were curious about the image of "V" and asked many questions. Most, when asked if they had seen the movie "V for Vendetta", smiled their approval.
When an agent asked if "V" would remove his mask for identification purposes, "V" explained that would defeat the very purpose of the mask, which was to give expression to the fact that the nation was becoming a police state, that too many people were becoming afraid to be identified as dissenters or protestors, and that this was not in the long term interest of a free people. The agents accepted the veracity of "V's" message and refrained from veering "V" from his vanguard visit as the vox populi.
Many law enforcement agents dutifully responded to the first impression security concerns caused by "V's" dramatic and startling presence at the seat of governmental power. All but one who confronted "V" were generally pleasant, professional and ultimately respectful of the voraciously valued Rights of peaceful protest, dissent and Petition that "V" was claiming and exercising.
Unfortunately, there was one agent who, either out of vanity, vice, or emotional instability, believed his vows of service and badge would vindicate his use of violence where clearly none was justified.
One Secret Service agent near the White House, even after he and all the other agents had recognized that the toy daggers in "V"'s belt were plastic and part of the costume, and despite the clearly peaceful and non-threatening behavior of "V," the officer forcefully seized the plastic daggers from "V's" belt.
After a bit of mental gymnastics between the agent and "V", amid the growing public spectacle and peer pressure from his fellow officers (who voiced their agreement with "V's" logic and assertion of his Rights), "V" eventually prevailed over the vexed officer and succeeded in securing the return of the toy daggers.
The crowd by the White House gates also included activist Cindy Sheehan and her supporters who were demonstrating nearby and had gathered to observe the incident between "V" and the Secret Service. They let out a cheer as the SS agent stood down and returned the plastic knives.
At "V's" request, a Secret Service agent called up to the White House to ask if someone would come to the gate to accept service of the papers. After 20 minutes or so, word came to the gate house that the papers should be mailed to the President. This was done the next day.
After departing from the White House, "V" walked around the White House compound to the security checkpoint at the Treasury Department. Treasury accepted service of the papers from "V" without incident. Other than the agent at the security check point who instructed "V" to use his phone to call the mail room, the only other person to speak with "V" was Mr. Lynch from the mail room.
The IRS building is apparently still closed due to the flooding experienced last summer. The agents at the security check point informed "V" that the papers would have to be delivered to IRS at 500 North Capitol Street. Rather than do that, the papers were mailed to the IRS Commissioner the next day.
At the Department of Justice several armed agents with "Homeland Security" patches on their arms, as well as DOJ security personnel met "V". They too were very curious. There ensued another prolonged face-to-mask exchange of news, information, affirmations and assurances. Eventually, the officers determined that "V" and the camera person were not violating the DC code dealing with the wearing of masks on the streets of the city, or their refusal to produce identification, and that they were not a security threat. The protective security forces and agents from the DOJ arranged for a Mr. Burroughs to accept service of the Petitions for Redress for the agency.
Note: The most disturbing part of "V's" interaction with the law enforcement authorities at DOJ occurred when the Homeland Security agent in charge asked "V" what was the purpose behind "V's" presence at DOJ. "V" began to explain the First Amendment freedoms and the Right to Petition. Almost immediately the agent said, in effect, "You're pulling my leg. You are trying to pull a fast one. I'm not falling for the garbage. I don't want to hear it." At that point the agent phoned the DC police and learned that "V" was not violating any municipal laws. After asking "V" where he was going next, he told "V" he was free to go.
At the Cannon House Office Building, the agents of the Capitol Police who were manning the security check point told "V" they were instructed not to let him into the building. They said the papers would have to be delivered to a "Pitney Bowes" facility at 119 D Street. The papers were mailed the next day.
At the Hart Senate Office Building, the agents of the Capitol Police said someone from Majority Leader Frist's office would have to come to the security check point to accept service of the papers. "V" was given the phone number of Senator Frist's office. The young man who answered the phone said he was the only person there and could not possibly leave the office. The papers were mailed the next day.
As "V" and the videographer walked from one location to the next, he met and conversed with many people. About half of the people smiled; some said they had seen the movie. About half clearly did not know what to make of "V" and avoided eye contact.
Some people were interested in conversing with "V," including a group of 6-10 college age young people who were waiting in a line to tour the Capitol. During the conversation, "V" said he wanted to quiz them on their knowledge of the Rights covered by the First Amendment. "V" asked if they could name the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment. Two or three immediately said "Speech." After a moment or two one said, "Worship God." "V" restated that freedom for the young man. Then another said "Guns." "V" corrected him.
That was as far as the young people could go in answering the question. "V" then engaged the young people in a discussion of all five of the freedoms and the four outstanding Petitions for Redress. The young people stayed with the conversation, expressing an interest in learning more, until they had to move along in the line.
All in all, Monday's "dry run" was beneficial. All local and federal law enforcement agencies in DC have now been introduced to "V." They now know that on November 14th there will be more than 100 "Vs" rallying at Lafayette Park and the Reflecting Pool and marching from one rally to the other along the streets of DC, stopping at various federal buildings to await a response to certain Petitions for Redress.
All local and federal law enforcement agencies in DC now know the purpose of these events is to show peaceful support for the First Amendment Right to Petition Government for Redress of Grievances and to give expression to the fact that too many Americans are beginning to fear the Government and that that is unhealthy to the longevity of a free people and our Republic.
All participants are asked to arrive at Lafayette Park between 11 and 11:30 am on the 14th. The event starts at NOON. The group will wait up to 1 hour for a representative of President Bush to appear and to tell the group when they might expect to receive a response to the Petitions for Redress of Grievances.
If no such representative appears, the participants will move to the front entrance of the Treasury Department where they will wait up to ½ hour for a representative of Secretary Paulson to appear. If no such representative appears, the group will move to the Justice Department where they will wait up to ½ hour for a representative of Attorney General Gonzales to appear. If no such representative appears, the group will move to the Reflecting Pool by the Capitol where they will wait up to 1 hour for a representative of Speaker Hastert or Majority Leader Frist to appear..
We have reserved 8 rooms for 16 people at an Extended Stay Inn for the night of November 13, 2006. The Inn is located at 205 North Breckinridge Place, Alexandria, VA 22312. The cost is $50 per person per night, double occupancy, i.e., $100 per room per night. The WTP team will be staying at the Inn.
No sooner did the dust settle after the midterm elections, with the trumped up significance of a Democrat victory in both houses of Congress, did the corporate media begin concentrating on "reconciliation" between Democrats and the unitary decider.
"Within hours of an election that puts Democrats in charge of the House and the Senate for the final two years of Bush's presidency, the president and the woman all but certain to be House speaker proclaimed reconciliation," reports the Associated Press.
George invited Nancy to lunch. George ate crow, we are told, and "Pelosi pledged to find common ground in a turned-upside-down Washington." Bush said the "people have spoken, and now it's time for us to move on," and Nancy vowed no recrimination, declaring "Democrats are not about getting even. Democrats are about helping the American people to get ahead."
Of course, as a result of the shell game successfully concluded earlier this week, we can expect more of the same, that is to say the only people who will "get ahead" will be the small number ensconced in the corporate plutocracy, determined to continue the incremental push to convert America into a feudal estate lorded over by bankster suzerains and their minions, such as Pelosi and Bush. Everything else, as they say, is show business.
As the Associated Press is eager to inform us, the Democrats will do nothing to upset the apple cart, lest they be viewed as "unproductive or too obstructionist" and chance "losing their majority" in two years, as if that sincerely means anything. "Hence all the happy talk about bipartisanship," that is to say business as usual.
Don't expect impeachment, an end to the Iraq imbroglio, or a cessation of threats issued against Iran. Expect the Neoliberal Order to continue its drive to render North America into a "free trade zone," that is to say the sovereignty of nations will be destroyed and populations reduced to biddable pauperage.
According to CNN's Wolf Blitzer, all of this will be "an exciting ride" and "an enormous amount of responsibility... comes with the job" of making it appear Democrats will actually do something for the people, when in fact there ain't a dime's worth of difference between two sides of the same coin.
In regard to the "I" word, Pelosi's own constituency demands action. "Pelosi represents what may well be the most impeachment-friendly district in the country. On Tuesday, San Francisco voters approved a referendum, Proposition J, urging impeachment," notes John Nichols, writing for the Capital Times.
Nancy Pelosi is all about respecting the wishes of her constituents-who are, after all, the corporations that fill her coffers: Charles Schwab, IBM, Wells Fargo, and the usual list of suspects. "Just in the third quarter of this year, her donors included such GOP-friendly groups as the American Bankers Assoc, the American Hospital Assoc, Credit Suisse, the Financial Services Roundtable, the Mortgage Bankers Assoc, Honeywell Corp, Accenture, Genworth, Lockheed Martin and even the Nat'l Beer Wholesalers," writes blogger Jonathan Tasini. According to Open Secrets, "securities and investment," i.e., the banksters, run the Nancy Pelosi song and dance show.
As for foreign policy, Pelosi is as Zionist friendly as any Straussian neocon, albeit in a fuzzy Democrat sort of way, and thus we can expect more murder and mayhem in the Middle Eastern neighborhood.
Pelosi "denies that the key issue is Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza," writes Mark Gaffney. "The real issue, she states, is the survival of Israel" and "the biggest danger to Israel today comes from Iran, whose nuclear ambitions, though still unproved, also threaten the US. Her perspective contains the seed of ominous things to come, because, after all, something will have to be done about Iran, right? Yes, and soon.... Meanwhile, Pelosi manages to overlook Israel's brutal treatment of the Palestinians," a consistent crime, recently magnified to disgusting dimension by Israel's recent attack on Beit Hanoun in the Gaza, killing innocents in their beds.
"The United States will stand with Israel now and forever. Now and forever," Pelosi avowed last year at the AIPAC meeting, never mind the seeming inexhaustible crimes against humanity. "There are those who contend that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all about Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. This is absolute nonsense. In truth, the history of the conflict is not over occupation, and never has been: it is over the fundamental right of Israel to exist."
Last month, Pelosi "said that a party change in the House of Representatives wouldn't affect support for Israel," Yedioth Internet reported. "In an internet discussion with the pro-Israel lobby to the Democratic party, Pelosi emphasized that 'a strong relationship between the United States and Israel has long been supported by both Democrats and Republicans,'" in other words, when it comes to slaughtering Palestinian children, there is a consensus. "Nancy's Pelosi's record on Israeli-related topics is perfect. She expresses interest in the situation in the country and has always participated in votes related to Israel. She has not harmed Israeli interests," that is to say she has consistently and will continue to give the tiny outlaw settler state her blessing, no matter the slow genocide unfolding with horrific regularity.
"America's commitment to the safety and security of the State of Israel is unwavering, regardless of which party is in power. However, the war in Iraq has made both America and Israel less safe," Pelosi declared. Never mind that such commitment is destroying and dividing America, to say nothing of bankrupting its treasury of funny money (i.e., more loans from banksters will be required, pauperizing future generations) and killing and maiming our soldiers has made America less safe. Of course, of utmost importance here is the state of Israel, thus revealing Pelosi is an Israel Firster, not much different than the most rabid neocon.
Indeed, George and Nancy have made nice, casting aside the theatrical snipes of the campaign. In essence, there is little difference between the unitary decider, a sock puppet for the neocons, and Nancy Pelosi, champion of Palestinian genocide in slow motion.
Now that the smoke has dissipated and the mirrors have been yanked from the stage, we will see "bipartisanship" between Pelosi, as presumptive leader of the Democrats in the House, and the neocon Republicans.
In fact, the show will go on-Iran will be attacked, come hell or high-water, and Bush will not face the music on his egregious and obvious lies leading to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Or for that matter will he be called to answer for his destruction of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Meanwhile, the possibility of actually prosecuting Bush and crew for the inside job of nine eleven will remain about as remote as the Oort cloud.
Call me a doom and gloomer. But it should be manifestly apparent Pelosi and the Democrats have no intention of going after the unitary decider and his iniquitous crew.
Of course, I very well could be wrong.
I hope I am wrong.
But, at this juncture, delivering the thieves and warmongers to justice does not look very promising. It will take more, far more, than electing Democrats to office and then holding their feet to the fire.
It may take people going in the street and marching on Washington, and millions of people, not a few hundred thousand, a number effortlessly minimized by the New York Times, the Washington Post, Fox News, and all the other corporate conspirators who would have use believe the election signifies the beginning of a new start in America, when in fact it is simply another act of the same old rotten performance, complete with a rotating cast of singers, dancers, acrobats, and magicians.
Please note: this video contains images of women and children killed by the Israeli state with U.S. weapons in Beit Hanoun, the Gaza Strip, in violation of the Arms Export Control Act (specifically, Title 22, Chapter 39, Subchapter III Sec 2778 c).
"My wife recorded this for my blog a couple of days ago. Since then, she won't even look at the news," writes Sabbah.
If the above video is not enough to convince you of the brutality of the Israeli government, watch the one below.
On November 2, the IOF "transferred the males of Beit Hanoun aged between 16-45 in a convoy of large trucks to unknown destinations.... Security sources reported that the Israeli occupation forces called the men through loudspeakers, and gathered them in front of An-Nassr mosque in the north of Beit Hanoun," according to Aljazeera (English translation here). In response, unarmed Palestinian women confronted the IOF and 12 were shot, two fatally. So, the next time Nancy Pelosi gets up before AIPAC and declares Israel is simply protecting itself, please email her a link to this video:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration said on Monday that Guantanamo prisoners have no constitutional right to challenge their detention before U.S. federal judges, and the lawsuits by hundreds of detainees must be dismissed.
In papers filed with a U.S. appeals court in Washington, Justice Department attorneys gave their most detailed argument yet that the cases must be dismissed because of the tough anti-terrorism law signed by President George W. Bush last month.
Lawyers for the prisoners have argued the new law does not give the U.S. government the power to arrest suspects overseas and imprison them indefinitely without any charges and without allowing them to challenge their detention in U.S. court.
They say a provision of the law unconstitutionally suspends the right under habeas corpus, a long-standing principle of American law, for detainees to contest their imprisonment.
Justice Department attorneys disagreed. "There is no constitutional habeas right for an enemy alien held outside the United States to challenge his detention," they said. "No actual habeas rights have been suspended."
After Bush signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 into law, the Justice Department told federal district court judges they no longer have jurisdiction over some 200 cases covering more than 400 prisoners at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
Department lawyers told the appeals court the new law and a similar law, the Detainee Treatment Act that Congress approved late last year, provide "an unprecedented level of judicial review for the claims of the enemy aliens held at Guantanamo."
They said the prisoners received a military proceeding, called a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, to determine if the detainee has been rightfully deemed to be an unlawful enemy combatant.
Those proceedings can be appealed directly to the appeals court, but the prisoners are not entitled to a sweeping factual inquiry by a federal district court judge, the lawyers said. Those cases must be dismissed.
The appeals court is expected to rule later this year or early next year, but any decision likely will be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which would have the final word on the law's constitutionality.
The law was prompted by a Supreme Court ruling in June that said Bush lacked the legislative authority in setting up his first system of military commissions after the September 11 attacks.
That prompted Bush to go to Congress to get authority under the new law authorizing tough interrogation and prosecution of terrorism suspects under a new system of military commissions.
No softening in policy and no talks : President George W. Bush's warning on Iran and Syria defied a drumbeat of calls at home and abroad for the United States to engage its two foes.
From Britain to Australia and in the political echo chamber in Washington, the notion of diplomatic outreach to Damascus and Tehran is being mooted as part of a possible fresh strategy to end Iraq's torment.
But Bush Monday signalled his looming "lame duck" status, loss of allies in Congress and a foreign intervention would not force a climbdown.
Iran must halt its nuclear program and Syria must get its hands off Lebanon and stop shielding extremists before talks can begin, Bush said, as he met Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
The United States accuses Syria and Iran of fomenting instability in Iraq and allowing insurgents to cross their borders.
Renewed debate on Iran and Syria arose as the Congressionally-mandated Iraq Study Group, charged with coming up with a new approach in the violence-wracked country, met Bush Monday before drawing up recommendations.
Veteran co-chair James Baker has said Washington should not be afraid to talk to its enemies, prompting speculation the group will endorse contacts with Iran and Syria on ending Iraq violence.
Some observers say the group may suggest de-linking Iraq from Washington's nuclear showdown with Tehran. The State Department said Monday a previous effort to discuss Iraq with Iran through its ambassador in Baghdad "didn't work out."
The high price two twin foes might demand for help in Iraq is likely to seriously complicate any talks, but foreign policy analyst Jon Alterman said he expected a US-Iran dialogue within the next two years, despite current political posturing on both sides.
"Complete chaos in Iraq is not in Iran's interests, complete American success in Iraq is not in Iran's interest either, but we are much closer to the former than the later," said Alterman of the Center For Strategic and International Studies.
Some analysts believe Tehran might require an end to pressure on its nuclear drive, and Syria could ask for more of a free hand in Lebanon in return for helping in Iraq. Either demand might be a climbdown to far for Bush.
Top Democrats emboldened by last week's rout of Republicans in congressional elections, are among those recommending a new approach.
Future Senate Foreign Relations committee chairman Joseph Biden called Sunday for a conference of regional powers similar to the Dayton talks which brought peace to former Yugoslavia.
Some observers interpreted last week's appointment of Robert Gates as the US defense secretary as a sign of a possible softening of US tone on Iran and Syria, as he once advocated dialogue with Tehran.
Britain's Observer newspaper reported Sunday Prime Minister Tony Blair told Bush in a phone call it was important to involve Syria and Iran in the attempt to still spiralling violence in Iraq.
Earlier this month, Blair sent a senior official to Syria to assess its readiness to play a "constructive" role in the Middle East, sparking speculation over a possible new diplomatic opening.
But Blair toed the US line Monday, though he did say Iran should be given a "strategic choice : "they help the Middle East peace process not hinder it; they stop supporting terrorism in Lebanon or Iraq; they abide by, not flout, their international obligations.
"In that case, a new partnership is possible," he said.
Another Bush ally, Australian Prime Minister John Howard earlier appeared out of step, telling ABC radio the West should talk to Iran and Syria, though it would probably not make much difference.
Though Bush ruled out talks with Iran and Syria, the White House said Monday it did not want to prejudge recommendations of the Iraq Study Group expected to report within weeks.
It might be possible for any large-scale international conference on Iraq to include Washington and its foes but preclude any direct, one-on-one contacts.
The United States has, for instance, taken part in six-party nuclear talks also involving North Korea, despite its refusal to offer two-way talk.
Rand Beers, a former US security official in both Republican and Democrat administrations said he believed a regional framework was likely for addressing Iraq problem.
"I do think there is likely to be some kind of international conference as an effort to find a way to take the outside actors and make them part of the solution instead of being neutral or part of the problem," Beers said.
DETROIT -- President George W. Bush is a better actor than his director, Vice President Dick Cheney. Watching the two chumming it up with Democratic congressional leaders was the true measure of their relative theatrical skills.
Bush did his best to pretend he respects democracy and that quaint Article I of the U.S. Constitution that describes the powers and authority of the Congress. So accustomed to being the undisputed "decider" with the gelded Republicans running Capitol Hill, Bush now is forced to deal with Democrats who believe Congress is a co-equal branch of government, not the handmaiden of the executive.
Cheney couldn't even feign respect for that principle. He tried to smile, but his body language said it all.
"You mean we're actually going to deal with these people," he thought to himself. He's the chief proponent of the radical unitary-executive theory, which claims the president can do anything he wants, especially in times of war -- declared, or just proclaimed, as the Busheviks prefer to do.
Cheney cued Bush on the idea of a monarchical presidency with no accountability to Congress, the courts or, of course, the people. Their systematic trampling on constitutionally protected rights, their addiction to government secrecy and their passion for all things unilateral spring from this despotic, un-American notion.
Cheney is already nostalgic for the wonderfully subordinate legislative branch departing Senate Majority Leader Bill "Dirty Hands" Frist and House Speaker Denny "What Page?" Hastert dutifully provided. The hos on the Hill performed every important trick the Johns in the White House solicited.
Frist and Hastert deserve a disgraceful little footnote in history for presiding over the most fiscally irresponsible Congress in memory, one that entirely abrogated its oversight responsibilities and became totally subservient to the executive branch in exchange for Bush's support for their greedy pork-barrel projects.
After spending months smearing the Democrats as terrorist-coddlers and cowards, Bush shrugged off his gutter tactics as "just politics." What the hell. It's OK to accuse your opponents of ignoring national security, favoring terrorists and being surrender monkeys for Osama bin Laden. In Bush's perverted view of public life, that's just routine behavior, and now, as he cavalierly noted, "the election is over. It's time to move on."
Bush's own post-election analysis was an insult to the American people. They just don't understand how wise he is and how they should respect his sparkling leadership. "I thought when it was all said and done," Bush whined at a news conference, "the American people would understand the importance of taxes and understand the importance of security."
Those ignorant buffoons. They don't understand why borrowing money to give tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans and burdening our children with unconscionable debt is such a swell plan.
Those same nincompoops don't understand why invading Iraq -- a nation which posed no threat to our security -- killing hundreds of thousands of people in the process, at a cost of $8 billion a month, creating and fostering a new generation of terrorists, and alienating the rest of the world is not a fabulous strategy to make our nation more secure. Come on, people, wake up and understand.
Cheney is less resilient than Bush and he is fuming over the sacking of his friend and mentor, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. This is the first major decision Bush has made without big Dick's approval, and the veep is angry and resentful.
Rumsfeld resorted to his signature arrogance and condescension, even as he was forced to walk the plank. Iraq is a "little-understood, unfamiliar war," he huffed. What the most incompetent and bull-headed military leader in modern times crafted is simply too "complex for people to comprehend."
The American people understand and comprehend Bush and Rumsfeld's war. They, at long last, understand what a horrible blunder invading Iraq was, and recognize those who sold it lied and created an intractable mess. All that remains is how tragic the extrication will be.
Losing your delusional identical twin and partner in incompetence is painful. Cheney will spend the rest of his term locked in the bat cave, going on drinking-hunting trips with his rich pals and counting his money from Halliburton dividends.
He and Rummy have neighboring retirement homes on Maryland's eastern shore, where they will spend their time sipping scotch, sharing war stories and rationalizing their failures and the horrors they brought the nation and the world. They will never forgive Bush for Rumsfeld's ignominious departure.
But Rummy may be hiding from the sheriff, the jaws of justice snapping at his heels. Lawyers for the Center for Constitutional Rights have filed a complaint, and a German prosecutor is considering criminal charges against Rumsfeld. He's accused of personally approving torture and abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the American-run gulag in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
German law recognizes jurisdiction for war crimes and human rights abuses. Rumsfeld may find himself in the same boat as former Chilean dictator Generalissimo Augusto Pinochet and former secretary of state Henry Kissinger. Pinochet ordered thousands of murders, kidnappings and the torture of his political rivals during the decades of his reign of terror. Kissinger's hands are bloody for ordering the assassination of a Chilean military leader, which paved the way for Pinochet's coup.
Pinochet has already been charged in Spain, but his age is sparing him the prosecution and prison he deserves. Kissinger won't travel to several countries, fearing prosecutors with memories will slap him with arrest warrants. The German prosecutor may also be considering criminal charges against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and former CIA director George Tenet for their roles in the torture and abuse programs. Whatever crimes their minions may have committed, Bush and Cheney are even more culpable.
It was not at all surprising that Bush lied through his teeth when -- just a week before firing him -- he told reporters Rumsfeld was doing a "fantastic job" and he planned to keep him on through the remainder of his term. He said this while lining up Rumsfeld's named successor, former CIA director Robert Gates, for the job.
The lie, which Bush admitted, was true to his mendacious mind. He justified the naked deception as noble in purpose, saying he didn't want to "inject a major decision about this war in the final days of the campaign."
When I heard it, I thought, well, finally one of the network types would label what Bush did as the lie it was. "President Bush lied when he said he intended to keep Donald Rumsfeld on as defense secretary for the remainder of his term, but the president said he did so for a good reason." Those are truthful words. ABC's Charles Gibson, NBC's Brian Williams and CBS's Katie Couric could have delivered them with ease. But the mainstream media cowards balked again, choosing to regurgitate the White House talking points and Bush's claim that he wants a "bipartisan" approach to Iraq and other issues.
The Democrats have a great responsibility to bring some sanity and decency to our national public discourse that the Busheviks and their media allies have so damaged.
Some advice for the Democrats:
Jack Murtha should be picked as the Democratic majority leader in the House, not his rival Steny Hoyer. Murtha's dramatic defection and criticism of the war was a turning point that roused public opinion. He is frank, and his military credentials are impeccable. Hoyer is far too cozy with lobbyists and corporate interests.
Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden will chair the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and he's already announced there will be hearings on the Iraq fiasco. That's a good thing. The problem is, the always-verbose, often-pompous Biden will conduct the hearings.
I suggest the first witnesses ought to be Biden himself and New York Sens. Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton. They can testify under oath why they voted for the war in Iraq in the first place, a terrible mistake none of them has acknowledged so far, and why they insist the issue is the way the war is being conducted, not the invasion and the stupid strategy and aggression they authorized.
Their usual argument is that they "trusted" Bush would exhaust all other means short of war. Their real reason was covering their political hides. "We're tough on terror, too" they branded themselves, even when the facts didn't support their stance.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W. Va., who will take over the Senate Intelligence Committee from that despicable coverup artist Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., should quickly wrap up the panel's investigation of the administration's use and manipulation of pre-war intelligence. The task should take about one week. The conclusion will be simple: George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their confederates twisted, shaped and distorted government intelligence reports to support their preconceived notion that Saddam Hussein's Iraq posed a threat to our national security.
They lied to draw our nation into a war that had nothing whatsoever to do with the 9/11 attacks. The invasion was part of a bizarre plan the neocon nuts hatched long before bin Laden's mass murder. Reshape the Middle East. Assert American supremacy in the region. Make Israel more secure. American volunteers -- none named Bush, Cheney or Rumsfeld -- would die for the experiment.
Iraq's oil was already in their crosshairs. The rich bin Laden, driven by his own Wahhabi fanaticism, the Saudi royal family's state religion, just happened to walk into their game and gave them the bloody shirt to wave they needed for a war that otherwise would have been impossible to sell.
Nancy Pelosi, our next speaker of the House, had the good sense to vote against the war. She is a bright, practical politician and the first woman and Italian-American to lead a branch of our government.
Pelosi has a great challenge, which she is certainly capable of handing. She has an easy act to follow. She will begin cleaning up the corruption and thuggery the Republicans brought to the House. Her toughest task, though, may be trying to teach all those WASP boys in the executive branch what good government and decency are all about.
Bill Gallagher, a Peabody Award winner, is a former Niagara Falls city councilman who now covers Detroit for Fox2 News. His e-mail address is gallaghernewsman@sbcglobal.net.
WASHINGTON -- I spent an unusual day with George W. Bush in the fall of 2000, just before he was first elected president. During that interview, I innocently said to him, "I suppose you're getting a lot of help from Jim Baker ..."
To my amazement, his entire face contorted almost grotesquely. But the exchange over his father's close friend continued: "Oh, Jimmy," George W. then said, his voice thick with condescending derision. "I talk to him maybe twice a year."
How amazing is life! For now, that same "Jimmy" Baker stands on W.'s fractured horizon as the besieged president's only savior -- not to mention as the agent of his father's retribution.
On that day six years ago, we spoke too of his father, the first President Bush, and W. had tears in his eyes. But how cruel is life! For in his six years in the presidency, the younger Bush has moved inexorably, and until now effectively, to destroy his father's legacy by wiping out just about everything that the Eastern Establishment Bushes believed in and painstakingly built.
So now, James Baker III is moving back into Washington, his Baker Commission virtually the only hope for ending the Iraq war and returning America to its traditional place of respect in the world. We can see why he has so often been called the "velvet hammer": Baker is unquestionably the only American statesman of the last five administrations who combines brilliant cunning, supreme common sense and uncommon personal decency.
When he and his co-chairman, Democrat Lee Hamilton, release their report from the congressionally mandated Iraq Study Group in December, what rabbits will they pull out of their hats? What foreign policy tactics and truth SHOULD they pull out of their hats?
There are a few things we already know from leaks and speculation about their carefully guarded work: 1) The report will stress stability in Iraq rather than democracy; 2) it will set up appropriate systems for talking to Iran and Syria; 3) members will not advise for partition of the three Iraqi groups (Kurd, Shiite, Sunni); 4) they will seriously consider the idea of "redeploy and contain," moving American troops into surrounding countries to be used only in emergencies; 5) and they might advise the "stability first" idea, which would focus the United States on stabilizing Baghdad and turning it into a model for the rest of the country.
Jim Baker, as secretary of state under Father Bush, was not only instrumental in freeing Eastern Europe, in allowing the Soviet Union to collapse with some dignity, and in judiciously conducting the Gulf War of 1991, but he was intimately involved in attempting to bring peace to Israel/Palestine. It was Baker who designed, oversaw and carried to creative fruition the Madrid Conference in 1991, which made possible the 1993 Oslo Accords -- which nearly resulted in peace between the Israelis and Palestinians over five years in the mid '90s.
But President George W. Bush has been so enamored of his war-making capacities and so enchanted by the demands of the Israeli lobby that the hatred between those two peoples has festered almost to civil war there.
The Baker Commission needs above all to remove us from the singularity of Iraq, to move to re-establish American justice and power in the Middle East by convincing the moderate Arab regimes that we will tackle -- and solve -- the Palestinian problem. We need to alter the perception of "America" today as a country obsessed with Iraq, and return it to its historical fair negotiator role.
This would mean putting pressures on the Palestinians and Israelis alike -- and Jim Baker is practically the only one who could and would be tough enough to do it. (Oh yes, I know, you've heard this for YEARS -- that doesn't make it any less true.)
Ironically, despite the seeming hopelessness of the Iraq situation, many voices in the Middle East still support an Israeli/Palestinian settlement. The Saudi proposal of March 2002, signed by 22 Arab states -- calling for the two states to fully recognize each other, for a workable Palestinian state to be formed, and for a return to the pre-1967 borders -- is still viable. In only the last few weeks, Egypt, Jordan, Germany and Great Britain have called, again, for such a peace process. All it needs is for a serious American push.
With Baker, perhaps there is a chance to return to the centrist, moral, politically savvy values of Father Bush's administration, in place of the hubristic, imperialistic, amoral, politically ignorant values that "Sonny," as many of the senior Bush's generation now refer to the president, has imposed upon the country.
Think of the elegant words that Father Bush gave us earlier this year at a celebration of the uniting of the two Germanys, and you'll see where we came from -- and what we must return to.
"We rose above the recriminations of the past," he said, "and broke a chain of human discontent and resolved our affairs not with rifles but with reason. For once, mankind did not fall back on a primeval reflex for violence, but instead asserted the 'better angels' of human nature."
George Herbert Walker Bush is a proud father; tears easily come to his eyes when he thinks of his children, all of them, and there is gracious deference in his tone when he talks about the son he calls, with emphasis, "The President." He is not given to boasting about or bragging on his family; he still hears his mother's voice warning him to avoid "the Great I Am," but several times over the past few years the 41st president has mentioned to visitors that the 43rd president has read the Bible in its entirety-not once, the father says, but twice, sticking two fingers in the air. If so, then the incumbent may recall the Song of Moses: "Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations; ask thy father, and he will show thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee."
Ask thy father, and he will show thee: advice that, at long last, George W. Bush seems to be taking. Last week the president lost both houses of Congress and 16 more Americans died in Iraq, bringing the U.S. death toll to 2,844, with little discernible progress in sight. The war there has now lasted 44 months, the amount of time that elapsed between Pearl Harbor and VJ Day.
In a conference room filled with commemorative shotguns in his Houston offices last Wednesday, the father settled in to watch his son's post-election press conference on TV. Lunching on pizza, Bush Senior listened as George W. Bush said the loss of Congress was a "thumping," promised to "work with" a commission on Iraq chaired by James A. Baker III and Lee Hamilton, and announced that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was resigning. Within two hours the president was in the Oval Office with Rumsfeld and his replacement: Robert M. Gates, Bush Senior's CIA director and the president of Texas A&M University, the home of Bush 41's presidential library.
In Houston the phones started ringing, and Bush 41 staffers were pulled away from their pizza. Reporters were calling and e-mailing: would 41 talk about 43's shake-up? The answer was no, though two perfunctory statements were issued (one for the College Station Eagle and one, as the former president put it, "for everybody else"). Still, the reality spoke for itself. Dad's team was back-a remarkable course correction in the political life of the son and, quite possibly, in the life of the nation.
The American people, as politicians like to say, spoke last week-and spoke in no uncertain terms. The 2006 vote does not suggest an eagerness for a sharp left turn. It seems, rather, to be a plea for a shift from the hard right of the neoconservatives to the center represented by the old man in Houston. The re-emergence of Iraq Study Group voices such as Baker, Gates and Alan Simpson-all longtime friends of Bush Senior-is not unlike the entrance of Fortinbras at the conclusion of "Hamlet." These are 41's men, and the removal of Rumsfeld-an ancient rival of Bush Senior's from the Ford days-is a move toward the broad middle. The apparent triumph of pragmatism over ideology on Iraq was welcome news, at least to the public. In the new NEWSWEEK Poll, 67 percent favor Bush Senior's internationalist approach to foreign policy over his son's more unilateral course.
Did 41 help bring Gates to the Pentagon? The White House denies it, but, as a Bush friend told NEWSWEEK, "his fingerprints are all over this." (The friend refused to be identified for fear of alienating the family.) Given the mists of secrecy that envelop the 41-43 relationship, it is striking that the broad Bush circle believes he had a hand in the Rumsfeld succession: as an old CIA director, 41 rarely leaves any clues at all.
What the two Bushes discuss has long been a subject of endless guesswork. "In my experience, the two men spent most of their time talking about family matters, about sports, about fishing," former White House chief of staff Andy Card told NEWSWEEK. "They spoke to each other much more as father and son rather than as president and former president." Still, politics and policy do come up. "It would be wrong to assume that they never discuss Iraq, the state of play in the world and some personalities," Card said. "But it would also be wrong to assume that they discuss these things all the time. They are mutually deferential to one another."
The Bush family psychodrama is the stuff of perennial speculation but little information, since the two people who know the most about it-the father and the son-speak of it so infrequently. Yet its complexity, its blend of love and rivalry, is rich analytical territory. (Maureen Dowd of The New York Times, an unlikely e-mail pal of 41's, has spent so much time contemplating the generational drama that she ultimately published an excellent book on the topic, "Bushworld"; it ran to 544 pages.) In perhaps the most revealing on-the-record remark about their relationship made by either man, the son once told Bob Woodward that his father is "the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength. There is a higher father that I appeal to."
As the war has gone badly and the years have ticked by-2003, 2004, 2005 and now much of 2006-the senior President Bush, the man who managed to capture just 37 percent of the vote in 1992, has grown in stature. Raising taxes and capping domestic spending in 1990, refusing to exceed the United Nations mandate after expelling Saddam from Kuwait, and deftly managing the end of the cold war and the reunification of Germany loom ever larger. Given the midterm reaction to the son's inattention to alliances and to the details of postwar Iraq, it is clear that many Americans are nostalgic for the skills and sensibility the first President Bush brought to the Oval Office-a reversal of historical fortune that has come, sadly for the father, at the expense of his son.
In terms of foreign policy, it is true that 41 was more a realist than an ideologue-the prose to Reagan's cold-war poetry. And it is also true that the son would prefer to be remembered not as a second George Bush but as a second Gipper-a big, transformative president who confronted a mortal threat to the nation with steely soul and soaring words. Hence, it seems, the innate appeal of the neoconservative argument, advanced in part by Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney (a 41 figure who got neocon religion after 9/11), to strike Iraq in a noble bid to transform the Middle East.
In classical terms, the tragic figure is someone whose inherent flaws are evident from the beginning. In the wake of September 11, we knew our president's virtues. He was resolute, disdainful of dissent; like his hero Winston Churchill, Bush dismissed critics he believes spin around with "the alacrity of squirrels." But we also knew Bush's vices. Resolution can harden into stubbornness; a refusal to listen to criticism can breed isolation.
Hindsight, of course, is a luxury, and life often appears clearer in retrospect than it does at the time, in the arena. The bet Bush has made in the Middle East is a grand one, and history is made, and people are freed, by grand gambles. The American Founders gambled with Britain in 1776; Churchill gambled with Germany in 1940; Reagan gambled with the Soviet Union in the 1980s. The line between triumph and tragedy is a thin one, and things may yet work out.
Or so we must believe. Faith is important to the Bushes, always has been, and to return to the Bible the president knows so well, there is a New Testament verse familiar to patrician politicians from Theodore Roosevelt and his cousin Franklin to Prescott and George H.W. Bush: "To whom much is given," the Scriptures say, "much is expected." Much has been given to George W. Bush, and now, in the twilight of his term, as his father's men step in, he has been given another great gift: one more chance to set things right.
Comment: What a bleeding-heart, phoney crock of horse hockey!
By Peter Spiegel
Times Staff Writer
November 4, 2006
WASHINGTON - Richard N. Perle, the former Pentagon advisor regarded as the intellectual godfather of the Iraq war, now believes he should not have backed the U.S.-led invasion, and he holds President Bush responsible for failing to make timely decisions to stem the rising violence, according to excerpts from a magazine interview.
Perle - a leading neoconservative who chaired the Pentagon's defense advisory board for the first three years of the Bush administration - is quoted in January's Vanity Fair as saying the U.S. might have been able to strip Saddam Hussein of his ability to build unconventional weapons "by means other than a direct military intervention."
"I think if I had been Delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said 'Should we go into Iraq?' I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists,' " Perle said, according to interview excerpts released Friday by the magazine.
Perle's about-face is the latest in a series of war recriminations by neoconservatives, many of whom blame Iraq's spiraling violence on the administration's management of the postwar stabilization effort.
Others interviewed for the article included former Bush speechwriter David Frum and former Reagan administration official Kenneth L. Adelman.
Perle's prominent advocacy of invasion after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks - and his close relationship with the war's top architects, including Paul D. Wolfowitz, then the deputy Defense secretary, and Douglas J. Feith, the former Pentagon policy chief - makes his reversal particularly noteworthy.
Perle told Vanity Fair he did not anticipate the "depravity" currently underway in Iraq, saying, "The levels of brutality we've seen are truly horrifying."
He said "huge mistakes" had been made in the management of the war, and he blamed disloyalty among top Bush administration officials for a failure to get the policy correct.
"The decisions did not get made that should have been," he said.
He continued: "At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible....
"I don't think he realized the extent of the opposition within his own administration, and the disloyalty."
Although the excerpts do not show who Perle blames for disloyalty or mismanagement, he appears to lay the blame at the feet of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the military leaders who put together the war plan.
"Huge mistakes were made, and I want to be very clear on this: They were not made by neoconservatives, who had almost no voice in what happened, and certainly almost no voice in what happened after the downfall of the regime in Baghdad," he said.
"I'm getting damn tired of being described as an architect of the war. I was in favor of bringing down Saddam. Nobody said, 'Go design the campaign to do that.' I had no responsibility for that."
The excerpts include quotes from other neoconservatives who have turned against the war, including Adelman, a longtime friend of Rumsfeld who has received classified Pentagon briefings on the war as recently as March, according to a recent book by journalist Bob Woodward.
Vanity Fair quotes Adelman as saying that though he still believes the reasons for going to war were right, the invasion should not have occurred because the goals were unachievable. He called Bush's national security advisors "among the most incompetent teams" in the post-World War II era, adding he was particularly let down by Rumsfeld: "I'm very, very fond of him, but I'm crushed by his performance."
As Iraq slips further into chaos, the war's neoconservative boosters have turned sharply on the Bush administration, charging that their grand designs have been undermined by White House incompetence. In a series of exclusive interviews, Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, David Frum, and others play the blame game with shocking frankness. Target No. 1: the president himself.
I remember sitting with Richard Perle in his suite at London's Grosvenor House hotel and receiving a private lecture on the importance of securing victory in Iraq. "Iraq is a very good candidate for democratic reform," he said. "It won't be Westminster overnight, but the great democracies of the world didn't achieve the full, rich structure of democratic governance overnight. The Iraqis have a decent chance of succeeding." Perle seemed to exude the scent of liberation, as well as a whiff of gunpowder. It was February 2003, and Operation Iraqi Freedom, the culmination of his long campaign on behalf of regime change in Iraq, was less than a month away.
Three years later, Perle and I meet again at his home outside Washington, D.C. It is October, the worst month for U.S. casualties in Iraq in almost two years, and Republicans are bracing for losses in the upcoming midterm elections. As he looks into my eyes, speaking slowly and with obvious deliberation, Perle is unrecognizable as the confident hawk who, as chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, had invited the exiled Iraqi dissident Ahmad Chalabi to its first meeting after 9/11. "The levels of brutality that we've seen are truly horrifying, and I have to say, I underestimated the depravity," Perle says now, adding that total defeat-an American withdrawal that leaves Iraq as an anarchic "failed state"-is not yet inevitable but is becoming more likely. "And then," says Perle, "you'll get all the mayhem that the world is capable of creating."
According to Perle, who left the Defense Policy Board in 2004, this unfolding catastrophe has a central cause: devastating dysfunction within the administration of President George W. Bush. Perle says, "The decisions did not get made that should have been. They didn't get made in a timely fashion, and the differences were argued out endlessly.... At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible.... I don't think he realized the extent of the opposition within his own administration, and the disloyalty."
Perle goes so far as to say that, if he had his time over, he would not have advocated an invasion of Iraq: "I think if I had been delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said, 'Should we go into Iraq?,' I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.' ... I don't say that because I no longer believe that Saddam had the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction, or that he was not in contact with terrorists. I believe those two premises were both correct. Could we have managed that threat by means other than a direct military intervention? Well, maybe we could have."
Having spoken with Perle, I wonder: What do the rest of the pro-war neoconservatives think? If the much caricatured "Prince of Darkness" is now plagued with doubt, how do his comrades-in-arms feel? I am particularly interested in finding out because I interviewed many neocons before the invasion and, like many people, found much to admire in their vision of spreading democracy in the Middle East.
I expect to encounter disappointment. What I find instead is despair, and fury at the incompetence of the Bush administration the neoconservatives once saw as their brightest hope.
To David Frum, the former White House speechwriter who co-wrote Bush's 2002 State of the Union address that accused Iraq of being part of an "axis of evil," it now looks as if defeat may be inescapable, because "the insurgency has proven it can kill anyone who cooperates, and the United States and its friends have failed to prove that it can protect them." This situation, he says, must ultimately be blamed on "failure at the center"-starting with President Bush.
Kenneth Adelman, a lifelong neocon activist and Pentagon insider who served on the Defense Policy Board until 2005, wrote a famous op-ed article in The Washington Post in February 2002, arguing: "I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk." Now he says, "I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national-security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent. They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the post-war era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional."
Fearing that worse is still to come, Adelman believes that neoconservatism itself-what he defines as "the idea of a tough foreign policy on behalf of morality, the idea of using our power for moral good in the world"-is dead, at least for a generation. After Iraq, he says, "it's not going to sell." And if he, too, had his time over, Adelman says, "I would write an article that would be skeptical over whether there would be a performance that would be good enough to implement our policy. The policy can be absolutely right, and noble, beneficial, but if you can't execute it, it's useless, just useless. I guess that's what I would have said: that Bush's arguments are absolutely right, but you know what, you just have to put them in the drawer marked can't do. And that's very different from let's go."
I spend the better part of two weeks in conversations with some of the most respected voices among the neoconservative elite. What I discover is that none of them is optimistic. All of them have regrets, not only about what has happened but also, in many cases, about the roles they played. Their dismay extends beyond the tactical issues of whether America did right or wrong, to the underlying question of whether exporting democracy is something America knows how to do.
I will present my findings in full in the January issue of Vanity Fair, which will reach newsstands in New York and L.A. on December 6 and nationally by December 12. In the meantime, here is a brief survey of some of what I heard from the war's remorseful proponents.
Richard Perle: "In the administration that I served [Perle was an assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan], there was a one-sentence description of the decision-making process when consensus could not be reached among disputatious departments: 'The president makes the decision.' [Bush] did not make decisions, in part because the machinery of government that he nominally ran was actually running him. The National Security Council was not serving [Bush] properly. He regarded [then National-Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice] as part of the family."
Michael Ledeen, American Enterprise Institute freedom scholar: "Ask yourself who the most powerful people in the White House are. They are women who are in love with the president: Laura [Bush], Condi, Harriet Miers, and Karen Hughes."
Frank Gaffney, an assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan and founder of the Center for Security Policy: "[Bush] doesn't in fact seem to be a man of principle who's steadfastly pursuing what he thinks is the right course. He talks about it, but the policy doesn't track with the rhetoric, and that's what creates the incoherence that causes us problems around the world and at home. It also creates the sense that you can take him on with impunity."
Kenneth Adelman: "The most dispiriting and awful moment of the whole administration was the day that Bush gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to [former C.I.A. director] George Tenet, General Tommy Franks, and [Coalition Provisional Authority chief] Jerry [Paul] Bremer-three of the most incompetent people who've ever served in such key spots. And they get the highest civilian honor a president can bestow on anyone! That was the day I checked out of this administration. It was then I thought, There's no seriousness here, these are not serious people. If he had been serious, the president would have realized that those three are each directly responsible for the disaster of Iraq."
David Frum: "I always believed as a speechwriter that if you could persuade the president to commit himself to certain words, he would feel himself committed to the ideas that underlay those words. And the big shock to me has been that although the president said the words, he just did not absorb the ideas. And that is the root of, maybe, everything."
Michael Rubin, former Pentagon Office of Special Plans and Coalition Provisional Authority staffer: "Where I most blame George Bush is that through his rhetoric people trusted him, people believed him. Reformists came out of the woodwork and exposed themselves." By failing to match his rhetoric with action, Rubin adds, Bush has betrayed Iraqi reformers in a way that is "not much different from what his father did on February 15, 1991, when he called the Iraqi people to rise up, and then had second thoughts and didn't do anything once they did."
Richard Perle: "Huge mistakes were made, and I want to be very clear on this: They were not made by neoconservatives, who had almost no voice in what happened, and certainly almost no voice in what happened after the downfall of the regime in Baghdad. I'm getting damn tired of being described as an architect of the war. I was in favor of bringing down Saddam. Nobody said, 'Go design the campaign to do that.' I had no responsibility for that."
Kenneth Adelman: "The problem here is not a selling job. The problem is a performance job.... Rumsfeld has said that the war could never be lost in Iraq, it could only be lost in Washington. I don't think that's true at all. We're losing in Iraq.... I've worked with [Rumsfeld] three times in my life. I've been to each of his houses, in Chicago, Taos, Santa Fe, Santo Domingo, and Las Vegas. I'm very, very fond of him, but I'm crushed by his performance. Did he change, or were we wrong in the past? Or is it that he was never really challenged before? I don't know. He certainly fooled me."
Eliot Cohen, director of the strategic-studies program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and member of the Defense Policy Board: "I wouldn't be surprised if what we end up drifting toward is some sort of withdrawal on some sort of timetable and leaving the place in a pretty ghastly mess.... I do think it's going to end up encouraging various strands of Islamism, both Shia and Sunni, and probably will bring de-stabilization of some regimes of a more traditional kind, which already have their problems.... The best news is that the United States remains a healthy, vibrant, vigorous society. So in a real pinch, we can still pull ourselves together. Unfortunately, it will probably take another big hit. And a very different quality of leadership. Maybe we'll get it."
WASHINGTON - Nancy Pelosi, who unified fellow Democrats to win control of the U.S. House of Representatives last week, stirred division on Monday by backing John Murtha, a key foe of the Iraq War, as House majority leader over her current deputy.
Rep. Steny Hoyer, now the No. 2 Democrat in the House, brushed off the surprise endorsement by Pelosi, who is in line to be elected by the full House in January as speaker, the chamber's top job that helps set its legislative agenda.
Hoyer said he had the votes to be elected majority leader when his Democratic colleagues cast secret ballots on Thursday. The majority leader is one of the party's most influential positions, and serves as the spokesman during House debate as well as the party's chief negotiator with the Republicans.
"I look forward to working with Speaker Pelosi," said Hoyer, a Maryland moderate.
Andrew Koneschusky, a Murtha spokesman, replied: "He (Hoyer) likes to say the House election is in the bag. We'll see Thursday."
A public advocacy group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, blasted Pelosi, a California liberal, for backing Murtha, who it denounced as "one of the most unethical members in Congress."
The group charged Murtha has opposed ethics reform. It also said he abused his position on a defense appropriations subcommittee to benefit the clients of his brother, Robert Murtha, a registered lobbyist.
Murtha's office dismissed the complaints, and said the election for majority leader is about the future.
Pelosi, now House Democratic leader, noted in a letter to Murtha on Sunday that he had requested her support and saluted him for having helped lead the Democratic charge against the Iraq War, a key issue in the November 7 elections.
"Your presence in the leadership of our party would add a knowledgeable and respected voice to our Democratic team," Pelosi wrote Murtha in endorsing him.
SUPPORTIVE OF PELOSI
Pelosi defeated Hoyer for the post of House minority whip in 2001, with Murtha managing her campaign. In 2003, she was elected House Democratic leader, and Hoyer was elected whip.
"Murtha says Nancy now needs someone supportive of her," Hoyer told Reuters. "I've asked members, 'Have you ever seen me not supportive of her?' I have been supportive."
Rep. John Lewis, a 10-term Georgia Democrat, said: "Steny Hoyer is a bridge builder, and I believe he'll be our majority leader. I don't expect lasting division. We'll have a vote and move on."
Democrats and Republicans will spend much of this week electing party leaders in the House and Senate for the 110th Congress, which convenes in January.
For the first time in 12 years, both chambers will be under the control of Democrats, who prevailed in the elections largely because of discontent with the Iraq war.
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada appeared certain to be elected on Tuesday without opposition as Senate majority leader, with Dick Durbin of Illinois moving up to assistant majority leader.
Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, now assistant Senate Republican leader, had no opposition in his bid to be elected on Wednesday as Republican leader. He would replace Bill Frist of Tennessee who is retiring from Congress.
Contested elections loom on Friday for House Republicans, who complain their party has lost its conservative way, for top party jobs, including minority leader.
John Boehner of Ohio, the current Republican leader, faces challenges from Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, now chairman of the Energy Committee, and Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, who has pushed for reduced spending amid a mounting federal debt.
By Jeffrey Heller and Matt Spetalnick
Reuters
13 Nov 06
WASHINGTON - President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert turned up the heat on Iran over its nuclear program on Monday, despite growing pressure for Washington to reach out to Tehran to help stabilize Iraq.
Bush, reasserting a central plank of his foreign policy after his party suffered heavy losses in U.S. elections, called for the "economic isolation" of Iran if it proceeds with uranium enrichment in defiance of international pressure.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair was expected to call on Monday for Iran and Syria to back efforts to stop violence in Iraq as Washington and London consider changes in their strategy for the increasingly unpopular war.
But after talks with Olmert, Bush expressed little enthusiasm for appealing to Iraq's neighbors, which the United States has accused of helping to fuel the Iraqi insurgency since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled
Saddam Hussein.
Instead the two leaders had harsh words for Tehran. "I recognize the threat to world peace that ... the Iranians pose, as does the (Israeli) prime minister," Bush told reporters.
Accusing Iran of "fanaticism and extremism," Olmert voiced support for U.S.-led efforts to impose U.N. sanctions on Iran and said Tehran must not be allowed to "cross the technological threshold" to develop a nuclear bomb.
Israel, widely believed to be the only country in the Middle East to have atomic weapons, fears that a nuclear Iran would threaten its existence.
Iran has insisted it only wants nuclear know-how for civilian power purposes. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for Israel's destruction.
Olmert, on a visit to Washington to gauge post-election U.S. policy toward the Middle East, said on Monday that Israel was not looking for a confrontation with Iran.
"I am not looking for wars," he said. "I'm looking for the outcome," he told NBC's Today Show, referring to international efforts to get Tehran to curb its nuclear program.
NEW FOCUS FOR BUSH
Monday's talks gave Bush a chance to shift focus after Republicans lost control of both houses of Congress in the November 7 elections, widely seen as a repudiation of his Iraq policy.
"It's very important for the world ... to say to the Iranians if you choose to continue to move forward you will be isolated," Bush said. "There has to be a consequence for their intransigence."
Leading Democrats and some U.S. allies are calling on Washington to open dialogue with Iran. Bush has rejected direct talks until Tehran suspends uranium enrichment.
Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking has been on hold since the militant Islamic group Hamas was voted into power in January.
Olmert's visit came amid speculation in Israel that Bush, weakened by electoral losses, might try to cap his presidency with a fresh bid to resolve the conflict. U.S. peace efforts have failed to take off despite a pledge to re-engage after the Israel-Hezbollah war in July and August.
Olmert said he was prepared for "serious dialogue" with moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas but the Hamas government must first renounce violence, recognize Israel and abide by existing peace accords. Hamas has refused.
Palestinian officials said rival factions were close to agreeing on a new prime minister to replace Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas. Palestinians hope a new coalition cabinet will ease Western sanctions imposed on the
Palestinian Authority.
The United States has taken Vietnam off its religious freedom blacklist as the two former enemies edged closer ahead of a key Asia-Pacific summit, but US lawmakers defeated a bill to normalize trade ties.
A US State Department official described the removal of Vietnam from the list as one of Washington's "most significant announcements" of the year, just days ahead of US President George W. Bush's first visit to the country.
But the rejection of legislation to grant Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) to Washington's one-time enemy was a slap in the face to the White House ahead of a weekend meeting of leaders from 21 key Pacific Rim economies.
Vietnam has pulled out all the stops for this weekend's annual summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, which it considers to be its coming-out party on the international stage.
Global trade looks to be the focus of the two-day summit, with APEC leaders expected to issue a joint statement calling for the early resumption of World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations that collapsed in July.
Business leaders from APEC member economies were set to launch three days of talks on Tuesday culminating in a list of recommendations on everything from the stalled WTO talks to ensuring the security of regional energy supplies.
APEC members -- which account for about 60 percent of global economic output and nearly half of world trade -- are also expected to consider a US proposal for a Pacific-wide free trade zone to harmonize the "noodle bowl" of existing bilateral and regional deals.
The grouping's week-long gathering kicks into high gear from Wednesday, when foreign ministers will descend on a huge new convention center on the outskirts of Hanoi to hammer out the agenda for heads of state and government.
Bush, Russian President Vladimir Putin and China's Hu Jintao are among the leaders due to attend the summit, the biggest ever diplomatic event staged in the Southeast Asian nation.
Although US officials insisted Monday's decision to take Vietnam off the religious freedom blacklist was not specifically linked to Bush's visit, it is seen as an important step along the path to normalization of bilateral ties.
The US president is to attend a church service in Hanoi during his stay to highlight what Washington sees as improved religious freedom, and Vietnamese analysts praised the move.
"We welcome the US decision to bring Vietnam out of the list. This is an essential issue," said Lieutenant General Nguyen Dinh Uoc, a historian at the Vietnam Institute of Military History.
US and Vietnamese authorities had hoped to see Bush sign the bilateral trade bill into law during his visit to Vietnam, East Asia's fastest-growing economy after China, but procedural problems could leave the draft stuck in Congress.
Without it, US companies cannot fully benefit from the full-market access offered by Vietnam's WTO accession.
The US president, weakened after a massive defeat in mid-term legislative elections earlier this month, has urged Congress to approve the measure, which enjoys bipartisan support, but it failed to gain a two-thirds majority.
The House of Representatives is likely to bring the bill up for a second vote later this week, but even with House approval, it was unclear whether the Senate would push it through in time for Bush's visit.
Hoang Van Dung, vice chairman of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, put a brave face on the setback, saying it was just "a matter of time" before the bill was passed.
"The US decision not to give PNTR for Vietnam this week will have some influence on bilateral trade. However, in the long run, the US will surely give the PNTR status to Vietnam," he told AFP.
Before Bush arrives in Hanoi, APEC foreign ministers will hold talks on how to curb North Korea's nuclear ambitions after its October 9 atom bomb test.
Christopher Hill, Washington's pointman on Pyongyang, is to meet his South Korean and Japanese counterparts to work out how to restart disarmament talks.
The political firmament shook briefly post-November 7 raising hopes change would follow the Republican's drubbing at the polls and the Democrats regaining control of both houses of Congress for the first time since the GOP sweep in 1994. Presumed new House speaker Nancy Pelosi stopped the tremors making it clear no substantive change will be on the table when when the 110th Congress convenes on January 3. Instead, she announced to those paying attention it'll be business as usual (as it always is) as she intends to work with the president in a spirit of bipartisanship and not be "obstructionist" even though Republicans for past 12 years never returned that courtesy or even made a pretense of doing it.
Pelosi made it clear the Democrat victory will be just another betrayal of the electorate that sent her and the Democrats a strong message it voted for a mandated populist anti-Bush, anti-war agenda it won't get. It's always for the same reason - because those controlling the political process in Washington owe their allegiance to the interests of wealth and power that select and fund them and of which these officials are a part. The Democrat (anti-populist) Leadership Council (DLC) made that position clear when it participated in a November 10 post-election made-for-television spectacle in the Oval Office so the whole world could watch their new congressional leadership line up in a shameless public display of partnering with a criminal enterprise in the White House posing as a legitimate government they've been complicit with all along. Should anyone understanding how things work in Washington have expected anything else?
Politics 101, Washington-style teaches that nothing can be taken on its face, campaign promises are empty and disingenuous, and in the nation's Capitol the criminal class is bipartisan. Pelosi, whose background is one of privilege and not populism, and her leadership collaborators plan on business as usual come January. They intend taking full advantage of their newly empowered status to grab a bigger piece of the political pie without sharing any of it with their constituents beyond a few crumbs that exclude the most important things people voted for - ending the Iraq and Afghan wars of aggression and bringing US forces home, impeaching Bush and Cheney, addressing critically needed social services like health care and public education Republican and DLC Democrat rule have ignored and allowed to deteriorate, restoring our civil liberties, finding and prosecuting everyone involved in the cesspool of rampant endemic corporate and government corruption both parties allowed to go on and that only a few have had to answer for - and that's just for starters.
What about restoring constitutional democracy and the rule of law complete with checks and balances, the separation of powers and our elected officials held accountable to the public for all their actions and made to face the music when they betray the public trust. What about ending the privatization of the most fundamental element of a democratic process and returning control of it to the people - the electoral process (now corporate run and corrupted) that can only be fair under a system of verifiable paper ballots counted by hand by civil servants unconnected to either party or the corporatocracy that funds and owns them. What about allowing real alternative party candidates the right to run under a system of proportional representation and break the monopoly of a corrupted two-party, winner take all system. What about that and a lot more that a real democracy demands, and the sham one we now have won't allow.
Post-election, we're light years from any of that which was confirmed when the other newly empowered Democrats were also quick to show their shameless deference publicly. They, too, had their Oval Office moment, genuflected obediently for the cameras while there, and pledged their fealty to an unindicted war criminal who's done more harm to the core principles of the country and the welfare of everyone around the world (other than the elitists like themselves) than any former president since Richard Nixon who was forced from office in disgrace. Expect little chance of that for George Bush if the Democrats' disgraceful display of servility indicates what's ahead, which it does unless people wake up and demand the accountability everyone deserves.
New Senate majority whip Richard Durbin showed the public what it's up against. He expressed the victor's spirit of conciliation and complicity saying both sides spoke of "moving forward on an agenda, finding things that we can agree on to start off on the right foot." Incoming Senate majority leader Harry Reid was even clearer than the Illinois senator saying "The only way to move forward is with bipartisanship and openness, and to get some results....and that's what we're going to do." And the man the Wall Street Journal calls "the architect of the Democrats' Senate win," New York Senator and Senator to Tel Aviv Charles Schumer, said in a November 11 Journal interview "If we are seen as just blocking the president, it will not serve us well in 2008."
With acts of this kind of obeisance, any hope the 110th congress will address the key issues people voted for and demand faded like a late autumn sunset. For one thing, Nancy Pelosi said any notion of following through on what a growing majority of the public wants is off the table - impeaching George Bush (87% of participants in an MSNBC online poll still in progress said "yes" to impeachment). Pre-election, incoming House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers said that would be a priority for him, but on November 10 he reneged saying "The incoming speaker has said that impeachment is off the table. I am in total agreement with her on this issue: Impeachment is off the table."
The public needs to remind Mr. Conyers how he laid out the grounds for impeachment last December in a detailed 350 page report titled "The Constitution in Crisis: The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution and Cover-Ups in the Iraq War" and later updated it to include "illegal domestic surveillance." Now the Michigan Democrat, just reelected to a 22nd term by his constituents, can do no better than say "To be sure, I have substantial concerns about the way this administration has abused its authority, but impeachment would not be good for the American people." Is he saying war crimes, crimes against humanity and the destruction of a democratic republic gone unpunished are good for the people?
In the past, Conyers had a record of being one of the few in Washington remembering who elected him and supporting their interests. What is this man now thinking in backing off on a crucially important issue with mass public support, and why after over 40 years in the Congress is he willing to renege on his word on a fundamental matter needing resolution before the country can move on? Mr. Conyers has the power to end our "long national nightmare" that will go on unless he does the job the public demands of him - and if he won't, he needs to step aside and let someone else do it.
Just last May in a Washington Post op-ed piece, the Michigan congressman had a different view than now saying a new Congress needs to get answers about whether the "intelligence was mistaken or manipulated in the run-up to the Iraq war (and if) high-ranking (administration) officials approved the use of torture and other cruel and inhumane treatment inflicted upon detainees." If evidence was found, he indicated these would be potentially impeachable offenses and left no doubt he believes the constitutional law of the land is sacred, and if the president of the United States violated it he must be forced to answer for it like anyone else.
He did violate it, and there's plenty of evidence found to prove it. So why did John Conyers decide not to follow through on the evidence he found as he promised to do. The public needs to remind the congressman of the oath he took and the word he gave and demand he reverse his statement and chalk it up to a case of temporary bad judgment. He'll be forgiven if he does, but damned if not. It now remains to be seen if he's man enough to see his error, say he's ready to do the job he said he would, and be willing to fulfill the public trust with the power entrusted in him.
Conyers has all the evidence he needs in The Downing Street (Memo) Minutes mentioned above and in the title of his report. It refers to the secret 2002 Washington meeting of high level US and British officials when the intelligence claiming justification for the 2003 Iraq war was cooked to fit the policy already decided on by the Bush administration and is clearly stated in so many words. It was smoking gun evidence the president and his close advisors lied to the public to make their fraudulent case for the Iraq war. It had nothing to do with the falsified justification given for it, and that alone is grounds enough for initiating impeachment proceedings.
One of the war-planning co-conspirators practically admitted his guilt when Paul Wolfowitz, then Deputy Secretary of Defense under Donald Rumsfeld and now World Bank president, later gave an interview in Singapore and was asked publicly how it was he and others in Washington decided on WMDs as the reason to go to war. He answered "it was the only thing we all could agree on."
The new Democrat leadership apparently didn't hear him or bother to read the Downing Street Memo. It also fails to grasp that if Bill Clinton could be nonsensically impeached for lying in a sworn deposition about his sexual proclivities, the present incumbent deserves at least as much for going to war based on lies and murdering 655,000 or more Iraqis and counting plus the many thousands of Americans killed, wounded and to be affected by the war for the rest of their lives along with their families. He and his spurned Republican allies also need to be held to account for six years of wanton abuses of the public trust in all aspects of their agenda from hell still ongoing and unaddressed.
The list is endless and includes waging two illegal wars of naked aggression to supporting and funding the two illegal ones Israel waged over the summer with one still raging below the radar that's murdering defenseless Palestinians daily and that no one is acting to stop. It includes waging war on the public at home, dismantling or ending essentially needed social services, endangering the economy by a policy of reckless spending, destroying our civil liberties and seizing absolute state control through a power-grab coup d'etat the Democrats supported by their votes in the Congress or silence when they could have acted to thwart it with strong public support backing them.
On November 7, the public expressed a powerful sentiment of anger and disgust against a rogue criminal administration, demanding accountability from those they voted for and big change going forward. They won out in spite of already uncovered massive Republican- manipulated voter fraud (again) that was unable to contain the torrent of resentment too great to overcome. In drubbing the Republican congress that Tuesday, voters sent a message they want a new direction that reverses all the harm done by the current one. So far, it hasn't gotten through and unless repeated on the streets, through the mail, in town meetings, on the phone, in emails and all the other ways voters reach their officials, it'll again be ignored by the Democrat leadership, who, like their counterparts, never get it until they awaken the day after and realize they just lost their jobs.
The DLC is already actively collaborating behind the scenes to continue the conflict in Iraq by signing on to whatever altered tactical plan the Baker Commission proposes and is soon to release. Should we have expected anything else from a party that marched shamelessly in lockstep with a Republican administration beginning with Al Gore's pathetic refusal to fight for the office he won in 2000, choosing instead to surrender it meekly to George Bush's Supreme Court appointment as did John Kerry four years later in his show of insouciance in an election even more fraud-laden than the one in 2000. It hardly matters under a system author and political critic Gore Vidal calls our one party state ruled by the Property Party with two wings in a plutocracy, with scarcely a dime's worth of difference between them.
The public is slow reacting and is still hypnotized and basking in the deceptive afterglow of post-election hoopla to realize they've been had again. Instead of celebrating victory unconsummated, what's needed is follow-through to press the demands that will remain unaddressed waiting around for a new bunch of politicos to act on them. Nothing will change in Washington until people understand that bringing in a new set of bums replacing the old ones only guarantees more of the same unless they press their advantage in a very visible and vocal way beyond the voting booth.
Otherwise, the only change guaranteed ahead is none at all, and all they'll have to look forward to is the next electoral round in 2008 when the same charade of a democratic process is repeated on the false pretense it will matter more then than it does now. You'd have thought after 12 years in the political wilderness, enough newly inspired Democrats and some of its leaders would have been as aroused as were the revolutionary Republicans with their Contract with America in 1994 that helped them sweep the mid-term elections that year with a promise to "bring to the floor the (ten) bills, each to be given a full and open debate....and fair vote....and be available for public inspection." They delivered as promised, but it was a scam calling for government reform Clinton DLC Democrats went along with and voters fell for not realizing the GOP agenda meant tax cuts for the rich and corporate giants, a dismantling of tort and welfare protection, and cuts in social programs and bedrock social security protection mostly affecting those most in need of them.
So where do we stand now that the celebratory dust has settled and the cold light of another day has dawned. Washington is still enveloped in a Kafkaesque shroud of hellish strangulation combining illegal foreign wars with domestic repression and neglect along with a guarantee nothing substantive will change beyond a few feel-good bits of tinkering around the edges to fool the public again a new agenda arrived and all is well in the world. The reality is all is hell in the world, and the DLC Democrats intend to continue conspiring with a criminal administration to keep it that way - at least as long as people allow them to get away with it.
Hope springs eternal and eventually there may be a public awakening that the same criminal element is in charge, little has changed nor will it without action outside the voting booth, the illegal Iraq and Afghanistan killing machines go on without end as do the appropriations for them about to get another obscene supplemental off-the-books $160 billion wasted-on-war tranche of funding diverting desperately needed revenue away from critically neglected social programs Democrats allowed Republicans to slash and burn and now aren't even considering for restoration.
The specter of Patriot Act I and the covertly proposed and stealth piecemeal enacted Patriot II (total police state takeover) Act remain in force as do the just passed Military Commissions Act and revision of the Insurrection Act that makes everyone including US citizens an "enemy combatant" unprotected by habeas or due process and allows the president the right to send "jackboots" to the streets to enforce whatever he says is the law and against anyone he claims without evidence is a threat to national security - aka a terrorist.
That combined with a president claiming the dictatorial right of a "unitary executive" allowing himself, on his self-authorization, to go around the Constitution, Congress and courts in the "interest" of "national security" has transformed a country Lincoln said "was conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal (in a) "government of the people, by the people, (and) for the people into a fascist dictatorship the Democrat leadership is very comfortable with and has no intention of challenging - as long as they're cut in on the spoils which they'll now get a bigger piece of.
These are the same "Democrats" who pledge allegiance to Thomas Jefferson who abhored war calling it the "greatest scourge of mankind....(swore) eternal hostility against every form of tryanny....(explained) All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent....(and said) Every generation needs a new revolution (to reinvent itself and expunge the sins of the past one)."
If Jefferson were with us now, he'd tell us the sins of the past generation are so enormous and out-of-control and so endanger the republic, at best on life support and fading fast, that never before in the country's history than now is the mother of all revolutions he spoke of needed. The political class in Washington won't respond to his call or even want us to know about it, and it's up to the public to deliver the message in a way those in power can't ignore.
Jefferson would approve explaining how important it is to keep "the spirit of resistence....alive....(that) timid men prefer the calm of despotism....(and that everyone has) certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Jefferson also knew what Ben Franklin meant when he said at the Constitution's birth that we have a Republic if we can keep it. He also knew that if lost, it's for the public to reclaim it from those who took it. It's high time to try. Jefferson and Franklin would approve.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at http://www.sjlendman.blogspot.com
I am a 71 year old, retired, progressive small businessman concerned about all the major national and world issues, committed to speak out and write about them.
Main reason of terrorism is Bajaur Agency is the rampant corruption. The officials posted in the tribal areas are busy in loot and plunder. They have been promoting and patronising the terrorists just to keep their activities hidden from the world.
According to a survey carried out by the Voice For Peace in Bajaur Agency, Tribal Areas situated on Pak-Afghan border, corruption is the main reason for terrorism in the tribal areas. The officials are openly looting the people. Thousands of tribesmen have been jailed by the officials for minting money from them.
The Voice For Peace appealed to the world leaders to exert pressure on Pakistan to take notice of the corruption in the tribal areas as this is the only way of controlling terrorism in the tribal areas and Afghanistan.
The people of tribal areas are mostly ignorant and innocent and they do not know how to save themselves from the corrupt officials. According to the observers, if proper education has been provided to them then there is no reason that they will resort to terrorism.
The local people demand that all the forign terrorists must be expelled from their areas. They are ready to cooperate with the US or NATO forces for flushing out the terrorists.
The End
My name is Muhammad Khurshid, a bonafide resident of Bajaur Agency, situated on Pak-Afghan border. Basically I am a journalist, but nowadays I have been fighting against terrorists in the tribal areas.
By Arnaud de Borchgrave
Washington Times
November 13, 2006
"Ripley's Believe It Or Not" began in 1918 as a comic strip featuring unusual, hard-to-believe facts from around the world. Today it is a Web site for a global community that combs cyberspace for events so strange and unusual it is often hard to believe they are taking place. These days, you don't have to go further afield than Washington, D.C.
The neo-conservatives (neocons) who gave us the "cakewalk" prediction for Iraq before the war are now plugging "a walk in the park" in Iran -- i.e., a U.S. bombing campaign to consign the mullahs' nuclear ambitions to oblivion, or at least to retard the advent of an Iranian bomb for a few years, hoping that in the interim good democrats would rise up and send the clerics and their Revolutionary Guards packing.
Two Washington-based representatives of a global Fortune 100 company told their visiting senior executive this week a bombing campaign of Iran's nuclear facilities "is inevitable while Mr. Bush is in the White House." The incredulous CEO thought his Washington eyes and ears were overstating the case. They assured him they were deadly serious.
Leading neocon Richard Perle, who led the intellectual charge for the ill-fated invasion of Iraq, believes two B-2 bombers, each with 16 independently targeted weapons systems, could punch out Iran's nuclear lights. No Air Force expert we could find agreed. But the Pentagon's Air Force generals believe it can be done -- and successfully -- with a much larger operation, including five nights of bombing, some 400 aim points, 75 requiring deep penetration ordnance. Time magazine estimates 1,500 such aim points, or "viable targets," related to Iran's widely scattered nuclear development complex. The Navy, with its carrier task forces and ship-launched cruise missiles, does not share the same degree of certainty.
No one has worked more assiduously for military action than Michael Ledeen, a neocon field marshal, who writes frequently about the "horrors" of Iran's mullahocracy. His National Review Online commentary Nov. 1 was headlined "Delay." Mr. Ledeen has grown impatient over Mr. Bush's dangerous postponement of what he considers inevitable. "If the president knows Iran is waging war on us," wrote Mr. Ledeen, "he is obliged to respond; the only appropriate question is about the method, not the substance. If he does not know, then he should remove those officials who were obliged to tell him, and get some people who will tell the truth."
The truth has become an increasingly rare commodity in Washington. Mr. Ledeen concludes the president knows the truth, but thinks he may lack the political capital to directly challenge the mullahs. More likely, Mr. Bush's thinking has changed when confronted by the intelligence community's assessment of Iran's retaliatory capabilities. They are described as "formidable." These include mining the Strait of Hormuz, the channel for two-fifths of the world's oil traffic, which would send oil prices skyrocketing to $200 per barrel almost overnight.
Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the U.S., headed his country's intelligence service for 25 years. He warns that an attack against Iran would turn "the whole Persian Gulf into an inferno of exploding fuel tanks and shot-up facilities." Earlier this month, Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards test-fired dozens of missiles, including the long-range Shahab-3 (1,242 miles), Shahab-2 (cluster warhead of 1,400 bomblets), solid-fuel Zalzals, Zolfaghar73, Z-3, and SCUD-Bs, all timed to follow by two days the completion of U.S.-led allied naval maneuvers in the Gulf that Tehran described as "adventurist." Warships from Australia, Britain, France, Italy, Bahrain and the U.S. participated.
Dubbed "Great Prophet," Iran's 10-day war games were designed "to show our deterrent and defensive power to trans-regional enemies, and we hope they will understand the message," said Revolutionary Guard commander Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi.
Iran also has control over Hezbollah whose terrorist arm has already reached all the way to Argentina (in the mid-1990s) and whose sleeper cells, from Saudi Arabia's eastern oil fields where Shi'ites are the majority, to North America, are still feigning sleep.
Russia and China have made clear they will not be part of any tough sanction regime against Iran. They both have strong commercial ties to Iran. Tehran is paying Russia $700 million for 29 air defense missile systems. China signed a 10-year, $100 billion oil deal with Iran.
What the neocons dismiss as the "nervous nellies" of the intelligence community may have slipped in to President Bush's morning brief a subversive quote or two from conservative historian Paul Johnson, e.g., "Statesmen should never plunge into the future ... without first examining what guidance the past could supply?"
Mr. Ledeen, who acts as spokesman for Iran's suppressed democratic forces, says, "The first step is to embrace the unpleasant fact that we are at war with Iran, and it is long past time to respond." The Iraqi debacle, along with the fading image of the U.S. as the world's sole superpower, as well as of Israel as the regional superpower, evidently persuaded President Bush to further disappoint the neocons. The Iraq Study Group's (ISG) James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton wanted neocon idol Donald Rumsfeld replaced as defense secretary before going public with their findings.
The new defense secretary, former CIA Director Robert M. Gates, a close friend of Mr. Baker, and also a member of ISG, has long favored direct talks with "Axis of Evil" charter member Iran. Mr. Baker, Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Gates are now on the same wavelength. They believe bombing Iran would be an unmitigated disaster for U.S. interests the world over. The alternative is to explore a geopolitical deal with a country that has legitimate security interests.
The neocons' ideas for a walk in the Iranian park are still very much alive in Israel, whose very existence has been threatened by the mullahocracy. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will make clear to Mr. Bush today during a White House visit that Israel is not prepared to live with an Iranian nuclear weapon.
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.
I think it is finally time we stood up and thanked Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the darling Democrat from the Bay Area who leads her party in the House. Pelosi's recent speech to the Israel-American lobby AIPAC, the second largest lobby in Washington, was monumental - truly unparalleled in its candor.
Despite the fact that AIPAC was recently busted for spying on the United States, Pelosi, along with many other top bureaucrats from Washington, gushed effusions of praise on the foreign power. "There are those who contend that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all about Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza," Pelosi said as she rallied AIPAC loyalists. "This is absolute nonsense. In truth, the history of the conflict is not over occupation, and never has been: it is over the fundamental right of Israel to exist."
Apparently Pelosi has never asked Palestinians what they think of Israel's brutality. Not that she hasn't witnessed the occupation firsthand; Pelosi is just not concerned in the least with the Palestinian resistance.
"This spring, I was in Israel as part of a congressional trip that also took us to Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq," said Pelosi. "One of the most powerful experiences was taking a helicopter toward Gaza, over the path of the security fence. We set down in a field that belonged to a local kibbutz. It was a cool but sunny day, and the field was starting to bloom with mustard. Mustard is a crop that grows in California, and it felt at that moment as if I were home. And then we were told that the reason we had to land in that field, as opposed to our actual destination, was because there had been an infiltration that morning, and they weren't sure how secure the area was. And that point alone brought us back to the daily reality of Israel: even moments of peace and beauty are haunted by the specter of violence."
Pelosi, like so many other Democrats and Republicans in D.C., does not appreciate the asymmetry of the conflict. She cannot understand that Palestinians are faced with violence every day as their livelihoods and homes are uprooted to make way for new Israeli settlements. Never mind that the farm collective where Pelosi landed in her fancy helicopter was at one time operated by Palestinian farmers. For the land, according to Pelosi, has always belonged to the state of Israel.
"One thing, however is unchanged," Pelosi added. "America's commitment to the safety and security of the state of Israel is unwavering. America and Israel share an unbreakable bond: in peace and war; and in prosperity and in hardship."
Sadly, Palestinians don't figure into Pelosi's lopsided equation; those darn Arabs just don't matter. And when Pelosi speaks of "safety and security," it's only Israelis she's talking about. While Pelosi ignored Israel's vast arsenal of chemical, biological, and nuclear weaponry, along with the numerous UN resolutions the country has broken, she still had the audacity to lash out at the latest troublemaker in the Middle East: Iran.
"The greatest threat to Israel's right to exist, with the prospect of devastating violence, now comes from Iran. For too long, leaders of both political parties in the United States have not done nearly enough to confront the Russians and the Chinese, who have supplied Iran as it has plowed ahead with its nuclear and missile technology."
So, three cheers for Pelosi! Her honesty has been crudely insightful. Especially given the fact that two AIPAC staffers have just been indicted for espionage by the U.S. government.
WASHINGTON - The U.S. House of Representatives on Monday failed to pass a bill establishing permanent normal trade relations with Vietnam, in a setback for
President George W. Bush, who is visiting Hanoi this weekend.
The surprise result followed an announcement by the State Department that it had dropped Vietnam from its list of nations that severely violate religious freedom, citing an improvement in its tolerance for religious expression.
The setback on the trade bill raises the possibility that Bush could go to this weekend's Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Hanoi without delivering on a trade initiative his administration made a major priority.
That threatened to overshadow other efforts to ensure Bush's visit would be a success, including Vietnam's removal from the U.S. list of countries that violate religious freedom.
Supporters of the Vietnam trade bill failed to get the two-thirds vote needed to approve it on the House "suspension calendar," usually reserved for noncontroversial legislation.
But since lawmakers voted 228-161 in favor of the bill, Republicans leaders were expected to try to win approval later this week through a procedure that requires only a simple majority to pass.
"The vote showed there is strong support in the House for this bill and it will pass eventually," said Adam Sitkoff, the executive director of the American Chamber of Commerce chapter in Hanoi.
It is still possible that both the House and the Senate could approve the bill before Bush is in Hanoi.
The chances of a Senate vote on the trade bill improved after Hanoi announced it was deporting a U.S. citizen convicted of plotting violence against the Vietnamese government.
Sen. Mel Martinez, a Florida Republican, had been blocking Senate action on the to win the release of Thuong Nguyen Foshee, who lives in his state and was in a Vietnamese prison for 14 months before she was convicted last week.
DEMOCRATS DIVIDED
The House vote showed many Democrats remain strongly opposed to trade agreements. Republicans supported the Vietnam bill by a two-to-one margin, but Democrats were almost evenly divided for and against the measure.
That raises questions about whether Rep. Charles Rangel (news, bio, voting record), a New York Democrat expected to become chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee in January, can follow-through on promises to work with the White House on trade.
Rangel had predicted the Vietnam trade bill would pass and urged other Democrats to support it.
"We're just dumbfounded and confounded by this vote," said Nicole Venable, a trade lobbyist with the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "What does this mean? Does it mean the (Democratic) caucus really isn't where (Rangel) is? Does it mean that he really doesn't have any sway?"
A late push by the AFL-CIO labor federation might have been a factor in persuading many Democrats to vote against the bill, Venable said.
Congress needs to approve permanent normal trade relations with Vietnam for U.S. farmers, bankers and other business to share in the market-opening benefits of Hanoi's entry into the
World Trade Organization next month.
The United States normalized trade relations with Vietnam in 1995 and signed a bilateral trade deal in 2001 that opened Vietnam's market to more U.S. exports. Two-way goods trade between the countries totaled about $7.8 billion last year, including $6.6 billion in imports from Vietnam.
However, U.S. trade relations with Hanoi have remained subject to a Cold War provision known as the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which links favorable tariff treatment for products from several countries such as Vietnam and Russia to the rights of religious minorities to emigrate freely.
Vietnam's WTO deal requires Hanoi to reduce tariffs on almost all U.S. manufactured goods and on nearly 75 percent of U.S. farm exports. Hanoi also pledged to open sectors like telecommunication, financial services and energy to more U.S. and foreign firms.
John McCain, the Arizona Republican widely seen as a front-runner for his party's presidential nomination in 2008, has moved closer to a White House run, saying he was setting up an exploratory committee, and that he would take a final decision early in 2007.
"I am going to sit down with my family over the holidays and make that decision," the four-term senator, who unsuccessfully ran against George Bush in 2000, told NBC's Meet the Press yesterday.
He did not say exactly when the committee - a legally required precursor of a White House bid - would be formally established. But he noted that it was "part of the process". Whatever happens, he added, "the important thing is that we will be prepared".
With his reputation as a maverick and blunt-spoken teller of truth to power, Mr McCain has a proven appeal to independents and many Democrats. He has also of late moved to shore up support among the Christian right, a constituency vital to success in the primaries - as he learnt to his cost six years ago.
Every sign thus far is that he plans to run. There are, however, significant question marks about a McCain candidacy. One is his advocacy of yet more troops being sent to Iraq, at a moment when the war has never been less popular. The other is his age. If elected, Mr McCain, who is a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, would be 72 when sworn in in January 2009, making him the oldest incoming president ever. He also has a history of melanoma skin cancer, meaning that his health would be a matter of intense scrutiny.
On the Republican side, after the defeat and political self-destruction of the once-fancied Senator George Allen of Virginia at last week's midterm election, the Arizona senator's most dangerous rival may be Mitt Romney, the outgoing governor of Massachusetts, who is showing every sign of a presidential bid.
Other possibilities include the former mayor of New York Rudolph Giuliani, and the outgoing Senate majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee - and conceivably even Mr Giuliani's successor as mayor, Michael Bloomberg.
The Democratic contest also became slightly clearer yesterday. Joe Biden, senator for Delaware, confirmed on ABC's This Week programme that he planned to run in 2008, but did not say when he would take a final decision. In the meantime, Mr Biden is expected to become chairman of the powerful Foreign Relations Committee when the new Democrat-controlled Senate convenes in January. He advocates a loose federal structure for Iraq. But another senator, the liberal Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, who has been a strong opponent of the Iraq war from the beginning, ruled himself out of the race - as did Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat poised to take over as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "I value my marriage too much for that," he joked.
The favourite - albeit undeclared - remains Hillary Clinton, flush with money after her untaxing re-election to the Senate from New York last week, and with a powerful organisation already in place.
But a threat has emerged in the person of Barack Obama, the wildly popular first-term senator from Illinois, who has been promoting a political memoir, The Audacity of Hope, that in part resembles a campaign manifesto. Mr Obama, born of a Kenyan father and Kansan mother, recently admitted that he was mulling a bid. A decision could come soon, he indicated. Other senators who might join the 2008 contest are the defeated 2004 nominee John Kerry, and Evan Bayh, the conservative Democrat from Indiana. All but certain to run is John Edwards, Mr Kerry's running mate four years ago.
The democrats "have a constitutional duty," as Nancy Pelosi has said, to investigate--- criminal wrongs, offenses to the constitution...
In the coming months, as the Democrat-led congress moves forward, dealing with the war, unemployment, health care, medicare drugs, immigration (ignoring flag burning, gay marriage, and other BS the republicans wasted whole sessions on) they will also be convening hearings. The Democrats will force the release of reports that the Republicans held back from the public. They will begin to shed line on the dark recesses that the Republicans hid.
The truth will see the light of day.
Once the dirty truth comes out-- that Bush was a criminal and constitutional violator in SO many ways, the 31% rating for Bush that we see today will look huge. The American public will demand that something be done. They will insist upon the rescue of the constitution.
I believe that there will be more network anchors who, emboldened by the tough talk of first and foremost, Keith Olbermann, but also Jack Cafferty and Lou Dobbs. These gutsy media spokesman will rally the American people to demand that the perpetrators face justice, that the abuses to the constitution and the bill of rights be righted (or, with the current climate, "lefted.")
The Republican party will be faced with a disastrous 2008 election and they will have little choice but to cut the damage-- the slowly, but strongly growing media storm of outrage over the crimes and abuses of Bush, Cheney and their worst appointees, particularly Gonzalez.
The Republicans will be forced to take a walk to the white House-- at least 15 or 16 of them-- and they will tell Bush and Cheney, that they have to resign, because the Republican party will be obliterated if they don't clean up their own mess. And Bush and Cheney are their mess.
It will be oh so delicious to see the day that Bush and Cheney resign because the Republicans told them to. Either that, or the Dems will take an additional 50 house seats and 15-20 MORE senate seats in 2008. At that point, the two party system could be replaced by new parties.
It is a certainty, the Republicans will not allow that to happen. The senators will go to Bush and Cheney and tell them they have to resign-- and fast.
This won't happen overnight, but it won't take too long. There are already a few Republicans who have expressed reservations. Expect the ones who will be facing elections in 2008 to be under more pressure to get on board, and the few remaining moderates remaining on the Republican side of the aisle.
Don't expect every Democrat to get on board. Joe, the red, Lieberman might hold out just to annoy the Dems, or to hold out for a deal of his own. Seriously though, that is VERY unlikely, with his constituent base.
Eventually though, Bush will get a visit. Almost certainly, it will be a real, actual visit, from a big enough group of Republicans to make it clear to George and Dick that they really do have a choice-- face impeachment or resign.
Of course, when Bush gets the visit from the Republicans, he will drag James Baker from wherever he is, to negotiate a deal. Cheney will pull out his shotgun and shoot at them, probably at a more moderate one, like Arlen Spector or Olympia Snowe who will surely be amongst the resignation demand team.
The Dems will be straining at the leash to take any offer. That will be a mistake. Bush and Cheney do NOT deserve to get off with just resigning. They must plead guilty to crimes. They must do at least some time-- so they lose their right to vote. They must, as part of their "deal" agree to never speak in public, to not give speeches, to give all claims to all monies in any bank accounts they did not have upon entering office. They should pay fines consisting of all their assets. They should be put in house arrest-- on Bush's remote ranch. Government security agents should be supplied to keep all visitors out except family, and to keep Bush and Cheney in. Okay-- Cheney can do house arrest in some ranch in Wyoming.
There are those who would imprison these criminals for life, and those who believe they deserve execution as mass murderers. The US should also allow the world court to try them, with Rumsfeld, Gonzalez, Tommy Franks, and a number of the generals who allowed or even observed torture and other war crimes. The US owes the world access to the criminals who got out of control. We need to clear our Karma. Allowing justice to take its course-- true justice, not the perverted, despicable thing that Gonzalez, Yoo and company perpetrated upon this nation and this planet.
On the other side, James Baker and Bush's few remaining friends will negotiate on behalf of Bush. Some of my wish list of sentencing elements will fall. I hope not many. They are designed to prevent Bush or Cheney from contining to do damage or to benefit from their crimes.
The American people will see the light and they will make at least most of these things come to pass. And it will be sweet to see Bush and Cheney and friends do the perp walks they so richly deserve.
Democrats never said impeaching him was "off the table."
The Democrats first order of business upon convening as a majority party this January should be to target Dick Cheney for impeachment. They can use him as the starting off point for investigations into the entire energy industry. Perhaps we can finally find out what Cheney was hiding with his "Secret Energy Taskforce" meetings during their first term.
They can then use the threat of investigations against Bush to get him to agree not to use his Veto power on any legislation they pass. Then they can get to work repairing the damage done to America, starting with the minimum wage and hopefully moving on to repealing the Anti-American "Patriot Act".
If the Democrats are tough enough and can maintain the political will, then they have the chance of the century to pass legislation without fear of veto by using Bush's own corruption against him.
They never said that impeachment was off the table for Cheney, so there will be no real political repercussions for doing it. By impeaching Cheney first, would also insure that should they decide to impeach Bush at some point, Cheney could not replace him. But so much more can potentially be accomplished by going to Bush and offering to leave him alone so long as he cooperates with passing the legislation. They may even be able to force Bush to rightly take responsibility for his lost war and preclude the GOP attempting to tar the Democrats with it.
I am a classic Gen x'er with a short attention span, high intelligence, low motivation and an overabundance of cynicism that the world just keeps re-justifying. At various points in my life I have been a Journalist, a Personal Trainer, a D.J., a Photographer, a Paralegal, a Waiter, a Pizza Deliverator and a Network Engineer...among other things.
When Russ Feingold announced in March that he would introduce a resolution to censure President Bush for breaking the law by eavesdropping on Americans without warrants, a clear two-pronged consensus immediately arose among Beltway pundits and politicians -- including Republicans and many Democrats as well:
(1) Feingold had just disastrously handed a huge "gift" to Republicans, because opposition to Bush's warrantless eavesdropping would doom the Democrats politically, and,
(2) Feingold had introduced this resolution not because he really believed anything he was saying about it, but only as a "political stunt," selfishly designed to advance his own political interests (at the expense of his party) by shoring up the "liberal base" for his 2008 presidential run.
As for premise (1), Democrats spent all year opposing warrantless eavesdropping (mostly mild and reluctant opposition, though in some cases passionate). That opposition culminated in a House vote just 6 weeks before the election where 85% of Democrats voted against a bill to legalize warrantless eavesdropping.
Thereafter, Republicans did everything possible to make that an issue in the campaign, and Democrats just crushed Republicans in the election. As but one example, 12-term GOP incumbent Nancy Johnson made her support for warrantless eavesdropping (and her challenger's opposition to it) a centerpiece of her campaign. She was easily defeated.
As for premise (2), Russ Feingold announced today, definitively, that he is not running for President in 2008.
It is hard to overstate how ignorant and wrong Beltway pundits are about everything, and how barren and corrupt inside-Washington conventional wisdom is.
Russ Feingold has spent his entire idiosyncratic political career espousing views because he believes them, even when those views are so plainly contrary to his political interests. He infuriated his entire party by being the only Democratic Senator to vote against dismissal of the Clinton impeachment charges prior to the Senate trial. He pursued campaign finance reform hated by incumbents in both parties.
And in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, he seemed to be the only elected official immune from irrational pressures, as he not only was the only Senator to vote against the "Patriot Act," but was also the only Senator who refused to blindly pledge his loyalty to limitless presidential power, emphasizing on the Senate floor as early as September 14, 2001:
Like any legislation, this resolution [authorizing military force in Afghanistan and against Al Qaeda] is not perfect. I have some concern that readers may misinterpret the preamble language that the President has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism as a new grant of power; rather it is merely a statement that the President has existing constitutional powers . . . .
Congress owns the war power. But by this resolution, Congress loans it to the President in this emergency. In so doing, we demonstrate our respect and confidence in both our Commander in Chief and our Constitution. . . .
Our response will be judged by friends and foes, by history, and by ourselves. It must stand up to the highest level of scrutiny: It must be appropriate and constitutional.
Within this confusing scenario, it will be easy to point fingers at an ever increasing number of enemies, to believe that the "the enemy'' is all around us, that the enemy may even be our neighbor. The target can seem to grow larger and larger every day, before the first strike even occurs. And this, of course, is exactly what the terrorists want. They seek to inflate their numbers and their influence by retreating into the shadows. They seek to turn us against each other, and to turn us against our friends and allies across the world, but we will not allow this to happen.
Despite all of that, when Feingold stood up and advocated censure -- based on the truly radical and crazy, far leftist premise that when the President is caught red-handed breaking the law, the Congress should actually do something about that -- the soul-less, oh-so-sophisticated Beltway geniuses could not even contemplate the possibility that he was doing that because he believed what he was saying. Beltway pundits and the leaders of the Beltway political and consulting classes all, in unison, immediately began casting aspersions on Feingold's motives and laughed away -- really never considered -- the idea that he was motivated by actual belief, let alone the merits of his proposal.
That's because they believe in nothing. They have no passion about anything. And they thus assume that everyone else suffers from the same emptiness of character and ossified cynicism that plagues them. And all of their punditry and analysis and political strategizing flows from this corrupt root.
Not only do they believe in nothing, they think that a Belief in Nothing is a mark of sophistication and wisdom. Those who believe in things too much -- who display political passion or who take their convictions and ideals seriously (Feingold, Howard Dean) -- are either naive or, worse, are the crazy, irrational, loudmouth masses and radicals who disrupt the elevated, measured world of the high-level, dispassionate Beltway sophisticates (James Carville, David Broder, Fred Hiatt). They are interested in, even obsessed with, every aspect of the political process except for deeply held political beliefs -- the only part that really matters or that has any real worth.
For that reason, when Feingold announced his censure resolution, the merits of it were virtually ignored (i.e., should something actually be done about the President's deliberate lawbreaking? What are the consequences for our country for doing nothing?). Instead, Feingold's announcement was immediately cast as a disingenuous political maneuver and discussed only in cynical terms of how it would politically harm the Democrats.
This was the first line of the AP article on Feingold's resolution:
While only two Democrats in the Senate have embraced Sen. Russ Feingold's call for censuring President Bush, the idea is increasing his standing among many Democratic voters as he ponders a bid for the party's presidential nomination in 2008. . . .
And as is so often the case, Beltway Republicans and Democrats worked in tandem with this cynical, substance-less storyline -- because it's how they all really think. Thus, the Post reported that Republicans "denounced the censure resolution as a political stunt by an ambitious lawmaker positioning himself to run for president in 2008."
Many Democrats (though not all), petrified by Feingold's stand, made the same accusation. As David Limbaugh gleefully recounted:
Feingold's move is not one of moral courage, but raw political ambition. In the words of Democratic senator Mark Dayton, Feingold's move is "an overreaching step by someone who is grandstanding and running for president at the expense of his own party and his own country."
And the AP article also reported this:
"This is such a gift," Rush Limbaugh said on his radio show. The National Review came to the same conclusion. In an online editorial titled, "Feingold's Gift to the GOP," the conservative magazine wrote that Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman would hug Feingold if given the chance.
Marshall Wittmann insisted that Feingold was dooming the Democrats and if Democrats didn't drop the whole issue of warrantless eavesdropping, it would ensure GOP victory:
The Moose avers that Russ Feingold is the GOP's man of the hour. . . . . Here is the bottom line - the American people are not going to penalize the President for being overly zealous in preventing a destruction of an American city. That is what the Republicans know and they are gleeful about a debate on this issue. And they are co-dependent on the Democratic left to keep this issue alive.
And then there was this most wretched column by Eleanor Clift, vividly echoing all of those brilliant Beltway insights with one textbook case study on how our Beltway political class, across the board, "thinks":
Republicans finally had something to celebrate this week when Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold called for censuring George W. Bush. Democrats must have a death wish. Just when the momentum was going against the president, Feingold pops up to toss the GOP a life raft.
It's brilliant strategy for him, a dark horse presidential candidate carving out a niche to the left of Hillary Clinton. . . . . There is a vacuum in the heart of the party's base that Feingold fills, but at what cost? . . . .
The broader public sees it as political extremism. Just when the Republicans looked like they were coming unhinged, the Democrats serve up a refresher course on why they can't be trusted with the keys to the country.
[The same thing happened when Feingold announced that he favors same-sex marriages. He can't possibly be motivated by actual belief, so AP tells us why he really did it: "Sen. Russ Feingold, a potential presidential candidate, said Tuesday he supports giving gays and lesbians the right to marry, again positioning himself to the left of possible 2008 rivals."]
All of this Beltway certainty about the motives of Feingold's Censure Resolution and the political consequences of it could not have been any more wrong. Feingold obviously hadn't decided to run for President and apparently wasn't planning on it. And 2006 saw endless controversy over the NSA program -- from hearings to court cases to Feingold's resolution to a final House vote in which Democrats overwhelmingly opposed the President's NSA program -- and Americans stomped on the Republicans and put the Democrats in power.
The Beltway pundit class and the premises which generate conventional Washington wisdom are corrupt to their core and always wrong. And this Feingold announcement illustrates a major reason why that it so. They operate from a set of completely unexamined, empty premises that reflect their own character and belief system, but nobody else's. They have no core convictions and no passion and think that those attributes are the marks of sober, responsible people. And they project those character flaws onto everyone else and assume that nobody other than unserious lunatics are motivated by real belief.
All of that combines to produce a worldview that is as inaccurate as it is bereft of integrity and principle. The excitement over new politicians like Jim Webb and Jon Tester -- and the passion inspired by Russ Feingold and even Howard Dean -- has nothing to do with long-standing and increasingly obsolete liberal/conservative stereotypes (the only prism through which the media can analyze the election results, which is why they are so confused). Instead, the excitement is due to a widespread hunger for people who are outside of and immune to the entire, soul-less Beltway machinery -- a system which, in every aspect, is broken and empty at its core.
UPDATE: One of the best/worst examples of this emptiness comes, unsurprisingly, from The New Republic, courtesy of Ryan Lizza, who chortled at the political stupidity of Feingold's censure resolution but -- of course -- knew exactly why Feingold was doing it (h/t Michael):
Feingold is mystified by the reaction. Democrats, he said this week, are "cowering with this president's numbers so low." The liberal blogosphere, aghast at how wimpy Democrats are being, has risen up in a chorus of outrage: . . . .
The nature of the split is obvious. Feingold is thinking about 2008. Harry Reid, Charles Schumer, and other Democrats are thinking about 2006. Feingold cares about wooing the anti-Bush donor base on the web and putting some of his '08 rivals--Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Evan Bayh--in uncomfortable positions. Reid and Schumer care about winning the six seats it will take for Democrats to win control of the Senate . . . .
So the partisans on the left cheering Feingold appear to have both the policy and the politics wrong. Censure is meaningless. Changing the FISA law is the way to address Bush's overreach. And the only way for Democrats to change FISA is for them to take back the Senate. This week, Feingold's censure petition has made that goal just a little bit more difficult to achieve. What an ass.
So knowing and sophisticated. So wise and insightful to the hard-core political realities. Always above the lowly impassioned masses and their misguided, simplistic notions (such as the belief that there should be consequences for presidential lawbreaking -- how excitable and stupid that is). TNR is always so cleverly restrained and calculating.
And the stupid liberal blogosphere -- cheering on Feingold's stand against the President. As though that's about anything other than Feingold's '08 presidential run. How "obvious" that is.
And all of that is to say nothing about the complete incoherence of Lizza's "argument." How could "changing FISA" -- what Lizza calls "the way to address Bush's overreach" -- possibly be a solution to the president's lawbreaking when the whole point is that the President claims he has no obligation to comply with FISA because Congress can't limit his eavesdropping activities?
Censure was the only way (short of impeachment) for Congress to force the President to comply with the law and to express its objections to the President's lawbreaking. "Changing FISA" was -- and still is -- a complete non-sequitur to the President's conduct, which is based on the premise that FISA (like all laws that limit the President's conduct concerning national security) is a nullity. But to Lizza, that's the more moderate, passionless and less disruptive course. Therefore, by definition, it's the best one -- the only one that responsible and sophisticated political experts like him would ever consider.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Gunmen in Iraqi police uniforms rounded up dozens of men at a government building in central Baghdad on Tuesday and drove off, in what may be the biggest mass kidnapping seen in a city becoming used to such violence.
A source at the Interior Ministry said 20 employees of the Higher Education Ministry were seized. But a spokeswoman for the department itself said dozens of men -- "100 or maybe 150" -- had been rounded up, including many visitors to the building.
Women were separated from the men and locked in a room after having their mobile phones confiscated by the gunmen, who drove up to the ministry's Research Directorate in the commercial, religiously mixed district of Karrada, in government vehicles.
"All Interior Ministry forces are on alert, searching for this group. We don't know if it's terrorists, militias or even government forces," Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier Abdul Kareem Khalaf said, declining to say how many people were missing.
Numerous mass kidnappings have been blamed on sectarian militias operating either within the security forces or with the help of police in providing equipment.
The once dominant Sunni minority and U.S. officials have focused particular suspicion on militias from the now dominant Shi'ite Muslim parties, who control the Interior Ministry.
The Higher Education Ministry is headed by a member of the main Sunni Arab political bloc. Most ministries have become fiefdoms of particular parties.
Not far from the ministry building attacked on Tuesday, about 30 sports officials and athletes, including the head of
Iraq's national Olympic Committee, were seized during a meeting in July by gunmen in uniform. Some were later freed but many, including the Olympics chief, have never been heard of again.
Last month, the 26-strong workforce of a Baghdad meat-processing factory were also seized in similar circumstances.
Some kidnap victims are ransomed but many end up among the dozens of corpses, found bound and tortured, on the streets of Baghdad every day. On Monday alone, 46 were found and the morgue says it is taking in about 50 unclaimed bodies a day.
After the incident involving the meat factory workers, the government removed a number of senior police officers who had responsibility for the area and took an entire brigade of police out of service for vetting and re-training.
Washington, under mounting domestic political pressure to start pulling its 150,000 troops out of Iraq, has placed a heavy emphasis on recruiting and training Iraqi security forces, which now number more than 300,000.
But their competence and sectarian loyalties remain a matter of grave concern as the government struggles to slow a slide toward all-out civil war.
GAZA - The ruling Islamic militant group Hamas said on Tuesday a planned Palestinian unity government would not recognize Israel or accept a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict.
Hamas's stance could undercut Palestinian efforts to form a unity government acceptable to Israel and its closest ally, the United States, casting doubts on whether an eight-month-old Western economic boycott would be lifted.
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said the agenda of the proposed unity government between Hamas and President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction "will not recognize Israel and will not include accepting the two-state solution."
"We reject the two-state solution, which is the vision of U.S. President George Bush, because it represents a clear recognition of Israel," Barhoum said. "Our position in this regard remains unchanged. We reject joining in any government that recognizes Israel."
A U.S.-educated Palestinian academic is the top candidate to replace Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas as part of the proposed unity government.
Mohammad Shbair, 60, the former head of the Islamic University in Gaza, is considered close to Hamas but he is not a member of the group.
The United States and the European Union regard Hamas as a terrorist organization and have cut off direct aid to its administration. As a result, the Palestinian government has largely been unable to pay its 165,000 workers since April.
Washington and Brussels have demanded Hamas recognize Israel's right to exist, renounce violence and abide by existing peace agreements with Israel if it wants to be recognized.
BAGHDAD - Chanting slogans in support of a radical, anti-American, Shi'ite cleric, mourners carried coffins on Tuesday through a Baghdad district where Iraqi officials said U.S. forces killed six people in an overnight raid.
The U.S. military declined to confirm any operation in Shula, a Shi'ite enclave in mostly Sunni west Baghdad.
Interior Ministry sources said 13 people were also wounded after U.S. troops called in an air strike when they came under fire from Mehdi Army militiamen loyal to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is under pressure from Washington to crack down on Shi'ite militias blamed for widespread sectarian killings but that, like the Mehdi Army, are tied to powerful political parties in his coalition. There was no comment from Maliki's office on the events in Shula.
Recent U.S. raids in Shi'ite areas targeting suspected sectarian death squad leaders have prompted angry protests from Maliki's Shi'ite constituency. Maliki has distanced himself from past operations in Shi'ite areas, like Baghdad's Sadr City.
Angry mourners on Tuesday chanted slogans in support of Sadr, a youthful, anti-American cleric who is a partner in Maliki's six-month-old government.
Maliki, struggling to appease powerful political barons in his Shi'ite-led coalition amid soaring sectarian violence and fears of civil war, has insisted he needs time to forge a political consensus to reduce violence.
He criticized a U.S. raid last month on Sadr City in east Baghdad where U.S. troops were seeking a renowned warlord known as Abu Deraa.
BEIRUT - Lebanon's political crisis deepened on Monday as a depleted cabinet approved draft U.N. statutes for a tribunal to try the killers of ex-premier Rafik al-Hariri despite the resignation of six pro-Syrian ministers.
Official sources said the Western-backed government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora would now send the draft back to New York and wait for the final text on the special court to return.
"Here we are today on the road to revealing the truth and achieving justice through the court with an international character that will be formed to stop this series of terrorist and criminal acts," Siniora told reporters after the meeting.
The resignation by pro-Syrian Hezbollah ministers and their allies brought to a head a crisis in Lebanon which has grown steadily worse since Hariri's killing last year and escalated further after Israel's war on Lebanon.
Hezbollah, the most powerful group in Lebanon, and its allies see the tribunal as a tool to punish
Syria, blamed by many Lebanese for Hariri's killing in a suicide truck bombing last year. Damascus denies involvement.
A U.N. commission investigating the assassination has implicated senior Lebanese and Syrian security officials.
At the United Nations in New York, U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said his country was prepared to move quickly in the Security Council to approve the tribunal "once we receive formal word form the government of Lebanon."
The approval of the draft follows deadlocked talks over Hezbollah's demands for greater say in government and political tension which threatens to spill into street confrontations.
Environment Minister Yacoub Sarraf, a Christian loyal to Syrian-backed President Emile Lahoud, resigned shortly before cabinet met. Five Shi'ite ministers from Hezbollah and its ally, the Amal movement, quit on Saturday over the collapse of talks on their demands for effective veto power in the government.
Nine of the cabinet's 24 members must resign for it to fall. A Sunni Muslim minister quit in February, though his resignation was not accepted, leaving 17 ministers in the cabinet.
Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun, a Hezbollah ally, vowed to press ahead with demands for a national unity government, saying Siniora's cabinet had lost its legitimacy because the Shi'ites, Lebanon's largest community, had quit.
VIOLENCE FEARED
Politicians and analysts said the crisis was likely to spill into street confrontations.
"It's hard to see how this situation will be resolved without there being some violence," Andrew Exum, research fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told Reuters.
The crisis dragged the country's stock market lower with the BLOM stock index ending the day 2.23 percent lower.
The anti-Syrian majority coalition has accused Hezbollah of implementing a Syrian-Iranian plan to overthrow the government and to foil efforts to set up the court to try Hariri's killers.
The Shi'ite group has denied this.
Siniora has rejected all the resignations but a senior source close to the ministers said they stood by their decision.
The United States has already accused Iran, Syria and Hezbollah of plotting to topple the government, which Washington holds up as an example of emerging democracy in the Middle East.
Hezbollah said on Sunday it would stage peaceful street protests as part of a campaign to press its demands for better representation in government for its allies, especially Aoun.
Anti-Syrian leaders have pledged counter-demonstrations should Hezbollah take to the streets.
The killing of Hariri, a leading Sunni, led to mass protests against Syria. Under international pressure, Syria ended its 29-year military presence in Lebanon in April last year and anti-Syrian politicians swept to victory in ensuing elections.
President George Bush's State of the Union address refers to the "axis of evil": Iraq, Iran and North Korea. The implication is that Iraq is the first to be dealt with in the "war on terror". But Iran aids the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, keeping the lid on Shia unrest.
Tehran is dismayed as international jihadists and Sunni insurgents target the Shia majority in the hope of triggering civil war. Mr Bush rejects an overture from Iran, under pro-reform President Mohammed Khatami, to review their relationship, frozen since the US embassy hostage-taking of 1979. Instead, the US accuses Iran of sponsoring terror and seeking nuclear weapons. The crisis deepens after Iran admits it has a uranium enrichment facility. Iran fears the US wants regime change.
Syria is added to the axis of evil by John Bolton, arch hawk, whose position as US ambassador to the UN is under threat after last week's mid-term elections. The neoconservatives believe a new democratic Middle East will sweep dictatorships from power after Saddam's fall, and Syria is in trouble after opposing the war and because senior Saddam aides - and weapons of mass destruction, the US claims - are brought across the border. Syria is accused of harbouring "terrorist" organisations. Syria tightens border controls, but fears of regime change are fuelled when Condoleezza Rice brands Syria as an "outpost of tyranny". Further setback for Syria when France and the US ensure expulsion of Syrian forces from Lebanon.
2006: THE PEACE BROKERS?
Robert Gates, the new US Defence Secretary, is an advocate of dialogue with Tehran to enlist its help in extricating allied forces from Iraq. Tony Blair, who wants Iran to help stop cross-border attacks on UK troops, backs this, setting the scene for demise of Bush's neoconservative policy. But Iran is now in the grip of a hardline leadership, headed by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is defiant over its nuclear programme. Iran faces UN sanctions. Ahmadinejad will aim to make Bush and Blair sweat before he agrees to help.
President Bashar al-Assad, flush with success of Syria's proxy militia in Lebanon, holds the key to success in Iraq and Middle East peace. Courted by Bush and Blair, whom he upbraided at their last meeting. Syria harbours a leader of the radical Palestinian Hamas movement, and is a supplier of Hizbollah. Assad will play hardball on the UN's case against Syrian officials accused of assassinating former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. And there is the Golan Heights, seized by Israel in 1967.
By Andrew Grice and Rupert Cornwell in Washington
14 November 2006
Tony Blair has urged George Bush to make a dramatic U-turn by drawing Iran and Syria into efforts to bring stability to Iraq and forge a long-term peace in the wider Middle East.
The Prime Minister joined a clamour in Washington for the US President to drop his hardline approach towards what he regards as two rogue states. In his annual foreign affairs speech to the Lord Mayor's Banquet last night, Mr Blair offered Iran a "clear strategic choice" - a partnership if it stops supporting terrorism in Lebanon and Iraq and accepts its international obligations, or isolation if it did not. His advisers said the same choice applied to Syria.
Mr Blair's spokesman denied his call meant a softening of British policy, which has always been keener on dialogue with Tehran and Damascus than the Bush administration, and would not involve concessions to the two nations. But he added that this was a "moment when people are rethinking policy, and the time to articulate a way forward".
Bringing both Iran and Syria in from the cold is likely to be one of the key recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, led by James Baker, the former US secretary of state, which is reviewing Iraq policy. It is also backed by Robert Gates, who will take over from Donald Rumsfeld as the US Defence Secretary after the Republicans' drubbing in last week's congressional elections.
MPs believe Mr Blair is seeking to exert leverage on President Bush over the Middle East at a time when he is weakened domestically and the influence of his neoconservative allies has waned. One Labour source described next month's Study Group report as Mr Bush's "get out of jail card". It is also likely to call for a phased withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq.
Mr Blair will reinforce his message today when he gives evidence to the Baker panel for an hour by video-link.
But there are signs that the Prime Minister and the President are at odds over Iran and Syria, with Mr Bush declaring that Iran must first halt its nuclear programme. "If Iranians want to have a dialogue, they must verifiably suspend their enrichment activities," he said.
Yesterday Mr Bush met nine of the 10 members of Mr Baker's group. White House officials described the session merely as "a conversation" in which both sides had shared their views, and played down expectations the group might come up with a magic formula to restore stability to Iraq and allow the US to withdraw its troops.
But the pressures on Mr Bush to do precisely that intensified as a leading Democrat in the Senate demanded a change of course. "We must start a phased redeployment of US troops ... within four to six months," said Carl Levin, who is set to take over as chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee. "We cannot save the Iraqis from themselves."
In his speech at Guildhall, Mr Blair hinted at changes in Iraq policy, saying: "Just as the situation is evolving, so our strategy should evolve to meet it." He called for strong political efforts, led by the Iraqi government, to build up Iraq's governing capability, and the plugging of any gaps in training, equipment and command and control in the Iraqi army, while rooting out sectarianism in the police.
But he argued that a major part of the answer lay in "a whole Middle East" strategy. The starting point had to be Israel and Palestine, then Lebanon, and then an effort to unite all moderate Arab and Muslim voices behind a push for peace in those countries and Iraq.
Accusing Iran of "using the pressure points in the region to thwart us" he said it had helped the most extreme elements of Hamas in Palestine, Hizbollah in Lebanon, and the Shia militias in Iraq. "That way, they put obstacles in the path to peace, paint us, as they did over the Israel/Lebanon conflict, as the aggressors, inflame the Arab street and create political turmoil in our democratic politics," he said.
The Prime Minister insisted that the alliances Britain has with America and within Europe must remain the cornerstones of its policy in a changing world.
He said none of Britain's vital concerns internationally could be addressed without America's support. "We need America. That is a fact," he said. "Europe gives us weight and strength. In fact, in my view, Europe should be far more confident about its potential."
To critics demanding a more independent British foreign policy, he replied: "In today's world a foreign policy based on strong alliances is the only British policy which works."
The Conservatives described hopes of a breakthrough with Iran and Syria as naive, but the Liberal Democrats welcomed the call, saying it was in their interest to avoid a civil war in Iraq.
Iran's Arabic language television station broadcast footage it claimed showed a US aircraft carrier cruising in Gulf waters it said was taken by an unmanned Iranian drone.
The brief minute-long film, which was shown on Al-Alam television's evening news bulletin, showed wobbly aerial footage of an aircraft carrier stacked with war planes as it sailed.
The television's anchor said the film, the property of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard, showed a vessel from "the US fleet in the Persian Gulf".
"A source in the Revolutionary Guard said the drone carried out its mission without US fighter pilots reaching it," the television said.
It said there were 10 such films taken by the drone which showed "more precise information and details about military equipment, foreign forces, and their activities in the Persian Gulf."
The station did not name the vessel nor did it say when the footage was shot.
The broadcast comes near the end of Iran's latest 10-day war games, "Great Prophet II", which military chiefs have said were aimed at showing off Iran's defensive prowess and testing new military hardware.
The war games coincided with US-led naval manoeuvres in the Gulf off Iran aimed at halting arms-trafficking, the first time such an exercise has been held in the area.
A US-educated microbiologist who used to be president of Gaza's Islamic University is emerging as a possible candidate to head the "national unity" government that Palestinian leaders are predicting will replace the current Hamas-dominated cabinet.
Mohammed Shabir, 60, is being promoted as a compromise "technocrat" who could replace the Hamas leader Ishmail Haniyeh as Palestinian Prime Minister. Mr Haniyeh announced on Friday that he was prepared to stand down if he was an obstacle to the lifting of the economic blockade of the Palestinian Authority.
But Mr Shabir's appointment will probably only happen after further talks between Hamas and the Fatah opposition on the wider composition of a government, as well as the programme it would adopt. Mr Haniyeh and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, suggested last week that the process could take between two to three weeks.
Israel, which has been withholding $60m (£330m) a month in duties owed to the Palestinians since March, and the international community have insisted that they will only deal with the PA if it recognises Israel, renounces violence and abides by all agreements made by the Fatah-led predecessor authority.
Mr Abbas had indicated on Saturday that the two sides had made "great progress" on the formation of the unity government which Mr Abbas wants to agree a programme consistent with the "prisoners' document" providing for implicit rather than explicit recognition of Israel.
Other candidates for senior ministerial office being seen as potentially acceptable to the international community include Ziad Abu Amr, another Gaza academic and secular politician who is not a Hamas member but who was given backing by the faction in last January's elections.
A possible finance minister could be Salam Fayad, who is favoured by Mr Abbas, has good contacts in the Washington political and banking community, and made serious, if lonely, efforts to regulate inefficiency and corruption in the Fatah-led PA when he held the post before.
But the prospects of even forming such a government are closely linked with the question of whether the international community, in particular the US, would re-engage diplomatically and economically with coalition at the head of the PA. While Israel and Fatah have blamed Hamas's hardline exiled leadership for aborting the previous attempt to form a unity government in September, some Palestinian sources also say that an obstacle was the US insistence that nothing short of literal acceptance of the three international conditions would be acceptable.
While the US is watching developments, it is unclear whether it would be ready to soften its stance. Israel's Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, said: "The issue is not who is sitting in the government but what the government says."
Suggesting the new government would be "Hamas-lite", a senior Israeli military official said last night that Hamas was building up its military infrastructure and would remain the leading player in Palestinian politics. "It will have control of the parliament, control on the ground and [control of the capacity] to make terrorist attacks. It will have influence over every process in the Palestinian arena," the official said.
The Arab League said its members had abandoned the US-led boycott of the PA in response to the US veto of a UN resolution condemning Israel's killing of 19 civilians in Beit Hanoun last Wednesday. "We decided not to co-operate. There will no longer be an international siege," Bahrain's Foreign Minister, Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa, said.
Shabir in brief
* POLITICAL LEANINGS
Although not active in politics, Mohammed Shabir is seen as closer to Hamas than to the other Palestinian factions.
* ACADEMIC RECORD
Graduated in pharmacy at the University of Alexandria in 1968 and took a PhD at the University of West Virginia. He is seen as having successfully built up the Islamic University.
* WORLD VIEW
Told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz yesterday that he has no problem with any party. He said he would not answer questions about his views on Israel before being named to the post, but added he would act "realistically".
Some people like to compare those they wish to kill with Hitler and the Germans under Nazism.
But one comparison truly reflects history, not emotion, and truly holds up:
The Nazis wished to declare "Germans" a distinct ethnicity - and to marshal "Germans" together into a unified political force, in an ethnically and religiously homogenized homeland. This is plain fact.
The Zionists wish to declare "Jews" a distinct ethnicity - and to marshal "Jews" together into a unified political force, in an ethnically and religiously homogenized homeland. This too is plain fact.
Zionism did come first, however, and Nazism was partly an emulation of it and partly a "pre-emptive" response against it.
Under Zionism (or Nazism,) a state would be "redeemed" through violent purification, and new Jewish-only (or German-only) "settlements" would be created through ethnic-cleansing - in Palestine and all the way to the Tigris-Euphrates (or Poland and all the way to the Ural Mountains).
The new state would be a highly egalitarian, worker-friendly, or "socialist" democracy, but it would reject the internationalism that is normally essential to socialist doctrine: the blessings of socialism and democracy would be neatly reserved for one distinct ethnicity, in an officially ethnic-supremacist land, wherein the special ethnic rights of the favored nationality would supercede the human rights of less favored groups. The new state would be a democratic "National Socialism."
The national socialism, which was and remains the Zionist goal, is fundamentally identical to the national socialism we know as Nazism. Zionism is Jewish national socialism, just as Nazism was German national socialism.
Both Nazism and Zionism are based on a fancifully mythic interpretation of history and nationality - one producing a "Master Race," the other producing a "Chosen People" or "Sons of the Covenant" (B'nai B'rith). Both latched onto a simplistic, ancient religious symbol - the swastika and star of David - as if to assume from it some special authority. In both cases, the adopted symbol actually has very little to do with the ethnic group it supposedly represents, and nothing to do with the violent racial or ethnic superiority claimed by those who use it as a banner of ethnic conquest and ethnic-cleansing. (Keep in mind that the Magen David has little to do with ancient Israel and nothing to do with the Eastern Europeans who converted to Judaism several centuries ago.)
In both cases, Zionism and Nazism, the ethno-centric tribal chauvinism and racism commonly found in Eastern Europe was transferred to and adopted by otherwise-modern elements of a broader group - "the Germans" and "the Jews" - and that Eastern European racist ideology would displace what was civilized and decent in the larger groups.
The main difference is, whereas Germans adopted an Eastern European tribal ideology, in the case of Zionism, a racist Eastern European group (Ashkenazim) physically migrated, with their tribal ideology, to Palestine, a totally MYTHIC "promised land," to which they had no hereditary or cultural ties, and found success by imposing their racism on innocent, unarmed, helpless, and non-racist people. (A few mythic references to the Holy Land and its history do NOT constitute a cultural tie.)
Both Nazi Germany and Zionist Israel would build military power, secretly violating international law by manufacturing weapons - including NUCLEAR weapons - which they were not supposed to have, and both would conduct illegal espionage to steal materials they could not otherwise obtain.
Comparing Nazi Germany to IRAQ, on the other hand, is fanciful nonsense.
Neither Saddam Hussein nor Islam espouse any philosophy of ethnic superiority or supremacy, as Zionism does quite explicitly.
If we avoid comparing the credibility of their pretexts, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait CAN be compared with Nazi Germany's taking the Sudetenland - and then it can be compared with every invasion that has ever occurred.
In fact, the current pretexts for invading Iraq give it an equivalence with 1940 Poland, rather than Germany; and the Warsaw Ghetto is quite equivalent to the post-'67 Zionist Israeli occupied parts of Palestine.
The Zionist ethnic conquest of Palestine can be closely compared with the Nazi drive for "lebensraum" in Poland, through the importation of a desired ethnicity (German or "Aryan") at the expense of the indigenous people. And Israel's invasion of Lebanon, in 1982, was primarily a campaign of extermination against Palestinian civilians and national leadership (death toll estimates range between about 19,000 and 30,000), much like the extermination campaigns run by the Nazis in conquered European states.
In both cases, Nazi Germany and Zionist Israel, the official doctrine of ethnic-supremacy would create eternal conflict with all neighboring countries, and much of the world, until such time as the neighbors were totally crushed and dominated and the unwanted ethnicities and religions wiped out or driven far, far away.
In both cases, much of the world would stand by, trying to profit as much as possible from the early "success" of a highly unified and officially racist doctrine, as it massacred tens of thousands of less favored ethnic types - until the danger got way too far out of hand and nuclear combat became inevitable.
When Jorg Haider's far-right Freedom Party joined the governing coalition in Austria in 2000, the world offered a collective retch and moved to isolate the country. In the past fortnight, a startlingly similar far-right politician named Avigdor Lieberman has joined the governing coalition in Israel - in the lofty position of Deputy Prime Minister - but the world's gagging reflex has yet to respond.
Lieberman is an ex-nightclub bouncer, once arrested for attacking a boy who he suspected of insulting his son. His party, Yisrael Beytenu (Israel, Our Home), has campaigned on two ugly issues. The first is the claim that Israel's two million Arab citizens are "a danger to the country", to be dispensed with, in part, by ethnic cleansing. Lieberman wanted to bus thousands of released Palestinian prisoners to the Dead Sea and drown them.
Today, he has moderated his stance and merely wants to "transfer" many hundreds of thousands of Israeli Arabs - inevitably by force - to the scraps of remaining land that will be labelled Palestine after Israel has annexed the major illegal settlement blocks. If your name's not on the list, you're not staying in.
His model is Cyprus in the 1970s, where the mixed Turkish and Greek populations were separated out at gunpoint. "The final result was better," he sighs. "Minorities are the biggest problem in the world." He would like to begin these racist expulsions with a simple, swift move: executing Israeli Arab members of the Knesset. Since they have spoken to the democratically elected Palestinian leadership, they are "traitors", Lieberman argues.
His second issue has been an attempt to streamline and centralise power into the hands of one Strong Man. Lieberman grew up in the Soviet Union. His support base is overwhelmingly among the one million Jews who emigrated to Israel after the fall of Communism. Much as they despised Soviet anti-Semitism, many have imbibed Soviet habits of mind and do not see why faffing about with coalitions and supreme courts should be allowed to get in the way of the Great Leader vanquishing the Great Enemy.
It is important to stress that Ehud Olmert, the Prime Minister, says he rejects Lieberman's views, and will not carry out his policies. But he has placed Lieberman in charge of the largest single issue in Israeli politics - how to respond to Iran's imminent nuclear bomb. We already know his views on this: Lieberman was calling for bombing of Iran as long ago as 2001, and says Israel is "on the frontline of the clash of religions".
The silence that has greeted Lieberman's appointment is a bleak sign of how far Israel has drifted to the right. In the 1980s, a fascist called Rabbi Meir Kahane emerged calling for a Lieberman-style "pure Jewish state" that was "cleansed of Arab contaminants" and "stripped of liberal democratic illusions". He was execrated by everyone and banned by the Supreme Court from sitting in the Knesset even as a fringe member. Yet today, only a handful of heroic Israelis have spoken out at the appointment of Lieberman to the deputy premiership. One Labour cabinet minister - one - resigned, saying it would be a betrayal of everything the Jews have learned to sit alongside "a racist".
It is revealing that ethnic cleansing would re-emerge as a mainstream issue in Israel politics now, as the country undergoes a national nervous breakdown. This summer, in the sands of Lebanon, Israel effectively lost a war for the first time. (In his testimony before a Knesset committee last month, Olmert was reduced to defiantly bragging, "Half of Lebanon was destroyed - is that a loss?"). The country's political class is on life support just as surely as Ariel Sharon, with the President facing rape charges and Olmert facing a battery of corruption allegations.
In the midst of all this, a national taboo has melted away. Anybody who studies the history with open eyes can now see that ethnic cleansing of Palestine's indigenous population was Israel's original sin, a prerequisite for the state to come into existence. Today the Israeli people feel their existence is threatened once more, so they are returning in their minds - via Lieberman - to those birth crimes in the search for solutions.
David Ben-Gurion, Israel's founding father, wrote in 1937, "I support compulsory transfer. I do not see in it anything immoral ... The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war." The brave Israeli historian Ilan Pappe's new book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, documents in detail how Ben Gurion's plan was carried out, village by village, town by town, in 1948. The Jewish soldiers who carried out this crime were often still emaciated from the Nazi concentration camps, trying desperately to convince themselves that these totally innocent Arab peasants were somehow akin to Nazis - that Adolf Hitler was hiding in Ramallah, or Bethlehem, or Nablus.
Lieberman's argument is, in essence, that the ethnic cleansing of 1948 did not go far enough. Yes, 800,000 were driven out - but almost as many were left behind, a "fifth column" within Israel, who must now be dealt with.
The best symbol of how Israeli thinking has cracked and reverted to an earlier, base impulse is the historian Benny Morris, who I met up with last time he was in London. In the 1980s, Morris became a hero to the Israeli and international left because he was the first man brave enough to pore into the declassified Israeli military archives from the 1940s and show how Israel's founders carried out the expulsion of the Palestinians.
But then at the height of the second intifada, he gave an interview in which he said he had been misunderstood all these years. All this time he was talking about ethnic cleansing, he didn't mean it was a bad thing. No - "You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands," he said. It would have been "much better" if they had driven out all the Arabs, he declared.
The ugliest strains in Israeli political thought are rising to the surface. There have always been some anti-democratic forces in the country - Sharon considered mounting a military coup in 1967, for example. There have always been ethnic cleansers, from Ben Gurion to the politicians who today authorise the blowing up of "unpermitted" Arab (never Jewish) houses in East Jerusalem, a process I have witnessed myself.
But Avigdor Lieberman is a logo for all this at its most extreme, and today he is only a few bullets away from the Premiership. For the sake of the Palestinians, for the sake of Israel itself, now is the time for the world to jolt Israel, just as we jolted Austria back from its dark dance with the far right.
AIZAWL, India - Dalia Doliani Sela sits in her simple house poring over the Bible and learning Hebrew, dreaming of a life of piety and a family reunion with her children in the Promised Land.
Sela is an Indian by birth, part of a community in the country's remote northeast who says they are one of the "lost tribes of Israel," exiled from their homeland 2,700 years ago.
"I want to be there when my last days come. Because Israel is the land of Sarah. It's the first place where she will come," she said, referring to the wife of the biblical patriarch Abraham.
Sela, a 63-year-old mother of 10, is among the first group of India's Bnei Menashe community to be allowed to settle in the Holy Land since rabbinical leaders in Israel formally recognized them as Jews and carried out a mass conversion ceremony in India last year.
"It is the Promised Land of God and we can properly carry our religious duties over there. Here it is difficult to practice Judaism properly, so far away," Sela told Reuters in the Mizo capital, Aizawl.
Sela is one of 218 Bnei Menashe, or the "Children of Menashe," due to emigrate in November. She will join 1,000 of her community already in Israel, among them nine of her own children.
JEWISH? WELL, MAYBE
The tale of how the community's ancestors supposedly came to this thin slice of land sandwiched between Bangladesh and Myanmar is grand in its sweep of history, but short on scientific support.
Exiled from ancient Israel by the Assyrian empire around 730 BC, a tribe is forced east and travels through
Afghanistan and China before settling in what is now India's northeast.
Their language, history and traditions forgotten, they now look like their Mongoloid neighbors, speak a Tibeto-Burmese language, rear pigs and eat pork.
What's left is a name -- Manasseh, Menasia or Manmase, an ancestor whose spirit the community invokes to ward off evil.
In 1950, a holy man from a remote village in Mizoram said the Holy Spirit had appeared to him in a vision, to explain that the "children of Manasseh" were in fact the children of Menashe, a forefather of the Israelite tribe of Menashe.
The tribe was one of the biblical "Twelve Tribes of Israel," ten of which disappeared after the Assyrian invasion.
Gradually his ideas took hold among a people converted to Christianity a few decades before. Today, nearly 7,000 Bnei Menashe live in Mizoram and neighboring Manipur, hoping for their chance to join the rest of the community in Israel.
Zaithanchhungi, a Christian woman who has researched and defended the Bnei Menashe claims, says that many of their customs are very similar to those of the ancient Jews.
Some of the practices involved in animal sacrifice were similar to ancient Hebrew traditions, while an ancient song among one tribe talked of "crossing the Red Sea," with enemies in chariots at their heels, she said.
The search for conclusive proof of these claims goes on.
Calcutta's forensic science laboratory found no trace of a typical Jewish genes in the male Y chromosomes of the Kuki, Chin and Mizo people who inhabit the area, but found some evidence of a possible, but diluted, maternal link to the Near East.
Israel's Technion institute is also carrying out research but said it was too early to comment on results.
MIRACLE WORKER
Shavei Israel, a Jerusalem-based organization which has been locating descendents of the lost tribes of Israel and bringing them home, says the Bnei Menashe's return is a miracle.
"Next month (the group) will at last return to Zion. They will return to the land of their forefathers -- the place from which their ancestors had been exiled over 27 centuries ago. This is a miracle of biblical and historic proportions," Shavei Israel's chairman, Michael Freund, said in Jerusalem.
"This is the first time they will be coming here as Jews fully recognised as such by the Israeli rabbinate and the Israeli government," he added.
The 218 newcomers will move to the northern Israeli towns of Karmiel and Upper Nazareth -- areas which were hard hit by rockets fired by the Lebanese guerrilla group Hizbollah this summer during a 34-day conflict with Israel.
In the past, Bnei Menashe members had come to Israel in small groups on tourist visas and converted to Judaism in a deal reached by Jewish supporters and the country's interior ministry.
When the arrangement ended in 2003, Freund approached Israel's Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar for help. In March 2005, Amar formally recognised the Bnei Menashe as descendants of the Jewish people and, in September 2005, the 218 were converted.
But more conversions are unlikely to follow any time soon as the Israeli government banned such mass conversions in India following complaints by Indian authorities.
"Absolutely nothing will be done in the future to infringe upon the sovereignty of the Indian government, nor will anything be done that could cause any type of disruption or issue between India and Israel -- that is in no one's interests," an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman told Reuters.
India said it had no problem with genuine Jews leaving for Israel, and Freund said he was confident the remaining 7,000 Bnei Menashe would be brought there.
"We are committed to finding a solution," he said.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that Israel and the United States had "complete understanding" on Iran, as President George W. Bush threatened to isolate Tehran unless it suspends its nuclear programme.
Bush said that if Iran continues with its programme, which the United States and Israel believe is aimed at developing an atomic bomb despite Iran's denials, "there has to be a consequence for their intransigence."
"If they continue to move forward with the program, there has to be a consequence," he said, speaking to reporters following an hour-long talk with Olmert at the White House.
"And a good place to start is working together to isolate the country," he said, branding a nuclear-armed Iran as an "incredibly destabilizing, and obviously very threatening to our strong ally," Israel.
Olmert said that he had a "deep conversation" with Bush and that the two leaders had "complete understanding over their objectives" regarding Iran.
Backed by the United States, Israel has said sanctions are necessary following Tehran's failure to suspend uranium enrichment.
The president, who used the meeting with Olmert to divert attention from the situation in Iraq and his Republican Party's humiliating defeat in last week's midterm elections, also rejected direct talks with Tehran unless it freezes its nuclear plans.
"If the Iranians want to have a dialogue with us, we have shown them the way forward, that is, for them to verifiably suspend their enrichment activities," Bush told reporters at the White House.
Speaking in Hebrew after the meeting, Olmert said that "our position is that we must do everything in our power to make sure the Iranians do not cross a technological threshold that would allow them to develop nuclear weapons."
Israel -- widely considered the Middle East's sole, if undeclared, nuclear weapons power -- considers Iran its chief threat, pointing to calls from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the Jewish state to be wiped off the map.
After the meeting Olmert also said that Israeli and US officials discussed ways to kick start the stalled Middle East peace process.
"The Americans and us have been exchanging ideas that could allow positive developments regarding future negotiations between us and the Palestinians," Olmert told reporters.
That "intensive dialogue ... includes exchanging ideas and thoughts on ways to promote conditions that would allow negotiations with the Palestinians," he said.
Olmert said he remained attached to the internationaly-backed "roadmap to peace" based on Bush's vision of a Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel.
Earlier on US television, Olmert said he hoped diplomacy would dissuade Tehran from pursuing its nuclear program.
"We will not tolerate the possession of nuclear weapons by Iran," he told NBC television.
Asked whether his country was considering a preemptive strike on Tehran's nuclear facilities, Olmert answered: "I hope we don't have to reach that stage."
But the Israel leader said his first choice is a negotiated resolution.
"Every compromise that will stop Iran from acquiring nuclear capabilities, which will be acceptable to President Bush, would be acceptable to me."
Asked what he believed to be the timeline for Iran developing possible nuclear weapons, Olmert responded, "it's a matter of, unfortunately, shorter time than most people think."
"I don't want to measure it in days or weeks, but it's quite close," he said.
Olmert added that he was not seeking Washington's protection from Tehran.
"I am not coming to the United States to ask America to save Israel," he said, saying his country had drawn the lessons of the Holocaust and World War II.
The Israeli leader added: "I am not looking for wars or confrontations. I am looking for the outcome."
He added that, in his view, the only result that matters is "whether it will succeed to stop Iran from possessing nuclear weapons."
On Sunday, Olmert reiterated Israel's position that Iran should be intimidated into halting its nuclear programme.
"Iran will not agree to make compromises if it is not afraid of the options it would face in the absence of a compromise," Olmert told reporters.
He hinted that "Israel has options which I am not ready to specify" regarding Iran's nuclear programme.
US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Monday that Washington no longer sought direct contacts with Iran to discuss ways to ease unrest in neighboring Iraq, saying that channel of communication "didn't work out."
"We went through a period where there was an offer of that channel of communications," McCormack said.
"It didn't work out for a variety of different reasons," he said.
Judging from below report from a press conference of the mayor of Beit Hanoun, the "soldiers" of the Givati criminal rabble were not content with murdering and injuring hundreds of people, destroying property valued at millions of dollars, destroying the livelihood of a whole city during their so-called "Autumn Clouds" operation, but they also had time to steal cellphones, gold (which is the most widely used form of saving in Palestine) and other private property from the homes of impoverished people who are already under a genocidal regime of starvation. It is obvious that these Israeli Jews from the Givaty Unit did not steal because they are hungry, but that they stole because they are thieves.
The Mayor of Beit Hanoun, Muhammad Nazek Al-Kafarneh, said during a press conference he held after the recent massacre, that the Israeli soldiers participating in the so-called "Autumn Clouds" operation in the city used the ocassion to steal Palestinian property: money, gold, cellphones and other valuables.
- The total value of things stolen from private persons and households amounts to over 200,000 dollars.
The mayor also enumerated the loss and damages which the Israeli terrorists caused in the city of Beit Hanoun:
- The loss due to damages to water equipment is 350,000 dollars.
- The loss due to damages to the infrastructure for processing wasted water is 450,000 dollars.
- The loss due to damage and destruction of Palestinian houses amounts to 2,5 million dollars.
- The loss due to damages to road infrastructure amounts to 3,5 million dollars.
- The loss due to damages to the public gardens and the children gardens amounts to 200,000 dollars.
- The loss and the damages of the electricity net are 2,5 million dollars.
- The losses to the economy of the city amounts to one million dollars.
- The loss due to damages to the communication net amounts to 1,5 million dollars.
- The loss due to damages to public property amounts to 1,5 million dollar.
The mayor said that the Israeli terrorists destroyed 25 public facilities of the city, and other 25 facilities were damaged partially. He gives the amount lost due to these damages as half a million dollars.
Further, mayor Al-Kafarneh said that 40 shops were destroyed completely; the loss due to the destruction of these shops is 200.000 dollars.
The losses of the city in the sectors of agriculture and health are not counted among the losses given above.
The Israeli army denied charges by a human rights watchdog that it had shot dead two unarmed Palestinian suspects as they lay wounded last week in the occupied West Bank.
On Monday, the B'Tselem rights group said it had "grave concerns" that the two men were not killed outright along with three suspected gunmen -- as initially reported by the army -- but as they lay wounded waiting for an ambulance.
Salim Abu al-Haija and Mahmud Abu Hassan were killed following a raid in the village of Yamun near West Bank's northern town of Jenin last Wednesday.
B'Tselem said that according to witnesses the two men, wanted by the Israeli security forces, managed to escape the initial encounter with the soldiers and took refuge in a nearby house.
Witnesses "saw soldiers enter a side room, where Abu al-Haija was lying and after a minute or two, heard gunfire. Then, two of the witnesses saw one of the soldiers fire at Abu Hassan."
"The testimonies raise a grave concern that Salim Abu al-Haija and Mahmud Abu Hassan were executed by the soldiers, while they were unarmed, wounded, and posed no risk to the soldiers," it said.
In a statement Tuesday, the army said that "following the exchanges of fire, the force called residents of a structure, in which additional armed gunmen were suspected of staying, to leave it."
The Israeli unit then entered the building "only after the commander of the ... force made sure, by asking the local Palestinians, that there were no other people inside it."
"During the searching, the force identified several suspicious figures inside the structure and fired at them," it said.
"It is important to stress that the local Palestinians who were asked by the force whether all of the structure's resident have left it, not only concealed the fact that the gunmen were inside, but told the force that the structure was totally vacant," it said.
B'Tselem called for the military police to immediately open an investigation into the incident.
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica, Nov. 9 (JTA) - The return of Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega after his victory in Nicaragua's presidential election has the country's tiny Jewish community on edge.
During Ortega's last stint in power, as head of the left-wing revolutionary government from 1979-90, the entire Jewish community fled into exile while the Sandinistas built cozy relations with the PLO and other anti-Israel groups and allied themselves closely with Cuba.
Now, 16 years later, just as the community is on the verge of restoring itself to its pre-revolution levels, the Sandinistas appear to have narrowly won a new chance at heading this impoverished Central American nation.
"We have to accept the result and see how he's going to act," a disappointed Elena Pataky told JTA by telephone Tuesday. "We need to make sure that he doesn't again make Nicaragua a sanctuary for drug traffickers and terrorists."
Final counts from Sunday's election showed Ortega with 38 percent of the vote in the five-person race, ahead of chief rival Eduardo Montealegre, who won 29 percent. That was enough for Ortega to win on the first ballot under Nicaraguan law.
It marks Ortega's first victory in four tries since he was rousted out of office in a 1990 landslide.
The country's anti-Sandinista right split this year, with some supporting Jorge Rizo - the handpicked successor of Arnoldo Aleman, a far-right former president currently under house arrest on corruption charges. Others, including Pataky and the United States, supported Montealegre, a former banker who was dogged by charges of insider trading involving bond issues and embargos by his bank.
An expected split on the left between Ortega and Sandinista dissidents never materialized after the Sandinistas' preferred candidate, charismatic former Managua Mayor Herty Lewites, died of a heart attack in July. Lewites was the son of a Jewish immigrant who had helped supply the Sandinistas with arms when they were a guerrilla movement in the 1970s, but they slandered the father for his Jewish roots after he split from the group.
Lewites' replacement in the election, intellectual Agusto Jarquin, finished a distant fourth in Sunday's vote.
Nicaragua's Jews, never more than 100 strong, went into exile within two years after the Sandinistas overthrew the U.S.-backed Somoza dictatorship. The country was possibly without a single resident Jew for the remainder of the Sandinista era, when the synagogue was converted to a secular school - it's now a funeral home - and a number of PLO members were given Nicaraguan passports.
The Sandinista regime had hostile relations with the United States, which funded the "Contra" rebels in a bloody civil war that marred the 1980s and help send the Nicaraguan economy into a tailspin that continues to stunt development to this day.
After losing power, the Sandinistas changed their position on Israel, at least publicly, accepting diplomatic relations and abandoning their backing for rhetoric denigrating Zionism as racism. However, Sandinista leaders like the party's only surviving founder, Tomas Borge, continue to "deplore" Israeli policies in Gaza and the West Bank, and Ortega has expressed support for Iran's government, which threatens to annihilate Israel.
In recent years, Israel and Nicaragua have developed cordial relations. Israeli aid workers provide assistance to farmers in the country, but Israel has yet to open an embassy there, with the embassy in neighboring Costa Rica handling Nicaraguan affairs. Embassy officials could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Jews began returning to the country after Ortega lost the 1990 elections, although the community's Torah remains in Costa Rica. In recent weeks the community has been preparing to build a new synagogue.
Those plans may be put on hold, Rafael Lipshitz, president of the Nicaraguan Jewish Association, told JTA. He said the group's board will meet next week to discuss its future and that a community assembly will be held by early December to make a decision.
Lipshitz called the election results "worrying," but added that he advocates a waiting period before any decisions are made on the synagogue project.
Pataky, who spent her exile in Miami and supported Montealegre in Sunday's election, laughed at the idea of fleeing again.
"The conditions of 1979 were totally different from today," she said. "Like all of Nicaragua, I am observing with a keen interest."
Ortega's election marks a foreign policy setback for the Bush administration and a step forward for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who helped boost the Sandinistas' chances in the final weeks of the campaign by sending the country a shipment of free urea for fertilizer to be distributed by the Sandinistas.
Ortega is to take office in January, though his ability to govern remains in doubt: The anti-Sandinista right is expected to hold a majority in the legislature, also elected Sunday.
New York, NY, ... Under the leadership of firebrand President Hugo Chavez, Venezuela has experienced a disturbing rise in anti-Semitism, fostered in large part by Chavez's own rhetoric and that of his government institutions. A new report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) details the troubling mix of anti-Semitism and support for radical Islam that -- along with anti-imperialism and anti-Americanism -- have become the calling cards of the Chavez regime.
"The Chavez Regime: Fostering Anti-Semitism and Supporting Radical Islam" examines recent statements by Chavez, articles in the government-sponsored media and the remarks of academics and government leaders, creating a portrait of a regime that promotes virulently anti-Semitic and anti-Israel attitudes as it seeks to position itself as a regional and world player.
The Chavez regime's frequent anti-Israel statements, open support for terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah and collusion with radical Islamic leaders like President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran are having a "spillover effect" in Venezuelan society, with anti-Israel demonstrations, anti-Jewish graffiti and other displays of anti-Semitism becoming dangerously commonplace, according to ADL. The Jewish population of Venezuela is reportedly about 25,000 people.
"President Hugo Chavez and his government institutions have elevated their anti-Israel rhetoric to dangerous levels, and it often crosses the line into anti-Semitism," said Abraham H. Foxman. "It is troubling that the leadership of a Latin American country, that once served as a safe-haven for Holocaust survivors and that still boasts a sizeable Jewish community, has taken a wrong turn into fostering hatred, prejudice and bigotry while supporting countries and groups who call for Israel's total destruction."
Rehashing Stereotypes and Demonizing Israel
Chavez and his government have resorted to implicit and explicit anti-Semitic displays, including rehashing the ancient canard of Jewish control, blaming Israel and the Jews for the world's problems, and adopting anti-Semitic stereotypes about Jewish financial influence. Recently, in a series of public statements on Israel's war with Hezbollah, Chavez repeatedly compared Israel to the Nazis and Hitler, and in speaking to his own people he has on at least one occasion dabbled in classical anti-Semitic canards:
* Israel was committing genocide in Lebanon and its leaders should be held responsible and should be judged by an international tribunal ... The Israelis criticize Hitler but have done something worse." - August 25, 2006.
* This fascism is something similar to what Hitler did: bombard cities, kill innocent children, women and men, and destroy the infrastructure of people." - July 26, 2006
* ... The world is for all of us, then, but it so happens that a minority, the descendents of the same ones that crucified Christ, the descendants of the same ones that kicked Bolivar out of here and also crucified him in their own way over there in Santa Marta, in Colombia. A minority has taken possession of all the wealth in the world ... -- December, 24, 2005.
Allying with Radical Islam
Chavez has strengthened and formed new alliances with extreme leaders in the Middle East, including Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Chavez also has fostered relationships with convicted guerrilla terrorist Illich Ram?rez S?nchez (a.k.a. "Carlos the Jackal") and Holocaust denier Norberto Ceresole of Argentina.
During the 2006 conflict in Lebanon, the Venezuelan National Assembly and various Venezuelan states issued a number of one-sided declarations against Israel. Ch?vez was very aggressive in condemning Israel's actions against Hezbollah, recalling his charge d'affaires from Israel and threatening to sever diplomatic relations.
Anti-Semitism in the State-Sponsored Media
Anti-Semitism is routinely found in Venezuela's government-sponsored press, with stereotypical descriptions and caricatures of Jews and anti-Israel invective appearing in opinion pieces and editorial cartoons. Some examples:
* Those who are upset with Ahmadinejad's visit to Venezuela are the gangsters of the local Jewish mafia; the terrorists who control the Confederations of Israelite Associations (CAIV) and other criminal organizations of similar reputation." -- Los Papeles de Mandinga, September 19, 2006
* It was to be expected. The profound humanistic conviction and moral solidarity of Commander Chavez for denouncing the atrocities that are systematically committed by the state of Israel against Arab people have bothered the cancers of the inferno - international imperialism and Zionism." - Diario Vea, September 14, 2006
* Zionists, the destructive sect of radical Jews, are again impregnating the Jewish community with its animosity towards humanity. The genocide they executed in Palestine and Lebanon is similar to the Holocaust which the Nazis executed against them, and they will undergo another Holocaust because of the global hatred they are accumulating." -- Diario Vea, July 4, 2006.
The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.
Comment: At that period (1913) an event occurred which seemed of little importance then but needs recording here because of its later, large consequence. In America was an organization called B'nai B'rith (Hebrew for "Children of the Covenant"). Founded in 1843 as a fraternal lodge exclusively for Jews, it was called "purely an American institution", but it put out branches in many countries and today claims to "represent all Jews throughout the world", so that it appears to be part of the arrangement described by Dr. Kastein as "the Jewish international". In 1913 B'nai B'rith put out a tiny offshoot, the "Anti-Defamation League". It was to grow to great size and power; in it the state-within-states acquired a kind of secret police and it will reappear in this story. [...]
Mr. Roosevelt began by breaking down the barriers against uncontrolled immigration which the Congresses immediately before him strove to set up, because they saw in it the danger of the capture of the American administration by "a foreign group". Under various of his edicts the supervision of immigration was greatly weakened. Immigration officials were forbidden to put questions about Communist associations, and the separate classification of Jewish immigrants was discontinued. This was supported by a continuous press campaign against all demands for enquiry into loyalty or political record as "discrimination against the foreign-born".
None can say how many people entered the United States during that period. By 1952 Senator Pat McCarran, chairman of the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, estimated that, apart from legal immigration, five million aliens had illegally entered the country, including large numbers of "militant Communists, Sicilian bandits and other criminals". The chief investigating officer of the Immigration Service declined even to estimate the number of illegal entrants but said that at that time (when some measure of control had been re-established) "over half a million a year" were being intercepted and sent back at the Mexican border alone. The Social Security authorities, who supplied the cards necessary to obtain employment, were forbidden to give any information about applicants to the immigration or police authorities.
This mass of immigrants went to swell the size of the "fluctuating vote" on which Mr. Roosevelt's party (still following Mr. House's strategy) concentrated its electoral effort and its cry of "no discrimination". Under the president's restrictions on loyalty-interrogations the way into the civil service and armed forces was opened to American-born or legally-domiciled alien Communists. The results to which this led were shown in part by the many exposures of the post-war period, the literature of which would fill an encyclopaedia of many volumes. The entire West was also involved (as the Canadian, British and Australian exposures in time showed) and the significant thing is that, with the Canadian exception, no governmental investigation ever led to these partial revelations, which were always the work of persistent private remonstrants; nor was genuine remedial action ever taken, so that the state of affairs brought about during the 1930's and 1940's today continues not much changed, a source of grave weakness to the West in any new war.
The renewal of large-scale immigration formed the background to the political invasion of the Republic. This was a three-pronged movement which aimed at the capture of the three vital points of a state's defences: state policy at the top level, the civil services at the middle level and "public opinion" or the mass-mind at the base. The way in which control over acts of state policy was achieved (through the "adviserships" which became part of American political life after 1913) has already been shown, this part of the process having preceded the others. The methods used to attempt the capture of government services will be discussed later in this chapter. In what immediately follows the capture of the mass-mind in America, through control of published information, will be described; it was indispensable to the other two thrusts.
This form of political invasion is called by Dr. Weizmann, who exhaustively studied it in his youth, when he was preparing in Russia for his life's work in the west, "the technique of propaganda and the approach to the masses". The operation so described may now be studied in actual operation:
Far back in this book the reader was invited to note that "B'nai B'rith" put out a shoot. B'nai B'rith, until then, might be compared with such groups of other religious affiliation as the Young Men's Christian Association or the Knights of Columbus; its declared objects were the help of the poor, sick and fatherless and good works in general. The little offshoot of 1913, the "Anti-Defamation League", had by 1947 become a secret police of formidable power in America.
In Doublespeak "anti-defamation" means "defamation" and this body lived by calumny, using such terms as anti-Semite, fascist, rabble-rouser, Jew-baiter, Red-baiter, paranoiac, lunatic, madman, reactionary, diehard, bigot and more of the like. The vocabulary is fixed and may be traced back to the attacks on Barruel, Robison and Morse after the French revolution; the true nature of any writer's or newspaper's allegiance may be detected by keeping count of the number of times these trade-mark words are used. The achievement of this organization (usually known as the AD.L.) has been by iteration to make fetishes of them, so that party politicians hasten to deny that they are any of these things. Under this regime reasoned debate became outlawed; there is something of sorcery in this subjugation of two generations of Western men to the mumbo-jumbo of Asiatic conspirators.
When the A.D.L. was born in 1913 it had merely desk-room in the parent B'nai B'rith office and a tiny budget. In 1933 Mr. Bernard J. Brown wrote, "Through the intervention of the A.D.L. we have succeeded in muzzling the non-Jewish press to the extent that newspapers in America abstain from pointing out that any person unfavourably referred to is a Jew". In 1948 the Jewish Menorah Journal of New York wrote, "Should but one phrase in a reprinted literary classic reflect unjustly upon Jews, the A.D.L. will promptly belabour the innocent publisher until he bowdlerizes the offending passage. Let one innocent movie-producer incorporate a Jewish prototype, however inoffensive, in his picture and the hue and cry raised by the A.D.L. will make him wish he's never heard of Jews. But when Jews are subtly propagandized into accepting Communist doctrine . . . the A.D.L. remains silent. No word, no warning, no hint of caution, much less exposure and condemnation: although there are men high in the councils of the organization who should know by their own experience how the Communists 'infiltrate'." (The Menorah Journal spoke for the many Jews who were alarmed because the A.D.L. was attacking anti-Communism as anti-Semitism).
These quotations show the growth of the A.D.L.'s power in thirty-five years. It has imposed the law of heresy on the public debate in America. No criticism of Zionism or the world-government plan is allowed to pass without virulent attack; criticism of Communism is only tolerated in the tacit understanding that any war with Communism would lead to the communized world-state; and as to that, "Jerusalem is the capital of the world no less than the capital of Israel" (the Zionist mayor of Jerusalem, 1952).
America has today a few surviving writers who fight on for independent debate and comment. They will discuss any public matter, in the light of traditional American policy and interest, save Zionism, which hardly any of them will touch. I have discussed this with four of the leading ones, who all gave the same answer: it could not be done. The employed ones would lose their posts, if they made the attempt. The independent ones would find no publisher for their books because no reviewer would mention these, save with the epithets enumerated above.
The AD.L., of such small beginnings in 1913, in 1948 had a budget of three million dollars (it is only one of several Jewish organizations pursuing Zionist aims in America at a similar rate of expenditure). The Menorah Journal, discussing "Anti-Defamation Hysteria", said, "Fighting anti-Semitism has been built up into a big business, with annual budgets running into millions of dollars". It said the object was "to continue beating the anti-Semitic drum" and "to scare the pants off prospective contributors" in order to raise funds. It mentioned some of the methods used ("outright business blackmail; if you can't afford to give $10,000 to this cause, you can take your business elsewhere"), and said American Jews were being "stampeded into a state of mass-hysteria by their self-styled defenders".
DEARBORN -- In a move already sparking debate, the student government at the University of Michigan-Dearborn passed a resolution last week demanding the school stop doing business with Israel.
The student Senate unanimously approved a resolution last Tuesday calling on the Board of Regents, which also sets policy for Michigan's campuses in Ann Arbor and Flint, to divest from companies that profit from the actions of the Israeli military in what the resolution claims are "illegally occupied territories."
"We want the university to withdraw their investments so these companies think twice about selling their products or their services to the military," said Bilal Dabaja, 21, a senior political science major.
The vote passed unanimously, and Dabaja said it had nothing to do with the campus's location in Dearborn, the heart of the region's Arab-American community. Dabaja said student leaders at UM-Dearborn hope students at the university's Ann Arbor and Flint campuses will pass similar resolutions.
Julie Peterson, spokeswoman for the university, said investment and divestment decisions are made according to a policy established by the Board of Regents with input from the faculty.
"Students are students, and they have all kinds of ways of expressing themselves -- that's part of what being a student is about," Peterson said.
Dabaja said the 33-member student Senate is a diverse body, representative of the entire campus community. UM-Dearborn spokesman Terry Gallager said the university doesn't track students by ethnicity, but about 11 percent of students who fill out information forms at registration say they are Muslim.
It's unclear how much -- if any -- support the measure has outside UM-Dearborn. Terry Teicher, chairman of the Jewish student group Hillel at UM's main campus, said it's unlikely student leaders in Ann Arbor would support such a resolution.
"We feel that the situation is improving and there's hope for peace," Teicher said of the conflicts in the Middle East. "We would rather invest to help the Palestinians, the Lebanese and Israelis in productive ways.
"At Michigan (in Ann Arbor), the representatives of student government as a whole recognize that divestment is counterproductive to encouraging peace, and encouraging dialogue."
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - A 92-year-old retired archaeologist will stand trial in Turkey for claiming that Islamic-style head scarves date back more than 5,000 years - several millennia before the birth of Islam - and were worn by priestesses who initiated young men to sex.
Muazzez Ilmiye Cig, an expert on the ancient Sumerian civilization of Mesopotamia between the fourth and third millennia B.C., is the latest person to go on trial in Turkey for expressing opinions, despite intense European Union pressure on the country to expand such freedom as freedom of expression. Her trial is scheduled to start in Istanbul on Wednesday.
She joins dozens of other writers, journalists and academics who have been prosecuted, including this year's Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk and novelist Elif Shafak.
Charges of insulting Turkishness against Pamuk were dropped over a technicality earlier this year, and Shafak was acquitted.
The trial begins a week before a crucial European Union report on Turkey's progress toward membership, which is expected to chide Turkey for slipping in reforms and not acting to change laws that have been used to curb freedoms - in violation of EU human rights standards.
The trial against Cig was initiated by an Islamic-oriented lawyer who was offended by claims made in her recently published political book, "My Reactions as a Citizen," in which she says that the earliest examples of head scarves date back to Sumerian times, when priestesses who helped young men learn sex veiled themselves.
Unlike Pamuk and Shafak, who were tried under Turkey's notorious Article 301, which sets out punishment for insulting the Turkish Republic, its officials or "Turkishness," Cig is accused of "inciting religious hatred." She could face 1 1/2 years in prison if found guilty.
An avowed secularist, Cig gained public attention when she wrote to Emine Erdogan, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's wife, urging her to take off her head scarf and set an example to women in this predominantly Muslim and secular country, where more and more women are veiling themselves in a show of religious piety.
Secularists like Cig view the head scarf as a symbol of political Islam and of female oppression.
Turkey has strict secular laws and regulations. Head scarves are banned in schools and in public offices.
Erdogan, whose party has roots in Turkey's Islamic movement, has made no secret of his desire to relax the laws on head scarves. Cautious of sensitivities of pro-secular circles, including the powerful military, however, he has said that he would bide his time on the issue.
Pro-secularist groups were expected to turn out in force at the trial in a show of support to the archaeologist, who retired in 1972 and has written 13 books.
NAIROBI - Unchecked climate change could force up to 72 per cent of bird species in some areas into extinction but the world still has a chance to limit the losses, conservation group WWF said in a report on Tuesday.
From migratory insect-eaters to tropical honeycreepers and cold water penguins, birds are highly sensitive to changing weather conditions and many are already being affected badly by global warming, the new study said.
"Birds are the quintessential 'canaries in the coal mine' and are already responding to current levels of climate change," said the report, launched at a United Nations conference in Kenya on ways to slow warming.
"Birds now indicate that global warming has set in motion a powerful chain of effects in ecosystems worldwide," WWF said.
"Robust evidence demonstrates that climate change is affecting birds' behavior -- with some migratory birds even failing to migrate at all."
In the future, it said, unchecked warming could put large numbers of species at risk, with estimates of extinction rates as high as 72 per cent, "depending on the region, climate scenario and potential for birds to shift to new habitats."
It said the "more extreme scenarios" of extinctions could be prevented if tough climate protection targets were enforced and greenhouse gas emissions cut to keep global warming increases to less than 2 degrees C (1.6 F) above pre-industrial levels.
Already in decline in Europe and the United States, many migratory birds were now missing out on vital food stocks that are appearing earlier and earlier due to global warming, widely blamed by scientists on emissions from burning fossil fuels.
In Canada's northern Hudson Bay, the report said, mosquitoes were hatching and reaching peak numbers earlier in the spring, but seabirds breeding there had not adjusted their behavior.
In the Netherlands, it added, a similar mismatch had led to the decline of up to 90 per cent in some populations of pied flycatchers over the last two decades.
"NOWHERE TO GO"
Predicted rising temperatures could see Europe's Mediterranean coastal wetlands -- critical habitats for migratory birds -- completely destroyed by the 2080s, it said.
Rising temperatures were also seen having disastrous impacts on non-migratory species, as their habitat ranges shifted.
"Many centres of species richness for birds are currently located in protected areas, from which birds may be forced by climatic changes into unprotected zones," the report said.
"Island and mountain birds may simply have nowhere to go."
In the U.S., unabated warming was seen cutting bird species by nearly a third in the eastern Midwest and Great Lakes, while almost three-quarters of rainforest birds in Australia's northeastern Wet Tropics were at risk of being wiped out.
"In Europe, the endangered Spanish imperial eagle, currently found mainly in natural reserves and parks, is expected to lose its entire current range," WWF's report said.
Also at high risk were eight species of brightly colored Hawaiian honeycreeper,Galapagos Islands penguins and the Scottish capercaillie -- the world's biggest grouse -- which WWF said could lose 99 per cent of its habitat due to warming.
At least 21 people have been killed and 60,000 displaced by massive flooding in northern and coastal Kenya, triggered by three weeks of unusually heavy seasonal rains.
As downpours continue, officials warned of further devastation, while delegates meet in Nairobi at a UN conference on climate change that many blame for altering weather patterns and causing deadly drought-flood cycles.
Ironically, at the conference on Monday, the United Nations was presenting a report on harnessing the "massive potential of rainwater harvesting in Africa," which it said could supply more than enough of the continent's needs.
Kenyan emergency workers were meanwhile struggling with the effect of torrential, unharvested rains and floodwaters on an impoverished population.
"We have floods across the country and, since it is still raining, we fear the situation will deteroriate," said Abdi Ahmed, the acting disaster response chief at the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS).
In addition, the Kenyan health ministry issued an alert for possible outbreaks of water-borne diseases, notably cholera, in the affected regions.
At the weekend, at least six people, including a schoolgirl, were swept away and drowned by raging waters around the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa and the northeastern town of Garissa, officials said. Two others are missing.
The fatalities brought Kenya's flood death toll to 21 since October 25, when the first damaging effects of the unusually heavy October-to-December "short rains" season were reported by authorities.
Since then, at least 60,000 Kenyans -- 50,000 on the coast and 10,000 in the northeast -- have been forced from their homes by flood waters that have washed away crop fields, bridges and roads and destroyed numerous buildings.
"All these people are directly affected or completely cut off and we cannot access them," Ahmed told AFP.
On Saturday, the main road linking Mombasa, about 500 kilometers (300 miles) southeast of Nairobi, to Tanzania was cut off with four bridges washed away, a local official said.
"Delivering food to the 50,000 people who are in need of urgent supplies is the main problem," said Moffat Kangi, the commissioner of Kwale district just south of Mombasa.
"We are looking for water, shelter and medicine for the affected people, but in the long run we will be required to assist up to 200,000 people here," he told AFP. "Any help we can get will be appreciated."
In the capital, municipal officials said flood waters had blocked the city's drainage system, causing floods in some residential districts.
But the recent floods are not limited to Kenya, which is being hit as it hosts 6,000 international delegates to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that ends this week.
The onset of rains has compounded problems across the Horn of Africa region already brought by a recent killer drought, since parched soil inundating the worst-affected areas is unable to absorb the water, officials said.
In neighboring Somalia, floods have killed at least 42 and displaced 10,000 people over the past two weeks, compounding the misery affecting millions in the lawless Horn of Africa nation.
In neighboring Ethiopia, flooding from late October rains that burst the banks of several river has killed at least 68 people and affected some 280,000 people, according to officials there.
NEW ORLEANS - More than a year after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, thousands of homes damaged by flooding still stand empty, stained by black mold and some of them infested with maggots.
City authorities are now cranking up a $20 million drive to deal with a problem until now addressed mainly by charities, home-owners and contractors who have worked to gut the properties and eliminate the health hazard they pose.
Volunteers from the charity Acorn began the two-day process of gutting one such house belonging to Gwen Brown in New Orleans East suburb in late October, removing damaged goods and stripping the house to its walls, floorboards and ceilings.
They wore white full-body protective suits and put on gas masks, goggles and thick gloves because the spores infested every corner of the house.
"There's nothing like a maggot-filled refrigerator," said Daryl Durham, the team leader, as he hauled one into the street to join a growing pile of possessions. The stench from the fridge filled the road.
Flood waters that surged into the famed city of jazz in August last year churned the house contents around like a whirlpool and then sat at a depth of 5 feet for weeks before receding. Since then the house, like thousands of others, has been left untouched.
Acorn says its volunteers have gutted around 1,600 homes at a rate of around 20 per month and around 2,000 homes remain on its list to be cleared out, though many other residents have signed up with other groups to have their houses dealt with.
"People ... just think it was a city that was demolished. If people realized that these were people's lives then more things would happen quicker," said Lauren Pembo, 19, a student volunteer and New Orleans native.
CITY PLAN
As part of the Good Neighbor Program, Mayor Ray Nagin proposed $15 million in his $419 million November budget to strip 5,000 homes and $5 million to demolish 10,000 more, said Anthony Faciane, chief of development in the mayor's office.
The program, which started a year after the storm, involves a three-step, 120-day process for homeowners who have not cleaned out or demolished damaged homes or applied to a volunteer agency to do the job.
Homeowners are first given notice that they are in violation of local laws, then after 30 days a notice is put on the property and on a Web site and 30 days after that authorities can seek permission to demolish or to gut and board up a property.
"It is crucial that most of our resources have to be given for making a high-quality of life for the pioneers, the people who came back and started to rebuild. We need to clean neighborhoods up," Faciane told Reuters.
Around 120,000 properties were damaged by flooding in New Orleans. Permits had been issued for around 100,000 to be gutted or repaired, leaving around 20,000 untouched. Of those, around 15,000 would have to be demolished, Faciane said.
Many homeowners, traumatized by their experience of losing so much, were reluctant to make a decision on whether to return and rebuild so the city was setting deadlines to help them decide, he said.
"What people don't realize is that this was the first time in history is that an entire American city was shut down," Faciane said.
CROWBARS, SENSITIVITY
Volunteers use crowbars to prize sheetrock from walls in damaged homes. But they have to be careful -- items that look worthless may be of intense personal value.
For many people, seeing the contents of their flooded houses piled up in the street is traumatic.
Brown, whose New Orleans East home yielded the maggot-infested fridge and who fled to Houston, Texas, just before the storm, maintained telephone contact with the team clearing her single-story home and the next day returned to see it.
"This was my first place. I was so happy here. I would sit on this patio after work," said Brown, 51, as she picked through old records, carpets, plastic flowers and other items.
A neighbor who failed to get out before the storm drowned in her back yard. The body was removed in the immediate aftermath of the storm, she said.
Almost every item she found triggered memories. A framed print of jazz singer Billie Holliday had survived as had a bottle stuffed with coins her daughter used as a piggy bank.
Insurance money she received went to pay off the mortgage and she planned, one day, to rebuild the house and move back.
But Brown was unsentimental about her ruined possessions and marveled how much "junk" she'd accumulated over the years.
"It's a closure because this part of our life is over," she said as she surveyed her stuff. "We loved this house but I can't get none of it back."
By Steve Bloomfield, Africa Correspondent
14 November 2006
The Victoria Falls, one of Africa's most popular tourist destinations and most precious ecological sites, are under threat from plans to build a giant holiday complex nearby, environmentalists have warned.
Zambia's wildlife authorities have given permission to a consortium of Zambian and foreign investors to build two hotels, a golf course and hundreds of holiday chalets in a park next to the waterfalls.
But environmental groups in the southern African country said yesterday that the development risked destroying the park and putting the status of the falls as a world heritage site at risk.
An official from the World Heritage Centre, the UN body responsible for choosing the sites, said that a team would visit the falls later this month to examine reports of "uncontrolled and unplanned urban developments" affecting the site.
Lazare Eloundou Assomo, the Africa specialist at the World Heritage Centre, said depending on the seriousness of the mission's findings, the UN organisation could place the Victoria Falls on the world heritage endangered sites list.
"There are reports that the issue of uncontrolled and unplanned urban development is affecting the integrity of the world heritage property. The site may be threatened," he said. The falls, which are known in Zambia as Mosi-oa-Tunya, the "smoke that thunders", are about a mile wide and 420 feet high, making them the largest falls in the world - far bigger than the Niagara falls in North America. Victoria Falls is along the Zambia/Zimbabwe border on the Zambezi river, one of Africa's longest.
As the economy in neighbouring Zimbabwe has collapsed, Zambia has attempted to capitalise by marketing itself as the true home of the Victoria Falls.
The government hopes to bring in one million tourists every year by 2010, generating more than $500m (£260m) - quite a large sum for a country where 68 per cent of the population live on less than $1 (52p) a day.
The latest development, by a firm called Legacy Holdings, would see the construction of two luxury hotels, a golf course and 450 chalets on the edge of the Zambezi river, close to Victoria Falls.
The company claims that the project would create a total of 2,000 new jobs, attract 150,000 additional tourists to the area and provide Zambia with $170m (£90m) more per year in foreign exchange.
But such development, environmentalists warn, could put the ecology of the park beside the Falls, which includes rare black rhinos, at risk. Peter Sinkamba, a local environmental campaigner, accused the Zambian government of failing to carry out a proper study into the potential for ecological damage. He claimed that Zambian law had not been followed. "The whole project has been done in reverse," he said.
Environmental groups have threatened to ask the courts to block the project if the government allows it to proceed. Mr Assomo added: "World heritage sites have a value that must be protected. If the values are threatened by urban development it could be placed on the endangered list."
A spokesman for the Zambian government was unavailable for comment yesterday.
Antarctica and Greenland may be at opposite ends of the planet but their climate systems appear to be linked by a remarkable ocean current, a study shows.
The results, published today in the journal Nature, suggest that Antarctica's ice could eventually start to melt because of localised warming in the far North Atlantic.
The evidence comes from a 2500 metre ice core, drilled by European scientists at Dronning Maud Land, on the part of Antarctica that faces the South Atlantic.
With its compacted layers of ice and telltale concentrations of methane in trapped air bubbles, the core yields a picture of snowfall and atmospheric temperatures going back 150,000 years.
Even better than that, it can be matched with cores of similar amplitude drilled in the Greenland icesheet.
Put together, the cores provide the first solid evidence to back a theory that millennial scale climate changes that have unfolded in the far north and south of the Atlantic are not isolated, local events, but linked.
The glacial climate in the Northern Atlantic can swing extraordinarily rapidly, with temperatures rising by 8-16°C within the space of a few decades at the end of each Ice Age and falling back, albeit more slowly, when the next Ice Age beckons.
Antarctica, though, has far smaller temperature shifts, of between 1-3°C, and these unfold over millennia.
But the two sets of ice cores point to what the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica scientists describe as a bipolar seesaw
In short, what happens at one end of the Atlantic has a huge effect on the other, although at different time scales and in different ways.
The cause appears to be a conveyor-belt system of ocean flows.
On the conveyor belt
Relative heat from the Southern Ocean around Antarctica is picked up by a complex system called the meridional overturning circulation (MOC), of which the Gulf Stream is the best-known component.
The MOC channels warm surface water up to the North Atlantic, coincidentally enabling countries in northwestern Europe to have a balmy climate despite their northerly latitude.
When this warm water reaches the far north, it cools and sinks, and the MOC sends it back south, back down towards Antarctica, at depths far below the ocean's surface.
"Our data shows that the degree of warming in the south is linearly related to the duration of cold periods in the North Atlantic," says lead author Dr Hubertus Fischer of Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven.
Understanding this link also sheds light on what the researchers say is a troubling aspect about human-induced climate change: the fate of Antarctica, where the world's biggest store of frozen water is held.
"Today, Antarctica is still a reservoir of cold. We don't see any contribution to global sea-level change because of Antarctica, it's not melting yet. In fact there has been more precipitation and some models suggest that Antarctica actually will grow a little," Fischer says.
That reassuring scenario could change if, as some studies are now tentatively suggesting, the MOC is beginning to falter, says Fischer.
The causes for this slowing of the Atlantic conveyor belt could be a run-off of cold water from melting Siberian permafrost or the Greenland icesheet, triggered by rising atmospheric temperatures.
But any disruption would lead to a build-up of warmer water off Antarctica, according to the conveyor-belt theory.
"If the thermohaline [ocean convection] circulation in the Atlantic slows down just a little, it would cause a warming in the Southern Ocean," Fischer says.
"And if you have warming around Antarctica, at a certain point, the fringes of Antarctica will even warm over the melting point. Then we could start to see melting at the borders and run-off and that would contribute to sea-level rise."
The most colossal x-ray flare ever detected has been caught in the act of zapping its solar system with planet-killing radiation.
The star is II Pegasi in the constellation Pegasus, about 135 light-years from Earth.
That means the explosive flare seen by the NASA Swift satellite, designed to detect much more distant and powerful gamma-ray bursts, took place around the year 1871. Light from the event is only now reaching Earth.
The x-ray flare is the first-ever detected beyond our own Sun that bears a striking resemblance to the much smaller 'x-class' flares generated occasionally by our own Sun.
"It's a hundred thousand times more powerful than the largest solar flares ever recorded," says astronomer Dr Steven Drake of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
Despite being far more powerful, it looks like it was created in the same way, he says.
It starts with a tangle of magnetic field lines on the surface of a star that short-circuits. When that happens, atomic particles are accelerated to speeds only seen on Earth in high-tech particle accelerators.
The accelerated particles can emit gamma rays, which is what caught the Swift satellite's attention in the first place.
When the satellite turned to face II Pegasi, it took aim with its x-ray detector and caught the hour-long eruption of x-rays.
Violent eruption
The x-rays were created as material violently erupted from the star and then arched back down and slammed back onto its surface.
By comparison, x-ray flares on the Sun last only second or minutes, at most.
"It's certainly one of the biggest ever seen," says Drake about the II Pegasi flare. It's the hands-down winner in terms of those seen in 'soft' x-rays, which are the rays just beyond the wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light.
Drake is a co-author on a paper on the flare that is being presented by the University of Maryland's Dr Rachel Osten at a meeting in Pasadena this week.
Flaming star
What's less surprising about the flare, however, is that it originated from II Pegasi, says Pennsylvania State University astrophysicist Professor Eric Feigelson.
"It's known to be one of the most flaring stars," says Feigelson. If he had been asked to guess which nearby stars were capable of belting out such a flare, II Pegasi would have been among his top 10, he says.
Despite being a middle-aged star that ought to be past this sort of wild and violent behaviour, II Pegasi is part of a tightly-bound two-star system in which the stars are roaring around each other, generating powerful tidal forces that keep II Pegasi riled up.
Fortunately our own Sun is relatively quiet and stable, with x-ray flares that are unable to penetrate Earth's atmosphere.
A malfunctioning heart could be restored to health with the help of stem cells taken from the patient's own body, according to a study of how to repair the effects of cardiac failure.
Scientists have shown that it is possible to grow cardiac stem cells in the laboratory before transplanting them back into a patient to replace heart tissue.
The findings demonstrate the possibility of rebuilding cardiac muscle destroyed during a heart attack, offering an alternative treatment to a complete heart transplant operation.
The experiment was carried out on pigs but the researchers involved said that the animal's heart was so similar to the human heart that clinical trials on people could begin in 12 months.
Professor Eduardo Marban, the head of cardiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, said that the technique involves taking a small biopsy - a sample of living heart muscle - that is no bigger than a grain of rice.
Stem cells were grown in the laboratory and infused back into the animal's heart using a standard method of accessing the organ through a catheter inserted into an artery in the leg. "This is a relatively simple method of stem cell extraction that can be used in any community-based clinic, and if further studies show the same kind of organ repair that we see in pigs, it could be performed on an outpatient basis," Professor Marban said. "Starting with just a small amount of tissue, we demonstrated that it was possible, very soon after a heart attack, to use the healthy parts of the heart to regenerate some of the damaged parts."
The stem cells in the experiment were cultured for up to a month in the laboratory and were labelled with a coloured dye so that the scientists could see where they became integrated into the heart.
About a million stem cells were extracted from the biopsy and, after growing them in the laboratory, about 10 million cells were injected back into the heart, where they were still embedded in functioning tissue two months later.
Professor Marban said that the purpose of the experiment was to see whether or not the integration occurred, rather than measuring the physical benefits - a feature that will form the next stage of the experiment. "But we have proof of principle, and we are planning to use larger numbers of cells implanted in different sites of the heart to test whether we can restore function as well," Professor Marban said. "If the answer is yes, then we could see the first phase of studies in people in late 2007."
Stem cells are capable of forming specialised tissues, such as cardiac muscle. Taking adult stem cells from a patient's own heart could provide an alternative to the controversial process of using stem cells taken from a cloned human embryo.
The other advantage of using a patient's own cells is that the transplanted tissue will not be rejected by the body's immune system, which avoids the need to use potentially damaging drugs.
"The goal is to repair heart muscle weakened not only by heart attack but by heart failure, perhaps averting the need for heart transplants," said Peter Johnston, of the Hopkins Heart Institute. By using a patient's own adult stem cell rather than a donor's, there would be no risk of triggering an immune response that could cause rejection."
The results of the study were released yesterday at the American Heart Association's annual meeting in Chicago.
NEW YORK -- To prevent tooth damage, the American Dental Association (ADA) warned its members that fluoridated water should not be mixed into concentrated formula or foods intended for babies one year and younger, in a November 9th ADA e-mail alert.
"But who will alert parents," asks lawyer Paul Beeber, President, New York State Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation (NYSCOF).
Two-thirds of U.S. public water suppliers add fluoride chemicals, based on a disproved theory that fluoride ingestion prevents cavities. Bottled water with added fluoride is now sold with specific instructions to mix into formula.
The ADA reports, " ... infants could receive a greater than optimal amount of fluoride through liquid concentrate or powdered baby formula that has been mixed with water containing fluoride during a time that their developing teeth may be susceptible to enamel fluorosis." The ADA recommends using fluoride-free water.
Enamel or dental fluorosis is white spotting, yellow, brown and/or pitted permanent teeth. Pictures
NYSCOF news releases in 2000 and 2004 cited studies linking fluorosis to infant foods mixed with fluoridated water. Scientific evidence here
It took until 2006 for the ADA's alert, following the Food and Drug Administration's October disapproval of fluoridated bottled water marketed to babies, and after the recent National Research Council's (NRC) fluoride report indicated babies are fluoride overdosed from "optimally" fluoridated water supplies.
"The ADA claims the NRC report didn't question the safety of fluoridation but it did, as the ADA now admits," says Beeber.
"The NRC also revealed fluoridation's adverse effects to the thyroid gland, diabetics, kidney patients, high water drinkers and others," says Beeber.
Now, the Centers for Disease Control reports that modern science shows that fluoride absorbs into enamel topically.(9) However, adverse effects occur upon ingestion. Further, the CDC admits enamel fluoride concentration isn't inversely related to cavities.
The Environmental Protection Agency is required to consider the most vulnerable populations when setting allowable water fluoride levels. To protect babies, allowable fluoride levels should be near zero.
"This should end water fluoridation," says Beeber. "Fluoridation is a failed concept that must be abandoned before more Americans are harmed," says Beeber.
Scientists who have sequenced the genome of the sea urchin say these brainless and limbless invertebrates are surprisingly similar to humans.
They found that the California purple sea urchin (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus) genome has 23,300 genes.
And it shares 7077 of them with humans.
The genetic ties are far closer than scientists expect and make the sea urchin a closer genetic cousin of humans than the worm or fruit fly, according to the study in today's issue of the journal Science.
"Nobody would've predicted that sea urchins have such a robust gene set for visual perception," says Gary Wessel, a Brown University biology professor and member of the Sea Urchin Genome Sequencing Consortium.
"I've been looking at these organisms for 31 years, and now I know they were looking back at me."
Among other surprises from the project were that researchers found sea urchins have the most sophisticated innate immune system of any animal studied to date.
They say this may be one reason they live 100 years or more.
Sea urchins also carry genes associated with human diseases such as muscular dystrophy and Huntington's.
The creatures also have genes associated with taste, smell, hearing and balance, the study found.
Neanderthals may have given the modern humans who replaced them a priceless gift, a gene that helped them develop superior brains, US researchers report.
And the only way they could have provided that gift would have been by interbreeding, say the scientists.
Their study, published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week, provides indirect evidence that modern Homo sapiens and Neanderthals interbred at some point when they lived side by side in Europe.
"Finding evidence of mixing is not all that surprising. But our study demonstrates the possibility that interbreeding contributed advantageous variants into the human gene pool that subsequently spread," says Professor Bruce Lahn, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher at the University of Chicago who led the study.
Scientists have been debating whether Neanderthals, who died out about 35,000 years ago, ever bred with modern H. sapiens. Neanderthals are considered more primitive, with robust bones but a smaller intellects than modern humans.
Lahn's team found a brain gene that appears to have entered the human lineage about 1.1 million years ago.
It has a modern form, or allele, that appeared about 37,000 years ago, right before Neanderthals became extinct.
"The gene microcephalin (MCPH1) regulates brain size during development and has experienced positive selection in the lineage leading to Homo sapiens," the researchers write.
Positive selection means the gene conferred some sort of advantage, so that people who had it were more likely to have descendants than people who did not.
A common variant
Lahn's team estimate that 70% of all living humans have this type D variant of the gene.
"By no means do these findings constitute definitive proof that a Neanderthal was the source of the original copy of the D allele. However, our evidence shows that it is one of the best candidates," Lahn says.
The researchers reached their conclusions by doing a statistical analysis of the DNA sequence of microcephalin, which is known to play a role in regulating brain size in humans.
Mutations in the human gene cause development of a much smaller brain, a condition called microcephaly.
By tracking smaller, more regular mutations, the researchers looked at DNA's genetic clock and dated the original genetic variant to 37,000 years ago.
They note that this D allele is very common in Europe, where Neanderthals lived, and more rare in Africa, where they did not.
What's the advantage?
Lahn says it is not yet clear what advantage the D allele gives the human brain.
"The D alleles may not even change brain size; they may only make the brain a bit more efficient if it indeed affects brain function," he says.
Now his team is looking for evidence of Neanderthal origin for other human genes.
Melissa Arseniuk
CanWest News Service
November 12, 2006
Hershey Canada Inc. has voluntarily recalled a wide range of chocolate products nationwide and closed its Smiths Falls plant after salmonella bacteria was detected in the candy produced there.
It has not been determined how salmonella made its way into the factory. Officials have said was an "externally-sourced, minor ingredient," but did not say what the ingredient was.
The Smiths Falls plant employs more than 500 people, and will remain closed until the problems can be rectified. No one from Hershey Canada Inc. or the workers' union could say when the plant will re-open. Smiths Falls mayor Dennis Staples said he is "optimistic" the plant would re-open soon, but he said he couldn't say when that would be.
The recall includes a range of Hershey products, including Reese Peanut Butter Cups, Oh Henry! chocolate bars, and Chipits chocolate chips.
There have been no reported cases of illness in relation to Hershey products.
The possible contamination does not effect any Halloween goodies or Christmas treats, said Hershey spokeswoman Stephanie Moritz.
Salmonella causes salmonellosis, which causes flu-like symptoms including stomach cramps, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and fever.
The potentially tainted products were produced between Oct. 15 and Nov. 10, and have dates codes ranging from 6417 to 6455.
The following is a list of all items being recalled:
Chocolate bars and confectionary:
Oh Henry! (62.5 g, 62.5 g four bar packs, and 145 g)
Oh Henry! Bites (130 g)
Oh Henry! Peanut Butter (60 g)
Reese Peanut Butter Cups (51 g, 68 g, and 51 g four bar packs)
Eat-more Dark Toffee Peanut Chew (56 g, 56 g four bar packs)
Lowney Bridge Mix (52 g and 340 g)
Lowney Cherry Blossom (45 g)
Glosette Peanuts (45 g)
Glosette Almonds (42 g)
Glosette Raisins (50 g and 145 g)
Hershey's Creamy Milk Chocolate with Almonds (43 grams)
Hershey's Creamy Milk Chocolate (45 g)
Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate (45 g)
Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate with Almonds (43 g)
Hershey Assorted 16-count (728 g) and 50-count (2.5 kilograms)
Unbranded nut rolls (5 kilograms/bulk)
Hershey's chocolate shell topping (177 mililitres)
Affected chocolate chips include:
Chipits semi-sweet mint chocolate and semi-sweet chocolate chips (300 g)
Chipits milk chocolate chips (270 g)
Chipits mini chocolate chips (175 g, 300 g, 500 g, 10 kilograms/bulk)
Chipits chocolate chips (10 kilograms/bulk)
Hershey semi-sweet chocolate chips (300 g and 10 kilograms/bulk).
Hardline Indonesian Islamic groups are considering launching a no-confidence motion against President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono over US President George W. Bush's visit next week.
"We see that the people reject the visit, but the government is arrogantly going ahead with the plan to receive Bush," Secretary General of the Islamic Society Forum (FUI) Muhammad al-Khaththath, told AFP Tuesday.
FUI groups several hardline Islamic groups, including the Indonesian Mujahedin Council, chaired by firebrand cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, and the Front for the Defenders of Islam, known for its raids on nightclubs.
"Yudhoyono was elected by the people and if he ignores the wish of the people, then it is only appropriate that he gets a vote of no confidence," he added.
He said if the government did not change its mind over the visit, which has prompted daily protests across the country, the FUI would initiate a no-confidence vote by seeking the signatures of as many Muslim leaders as possible.
"The essence is that Bush and his regime have their hands bloodied and the conclusion is that most Indonesians do not want his visit," Khaththath said.
He said the main Muslim leaders in the country had already said they were opposed to the Bush visit and would not deign to meet him.
He cited the leaders of Indonesia's two largest Islamic mainstream organisations, the Nahdlatul Ulama and the Muhammadiyah, as well as leaders of the Indonesian Council of Ulemas (MUI), the highest authority on Islam in the country.
"We also see the daily protests everywhere demanding that Indonesian cancels the invitation to Bush," Khaththath said.
As he spoke, hundreds protested at the Kujang Memorial in nearby Bogor, a resort town where Yudhoyono will meet and entertain Bush for a few hours Monday.
The protesters included about 500 veiled Muslim women from the popular Islamic Prosperous Justice Party, many protesting Bush's visit by carrying black paper flowers and posters depicting the US head of state as a devil.
The women, many of them carrying children, held aloft placards which read "We are offering our condolences for Bush's visit, the one with the venomous mouth and the cold-blooded killer."
Students from two organisations -- one Christian and the other Muslim -- were also among the protesters.
In Semarang, Central Java, about 100 Muslim students also protested the visit in front of their university, the ElShinta radio reported.
In Southeast Sulawesi province, dozens of students also staged a rally outside the town's parliamentary building and urged funds spent for the preparation of Bush's visit be allocated to the poor.
"The government should better concentrate on improving the public and regions that still need assistance rather than spending billions of rupiah" for Bush, a protest leader who identified himself as Hadrin was quoted by the state Antara news agency as saying.
More than 90 percent of Indonesia's 220 million people follow Islam.
Chris McGreal in Goma
November 14, 2006
The Guardian
Hundreds of thousands of women and girls have been raped over the past decade by soldiers, rebels and ethnic militias in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The scale of the assaults has become increasingly evident over recent months as growing numbers of women have emerged for treatment with the reduction in fighting ahead of presidential elections, and because medical workers have been able to reach areas in the east of the country long cut off by conflict.
The survivors have given accounts of villages subjected to repeated assaults in which many women and girls were serially raped and men killed.
Although there are no comprehensive statistics, in one province alone, South Kivu, about 42,000 women were treated in health clinics for serious sexual assaults last year, according to statistics collected by the human rights group, Global Rights.
While rape has been a product of many conflicts, its scale and systematic nature in eastern Congo has led some human rights groups to describe it as a "weapon of war" used to punish communities for their political loyalties or as a form of ethnic cleansing. On occasions men and boys have also been raped.
Doctors and women's groups working with the victims say the attacks are notable not only for their scale but also their brutality.
Among those receiving treatment in the relative safety of the town of Goma in eastern Congo is a woman from Kindu who was repeatedly raped in May 2005 but was only able to reach a hospital for treatment earlier this year.
The 54-year-old woman, bent double over a stick after surgery to save her womb, said her village first came under attack from a group of Mai Mai, an ethnic militia recognisable by a preference for wearing animal skins and amulets believed to give magical powers.
"There were Mai Mai in the area. They came in the morning and raped me, two of them. That didn't disturb me so much after what happened later," she said. "In the afternoon five men came into the house. They told my husband to put three kinds of money on the table: dollars, shillings, francs. But we didn't have any of that kind of money. We are poor. We don't even know what dollars look like. So they shot him. My children were screaming and so they shot them. After that they raped me, all of them."
As she lay bleeding the attackers thrust the barrels of their guns into her vagina.
The woman identified the second group of armed men as members of the interahamwe, the extremist Hutu militia that fled into Congo 12 years ago after leading the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda. The interahamwe used rape as a tool of genocide, telling women that they would bear Hutu children and that would be the end of the Tutsis. Thousands still hide out in the forests of eastern Congo.
The Doctors On Call Service (DOCS) hospital in Goma has seen close to 4,000 women for rape over the past four years. One in four required major surgery. More than a third are under 18. "They really come with very bad wounds," said Justin Paluku, a doctor. "For example some have their vaginas pulled out. Most of them have been raped by four, five or six or even 10 men. A village will be attacked and all the women are raped. They kill the men and rape the women."
Immaculee Birhaheka, head of a women's rights group in Goma, Paif, said those women who make it to hospital are just a fraction of those attacked. "It's impossible to know how many women have been raped in the war but it is hundreds of thousands," she said.
Some human rights groups are calling for the leaders of groups responsible for the tide of rape to be brought before the International Criminal Court in the Hague.
One militia leader, Thomas Lubanga, founder of the Union of Congolese Patriots, went on trial before the the ICC last week for the forced recruitment of child soldiers, although his troops were also involved in the systematic rape of civilians.
Mrs Birhaheka says the Congolese authorities must act where the international court does not. Her women's rights group was at the forefront of a campaign that persuaded the DRC parliament to pass a new tougher law on rape earlier this year.
"There have already been 10 prosecutions in Goma under the new law, some were soldiers and some civilians," she said. "Before it was the women who were regarded as the criminals and condemned. That's changing. Now at least there is a recognition that rape is a crime."
Case study
Among the thousands of women attacked was a 23-year-old from Walikali who travelled more than 90 miles (150km) to hospital in Goma, where she had surgery after being assaulted by members of the Rwandan Hutu militia, the interahamwe.
"Where I lived they were in the forest ... we had to go there to find food. There were four of us and we were stopped by seven interahamwe," she said.
Two of us tried to run away. One was shot dead. The other got a bullet in the leg. They still raped her. I fainted because there were seven of them.
"I really got damaged. I couldn't hold in my urine. I heard those people came back and killed my father."
At least 27 people died today when a train smashed into a truck pulling a trailer packed with farm workers at a railway crossing near Cape Town in South Africa.
The victims, who worked for a local wine farm, were on the back of the truck, said Netcare 911 spokesman Chris Botha.
He said three people were in critical condition, while another three were described as being in serious condition.
The count of victims rose as more bodies were pulled out of the wreckage.
"There were 27 dead at the last count," Botha said.
Metrorail, the company operating the commuter train, said the accident happened at 7.16am "when a truck and trailer carrying about 30 farm workers collided with Cape Town-bound train 3208" just outside the suburb of Somerset West.
"According to eyewitnesses, the truck stalled at the crossing," it said in a statement.
No rail commuters were injured in the accident, the rail company said.
It said the level crossing did not have barriers, but conformed to legal requirements for warning signs.
FARMERS BRANCH, Texas - This Dallas suburb became the first Texas city to pass tough anti-immigration measures, prompting fears they could lead to sanctioned discrimination and racism.
City Council members unanimously approved fines for landlords who rent to illegal immigrants, making English the city's official language and allowing local authorities to screen suspects in police custody to check their immigration status.
The council made the series of 6-0 votes without discussion Monday night and took comment from the public afterward. A proposal to penalize businesses that employ undocumented workers was not voted on during the meeting.
Hundreds of opponents of the ordinances gathered in the City Hall lobby and a parking lot outside, waving American flags and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in English before the votes were taken.
Inside, supporters clapped as the votes were tallied in favor of the measures and later thanked council members for their action.
Attorneys with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a civil rights advocacy group, told council members before the vote that the proposals could violate federal housing laws preventing discrimination and the First Amendment.
One of the ordinances would force untrained business owners and landlords to evaluate a wide array of immigration documents to determine if the person carrying them is legally in the country, said Marisol L. Perez, a defense fund staff attorney.
"It puts the landlord in a very difficult position. You're putting them in the shoes of an immigration officer," Perez said.
The group said it would evaluate the measures to determine their legality.
"We passed this expecting to be sued," council member Tim O'Hare said after the vote.
Since 1970, Farmers Branch has changed from a small, predominantly white bedroom community with a declining population to a city of almost 28,000 people, about 37 percent of them Hispanic, according to the census. It also is home to more than 80 corporate headquarters and more than 2,600 small and mid-size firms, many of them minority-owned.
"They're afraid that Farmers Branch is becoming Hispanic," said Christopher McGuire, a resident of the city and spokesman for a group called United Farmers Branch. "It's going to happen, and that's not a bad thing."
More than 50 municipalities nationwide have considered, passed or rejected similar laws, but until now that trend hasn't been matched in the Lone Star State.
A vote this year in Hazleton, Pa., approved fining landlords who rent to illegal immigrants, denying business permits to companies that employ them and requiring tenants to register and pay for a rental permit.
However, a federal judge temporarily blocked enforcement of the Hazleton ordinance while he considers a lawsuit against the town by the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups.
By Steve Bloomfield, Africa Correspondent
12 November 2006
Zimbabwe's state-run airline has cancelled all flights to London, fearing the aircraft would be impounded to cover unpaid debts. The decision to ground flights will come as a fresh blow to Zimbabwe's collapsing economy. The country relies on Air Zimbabwe, and the tourists it brings, for much of its foreign currency.
Air Zimbabwe announced the decision to stop the thrice-weekly flights after a European air safety agency won a court order allowing it to seize planes to cover a $2.8m (£1.5m) debt. Air Zimbabwe board chairman, Mike Bhima, said: "As a security measure, our lawyers have advised us to suspend flights pending discussions."
Rising costs of fuel and equipment last month forced Air Zimbabwe to raise airfares by 500 per cent. The cost of an economy return flight to London soared to £3,900. The same flight on British Airways is £450.
The cost of living in Zimbabwe has become increasingly expensive with the official inflation rate running at 1,200 per cent. Experts have put the real figure at 4,000 per cent. Prices for staples such as a loaf of bread rise daily, even by the hour.
President Robert Mugabe has pinned the blame for Zimbabwe's economic woes on Britain and the West, but aid agencies and ordinary Zimbabweans have pointed to an ill-fated land reform programme and a slum demolition scheme that made 700,000 people homeless.
Hundreds of thousands of tourists used to flock to Zimbabwe to see the Victoria Falls, but numbers have dwindled, with Zambia now benefiting. The grounding of Air Zimbabwe's London flights will damage tourism - and the wider economy - even further.
Plugging a word or phrase into a search engine may soon give you fewer results if proposed new Australian copyright laws are adopted, according to internet giant Google.
The laws could open the way for Australian copyright owners to take action against search engines for caching and archiving material, Google says in a submission to a senate committee considering the legislation.
This could potentially limit the scope of the search engine results, which the internet company describes as effectively "condemning the Australian public to the pre-internet era".
Earlier this year the federal government announced its proposed changes to copyright law, which it says are designed to keep up with the rapidly changing digital landscape.
But in the submission to the senate legal and constitutional affairs committee, senior counsel and head of public policy at Google Inc, Andrew McLaughlin, says the changes fail to take into account the realities of the way in which information is processed and provided online.
"Google believes that the bill fails significantly to bring Australia's copyright act fully into the digital age," the submission says.
The internet company wants general "safety valve" provisions, as well as specific copyright exemptions, to protect search engines from falling foul of the law.
"Given the vast size of the internet it is impossible for a search engine to contact personally each owner of a web page to determine whether the owner desires its web page to be searched, indexed or cached," Google submits.
"If such advance permission was required, the internet would promptly grind to a halt."
Google is also concerned about the effect of the copyright laws on digitisation projects, like its book search, which allows users to download books from the internet.
Authors, news organisations and porn sites
Dr Matthew Rimmer, a copyright law expert from the Australian National University, says Google's concerns are justified and that the current laws haven't considered the crucial role search engines play in organising and providing information.
Google has already attracted legal action from the French press agency AFP, as well as authors and publishers in the US, he says.
The internet company is also appealing a decision which found in favour of a California pornographic company's breach of copyright claim against it.
Rimmer says internet search engines could be "crippled" by the proposed copyright changes, which protect libraries, archives and research institutions but leave commercial entities like Google out in the cold.
He says this will affect the ability of search engines to engage in digitisation projects like book search, provide images, index news stories and archive web content.
"Given the amount of litigation that Google has been involved in the last year I think they've got very genuine fears that they could be subject to copyright actions in Australia," he says.
He says rather than adopting the narrow "fair use" definitions contained in the legislation, Australia should adopt a US-style open-ended fair use defence to ensure a flow of and access to information.
"In the past when Google has been sued ... one of the things it did is take down its links and content.
"Google could very well become more reluctant to provide such comprehensive image and news services ... and with geo-identification technology you can also offer certain content in some countries and not others."
A spokesperson for attorney general Philip Ruddock says the committee has received 70 submissions, including one from Google, and all would be taken into account when considering the legislation.
"We will take on board all the submissions and the committee will take their views into account when they do their report," he says.
Submissions will be discussed at a public hearing in Canberra today.
By Ben Russell, Political Correspondent
14 November 2006
Tony Blair has been warned that he faces renewed dissent over planned anti-terror laws as research showed the Government faced record levels of rebellion from its backbenchers last year.
Labour MPs defied the whip in more than a quarter of votes during the last session of Parliament, academics at Nottingham University said.
More than half of the rebellions, and the four defeats inflicted, were over Home Office Bills, leading to warnings that the Government could face problems with legislation in a Queen's Speech expected to focus on crime and anti-terror measures.
The research came amid renewed calls for the Government to consider extending the time police can hold terror suspects without charge. The current limit of 28 days was set as a compromise after MPs threw out government plans to permit suspects to be held for up to 90 days.
Tomorrow's Queen's Speech is expected to include controv-ersial anti-terror legislation, while Gordon Brown and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair have called for an extension of the time suspects can be held in terror cases.
Labour MPs rebelled in 95 out of 343 votes, almost equalling the 96 rebellions suffered by the Government during the whole of Mr Blair's first term. MPs rebelled more often even than during the 1992-93 session, when John Major struggled to push the Maastricht treaty through Parliament.
Philip Cowley, a researcher, found that 114 Labour MPs had voted against their whips since the general election. He said no other post-war government with a majority of more than 60 in the Commons had suffered as many defeats in an entire parliament, let alone in its first session.
The most frequent rebel was John McDonnell, the chairman of the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs and a declared candidate to stand as a left-wing successor to Mr Blair. Mr McDonnell warned there was widespread unease over civil liberties across all parties and predicted fresh unrest if ministers failed to make the case for new anti-terror laws. He said: "If the Government is going to focus on this in the Queen's Speech they will have to come up with some very strong arguments and evidence."
Other senior Labour backbenchers also warned that the Government had to give strong evidence to justify extending the length of time police can hold terror suspects.
David Winnick, the Labour MP who proposed the 28-day compromise, told the BBC that he did not believe there was "any justification" for increasing it.
John Denham, chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Committee, called for an independent review of any case for an extension. He said: "If the Government is now convinced by the evidence they should subject it to the sort of independent scrutiny that the select committee called for. I think that if that happened, Parliament would be inclined to support a change."
By Susie Mesure, Retail Correspondent
14 November 2006
The prospect of online booze cruises if Europe's top court rules that British shoppers can import alcohol from the Continent without paying UK duty yesterday prompted Majestic Wine to call for "tax equalisation" across Europe.
Tim How, the wine warehouse retailer's chief executive, warned that the Exchequer risked being left with a £16bn hole in its coffers if the European Court of Justice backs duty-free shopping across borders.
"It would create a totally uneven playing field. It could have quite an effect on the whole of the UK drinks industry. We're talking about billions of pounds of tax losses for the Exchequer, which could have a serious impact on the UK economy," Mr How said.
UK shoppers pay £1.29 in duty on every bottle of wine, regardless of its price. This hits the cheapest wines the hardest. An ECJ ruling, expected on 23 November, is likely to allow shoppers to avoid paying that by ordering beer, wine and tobacco online from EU countries.
Mr How said Majestic would be better placed than rivals to cope because it already has three outlets in France pitched at UK booze cruisers. The French-based Wine and Beer World chain, which has suffered from the drop in the number of day-trippers, could ship cases to British shoppers, he added. "What the cost would be, I don't know."
He was speaking as Majestic unveiled a 17 per cent increase in interim profits before tax to £6.5m on sales up £7.6m to £88.3m. The group announced plans to buy back up to £20m of its shares over the next few months, lifting the stock 9.25p to 323.75p.
Demand for lighter wines, such as sauvignon blanc from New Zealand, and a new breed of less heavy Spanish riojas, helped to lift its sales. In the past five weeks like-for-like sales are up 4.3 per cent, roughly in line with the first half once the boost from a late Easter is excluded from the figures.
The group expects to open nine new stores during this financial year, lifting its total to 136 by March 2007. Customers, who have to buy cases in batches of 12 but can mix up their order, spent £121 on average, up from £115. The group's emphasis on fine wines, priced at £30 and above, is helping to drive both this and the average price of a bottle of wine higher.
KUALA LUMPUR - A U.S. defense chief called for closer military ties with China and for the two powers to shed "Cold War" thinking on Tuesday as he highlighted a recent naval encounter that could have gone wrong.
The chief of U.S. forces in the Pacific, Admiral William J. Fallon, was asked to confirm a U.S. newspaper report of an uncomfortably close encounter between U.S. warships and a Chinese submarine in the Pacific last month.
Confirming the gist of the Washington Times report, Fallon said the submarine had been detected at close quarters by an aircraft carrier and its accompanying warships.
The Washington Times said the submarine had stalked the USS Kitty Hawk and surfaced within range of its torpedoes and missiles in "ocean waters" near the Japanese island of Okinawa.
"The characterization of stalking an aircraft carrier is rather sensational and I think it's probably not close to being accurate," Fallon told reporters in Malaysia, where he is attending an annual meeting of Asia-Pacific defense chiefs.
But he added: "The fact that you have military units that would operate in close proximity to each other offers the potential for events that would not be what we would like to see -- the potential for miscalculation."
"Now it turns out that the aircraft carrier and its escorting ships were out doing some exercises. I am told they were not engaged in anti-submarine exercises, so they were not looking for submarines. But if they had been, and this Chinese submarine happened to come in the middle of this, then this could well have escalated into something that was very unforeseen."
Fallon gave no other details of the incident.
He has been leading a push for closer ties with the Chinese military, amid regional fears about a defense build-up by Beijing. In August, U.S. ally Japan urged China to disclose more information on its military modernization to ease these concerns.
Fallon said China had declined his invitation to attend this week's closed-door meeting of Asia-Pacific defense chiefs, but that Beijing might attend future meetings.
"There is a need to have a fundamental understanding," he said, adding that Admiral Gary Roughead, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, was currently visiting China for the first naval exercise between the United States and the People's Liberation Army.
"This is the kind of thing that we must encourage and continue so we can move ahead from what I would characterize as kind of Cold War thinking and truly broaden the dialogue."
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said on Tuesday she did not have information on the submarine incident.
"China has neither the intention nor the capability for a massive military build-up," Jiang Yu told a regular news conference in Beijing. "We will stick to the path of peaceful development. China is an important force in safeguarding peace in Asia-Pacific and in the world."
Fallon also highlighted North Korea's October 9 nuclear test, saying it posed a security threat, and he highlighted missile defense as an increasingly important aspect of regional defense.
"Missile defense is something that's important because these capabilities, these weapons are destabilizing in many respects and threatening to people," he said.
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 13, 2006
A Chinese submarine stalked a U.S. aircraft carrier battle group in the Pacific last month and surfaced within firing range of its torpedoes and missiles before being detected, The Washington Times has learned.
The surprise encounter highlights China's continuing efforts to prepare for a future conflict with the U.S., despite Pentagon efforts to try to boost relations with Beijing's communist-ruled military.
The submarine encounter with the USS Kitty Hawk and its accompanying warships also is an embarrassment to the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, Adm. William J. Fallon, who is engaged in an ambitious military exchange program with China aimed at improving relations between the two nations' militaries.
Disclosure of the incident comes as Adm. Gary Roughead, commander of the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet, is making his first visit to China. The four-star admiral was scheduled to meet senior Chinese military leaders during the weeklong visit, which began over the weekend.
According to the defense officials, the Chinese Song-class diesel-powered attack submarine shadowed the Kitty Hawk undetected and surfaced within five miles of the carrier Oct. 26.
The surfaced submarine was spotted by a routine surveillance flight by one of the carrier group's planes.
The Kitty Hawk battle group includes an attack submarine and anti-submarine helicopters that are charged with protecting the warships from submarine attack.
According to the officials, the submarine is equipped with Russian-made wake-homing torpedoes and anti-ship cruise missiles.
The Kitty Hawk and several other warships were deployed in ocean waters near Okinawa at the time, as part of a routine fall deployment program. The officials said Chinese submarines rarely have operated in deep water far from Chinese shores or shadowed U.S. vessels.
A Pacific Command spokesman declined to comment on the incident, saying details were classified. Pentagon spokesmen also declined to comment.
The incident is a setback for the aggressive U.S.-China military exchange program being promoted by Adm. Fallon, who has made several visits to China in recent months in an attempt to develop closer ties.
However, critics of the program in the Pentagon say China has not reciprocated and continues to deny U.S. military visitors access to key facilities, including a Beijing command center.
In contrast, Chinese military visitors have been invited to military exercises and sensitive U.S. facilities. Additionally, military intelligence officials said Adm. Fallon has restricted U.S. intelligence-gathering activities against China, fearing that disclosure of the activities would upset relations with Beijing.
The restrictions are hindering efforts to know more about China's military buildup, the officials said. "This is a harbinger of a stronger Chinese reaction to America's military presence in East Asia," said Richard Fisher, a Chinese military specialist with the International Assessment and Strategy Center, who called the submarine incident alarming.
"Given the long range of new Chinese sub-launched anti-ship missiles and those purchased from Russia, this incident is very serious," he said. "It will likely happen again, only because Chinese submarine captains of 40 to 50 new modern submarines entering their navy will want to test their mettle against the 7th Fleet."
Pentagon intelligence officials say China's military buildup in recent years has produced large numbers of submarines and surface ships, seeking to control larger portions of international waters in Asia, a move U.S. officials fear could restrict the flow of oil from the Middle East to Asia in the future.
Between 2002 and last year, China built 14 new submarines, including new Song-class vessels and several other types, both diesel- and nuclear-powered.
Since 1996, when the United States dispatched two aircraft carrier battle groups to waters near Taiwan in a show of force, Beijing also has bought and built weapons designed specifically to attack U.S. aircraft carriers and other warships. "The Chinese have made it clear that they understand the importance of the submarine in any kind of offensive or defensive strategy to deal with a military conflict," an intelligence official said recently.
In late 2004, China dispatched a Han-class submarine to waters near Guam, Taiwan and Japan. Japan's military went on emergency alert after the submarine surfaced in Japanese waters.
Beijing apologized for the incursion. The Pentagon's latest annual report on Chinese military power stated that China is investing heavily in weapons designed "to interdict, at long ranges, aircraft carrier and expeditionary strike groups that might deploy to the western Pacific."
It could not be learned whether the U.S. government lodged a protest with China's government over the incident or otherwise raised the matter in official channels.
BEIJING - While American voters were finally giving President George Bush and his southern-fried Republican Party a richly-deserved, long-overdue drubbing last week, I was off in China observing a nation that, while rigidly authoritarian, is at least governed by capable, intelligent people rather than the bungling politicians and crackpot ideologues that have run America onto the rocks.
Here in Beijing for my umpteenth visit since 1975, I've seen the future, and it still says "made in China."
This gigantic metropolis of 25 million seemed destined to become the world's new capital city - provided China's economy, still surging at over 10% per annum, remains strong, and political stability continues. Beijing's massive new skyscrapers, huge government blocks, broad, traffic-clogged avenues and miasma of smog and dust give it the look of an imperial capital in a science fiction film.
Last week Beijing staged a grandiose summit for 48 African leaders who received $10 billion in aid from China's new leader, President Hu Jintao.
Energy-voracious China now gets 30% of its oil from Africa. Angola just passed Saudi Arabia as China's leading oil supplier. China is bent on securing the lion's share of Africa's supplies of oil and other strategic resources. China-Africa trade has surged 30% to $50 billion in 2003.
China's non-interference policy means its trade and aid come without strings, a major plus for authoritarian African regimes. At least China is not hypocritical. While Washington boycotts Sudan and Zimbabwe over human rights, it cozies up to other major violators like Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.
The summit was a lavish spectacle, with convoys of bigwigs in limousines racing down the avenues, dancers, drummers, acrobats, small armies of tough security details, and regiments of China's feared paramilitary police, the Wujing, scowling at everyone.
China announced a third-quarter trade surplus of $102 billion (US). Beijing's monetary reserves have finally topped $1 trillion US, surpassing the former cash king, Japan.
Beijing continues to finance America's spending binge by lending it billions.
China's mammoth trade surplus, and a rising flood of foreign investment, has swamped the nation's banks with cash.
This, in turn, has fueled indiscriminate speculative investments, particularly in real estate, and a gold-rush frenzy that often obscures China's solid economic development.
This flood of hot money poses a serious danger. Indiscriminate investment leads to overproduction, which then causes a deflationary crisis that could end in financial meltdown. Japan experienced similar phenomena in the 1990s.
China's government has been struggling without much success to restrain this investment dragon. Beijing refuses, however, to allow its controlled, seriously undervalued currency, the yuan, to float, as its trade partners demand.
The undervalued yuan has given China its huge surplus, the motor of growth that has pulled the nation out of poverty. China still needs to deal with hundreds of millions of struggling farmers, state industry workers, and unemployed. So it refuses to allow the yuan to inch up by more than 5%.
If the yuan were allowed to float, say Chinese bankers, people would rush to convert to dollars, causing a dire financial crisis.
Too much cash
Anyway, argue Chinese officials, why should China pay the price for America's profligacy in refusing to save and running huge government deficits by revaluing the yuan? The U.S. Treasury is printing too much money in order to keep America's debt-ridden economy growing.
Since 60% of all U.S. dollars end up abroad, the Bush administration's reckless spending and over-stimulative money policies have caused a dangerous world-wide cash flood and serious imbalances to the global economy.
U.S. Republicans would do well to take pointers on capitalism from China's Communists, who have beaten the Western devils at their own game.
WASHINGTON - US President George W. Bush said Wednesday that he hoped China would transform from a country where people "hoard the money they have" into one where people buy large amounts of US products.
In an interview with conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, Bush said China should become "a society in which there's consumers. Because now they're a society of too many savers."
"And the reason why they're saving so much money is because there's not a pension plan or a legitimate health care system. And so, therefore, people hoard the money they have in anticipating a bad day," said the president.
"If we can encourage China to become a country of consumers, you can imagine what it would mean for US producers and manufacturers to have access to that market," he said.
Bush also said that the United States must remain present in East Asia because "we serve as a way to make sure that there's stability. And stability in the Far East, obviously, is essential for the United States in the long term."
"And therefore, that's why we'll have a presence there and should have a presence there for the long term," he said.
The interview came with less than one week before key US legislative elections in which Bush's Republicans worry that the unpopular war in Iraq may cost them control of the Senate, the House of Representatives, or both.
Comment: Does the U.S. have a real "pension plan" or a legitimate health care system that doesn't cost an arm and a leg?
Almost 100 percent of voters in Georgia's small separatist territory of South Ossetia have opted for independence, according to partial results after a weekend referendum that critics warned could inflame regional tensions.
Results received from 78 percent of polling stations following the Sunday referendum showed that 98 to 99 percent of voters had cast their ballots in favor of independence, election officials told AFP. No independent confirmation was available.
But as local residents celebrated what the rebel authorities trumpeted as a victory, with cars honking horns and flying South Ossetian flags, political leaders in Tbilisi discounted the ballot as irrelevant.
"Everybody needs to understand, once and for all, that no amount of referendums or elections will move Georgia to give up that which belongs to the Georgian people by God's will," Georgi Tsagareishvili, head of the Georgian parliament's Industrialists bloc said in televised remarks.
On a visit to Moldova, Georgian Foreign Minister Gela Bezhuashvili said the country would resolve its territorial problems peacefully and added that Tbilisi had "done everything possible to prevent the referendum provoking any kind of deterioration in the region."
The leadership of the tiny region in the foothills of the Caucasus mountains maintains however that the referendum is a first step towards international acceptance and eventual union with Russia.
"Integration with Russia is a priority of South Ossetian policy," the region's de facto leader Eduard Kokoity said on Monday, according to Interfax, after preliminary ballot counts showed he won a landslide in "presidential" elections held in parallel to the independence poll.
Moscow has backed the rebel authorities in South Ossetia while not explicitly endorsing full-blown independence.
The international community warned it would not recognize the poll on the grounds it could aggravate a diplomatic crisis between Georgia and Russia.
Polling data could not be independently confirmed. It was unclear how many, if any, ethnic Georgians living in South Ossetia took part in the vote in this province of some 72,000 people, according to South Ossetian statistics.
The only Georgian organization allowed to monitor the poll said the vote was marred by falsifications.
"We believe that a mass stuffing of ballots took place," Arnold Stepanyan, who headed a team of three observers from the Multi-ethnic Georgia minority rights lobby group, told AFP.
Russian observers, including parliament members who arrived en masse for the non-official poll, meanwhile gave it their seal of approval.
The referendum was criticized by the secretary general of the NATO military alliance, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who said "such actions serve no purpose other than to exacerbate tensions in the South Caucasus region."
Georgia, which accuses its neighbor Russia of trying to annex both South Ossetia and the breakaway region of Abkhazia, has branded the South Ossetian referendum illegitimate and vowed to restore control over the territory.
Georgian officials see Russia's hand in Sunday's referendum and accuse Moscow of using the ballot to weaken Georgian statehood as punishment for Tbilisi's pro-Western course, which includes moves toward joining the European Union and NATO.
Some 55,000 South Ossetians were registered to vote, including about 20,000 refugees in the neighboring Russian region of North Ossetia, the region's election commission said.
Alongside Sunday's vote a separate pro-Georgian "referendum" was held in some ethnic Georgian areas of South Ossetia for an alternative administration, although the head of the "alternative" voting commission, Uruzmag Karkusov, complained of harassment by South Ossetian authorities.
Populated by both ethnic Ossetians and Georgians on Russia's southwestern border, South Ossetia has long been a regional flashpoint.
Tensions between Tbilisi and Moscow escalated last month when Georgia arrested and then expelled four Russian officers it accused of spying.
Russia has been accused of flouting the United Nations Convention Against Torture by "systematically" torturing Chechen civilians at 10 secret detention centres across the predominantly Muslim republic. The allegations, in a report from the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), claim that civilians are being tortured into confessing to serious crimes that they did not commit.
According to HRW, the objective in most cases is to extract information about other suspects. In other cases, people are being convicted for bureaucratic convenience - to fill "cases solved" quotas.
The claims echo those by Anna Politkovskaya, the investigative reporter who was shot dead in October in what looked like a revenge killing for something she had written - her killers have not yet been found. Chechnya is officially "at peace" after Russian troops entered the republic in 1999 to fight separatist forces.
It is a fight that appears to be all but won, with rebel forces pinned in the hills bereft of their strongest leaders, who have either been killed or fled abroad.
But HRW questions whether the price being paid is too high and points the finger of blame at forces under the command of Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya's Moscow-backed prime minister, as well as federal policemen.
The report is being studied by the UN's Committee on Torture, and documents 115 purported cases of torture between July 2004 and September 2006.
Though most of the victims were young males, several cases concerned "women, elderly, disabled people, and minors, the youngest of whom was 13 years old", it said.
Holly Cartner, HRW's director for Europe and central Asia, said Russia was breaking the UN's Convention on Torture, a document it signed in 1985, and called for Moscow to halt the practice, investigate its allegations and provide redress to victims.
"If you detain someone secretly it's a lot easier to abuse them," she said. "[Yet] this is illegal under Russian and international law."
Torture methods listed include electric shock treatment, being beaten with cables or plastic bottles filled with water or sand (so as not to leave any marks), being burnt with a lighter and being threatened with execution or rape. HRW said that it had uncovered evidence of 10 separate torture facilities in Chechnya, many of which are apparently private homes belonging to commanders loyal to Mr Kadyrov.
It alleged that two facilities are in Tsentoroi, Mr Kadyrov's home village.
At the heart of the report is witness testimony from two brothers, identified as Sulim S and Salambek S.
Sulim, 29, who was detained in March 2006, claimed that he was kept blindfolded for five days before being tortured.
"They put a gas mask on my face and would cut the airflow until I started suffocating," he said. "They repeatedly gave me electric shocks ... one charge went through my tongue."
He claims he was beaten around the groin and threatened with rape before being told to confess to one of three crimes - he refused.
Prime Minister Kadyrov has repeatedly denied being complicit in torture. He says the allegations have been fabricated to end his chances of becoming Chechnya's next president.
By June Fletcher and Ruth Simon
Real Estate News
6 Nov 06
A little over a year ago, buyers couldn't wait to sign contracts to purchase homes. Now, many can't wait to get out of them.
With real-estate prices falling around the country and even pro-industry trade groups predicting further declines over the next year, buyers are backing away from deals in droves. At a semiannual housing forecast conference in Washington, D.C. recently, economists reported that contract-cancellation rates for big builders were running around 40 percent - about twice as high as last year's levels. Anecdotally, real-estate professionals say they are seeing a similar dynamic in existing-home sales.
Some of the cancellations are by people who signed new-home contracts at one price months ago, haven't yet closed, and are now stunned to see the builder drastically cutting prices on identical properties. Some are by speculators caught short by other investments they can't unload. And some are by people trapped in a chain reaction: They can't sell their old home - or the buyer has canceled the contract - so they are being forced to cancel the deal on a new house they are buying somewhere else.
"There are a whole lot of people running from contracts," says Alexandria, Va., real-estate attorney Beau Brincefield. He is currently representing more than 50 buyers who are seeking to get out of contracts on single-family homes, townhouses and condos, compared with none a year ago.
Even though it may mean losing a deposit that could run tens of thousands of dollars - deposits typically range from 1 percent to 5 percent of the purchase price - many buyers are deciding that is less onerous than the alternative. With median new-home prices already 9.7 percent below last year's levels, according to the U.S. Commerce Department, bailing out now may be less painful than committing to an expensive, and possibly depreciating, investment.
It's a far cry from the home-flipping exuberance of the past few years, when rising home values fueled a buy-and-sell mentality among millions of homeowners, and trading up became a staple of reality TV and home-improvement shows.
New-home builders are taking a big hit from record numbers of contract cancellations, or "kickouts." Fort Worth, Texas-based D.R. Horton Inc., the nation's biggest developer, says its cancellation rate is currently 40 percent, compared with 29 percent a year ago. Meritage Homes Corp., in Scottsdale, Ariz., is reporting a 37 percent kickout rate, compared with 21 percent a year ago. And Standard Pacific Corp. says that 50 percent of its contracts fell through in the third quarter of this year, compared with 18 percent for the same period last year. The Irvine, Calif.-based developer built 11,400 homes across the country last year. Among its current projects: Glenmeadow, a gated community in Simi Valley, Calif., where three- and four-bedroom homes range from $1.1 million to $1.3 million.
Caught Between Two Mortgages
Cancellations by buyers of existing homes are up as well. Although no formal measures exist, historically they have been in the 2 percent range, according to the National Association of Realtors. In September, however, nearly half of the 454 agents responding to an online NAR survey said they had recently experienced cancellation rates higher than that.
Sean Shallis, senior real-estate strategist for the Shallis Team of Re/Max Villa Realtors in Jersey City, N.J., says that roughly 22 percent of his sales have fallen apart before closing this year because the buyers backed out, up from 10 percent last year. With the market cooling, buyers have decided they can buy a similar property for less. For others, adjustable-rate mortgages have gotten more expensive, making a home purchase too costly, Shallis says. To reduce the chances of cancellation, he is advising his clients to close their deals as quickly as possible after the offer is accepted, and to put fewer contingencies in the contract. "The longer your property is under contract, the longer the buyer has to talk and think about it and watch the market change."
Shallis himself is among the would-be buyers with cold feet. Late last year, he agreed to pay $595,000 for a new two-bedroom condominium in Jersey City for his in-laws. He pulled the plug on the deal this summer after his father-in-law's illness scotched the planned move. "My exit strategy was if they didn't move into it, we could sell it or rent it," Shallis says. But that plan made less sense after the price of similar properties dropped to as low as $529,000. At the same time, higher short-term interest rates made it unlikely that he would be able to cover his mortgage payments and other costs if he found a renter. Instead, Shallis walked away from the contract and lost his $30,000 deposit.
A sinking home appraisal quashed the deal for retirees Denis and Michael Budge. The couple put their two-bedroom house in Carson City, Nev., on the market a little more than a year ago at $495,000, so they could move to another home they had already bought in Waldport, Ore. After some nail-biting months with few showings and no offers, they finally landed a buyer, who signed a contract in June for $425,000.
Rising Interest Rates
But during the escrow period, as prices in their area continued to slide, the appraisal came in - at $395,000. The Budges were still willing to sell, even at that greatly reduced price, but the buyer backed out the day before the closing. (Through his agent, he declined to comment.) The Budges pocketed the $1,000 deposit, of course, but now they are stuck with two mortgages - a hardship on their fixed incomes. "We thought we were going to relax and enjoy our retirement," says Budge. "Not any more."
Kickouts were high nationwide in the late '80s, and in California and New England in the early '90s, spurred by massive job losses. But until now there's never been a period where cancellations have spiked in the absence of a recession, according to Amy Crews Cutts, deputy chief economist at Freddie Mac. Cutts says the current jitters are largely a result of investors fleeing the housing market in the last few months, which "slammed [it] into reverse," and consumers' fears that the bubble had burst. Rising interest rates earlier this year also gave buyers who hadn't yet closed on their homes cold feet. The result: a huge backlog of unsold homes, which could further depress prices.But mortgage rates have fallen recently, and if they stay below 6.5 percent, Cutts expects that buyers will regain their confidence by late spring, causing cancellations to ease up. Vienna, Va., housing economist Thomas Lawler agrees, but says builders must continue to cut their production and sell off their inventory so supply and demand can get back in balance. "Builders need to take a bullet," he says.
Buyer's remorse does have legal consequences, but the laws vary from state to state and depend on how the purchase contract was written. Usually, a buyer who defaults will have to give up the "good faith" or "earnest money" deposit that was made when the contract was accepted. But typically there is also some wiggle room written into contracts that allows buyers to cancel without penalty - for instance, if they can't get financing, if the home inspection uncovers defects that the seller won't correct, or if the seller doesn't make certain disclosures. Just changing your mind, however, isn't a valid excuse to cancel. A court could find that a buyer who got cold feet is in breach of contract and liable for the seller's expenses, plus damages - or could even force the sale.
Of course, it is better not to wind up in court. To keep deals from falling apart, builders are offering everything from free vacations and cars to help with closing costs and mortgage-rate buy-downs - and they are cutting prices, too. "They're hungry," says Gopal Ahluwalia, director of research at the National Association of Home Builders, the organization that sponsored last week's forecast conference.
Upgrades Required
Most of these incentives are dangled to attract new customers. But as the market has cooled and kickout rates have risen, nervous builders have also been quietly sweetening the pot for buyers they have already snagged but whose contracts haven't yet closed - just to keep them from bailing out of the deal. Some are even offering to drop the selling price after contracts have been signed.
Two years ago, Rosemary and Paul Owen, both federal employees, signed a $350,000 contract on a three-bedroom condo in Cape Canaveral, Fla., that was yet to be built. Since they knew it would take a long time for the building to be completed - and the housing market was rapidly rising - they took their time getting their old house in West Melbourne, Fla., ready for sale. By the time they were ready to sell their three-bedroom home this January, buyers weren't biting. Though they lowered their asking price to $359,000 from $439,000, only 18 people looked at their home over a 10-month period, and no one made an offer.
So they went to the builder in Cape Canaveral to get out of the deal and to get back the $22,000 they had paid for a deposit and upgrades. He wouldn't allow that, but he did offer to lower the price of the condo by $21,000 to $329,000 - the amount he was asking new buyers to pay for a unit that was identical to the one the Owens had purchased two years ago. He also extended the deadline for closing until the end of November. The Owens haven't decided whether they will walk away from their deposit if they can't sell their old home by then. "We don't need two places," says Owen.
Meanwhile, builders' willingness to lard up their incentives is putting added pressure on sellers of existing homes to do the same. Many are finding it necessary to add thousands of dollars in upgrades to compete with what builders are giving away. Jim Parker, an exclusive buyer's agent in Atlanta, says that in the last quarter, three out of the five buyers he's been working with have bailed out of a contract, while no one canceled during the same period a year ago. "Before, if something was not perfect, they'd buy it anyway. Now they won't," Parker says. Buyers are also demanding more upgrades. "They're asking for everything, right down to the flat-screen television," he says. "They're comparing houses to a brand-new house, and they expect the house to be updated with new paint and carpeting."
Since most people who are buying are also selling - seven out of 10 households already own homes - some are finding themselves of two minds when it comes to kickouts. Glenn Nudell, a shipping executive, recently got $115,000 in concessions, including help with closing costs and fix-up money, when he bought a 12-year-old five-bedroom home in Skillman, N.J., for almost $1.1 million. If the seller hadn't agreed, he says, "I'd have backed away." But then he had to sell his eight-year-old, four-bedroom home in Princeton, N.J. He made sure it was as polished as a builder's model, with new wood floors and carpeting, new cabinets and even a newly finished basement - but he couldn't sell it until he had knocked $70,000 off of his original $630,000 asking price. Is he concerned that the buyer of his house might back away from the deal before it closes next month? "Of course," he says.
We are being misled into believing a false sense of perpetual invulnerable self-sufficiency. We largely fail to acknowledge just how extremely vulnerable we are. Given the scale of the problems outlined below, any single major disruption to our economy could have devastating consequences.
1. Wholesale sellout of core strategic assets to foreign acquirers: according to official figures, more than 8,000 American companies have been sold to foreign corporations in the last 10 years for at least $1.2 trillion (US Dept of Commerce)
2. Decline of vital industries through bankruptcy, foreign predatory competition, and foreign acquisition: foreign interests now own a majority of US industries in areas like mining, publishing/movies, cement, mineral manufacturing, rubber and plastics, and engine manufacturing and own substantial portions in areas like pharmaceuticals, glass, coal, chemicals, industrial machinery, transportation equipment, petroleum, and others (Internal Revenue Service)
3. Inability to manufacture competitively: American manufacturers suffer a 30+ percent structural cost disadvantage compared to overseas competitors through taxes, health and pension benefits, litigation, regulation, and energy costs - this disadvantage is more than the total labor cost of production in many other countries (National Association of Manufacturers)
4. Overdependence on imports: $1 in $4 of US consumption of manufactured goods now goes immediately and directly to imports (US Dept of Commerce)
5. Massive wealth transfer to foreign ownership: our trade deficit, at $723 billion in 2005, is funding foreign competitors with $1.4 million per minute of our dollars or $2,400 per US person per year spent on imported cars, clothes, toys, and thousands of other products (US Census)
6. Loss of job and career opportunities for people at all educational levels: 3 million high-paying manufacturing jobs lost over past 5 years (US Bureau of Labor Statistics)
7. Transition to low-paying services-oriented ("servant") economy: high-paying goods-producing industries have lost net employment over the past 25 years while non-tradable service-providing employment has nearly doubled (US Bureau of Labor Statistics)
8. Insourcing of foreign manufacturers destroys our domestic industries, takes profits and taxes overseas, and provides only low-skill jobs for American workers: foreign manufacturers operating in the US now account for over 20 percent of our exports and manufacturing assets, and a large percentage of our employment (Internal Revenue Service)
9. Foreign financing of vast majority of government debt: foreign countries now control 47 percent of our total federal deficit and finance nearly 100 percent of all new borrowings - our competitors are now our bankers (US Federal Reserve)
10. Outsourcing key manufacturing, research, and design: unchecked offshore outsourcing benefits individual companies and shareholders but destroys entire industries and communities
11. Lost scientific, engineering, technological prowess: in 2004, China and India graduated a combined 950,000 engineers versus 70,000 in the US. US ranks near the bottom of science/math proficiency (Associated Press)
12. Wealth shift into less productive assets: residential real estate now represents a record 38 percent of household net worth on record over-inflated home valuations and record mortgage levels (US Federal Reserve)
13. Record levels of personal and government debt: household liabilities at record levels, federal government adding record levels of debt each year financed mostly by foreign countries, trade deficits transferring unprecedented accelerating amounts of wealth to foreign hands each year (US Federal Reserve)
14. Misleading commonly used economic statistics: misleading incomplete statistics like GDP, job creation, and productivity belie our crumbling economic infrastructure
15. Proven failed trade policies and other legislation contributing to our demise continue unchallenged: destroying our industry and allowing our assets to be sold or taken from us
If these trends continue unabated, what future could we possibly have? This wealth of this country was created under far different conditions than those that now exist.
Vladimir Bukovksy, the 63-year old former Soviet dissident, fears that the European Union is on its way to becoming another Soviet Union. In a speech he delivered in Brussels last week Mr Bukovsky called the EU a "monster" that must be destroyed, the sooner the better, before it develops into a fullfledged totalitarian state.
Mr Bukovsky paid a visit to the European Parliament on Thursday at the invitation of Fidesz, the Hungarian Civic Forum. Fidesz, a member of the European Christian Democrat group, had invited the former Soviet dissident over from England, where he lives, on the occasion of this year's 50th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising. After his morning meeting with the Hungarians, Mr Bukovsky gave an afternoon speech in a Polish restaurant in the Trier straat, opposite the European Parliament, where he spoke at the invitation of the United Kingdom Independence Party, of which he is a patron.
In his speech Mr Bukovsky referred to confidential documents from secret Soviet files which he was allowed to read in 1992. These documents confirm the existence of a "conspiracy" to turn the European Union into a socialist organization.
I attended the meeting and taped the speech. A transcript, as well as the audio fragment (approx. 15 minutes) can be found below. I also had a brief interview with Mr Bukovsky (4 minutes), a transcript and audio fragment of which can also be found below. The interview about the European Union had to be cut short because Mr Bukovsky had other engagements, but it brought back some memories to me, as I had interviewed Vladimir Bukovsky twenty years ago, in 1986, when the Soviet Union, the first monster that he so valiantly fought, was still alive and thriving.
Mr Bukovsky was one of the heroes of the 20th century. As a young man he exposed the use of psychiatric imprisonment against political prisoners in the former USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 1917-1991) and spent a total of twelve years (1964-1976), from his 22nd to his 34th year, in Soviet jails, labour camps and psychiatric institutions. In 1976 the Soviets expelled him to the West. In 1992 he was invited by the Russian government to serve as an expert testifying at the trial conducted to determine whether the Soviet Communist Party had been a criminal institution. To prepare for his testimony Mr Bukovsky was granted access to a large number of documents from Soviet secret archives. He is one of the few people ever to have seen these documents because they are still classified. Using a small handheld scanner and a laptop computer, however, he managed to copy many documents (some with high security clearance), including KGB reports to the Soviet government.
An interview with Vladimir Bukovsky
Listen to it here
Paul Belien: You were a very famous Soviet dissident and now you are drawing a parallel between the European Union and the Soviet Union. Can you explain this?
Vladimir Bukovsky: I am referrring to structures, to certain ideologies being instilled, to the plans, the direction, the inevitable expansion, the obliteration of nations, which was the purpose of the Soviet Union. Most people do not understand this. They do not know it, but we do because we were raised in the Soviet Union where we had to study the Soviet ideology in school and at university. The ultimate purpose of the Soviet Union was to create a new historic entity, the Soviet people, all around the globe. The same is true in the EU today. They are trying to create a new people. They call this people "Europeans", whatever that means.
According to Communist doctrine as well as to many forms of Socialist thinking, the state, the national state, is supposed to wither away. In Russia, however, the opposite happened. Instead of withering away the Soviet state became a very powerful state, but the nationalities were obliterated. But when the time of the Soviet collapse came these suppressed feelings of national identity came bouncing back and they nearly destroyed the country. It was so frightening.
PB: Do you think the same thing can happen when the European Union collapses?
VB: Absolutely, you can press a spring only that much, and the human psyche is very resilient you know. You can press it, you can press it, but don't forget it is still accumulating a power to rebound. It is like a spring and it always goes to overshoot.
PB: But all these countries that joined the European Union did so voluntarily.
VB: No, they did not. Look at Denmark which voted against the Maastricht treaty twice. Look at Ireland [which voted against the Nice treaty]. Look at many other countries, they are under enormous pressure. It is almost blackmail. Switzerland was forced to vote five times in a referendum. All five times they have rejected it, but who knows what will happen the sixth time, the seventh time. It is always the same thing. It is a trick for idiots. The people have to vote in referendums until the people vote the way that is wanted. Then they have to stop voting. Why stop? Let us continue voting. The European Union is what Americans would call a shotgun marriage.
PB: What do you think young people should do about the European Union? What should they insist on, to democratize the institution or just abolish it?
VB: I think that the European Union, like the Soviet Union, cannot be democratized. Gorbachev tried to democratize it and it blew up. This kind of structures cannot be democratized.
PB: But we have a European Parliament which is chosen by the people.
VB: The European Parliament is elected on the basis of proportional representation, which is not true representation. And what does it vote on? The percentage of fat in yoghurt, that kind of thing. It is ridiculous. It is given the task of the Supreme Soviet. The average MP can speak for six minutes per year in the Chamber. That is not a real parliament.
Transcript of Mr Bukovsky's Brussels speech
Listen to it here
In 1992 I had unprecedented access to Politburo and Central Committee secret documents which have been classified, and still are even now, for 30 years. These documents show very clearly that the whole idea of turning the European common market into a federal state was agreed between the left-wing parties of Europe and Moscow as a joint project which [Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev in 1988-89 called our "common European home."
The idea was very simple. It first came up in 1985-86, when the Italian Communists visited Gorbachev, followed by the German Social-Democrats. They all complained that the changes in the world, particularly after [British Prime Minister Margaret] Thatcher introduced privatisation and economic liberalisation, were threatening to wipe out the achievement (as they called it) of generations of Socialists and Social-Democrats - threatening to reverse it completely. Therefore the only way to withstand this onslaught of wild capitalism (as they called it) was to try to introduce the same socialist goals in all countries at once. Prior to that, the left-wing parties and the Soviet Union had opposed European integration very much because they perceived it as a means to block their socialist goals. From 1985 onwards they completely changed their view. The Soviets came to a conclusion and to an agreement with the left-wing parties that if they worked together they could hijack the whole European project and turn it upside down. Instead of an open market they would turn it into a federal state.
According to the [secret Soviet] documents, 1985-86 is the turning point. I have published most of these documents. You might even find them on the internet. But the conversations they had are really eye opening. For the first time you understand that there is a conspiracy - quite understandable for them, as they were trying to save their political hides. In the East the Soviets needed a change of relations with Europe because they were entering a protracted and very deep structural crisis; in the West the left-wing parties were afraid of being wiped out and losing their influence and prestige. So it was a conspiracy, quite openly made by them, agreed upon, and worked out.
In January of 1989, for example, a delegation of the Trilateral Commission came to see Gorbachev. It included [former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro] Nakasone, [former French President Valιry] Giscard d'Estaing, [American banker David] Rockefeller and [former US Secretary of State Henry] Kissinger. They had a very nice conversation where they tried to explain to Gorbachev that Soviet Russia had to integrate into the financial institutions of the world, such as Gatt, the IMF and the World Bank.
In the middle of it Giscard d'Estaing suddenly takes the floor and says: "Mr President, I cannot tell you exactly when it will happen - probably within 15 years - but Europe is going to be a federal state and you have to prepare yourself for that. You have to work out with us, and the European leaders, how you would react to that, how would you allow the other Easteuropean countries to interact with it or how to become a part of it, you have to be prepared."
This was January 1989, at a time when the [1992] Maastricht treaty had not even been drafted. How the hell did Giscard d'Estaing know what was going to happen in 15 years time? And surprise, surprise, how did he become the author of the European constitution [in 2002-03]? A very good question. It does smell of conspiracy, doesn't it?
Luckily for us the Soviet part of this conspiracy collapsed earlier and it did not reach the point where Moscow could influence the course of events. But the original idea was to have what they called a convergency, whereby the Soviet Union would mellow somewhat and become more social-democratic, while Western Europe would become social-democratic and socialist. Then there will be convergency. The structures have to fit each other. This is why the structures of the European Union were initially built with the purpose of fitting into the Soviet structure. This is why they are so similar in functioning and in structure.
It is no accident that the European Parliament, for example, reminds me of the Supreme Soviet. It looks like the Supreme Soviet because it was designed like it. Similary, when you look at the European Commission it looks like the Politburo. I mean it does so exactly, except for the fact that the Commission now has 25 members and the Politburo usually had 13 or 15 members. Apart from that they are exactly the same, unaccountable to anyone, not directly elected by anyone at all. When you look into all this bizarre activity of the European Union with its 80,000 pages of regulations it looks like Gosplan. We used to have an organisation which was planning everything in the economy, to the last nut and bolt, five years in advance. Exactly the same thing is happening in the EU. When you look at the type of EU corruption, it is exactly the Soviet type of corruption, going from top to bottom rather than going from bottom to top.
If you go through all the structures and features of this emerging European monster you will notice that it more and more resembles the Soviet Union. Of course, it is a milder version of the Soviet Union. Please, do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that it has a Gulag. It has no KGB - not yet - but I am very carefully watching such structures as Europol for example. That really worries me a lot because this organisation will probably have powers bigger than those of the KGB. They will have diplomatic immunity. Can you imagine a KGB with diplomatic immunity? They will have to police us on 32 kinds of crimes - two of which are particularly worrying, one is called racism, another is called xenophobia. No criminal court on earth defines anything like this as a crime [this is not entirely true, as Belgium already does so - pb]. So it is a new crime, and we have already been warned. Someone from the British government told us that those who object to uncontrolled immigration from the Third World will be regarded as racist and those who oppose further European integration will be regarded as xenophobes. I think Patricia Hewitt said this publicly.
Hence, we have now been warned. Meanwhile they are introducing more and more ideology. The Soviet Union used to be a state run by ideology. Today's ideology of the European Union is social-democratic, statist, and a big part of it is also political correctness. I watch very carefully how political correctness spreads and becomes an oppressive ideology, not to mention the fact that they forbid smoking almost everywhere now. Look at this persecution of people like the Swedish pastor who was persecuted for several months because he said that the Bible does not approve homosexuality. France passed the same law of hate speech concerning gays. Britain is passing hate speech laws concerning race relations and now religious speech, and so on and so forth. What you observe, taken into perspective, is a systematic introduction of ideology which could later be enforced with oppressive measures. Apparently that is the whole purpose of Europol. Otherwise why do we need it? To me Europol looks very suspicious. I watch very carefully who is persecuted for what and what is happening, because that is one field in which I am an expert. I know how Gulags spring up.
It looks like we are living in a period of rapid, systematic and very consistent dismantlement of democracy. Look at this Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill. It makes ministers into legislators who can introduce new laws without bothering to tell Parliament or anyone. My immediate reaction is why do we need it? Britain survived two world wars, the war with Napoleon, the Spanish Armada, not to mention the Cold War, when we were told at any moment we might have a nuclear world war, without any need for introducing this kind legislation, without the need for suspending our civil liberaties and introducing emergency powers. Why do we need it right now? This can make a dictatorship out of your country in no time.
Today's situation is really grim. Major political parties have been completely taken in by the new EU project. None of them really opposes it. They have become very corrupt. Who is going to defend our freedoms? It looks like we are heading towards some kind of collapse, some kind of crisis. The most likely outcome is that there will be an economic collapse in Europe, which in due time is bound to happen with this growth of expenses and taxes. The inability to create a competitive environment, the overregulation of the economy, the bureaucratisation, it is going to lead to economic collapse. Particularly the introduction of the euro was a crazy idea. Currency is not supposed to be political.
I have no doubt about it. There will be a collapse of the European Union pretty much like the Soviet Union collapsed. But do not forget that when these things collapse they leave such devastation that it takes a generation to recover. Just think what will happen if it comes to an economic crisis. The recrimination between nations will be huge. It might come to blows. Look to the huge number of immigrants from Third World countries now living in Europe. This was promoted by the European Union. What will happen with them if there is an economic collapse? We will probably have, like in the Soviet Union at the end, so much ethnic strife that the mind boggles. In no other country were there such ethnic tensions as in the Soviet Union, except probably in Yugoslavia. So that is exactly what will happen here, too. We have to be prepared for that. This huge edifice of bureaucracy is going to collapse on our heads.
This is why, and I am very frank about it, the sooner we finish with the EU the better. The sooner it collapses the less damage it will have done to us and to other countries. But we have to be quick because the Eurocrats are moving very fast. It will be difficult to defeat them. Today it is still simple. If one million people march on Brussels today these guys will run away to the Bahamas. If tomorrow half of the British population refuses to pay its taxes, nothing will happen and no-one will go to jail. Today you can still do that. But I do not know what the situation will be tomorrow with a fully fledged Europol staffed by former Stasi or Securitate officers. Anything may happen.
We are losing time. We have to defeat them. We have to sit and think, work out a strategy in the shortest possible way to achieve maximum effect. Otherwise it will be too late. So what should I say? My conclusion is not optimistic. So far, despite the fact that we do have some anti-EU forces in almost every country, it is not enough. We are losing and we are wasting time.
German police have claimed that the corrosive designer drug known as "crystal meth" was responsible for hundreds of self-destructing euro notes which have been mysteriously disintegrating in the hands of baffled shoppers and bank clerks since early last summer.
More than 1,700 crumbling 50 and 20 notes have surfaced in at least 17 German towns and cities since June this year, prompting fears of a potential health risk and speculation about a possible blackmail attempt.
The crumbing note mystery, which causes large holes to appear in euro notes as soon as they are touched, prompted a nationwide investigation by police and the German Bundesbank, which has been obliged to take back hundreds of damaged 50 and 20 notes. Yet nobody blamed drug users for the problem.
Police and the German Bundesbank said they had almost certainly solved the mystery. The answer is apparently the designer drug crystal methamphetamine. Taken through the nose, the drug is rapidly replacing cocaine at parties and on the German club scene. Rainer Wenzel, a police forensic scientist who has been given the job of solving the bank-note mystery, said yesterday that crystal meth addicts habitually used a 50 or a 20 note to portion out and snort the drug because the notes had the right proportions.
"When a contaminated note comes into contact with human sweat, an aggressive acid is produced," he said. "If the note is in a wallet with a wad of other notes, the corrosion will spread to all of them."
Police said that although crystal meth had originated in the United States, where it has become the scourge of rural America, large quantities of the highly addictive and destructive drug were coming into Germany from Poland and the Balkans, where crystal methamphetamine was being refined and mixed with corrosive sulphates in the process.
Drug users in Europe should be wary: if the example of the US is anything to go by, crystal meth can prove lethal to rural communities not usually associated with chronic drug abuse.
Much more so than cocaine, crack, heroin or marijuana, small-town USA has steadily fallen prey to crystal meth, the effects of which are described by some as "having 10 orgasms at once".
Originally produced using over-the-counter medication containing ephedrine bought from local chemists, use of the drug has steadily increased over the past few years.
Although disintegrating 50 and 20 notes are a new phenomenon, the discovery of drug traces on bank notes has become routine. Three years ago German researchers conducted an exhaustive examination of 600 euro notes. They found that nine out of 10 banknotes carried clearly measurable amounts of cocaine and concluded that they could contaminate notes in bank cash-counting machines.
Professor Fritz Soergel of the Nuremberg Institute for Pharmaceutical Research, which carried out the study, started examining euro notes shortly after the introduction of the new currency in January 2002. Back then, only two out of 70 notes were found to carry traces of cocaine.
He said that his findings showed there was a clear correlation between the contaminated notes and levels of recorded cocaine use in the 12 countries of the euro currency zone. "Much less cocaine was found on banknotes from countries where there is less cocaine usage, such as France, Finland and Greece," he said.
The worst offenders were the Spanish. Professor Soergel said he and his team of researchers were "almost knocked flat" by the results of a study conducted in Barcelona. "The concentrations of cocaine on Spanish notes were almost a hundred times that of what we recorded in Germany," he said.
A man contracted by the Department of Natural Resources to pick up road kill came to the Washington County Sheriff's Department to report a 7-foot-tall "animal" had taken a deer out of the back of his pickup truck at about 1 a.m. Thursday, Sheriff Brian Rahn said.
According to the report, the man loaded a deer carcass into the back of his truck on Highway 167 near Station Way, got into the cab and prepared to drive away when a large black animal, very wide and larger than a bear, jumped into the back of his pickup and dragged out the carcass he had just loaded.
"He was horrified and took off out of there," said Rahn.
During his retreat, the man also lost an all-terrain-vehicle ramp that he used to ease carcasses into the truck.
Deputies went to the location near Holy Hill after the man reported the incident - at about 4 a.m. Thursday - and could find nothing, including the ATV ramp, Rahn said.
"I don't believe we have Bigfoot running around Washington County," said Rahn.
However, deputies will do an additional follow up on the report, he said.
"It will take more than this report to convince me," Rahn said.
Dick Liethen lives on Troll Hill Road, just through the woods from the reported sighting. He was out hunting this morning, but didn't catch sight of anything unusual.
"If I'm not hunting, I'm out walking the woods and I've never seen anything," said Liethen. "But the gentleman must have seen something. He was pretty shook up."
Liethen has a camera set up in the woods to record passing wildlife, but said he has not recorded any images of an animal matching the description.
The sighting has added to Liethen's daily chores, however.
"Since this happened I will be taking out the garbage and getting the mail. My wife says, 'you do it,' but the paper might wait until it's light out," said Liethen.
Highway Commissioner Ken Pesch was amused by the report.
"That's one way to get rid of them," said Pesch of the pilfered carcass. Reports of dead animals are sent to the Sheriff's Department and the state Department of Natural Resources contracts with the man to have the carcasses removed, Pesch said.
"We can't touch those carcasses. You need a license, so if they catch Bigfoot, they might want to check his license," said Pesch.
By Maggie Gill-Austern
Maine Sun Journal
November 11, 2006
INDUSTRY - Former naval intelligence crypto-tech Brad Luker is a down-to-earth kind of guy. At 40, he's a father and a husband, works as a power plant operator, and walks the straight and narrow. He doesn't believe in Bigfoot, aliens or the Loch Ness monster.
So when he saw strange bright lights in the sky above him Tuesday night, he assumed it was a helicopter, or maybe a small plane. Only when he opened the door to his truck, expecting to hear the whir of chopper blades above him, did he start to wonder what the craft could be.
"It was really bizarre," he said. "I've never seen anything like it."
"I do a lot of camping, and I've seen all the basic stuff (in the sky)," he said. Most strange things in the sky are high up in the air, he said. "This was way, way down here."
It was so low to the ground, and so brightly lit, at first he thought there must be something going on at the Industry town hall. "I thought 'wow, that's kinda neat,'" Luker said.
As he got closer, though, Luker realized the lights were coming from something about 300 feet above him. That was when he pulled over, and opened his door. It sounded like a quiet jet engine. Luker was mystified, and a little nervous.
A woman driving in an SUV behind him saw it, too, Luker said. He never got her name, and wishes now that he had. She said she thought it looked like an aircraft trying to land on the road, Luker said.
"I know the Navy has some real funky special top-secret aircraft out there," he said. "That's the only thing I could think that it could be."
Then it stopped - right above his head, for a few seconds. "That's when it really freaked me out," he said. He'd have thought it was a spaceship, he said, except he doesn't believe in spaceships.
It could be a UFO, Leland Bechtel, former director of Maine's chapter of the Mutual UFO Network (or MUFON), said Thursday.
"There has been a lot of activity there in the past," Bechtel said. He did an investigation in Farmington a few years ago, he said. Three college students - all very respectable - saw something somewhat similar to what Luker saw. "This thing came directly over them, and stopped, with a powerful floodlight right down on them."
Police said it might be a helicopter, Bechtel said. But most people can tell when they're seeing a helicopter, and when they're not.
Could what Luker saw be a UFO? "It certainly has earmarks of being an unidentified flying object," Bechtel said. "And we don't know what they are. We don't know where they come from."
Bechtel, like Luker, is a well-respected man. He taught psychology at Bates College in Lewiston for years and only became involved in the world of UFOs by accident, after he began hearing stories of sighting by people he considered sane, and credible.
"I've investigated scores of reported sightings in Maine," he said, "by some of the finest, most respectable people that I've met, and they're not kidding, and they're not deluded."
He's not sure what they are, nor convinced they're from outer space. "I'm open to all possibilities," he said. "I think it just stands to reason that some of the sightings have been experimental aircraft of our own government. But there are plenty of others that do not appear, to me, to be anything that we have developed."
"I started very skeptical. I'm not skeptical anymore," Bechtel said. "I just have questions, rather than answers. But I do feel certain there is reality there that needs to be investigated."
Luker, too, has no answers. "I talked to the police and (the dispatcher) said even if the military was flying some special mission, they wouldn't tell us anyway. I felt kinda foolish." Calls to Brunswick Naval Air Station were not returned Friday.
Dispatchers in Franklin, Androscoggin, Oxford, Somerset and Kennebec counties said they received no calls about strange objects in the sky Tuesday night.
"I assumed if I saw it, a couple other people might see it," Luker said. "As I drove away I was thinking hey, maybe they gave me some sort of special intelligence," he joked. "I told my wife I wished they gave me the Powerball numbers." He laughed.
In the end, Luker said, he thinks it was probably a military plane. "But I don't know why they would fly it that low, and I don't know why they would be out in Industry, Maine," he said. "It really doesn't make sense. But that's the only thing I can think of, because I really don't believe in spaceships, or anything like that."
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