Footnotes 

1. Novak, Jeremiah, Christian Science Monitor (February 7, 1977)


2. The Trilateral Commission, Membership List, www.trilateral.org


3. Washington Post, January 16, 1977


4. op. cit.


5. About Us, http://www.iie.com/institute/aboutiie.cfm


6. Board of Directors, http://www.iie.com/institute/board.cfm


7. Brzezinski, Zbigniew, Between Two Ages: The Technetronic Era, (Penguin Books , 1971)

ORIGINAL
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Life On Planet Earth

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Earthquake hits Sumatra

Posted at 8:01pm on 01 Dec 2006

A strong earthquake, measuring 6.6 on the Richter scale, has hit the Indonesian island of Sumatra but there are no immediate reports of casualties or damage.
The quake was centred 60km southeast of the North Sumatra provincial capital, Medan, at a depth of 200km.
Indonesia was the nation worst hit by the earthquake-triggered Asian tsunami two years ago, with 168,000 people killed in Aceh province in the north of Sumatra.
A quake on the south coast of the main island of Java also killed more than 600 people in July.



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Hundreds feared dead in Philippine mudslides

Justin McCurry
Friday December 1, 2006
Guardian Unlimited

At least 400 people are feared dead after Typhoon Durian swept across the central Philippines, causing flash floods and burying villages in waves of muddy volcanic ash and huge rocks.

The country's civil defence office said today that 198 people had died, with 260 missing, but the death toll was expected to rise.

"There are a lot of conflicting reports but, looking at the trend, we could have about 300 to 400 people dead by tonight," Richard Gordon, head of the local Red Cross, said in a television interview.

Glen Rabonza, head of the civil defence office, said rescue workers were struggling to pull people from the debris. "Our rescue teams are overstretched rescuing people on rooftops," he said.

The president of the Philippines, Gloria Arroyo, ordered the country's military to help reach people in submerged villages. More than 100 people died and 130 were injured after mudslides struck several villages on the slopes of the Mayon volcano.

"The disaster covered almost every corner of this province - rampaging floods, falling trees, damaged houses," Fernando Gonzalez, governor of Albay province, the worst hit area, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.

"It happened very rapidly and many people did not expect this because they haven't experienced mud flows in those areas before. By the time they wanted to move, the rampaging mud flows were upon them."

Reports emerged of residents of Padang village having their clothes ripped off as they were carried away by muddy flows of volcanic ash.

"It's terrible," Noel Rosal, mayor of Legazpi city, Albay's capital, told AP. "Based on our interviews with residents and village officials, more than 100 people were killed or [went] missing. We now call this place a black desert."

The typhoon caused havoc with communications, and details of the extent of the damage remained sketchy. The storm is thought to have made about 11,000 people homeless, as well as knocking out power lines and phone links, and burying roads beneath landslides.

Local officials estimated that more than 22,000 people had been affected by the storm, which by last night was heading to towards the South China Sea and was expected to weaken to a tropical storm before striking Vietnam on Monday.

Durian, named after a pungent local fruit, made landfall yesterday in the island province of Catanduanes, where there are no mountains that could have limited the storm's impact.

The typhoon devastated the island of Marinduque, uprooting trees and ripping the roofs from many homes. "It's the worst in our history," a local congressman, Edmund Reyes, said in a radio interview. "Almost all houses were damaged by the typhoon in the province."

The widespread damage caused by the 20 typhoons and storms to hit the Philippines every year has been blamed on destruction of local forests. Last February landslides killed more than 1,000 residents of a village in Leyte province, and in 1991 more than 5,000 people died in the same region in floods triggered by a typhoon.



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Aids ravaging workforce of poorest nations

Fred Attewill
Friday December 1, 2006
Guardian Unlimited

The Aids epidemic is devastating the economic prospects of the world's poorest countries, condemning millions of young people to a bleak future of unemployment and poverty, according to a new report.

Between 1992 and 2004, 31 countries in sub-Saharan Africa lost a total of more than 1m jobs every year due to the epidemic, as their economies grew more slowly.

The International Labour Organisation, which produced the report, said HIV/Aids killed almost 3.5 million people of working age last year.
The vast majority of the estimated 36.3 million people living with HIV/Aids globally are in sub-Saharan Africa, already the most deprived region on the planet.

In a speech to mark World Aids Day, the UN's secretary general, Kofi Annan, said politicians and individuals must consider themselves personally accountable for stopping the spread of the disease.

"It requires every one of us to help bring Aids out of the shadows and spread the message that silence is death," he said.

Last year, more than 3 million people - 75% in sub-Saharan Africa - were unable to work because of illness due to Aids.

The economic slowdown has hit young people hardest, with unemployment up to three times higher than for adults.

Young people stuck in the poverty trap are also at higher risk of contracting the disease, accounting for half of all new HIV infections. An estimated 5,000 to 6,000 people aged between 15 and 24 acquire HIV every day.

The report also focuses on the damage the epidemic is having on children, forcing them into child labour and ultimately preventing them from being able to find productive jobs as adults.

Often children are forced to seek work early after their parents are left dead or incapacitated from the disease, robbing them of an education and putting them at greater risk of contracting the virus themselves.

A survey in Uganda in 2004showed 95 per cent of children in HIV-affected households had some kind of job - and 16per cent worked day and night.

Girls in particular risk being sexually abused and being infected at work, especially those working as prostitutes.

The ILO added studies had shown most men and women working in the sex industry began in their teens or early 20s.

"Mortality losses to the labour force, illness and lack of access to antiretroviral treatment (ARVs) are jeopardising the ability of the worst affected countries to lift themselves out of poverty," the report said.

The ILO argues that "forceful measures" were needed to increase access to ARVs - and said a key aim was making them available at work.

Without better treatment, the future looks bleak. By 2020, losses to the global labour force due to the epidemic are set to reach 86 million a year, compared to an estimated 28 million for 2005.

Better access to drugs could cut that figure by up to a quarter.

"The prospect of averting between one fifth and one quarter of potential new losses of the labour force should serve as a powerful incentive to target the workplace as a major entry point to achieve universal access to ARVs," the survey said.



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Philippines typhoon kills more than 100

AP
01 December 2006

The fourth super-typhoon in as many months has battered the Philippines, setting off a volcanic mudslide and widespread flooding that killed at least 109 people and left dozens more missing, officials said today.

Glen Rabonza, head of the national Office of Civil Defence, said 200 body bags were being shipped to the disaster zone at the request of provincial chiefs. With power and phone lines brought down, helicopters were carrying out aerial surveillance of cut-off areas.

"Our rescue teams are overstretched rescuing people on rooftops," Rabonza said after President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was briefed on the storm's aftermath.
Fernando Gonzales, governor of badly hit Albay province, said 108 bodies had been found but that recovery operations were continuing. The figure did not include at least one person killed in adjacent Camarines Sur province, which reported that its capital was flattened.

Under secretary Dr Graciano Yumul of the Department of Science and Technology said the storm was particularly damaging because wind gusts hit 165mph when Typhoon Durian came ashore yesterday in Catanduanes, an island province with no mountains to break the storm's momentum.

At least 20 bodies were recovered from the village of Padang, which was hit by a mudslide of volcanic debris on the foot of the Mayon volcano, said Noel Rosal, mayor of Legazpi city, Albay province's capital.

Rosal said about 30 people were injured by boulders and roofing materials in Padang and taken to hospitals.

"It's terrible," he said, after visiting the village today. "Based on our interviews with residents and village officials, more than 100 were killed or missing."

Rosal said some victims had their clothes torn off as they were swept away by the mudslide.

"We now call this place a black desert," he said, referring to the colour of the volcanic debris.

Mayon erupted in July, depositing millions of tons of rocks and volcanic ash on its slopes. Rains from succeeding typhoons that hit the area earlier may have loosened the materials.

Rosal said three of the five communities comprising the village of 1,400 people had been "wiped out" with only the roofs of several houses jutting out of the debris.

He said some boulders were as big as cars.

Rosal said Padang could be reached only by foot or motorcycle because a bridge linking it to Legazpi, about six miles away, was damaged.

He said the mudslide occurred as the city was lashed by Typhoon Durian. His own residence was under water that was "higher than a person" from a flashflood.

Jukes Nunez of the Albay Provincial Disaster Co-ordinating Council said many communities in Legazpi were still flooded today.

"The request for rescue is overwhelming. The disaster managers are victims themselves," he said.

The typhoon weakened today as it moved north of Mindoro island south of Manila with sustained winds of 94mph and gusts of up to 116mph as it headed towards the South China Sea.



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Richest, most powerful countries dump their toxic waste in poor countries

BBC News
27/11/2006

The world's richest nations are dumping hazardous electronic waste on poor African countries, says the head of the UN's Environment Programme (Unep).

Speaking in Nairobi, Achim Steiner said consumerism was driving a "growing mountain of e-waste".

Unep estimates that up to 50 million tonnes of waste from discarded electronic goods is generated annually.

Improper disposal of e-waste can release hazardous chemicals and heavy metals into the environment.
Mr Steiner made his comments at the opening of a week-long conference in Nairobi which will review the Basel Convention, aimed at reducing the movement of all types of hazardous waste.

"The need for Basel is ever more evident in this globalised world," he said.

"Accelerating trade in goods and materials across borders and across continents is one of the defining features of the early 21st Century."

Toxic waste

E-waste is thought to be the fastest growing part of municipal waste in the developed world.

The decreasing cost of replacing computers, mobile phones and other electronic gadgets, and the speed with which technology goes out of date, mean there is more and more to be disposed of.

Traditionally, much of the waste found its way to Asian countries such as China and India, but tighter regulations means more and more is ending up in Africa.

A recent study by the Basel Action Network concludes that a minimum of 100,000 computers a month are entering the Nigerian port of Lagos alone.

"If these were good quality, second hand, pieces of equipment this would perhaps be a positive trade of importance for development," said Mr Steiner.

"But local experts estimate that between a quarter to 75% of these items including old TVs, CPUs and phones are defunct - in other words e-waste."

When these are burnt, a common disposal method, it can release toxic fumes and leach chemicals such as barium and mercury into the soil.

International force

The conference will discuss how to tighten regulations to prevent this kind of incident occurring.

In particular it will review amendments to the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal which will tighten controls on shipments and disposal of e-waste.

"We need to shine a brighter light on hazardous wastes - where they come from and where they end up," said Basel Convention Executive Secretary Sachiko Kuwabara-Yamamoto.

The convention is meant to regulate waste in all of its forms, including e-waste. It came into force in 1992, and has since been signed by more than 160 countries.

Members of the convention in Nairobi will also press those countries that have not yet ratified the treaty, such as the US, to do so.

Also on the agenda will be a recent incident in Ivory Coast where noxious fumes produced by waste dumped around Abidjan killed at least 10 people and left more than 70,000 seeking medical treatment.

Although there is no indication that the incident was caused by e-waste, the UN says the incident is indicative of the challenge facing African nations.

"I sincerely hope that the tragedy in Cote D'Ivoire and the challenges of e-waste will serve as a wake up call to the Parties of the Basel Convention and other related treaties," said Mr Steiner.




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Scientists fear results of collapsed ice shelf - The Ross Ice Shelf, a raft of ice the size of France, could collapse quickly, triggering a dramatic rise in sea levels, scientists warn

By JOHN HENZELL
29 Nov 06

A New Zealand-led drilling team in Antarctica has recovered three million years of climate history, but the news is not good for the future.

Initial analysis of sea-floor cores near Scott Base suggest the Ross Ice Shelf had collapsed in the past and had probably done so suddenly.

The team's co-chief scientist, Tim Naish, said the sediment record was important because it provided crucial evidence about how the Ross Ice Shelf would react to climate change, with potential to dramatically increase sea levels.

"If the past is any indication of the future, then the ice shelf will collapse," he said.
"If the ice shelf goes, then what about the West Antarctic Ice Sheet? What we've learnt from the Antarctic Peninsula is when once buttressing ice sheets go, the glaciers feeding them move faster and that's the thing that isn't so cheery."

Antarctica comprises about 90 per cent of the world's ice mass, with the the West Antarctic Ice Sheet holding an estimated 30 million cubic kilometres.

In January, British Antarctic Survey researchers predicted that its collapse would make sea levels rise by at least 5m, with other estimates predicting a rise of up to 17m.

Naish, a sedimentologist with the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences, said the drilling team had banked on recovering about 30m of sediment core a day but was far exceeding that.

In one day this week the team, organised by Antarctica New Zealand, retrieved 83m, containing climate records spanning about 500,000 years.

"We're really getting everything we've dreamed of. What we're getting is a pretty detailed history of the ice shelf," he said.

"You go from full glacial conditions to open ocean conditions very abruptly. It doesn't surprise us that much that the transition was dramatic.

"We know from the Larsen Ice Shelf (which collapsed on the Antarctic Peninsula in 2002) that they go extremely quickly." The cores had to be sent from Antarctica to get a definitive date, but the indications were the team had reached sediments laid down about three million years ago.

"Once the date is more precise we'll be able to look at what the ice shelf was doing during periods when we know from other evidence that it was 2deg to 4deg warmer than today," Naish said.

The team's project manager, Jim Cowie, said the unexpectedly rapid progress of drilling came after decades of experience in Antarctica.

This included a preliminary sediment recovery project run by Antarctica New Zealand at Cape Roberts and involved researchers from seven countries.



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The suffering that betrays a world divided

By Jonathan Brown, Andrew Grice and Steve Bloomfield in Zambia
UK Independent
01 December 2006

Today is World Aids Day. It was first marked in 1991, an attempt by the international community to alert humanity to the terrible scale of the threat posed by the disease.

Yet despite advances in medical science and a growing political consensus over the need to act, the epidemic shows no signs of abating. In fact, it is getting worse.

According to the United Nations, some 25 million people have already died from Aids. A further 40 million men, women and children are living with HIV. Since the turn of the millennium, 24.2 million people have been infected, 15.6 million have died.

If the world continues on its present course, Aids is set to surpass the Black Death of the 14th century as the deadliest outbreak of disease in human history.
World Aids Day will see millions marking their solidarity with those affected by the virus. Charities, campaigners and politicians from Africa to the Americas will speak of their plight and reveal the work that is going on to help them.

But the story of the battle against the epidemic reveals a world divided. A gulf exists between sufferers living in poverty in sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the developing world and those in the rich nations of Europe and North America.

The emergence of antiretroviral drugs, hailed by researchers as a "miracle" on a par with the discovery of penicillin, means that in the affluent West at least, HIV is now a treatable disease. The tragic irony is that in Britain infection rates among some communities continue to rise. It was reported last week that incidences among gay men had reached their highest level since 1981 as safe sex practices were being ignored.

In Africa it is a different story. In Rwanda, where rapid advances in treatment have helped hundreds of thousands, doctors call it the "Lazarus effect" - just two antiretroviral drugs can restore a stricken patient to almost full health. Costing less than a dollar a day, they can be bought from any corner shop.

The tragic irony here is that even at this price, they are too expensive. Africa is seeing the fastest growth of any region of the world with an infection rate of 15 per cent. Perhaps hardest hit are the 2 million HIV-affected children of the region, who contracted the virus in the womb or during breastfeeding. Global drug-makers have little interest in making smaller doses of their life-saving medicines. The bigger profits are in the markets of the developed world among the sick, rich adults.

So doctors in Africa are forced to crush adult pills into child-sized doses. However, a deal will be announced today between two Indian drug-makers and former US president Bill Clinton's foundation which promises to reduce dramatically the cost of treating children infected with HIV-Aids next year.

But in some countries the threat of Aids is compounded by political failure. In Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe has promoted traditional medicines over antiretrovirals and displaced 1 million of his poorest urban citizens, disrupting their treatment and increasing the infection rates in rural areas.

And even science has its limits. The hunt for a vaccine two decades after it was claimed to be just five years away from completion remains as elusive as ever.

The British International Development Secretary, Hilary Benn, warned last night that the world may miss its target of providing universal HIV prevention care and treatment by 2010 unless the "stigma and prejudice" surrounding the disease is tackled. "We mustn't let our discomfort or prejudice get in the way of saving lives," he told a lecture at the London School of Economics to mark World Aids Day.

However, the Government was condemned for its policy of deporting asylum-seekers who are HIV positive back to their home countries, where treatment is often not available. The Refugee Council said they should be given special dispensation to stay.



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Zimbabwe's bad practice: 3,500 dead each week as meltdown looms

By Daniel Howden
01 December 2006

...this year, Zimbabwe has been judged by the World Health Organisation to have the lowest life expectancy in the world. Last month, the cemeteries of the capital, Harare, were declared full. This week more than 3,500 people will die of HIV-related illness and tests on post-natal mothers have found infection rates of 70 per cent. A country whose population at its last census numbered 12 million people is dying in droves; its health system is in total disarray and malnutrition is a daily struggle for the majority of the country.
The gap between HIV rhetoric and reality in Zimbabwe has become a chasm. And it is a chasm into which hundreds of thousands of people are falling.

This was the year we were told the government would roll out free antiretroviral drugs to nearly 200,000 of the worst-hit Aids sufferers.

At the first national conference on HIV/Aids in 2004, President Robert Mugabe spoke not only of the need for ARVs but also of the need for "comprehensive programmes for Aids care that include access to counselling and treatment of opportunistic infections, community-based care and orphan support."

But, this year, Zimbabwe has been judged by the World Health Organisation to have the lowest life expectancy in the world. Last month, the cemeteries of the capital, Harare, were declared full. This week more than 3,500 people will die of HIV-related illness and tests on post-natal mothers have found infection rates of 70 per cent. A country whose population at its last census numbered 12 million people is dying in droves; its health system is in total disarray and malnutrition is a daily struggle for the majority of the country.

The reality of the government's Aids policy is perhaps better reflected by Didymus Mutasa, the current Minister of State Security. He has said: "We would be better off with only six million people, with our own people who support the liberation struggle; we don't want all these extra people."

The government's approach to the public health catastrophe is characterised by hypocrisy, indifference and denial. Soaring infection rates have been compounded by a state-sponsored economic meltdown that has provoked a famine in one of Africa's most fertile countries. Much of the country is forced to subsist on one meagre meal a day and ARVs, even if they were supplied, cannot be taken on an empty stomach.

Hospital dispensaries in Zimbabwe's second city, Bulawayo, are empty. The hospitals themselves are almost empty as unofficial fees have put health care out of the range of ordinary people.

A senior doctor who has watched the disintegration of the health system said: "They [the government] are still living in denial or cloud cuckooland when it comes to Aids. They talk of waiting lists of six to nine months for ARVs. The infected don't live that long."



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Cancer drugs harmful to brain cells

By John von Radowitz
30 November 2006

Common cancer drugs may be more harmful to the brain than the tumour cells they are meant to destroy.

Laboratory tests have shown that dose levels typically used when treating patients killed 70-100 per cent of neural cells but just 40-80 per cent of cancer cells. Several types of healthy brain cell continued to die for at least six weeks after exposure.

The findings, published in the Journal of Biology, may help explain the little understood cancer therapy side effect of "chemo brain".
Patients can suffer symptoms ranging from memory loss to seizures, loss of vision and even dementia. Until recently, these problems were often blamed on a patient's mental state.

However, a growing body of evidence is now leading doctors to accept the reality of "chemo brain".

A study this year suggested that more than 82 per cent of cancer patients may suffer some form of mental impairment. While scientists have suspected that chemotherapy could have an impact on the central nervous system, it was not clear how this might occur.

Mark Noble, from the University of Rochester Medical Centre in New York, who led the research, said: "This is the first study that puts 'chemo brain' on a sound scientific footing, in terms of neurobiology and cellular biology."

The brain is populated with several types of cells that produce or repair normally functioning neurons. These are classified as dividing stem cells, dividing intermediate cells, precursors and progenitors, and non-dividing mature cells. Dr Noble's team exposed healthy brain cells as well as cancer cells to three chemotherapy drugs, carmustine, cisplatin and cytosine arabinoside, used to treat a wide range of diseases, including breast cancer, leukaemia and brain tumours.Tests showed that the drugs were toxic to all the different cell types even at very low concentrations.

The research points to several strategies for making cancer treatments safer, such as applying protective agents and screening to see what cell populations are most at risk.



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Zionist Perfidy

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Two Palestinians killed in W Bank

Friday, 1 December 2006, 10:11 GMT

Israeli soldiers have shot and killed two Palestinians in separate incidents in the West Bank.

The Israeli military said soldiers opened fire on a man who threw a petrol bomb at a patrol.
The incident happened near the Tomb of the Patriarchs, which has long been a source of tension in Hebron.

Earlier, a 16-year-old was killed in a village near Nablus. The Israeli military said the youth had thrown petrol bombs and a pipe bomb at troops.

Overnight in the northern West Bank, Israeli troops arrested 29 wanted people they say are members of Hamas, the militant Islamist group that heads the Palestinian Authority.

However, the six-day-old truce in Gaza is holding.

The Israeli army says that 14 rockets have been fired into Israel since the truce was declared.

No Israelis were injured by the rockets and the Israeli army has not responded.

'Small opening'

On Thursday, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said a small opening exists for a resumption of peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians.

Speaking after talks with Palestinian and Israeli leaders, she said the fragile truce in the Gaza Strip should be strengthened and extended.

Ms Rice said that hopefully all sides could take advantage of the moment to move towards the goal of two states living peacefully side-by-side.

But she added: "This is the sort of thing that takes time - you don't expect great leaps forward, you expect progress and I think we've seen some progress."

In turn, Arab ministers from Egypt, Jordan and the six Gulf states have urged Ms Rice to encourage Israel to soften its security measures in the West Bank.

On Thursday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said that talks on forming an unity government with Hamas had ""unfortunately reached a dead end".

An aide to Mr Abbas, Yasser Abed Rabbo, said that the Palestinian leader was preparing new "political measures" to deal with the failure of these talks.

Palestinians factions have been trying to form a unity government, in which Hamas takes a back seat, in the hope that this will allow international donors to lift a financial embargo on the Palestinian Authority.



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Army shoots and kills Palestinian resident of Hebron

IMEMC & agencies
01 December 2006

One Palestinian resident was shot and killed in the old town area of the southern West Bank city of Hebron after being shot in the head by Israeli soldiers on Friday at dawn.

Bashar Al Ja'bari, 22, was going to pray the morning prayers in the Abraham Mosque, also known as the Tomb of Patriarchs, located in the old city, when soldiers stationed at a military checkpoint at the mosque entrance shot Al Ja'bari in the head and killed him.

Palestinian medical sources in the city that Al Ja'bari was killed after sustaining multiple hits with live rounds in the chest and the head. He arrived to the public hospital in the city dead, the sources stated.




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Palestinian youth killed, two injured by Israeli military fire near Nablus

IMEMC & Agencies
30 November 2006

Palestinian medical sources in Nablus, in the northern part of the West Bank, reported on Tuesday evening that a 17-year old youth was shot and killed by Israeli military fire in Aqraba village, near Nablus.

Shadi Isam Younis, 17, was shot dead after the army invaded the village as several youth hurled stones at the invading forces.

The army fired rounds of live ammunition, rubber-coated bullets and gas bombs at the youth.

Two youth, identified as Dia' Abu Mazin, 18, and Mustafa Jamil, 17, were moderately injured.




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Israeli soldier who shot foreigner in Palestine to serve two-week sentence

IMEMC & Agencies
01 December 2006


In one of the few cases where the shooting of an unarmed man at an Israeli checkpoint in Asira al-Shemaliya, Palestine on November has actually warranted investigation by Israeli officials, the soldier responsible for shooting and injuring the man has been sentenced to a mere two weeks in Israeli military prison.
The man, Haytem Yasin, 25, was shot in the stomach and severely injured while visiting relatives in Palestine. Yasin was shot after apparently questioning the soldiers' invasive search techniques of female Palestinians passing through the checkpoint. According to Israeli sources, he is now being treated for major abdominal injuries in a hospital in the Israeli settlement of Petah Tikva.

The Israeli human rights group B'tselem reported that Yasin was first pushed by the soldier after making a comment about the searches. Then, according to eyewitness accounts, two other soldiers joined in hitting Yasin, knocking him to the ground and continuing to beat and kick him, then throwing him against the cement blocks around the checkpoint. After the soldiers had handcuffed him, they continued to beat and kick the man, and finally shot him in the stomach.

Yasin had been visiting Palestine from Algeria, where he lives with his parents.

Abuse at checkpoints is a common practice by Israeli soldiers, according to Israeli, Palestinian and international human rights groups who monitor the situation.



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Palestinian leaders call for extension of ceasefire, Israeli officials want to break it

IMEMC & Agencies
01 December 2006

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas today urged restraint and a continuation of a week-long ceasefire in the Gaza Strip between Israeli forces and the Palestinian resistance, and called for an expansion of the ceasefire to the West Bank. Israeli security officials, however, have advised the Israeli cabinet to break the truce and continue their daily attacks in the West Bank.

Abbas stated that the ceasefire, which he claimed to be successful despite Israeli forces killing at least four Palestinians in the West Bank since the ceasefire began last Sunday, paves the way for a return to negotiations and to the peace process with Israel.

"I hope that the Ceasefire will include the West Bank, so we can return to the Sharm el-Sheikh understandings [an agreement made in February 2005] signed by the Palestinian Leadership with the former Israeli Prime Minister Areil Sharon towards returning to the peace process," said Abbas in a joint press conference in Jericho with the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Rice met with both Abbas and the Israeli President Ehud Olmert in her short visit to the region this week.

Rice, for her part, expressed a commitment by the US to see a "just achievement" for the Palestinian people, which she said would come in the form of a two-state solution, with a viable, independent and democratic Palestinian state -- although she did not specify whether that state would include a return of land illegally seized by Israel or the city of Jerusalem - two key issues for the Palestinian people.

Meanwhile, inside Israel, the Israeli Cabinet met with military officials who advised a return to violence, and a continuation of the daily Israeli invasions and attacks in the Palestinian West Bank.

Israeli military sources reported that Palestinian resistance groups have not entirely adhered to the ceasefire, having fired 14 homemade shells into the Israeli desert from Gaza since the ceasefire was declared Sunday. The shells did not kill or hurt any Israelis. Palestinians point out that Israeli ceasefire violations have been much more severe - that at least five Palestinians have been killed, and a dozen more injured, by Israeli forces invading the West Bank. Among those killed are an elderly woman and a child.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stated the the Prime Minister would be willing to extend the ceasefire, but only if the homemade shells fired by the Palestinian resistance come to a complete halt. Thousands of Palestinian security are in place in the border areas in Gaza to try to prevent shells from being fired by rogue factions into Israel.

But the military officials advising the Israeli Cabinet today advised against extending the ceasefire, saying that their ongoing invasions and attacks in the West Bank have actually prevented Palestinians who had planned to attack Israel.

Many of the Palestinians that have been taken prisoner in the Israeli raids have never been charged with anything, and maintain that Israel picked them up merely to maintain a pretense that their invasions are legitimate. With no way to present the evidence of their innocence in Israeli courts, these prisoners of war have no hope that they will be given a day in court to disprove that Israeli charge.



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Iran seeks more influential reaction of intl community against Israeli crimes

Friday December 01, 2006United Nations, New York, Dec 1, IRNA

The Ambassador and deputy permanent representative of Iran in the UN Mehdi Danesh-Yazdi on Thursday asked more influential international reaction against the Zionist regime's crimes in Palestine and other Arabian occupied lands.
The following is full text of Danesh-Yazdi's address to the 61st UN General Assembly session, that had been held on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People:

"In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful,

"Madam President,

"At the very outset and on the occasion of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, I would like to reiterate the solidarity of the Government and the people of the Islamic Republic of Iran with the Palestinian people and Government in their brave struggle to defend their inalienable rights.

"May I take this opportunity to express my delegation's appreciation to the Secretary General for his informative reports and to the Chairman and members of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People for their tireless efforts to address the torment and onerous circumstances of the people of Palestine.

"This year's report once again illustrates the uninterrupted and increased violation of the rights and aspiration of the Palestinian people by the Israeli regime, resulting in the deterioration of the situation to an unprecedented and intolerable level.

"As the report indicates, throughout the period under review, the systematic pattern of human rights violations and massive breaches of international law and international humanitarian law by the Israeli regime has continued unabated.

"A fundamental principle of international law, flowing from the United Nations Charter, is the illegality of the acquisition of territory by use of force."

He reminded that, "The occupation of the Arab lands in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, which grossly contravenes this fundamental principle, lies at the heart of the festering crises in the Middle East."

He concluded that, "It gives rise to all illegal and criminal practices by the occupying forces, which all emanate from the inherent dynamics of occupation."

Indiscriminate use of military force, willfully killing and collectively punishing the Palestinians, destroying their homes and infrastructures, trying to economically strangulate them, unrelenting expansion of Jewish settlements on the occupied lands and targeted assassinations, which are all prohibited under the international law, has continued during the year under review.
Indeed, the report documents and records frequent resorts to all these practices by the Israeli regime.

"Madam President,

"The report at hand depicts Israeli brutal military campaigns in Gaza in the last summer, which included aerial bombardments, ground activities, the arrest of Palestinian cabinet ministers and lawmakers, and the destruction of civilian infrastructure, including the only electric power plant in Gaza, roads and bridges, as well as many other public and private installations.
"The said atrocious crimes have resulted in the killing of over 202 Palestinians, including 40 children.

"According to the report, from September 2005 to August 2006, 450 Palestinians had been killed and over 2,500 wounded, which underscores the ever-present reality of the brutal, violent, and oppressive policies and practices of the occupying regime against the defenseless Palestinian people.
"During the year under review, the Israeli regime implemented a number of cruel restrictive and punitive measures such as checkpoints , curfews and closures that adversely affected the Palestinian lives and in turn have added to their suffering and hardship.

"At the same time, the Israeli settlement activities in the occupied territories continued unabated, and the occupiers began the construction of thousands of housing units in the West Bank and Al-Quds.

"The pace of construction of the separation Wall in the West Bank also accelerated during the reporting period.

"In this regard, land expropriation orders were issued by the Israeli regime to allow the extension of the Wall around Al-Quds.

"The Palestinian election, held on 25 January 2006, was a landmark development in the history of the region.

"Nevertheless, the reaction of the Israeli regime and a number of western governments to this important development not only was unproductive and disgraceful, but indeed helped unmask the real face of the kind of democracy that certain quarters in the west seek to extend to the region.

"While 1,000 international observers, including missions from the European Union, the US and Canada observed the conduct of the elections and called it a free and fair process, soon the US and few of its allies embarked on a campaign to deny the results of the elections, undermine the Government emanating there from and subject the Palestinian people to further hardship and suffering for freely expressing their will.

"Madam President,

"The situation in the occupied Syrian Golan is not very different.

"It continues to be another source of tension in the region and the Israelis have thus far indicated that they are not intent on considering a withdrawal from the Golan.

"Rather, they have made repeated attempts to alter the demographic and legal character of the area by establishing new settlements and imposing their laws on Syrian citizens in

contravention of all relevant UN resolutions.

"Moreover, the last summer aggression of the Israeli regime against Lebanon, and its subsequent humiliating defeat, has not stopped this regime to continue threatening the Lebanese people and Government.

"As has been repeatedly indicated by UNIFIL, the Israeli regime continues to occupy the Lebanese lands and to violate Security Council resolution 1701, including through daily violations of Lebanese airspace and harassment of UNIFIL forces.

"Such dangerous practices would undoubtedly create more instability and serve to inflame tension and threaten to further destabalise the situation in that volatile part of the region.

"It is evident that the settlement of the Palestinian issue is imperative and indispensable for the attainment of a comprehensive and lasting peace and stability in the Middle East and beyond.

"Peace in the Middle East cannot be achieved through aggression, state terrorism, intimidation and occupation. It is, indeed, long overdue for the international community to take meaningful measures to restore the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.

"The Charter of United Nations has bestowed an immense responsibility upon this world body to help find a fair, just and durable solution to this crisis, which constitutes the core of the Middle East conflict.
"We believe that a durable peace in Palestine will be possible only through the full restoration of the rights of the Palestinian people including the return of all Palestinian refugees to their homeland and establishment of a Palestinian state with Al-Quds -Al -sharif as its capital.

Comment: By standing up to Israel, the Lobby, and their lap dogs in the US and the West, Iran has made itself the enemy of the day. It just isn't permissible to have people standing up in international bodies and telling the truth about what is going on in the Middle East. Every US news report on Hamas or Hizbullah notes that they are "backed by Syria" or "backed by Iran", without ever saying that "Israel is backed by the United States". That is what counts as "fair and balanced reporting".

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Israel stole private land for settlements: report

Tue Nov 21, 10:52 AM ET

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Almost 40 percent of land held by Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank is privately owned by Palestinians, a left-wing Israeli group that monitors and opposes settlement-building said in a new report on Tuesday.

Peace Now said it based its findings on the database of Israel's military-run Civil Administration in the West Bank. The Civil Administration declined comment on the apparent leak, pending its examination of the report.
Israel has long maintained that Jewish settlements, which are illegal under international law, were built on "state lands," or areas not registered in anyone's name, and that no private property were being seized for settlement building.

"This report is a harsh indictment against the whole settlements enterprise and the role all Israeli governments played in it," Peace Now said on its Web site.

"The report shows that Israel has effectively stolen privately-owned Palestinian land for the purpose of constructing settlements and in violation of Israel's own laws regarding activities in the West Bank," the movement said.

The Palestinians, who want all the West Bank along with the Gaza Strip for a future state, and human rights groups have long accused Israel of illegally expropriating "state land" for the purpose of building settlements.

According to the report, Palestinians privately own nearly 40 percent of the land on which settlements have been built, and 3,400 buildings have been constructed on those properties.

In addition, more than 50 percent of the land on which settlements have been constructed has been designated "state," or unregistered, land by Israel, Peace Now said.

About 2.4 million Palestinians and 260,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war but stopped short of annexing.

The YESHA settler council, responding to the Peace Now report, said in a statement Israel halted authorizing construction on privately-owned land in the West Bank after a 1979 Israeli court ruling on the issue.

Peace Now said that in spite of court restrictions, Israel continued to build settlement homes on lands it knew to be owned by Palestinians.

Some of the settlement blocs Israeli leaders have said they intend to keep in any final peace deal with the Palestinians have been built in part on private Palestinian land, the report said.

They include the settlements of Maale Adumim, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, and Ariel in the central West Bank.

The World Court says settlements Israel has built on occupied territory are illegal. Israel disputes this.



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Arabic teachers: Security situation is damaging the subject's image

Last update - 04:05 30/11/2006 By Or Kashti, Haaretz Correspondent

Carmit Bar-On, an Arabic teacher in Rosh Ha'ayin's Begin high school, is frustrated. The Internet site she set up for Arabic studies won a prize from the European Union, after competing with 800 educational sites from some 30 countries, but has received no recognition from the Education Ministry.

"Almost every student of Arabic in Israel uses this site. I built it and maintain and update it myself, on my own time. It's terribly frustrating, but since I didn't build it to win a prize, the education system's attitude is less important to me," she says.
Many Arabic teachers share Bar-On's frustration. More than 50 percent of the Arabic teachers in secondary schools cited the language's low status as the main obstacle in teaching it, a new study of the Henrietta Szold Institute, the National Institute for Research in the Behavioral Sciences, finds.

The survey questioned some 360 teachers in the Jewish school system and examined the feelings of principals and students as well.

Arabic is a compulsory subject in junior high, but only is taught in 80 percent of the schools, the study finds. However, senior Education Ministry sources say that only about two thirds of junior high schools teach Arabic.

"The regulations are not always followed," says the ministry's supervisor for Arabic studies, Shlomo Alon. "The ministry allows for French to be taught in place of Arabic, or Russian in communities with a concentration of new immigrants. A few places teach Amharic as well, and some junior high schools teach no foreign language at all."

Bar-On says that many dedicated teachers encounter not only a reluctance among pupils to study subjects considered impractical, like mathematics or English, but also prejudice and ignorance. "The Arabic language and culture are seen as inferior and primitive," she says.

Only 2009 pupils took the five-unit matriculation exam in Arabic last year, 6 percent fewer than two years earlier. This is a negligible percentage of the Jewish students who took matriculation exams.

"Some of my friends asked what I needed it for," says Yaniv Ninio, a 12th grader from Rosh Ha'ayin studying Arabic. "We are actually studying about another culture. It's important to know the other - both in war and in peace. You can't run away from it and pretend it doesn't exist."

According to the study, 63 percent of the Arabic students in high school said they were studying it because they wanted to "serve in intelligence." Zuf Aragman, also of Rosh Ha'ayin, chose it because she wanted to study another language. "Pupils think that those who study Arabic do it only to get into intelligence, but that's not necessarily true. Languages are among the only things school gives you, because history, for example, I can learn from books," she says.

Some 80 percent of the teachers who participated in the study support adding Arabic to the compulsory matriculation exams. Only about half the principals support this, while the pupils predictedly object. Making the exam in Arabic compulsory would prove that the Education Ministry regards it as an important subject, says Alon. "Arabic must be exactly like literature, civic studies or history."

"If the pupils knew that at the end of the road they had to pass an exam in Arabic, they would doubtless study it much more seriously," says Bar-On. "Every subject that is required for matriculation is taken seriously. It's the only way. Something is wrong here if for so many years the Education Ministry has not succeeded in making it compulsory for pupils to take even a small-scale Arabic exam for matriculation."

The Education Ministry commented: "We are aware of the problem that exists in certain schools, which do not teach Arabic, and we enforce the requirement by means of district instructors and reports to the district directors, who are supposed to oversee study rosters."



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ADL slams UN body for making Tutu head of Beit Hanun mission

Last update - 12:01 30/11/2006 By Haaretz Service

The Anti-Defamation League on Thursday blasted the United Nations Human Rights Council for appointing Desmond Tutu as head of its fact-finding mission to the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanun.

The mission is charged with investigating a botched Israel Defense Forces shelling in Beit Hanun which killed 19 Palestinian civilians.
"The appointment of Desmond Tutu as head of the fact-finding mission to Beit Hanun is an extension of the anti-Israel kangaroo court tactics used by the UN Human Rights Council," said ADL National Director Abraham Foxman.

"No fact-finding mission can produce balanced and trustworthy results if its leader professes to know all the answers beforehand.

"Tutu has already publicly expressed his anti-Israel views and his opinions regarding what happened in Beit Hanun, and combined with the one-sided anti-Israel mandate provided by the resolution, the results of the mission are all-but preordained," he added.

The council, which has censured only Israel in its six-month existence, recently passed a resolution calling for a mission to "assess the situation of victims, address the needs of survivors, and make recommendations on ways and means to protect Palestinian civilians against further Israeli assaults."

Tutu, the former Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, has spoken out against Israel in the past and publicly denounced the Beit Hanun operation.

"It is an outrage that cries out to heaven and we must condemn it unequivocally as we do the atrocities committed by suicide bombers against Israeli civilians," Tutu said.

Tutu said Thursday he was "honored" that the United Nations had asked him to lead a fact-finding mission. "I hope that our mission will advance the cause of peace and stability for Palestinian and Israeli alike, and contribute to halt the awful carnage and bloodletting," he said.

"I believe fervently that it is possible for Arab and Jew to live amicably together," he added.

Foxman has condemned the UN Human Rights Council - an effort to reform and replace the UN Commission on Human Rights - an "overwhelming failure." The organization has been widely criticized for concentrating its efforts on condemnations of Israel, and Foxman branded its replacement a political tool of its Arab and Muslim majority.

The ADL said the new UN Human Rights Council has "ignored the world's worst human rights atrocities and instead has pursued Israel for political gain."

The 47-member council, which earlier this year replaced the discredited Human Rights Commission, has been severely criticized by some countries, including the United States, for moving four times to condemn Israel but not taking up human rights violations in Myanmar, North Korea or Sudan.

The Council has come under similar criticism from outgoing Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

"From the day it opened for business, the UN Human Rights Council has never operated with any moral authority," Foxman said in a statement released on Tuesday.

"The Council has failed in its most fundamental purpose: to monitor human rights abuses in all parts of the world. Instead, it has become a political tool wielded by its Arab and Muslim members who have the power of an automatic majority. The Council has ignored the world's worst human rights atrocities and instead has pursued Israel for political gain."

Earlier this month, the Council condemned an IDF artillery attack that killed 20 civilians in the northern Gaza Strip and ordered an on-site investigation by UN Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour.

The organization made no reference to Palestinian Qassam attacks. But when Arbour visited the area last week, she and her party were nearly hit by a Qassam that slammed into the Negev town of Sderot, in a salvo that killed a local factory worker.

"Closing in on six months since its first meeting, the Council has held one regular session and three special sessions and has yet to address a single state besides Israel," the ADL said in the statement. "The Council passed two resolutions yesterday condemning Israel while ignoring other more pressing problems around the world."

Comment: That wasn't a botched shelling. It was a complete success from the point of view of Israel and the IDF. But what else would you expect from the ADL, the attack dogs of Israel in the United States, ready to snap at anyone that doesn't offer the lushest of praise for Israeli brutality.

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Rice meets PM, praises Olmert's diplomatic plan

Last update - 07:16 01/12/2006 By Yoav Stern and Akiva Eldar, Haaretz Correspondent, Haaretz Service and Agencies

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem on Thursday and praised the prime minister for his diplomatic initiative presented earlier this week.

"Rice expressed her appreciation for Prime Minister Olmert's speech earlier this week and said that it was an important step that was likely to both contribute towards calm and advance the peace processes in the region," said the Prime Minister's Office in a statement.

Olmert said Monday during a speech in Sde Boker that Israel would accept a territorially contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank in exchange for Palestinians relinquishing their demand for a return of Palestinian refugees to Israel.
Olmert said Monday during a speech in Sde Boker that Israel would accept a territorially contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank in exchange for Palestinians relinquishing their demand for a return of Palestinian refugees to Israel.

Rice also praised the Gaza cease-fire, as well as Israel's restraint in the face of violations of the truce by Palestinian militants.

"[The cease-fire] must be backed by deeds," said the secretary of state.

"Prime Minister Olmert informed Secretary of State Rice on his meeting with Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman regarding the cease-fire, [arms] smuggling and the ongoing efforts to release [captured Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit," said the statement. "The secretary of state updated the prime minister on her meeting earlier today with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas."

"The two also discussed the Iranian issue," added the statement.

Olmert's chief of staff Yoram Turbowitz, his military adviser, Major General Gadi Shamni, the prime minister's diplomatic adviser, Shalom Turgeman, and his media adviser, Asaf Shariv, also attended the meeting.

The American delegation included U.S. Ambassador to Israel Richard Jones, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs C. David Welch and National Security Council Director for Near East and North African Affairs Elliot Abrams.

Following her meeting with Olmert, Rice met with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

Livni said prior to the meeting that "the prime minister's speech was very important, in which he sent an important message to the Palestinian Authority."

"I believe that there is a diplomatic horizon," she added. "I would like to thank the United States and Secretary Rice on their policy which ensures that terror is not rewarded. I would also like to thank them for on the other hand sending a message to moderates that there is a diplomatic horizon, which strengthens them."

Rice meets Abbas, says Washington to intensify peace efforts

Speaking a press conference with Abbas in Jericho hours earlier, Rice said that Washington wanted to "intensify our efforts" to renew the peace process.

She said that the U.S. has made clear it expects a viable, contiguous Palestinian state when it is created, and that no actions should be taken now to prejudge the outcome of a final peace agreement.

She added that the U.S. is interested in seeing Palestinian Authority reforms of its security services and political institutions.

Meanwhile, Abbas told reporters that talks on a unity government with the ruling Hamas organization had reached a "dead end."

Ahead of the Jericho meeting, an Abbas confidant said he believed the cease-fire and a conciliatory speech by Olmert earlier this week have created new momentum.

"I think it's up to us and the Israelis to make it work," said the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat. "It can work. The opportunity is there."

In Amman on Thursday, Bush appealed for support for Abbas, referring to him by his commonly used nomme de guerre, Abu Mazen.

"Abu Mazen, who I believe wants there to be a Palestinian state living side by side in peace with Israel, deserves the support of the world. And he deserves support in peeling his government away from those who do not recognize Israel's right to exist," Bush said at a news conference with the Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Israeli officials said Olmert would emphasize to Rice that pressure must be maintained on the Palestinian leadership to continue isolating Hamas and press for the formation of a Palestinian government that recognizes Israel, renounces violence and accepts previous peace accords, as the international community has demanded.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar of Hamas said he didn't think the meeting would help the Palestinian cause.

"Our experience with these meetings and these visits are that they justify more Israeli aggression against our people," Zahar said at a news conference before the Rice-Abbas talks began.

Sources say that Rice's visit to Jerusalem is designed to show American support for the fledgling negotiating process. The process began with the cease-fire that began Sunday, and should presumably lead to setting up a Palestinian national unity government.

In the next stage, the U.S. is expected to help jump-start the political negotiations between Israel and the PA.

Palestinian sources said Rice is expected to ask Abbas and Israel to expand the cease-fire to the West Bank. They will also discuss implementing the border passes agreement that was signed by the U.S., Israel and the PA after Israel's pullout from Gaza.

UN report: Israel violating Gaza border crossing agreement

The visit by Rice is expected to be preceded by the release of an extremely critical report written by the United Nations Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs in the Territories. The report, a copy of which has reached Haaretz, accuses Israel of violating the border crossings agreement's every single clause.

The report says that closing the passes for most of the year catapulted the unemployment rate in the Gaza Strip from 33 percent in 2005 to 42 percent this year. Since Shalit's abduction on June 25, the passes have been closed 86 percent of the time, the report says. Since mid-January, the average number of trucks passing through Karni has been 12 a day, while in the agreement Israel had undertaken to raise the number to 400 trucks a day by the end of the year.

Israel also violated its commitment to alleviate the passage of people and merchandise in the West Bank, and to enable the passage between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. In fact, all contact between the two regions has been cut off. The number of roadblocks in the West Bank rose during the past year by 44 percent and Israel divided the West Bank into ten enclaves.

Israel broke its commitment to allow convoys to pass from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank and to advance the operation of air and sea ports in the Gaza Strip.

The UN report emphasizes that since the beginning of April, Israel had cited security reasons for most of the closures of the Karni terminal, but that no security breaches had occurred there since April 26.

The cumbersome security arrangements enable only 40 percent of the trucks carrying export goods from the Gaza Strip to go through the border pass. The resulting damage to agricultural exports is estimated to be more than $30 million for this year. The losses incurred to the hothouses purchased from the Gush Katif settlements, resulting from the need to destroy hundreds of tons of strawberries and flowers, reached $6 million.



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Star Wars?

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News from Nearby Space

By Gregg Easterbrook
TMQ

Meanwhile the more researchers learn about asteroid and comet strikes on Earth, these events seem much more common than previously assumed -- which is definitely not good news. Last summer, TMQ laid out the disturbing evidence that space-rock strikes powerful enough to cause mass extinctions were not confined to the primordial mists: Something gigantic smashed into the Earth about 10,000 years ago, and there might have been a severe comet or meteorite strike as recently as the year 535. Recently researcher Dallas Abbott of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University has found indications that a huge comet or asteroid fell into the Indian Ocean about 4,800 years ago, causing global tsunamis.
Abbott's work is especially important because she is studying the oceans, not land. Most of what's known about past space-object strikes comes from the study of land craters. But three-quarters of Earth's surface is water; Abbott reasoned that three-quarters of space objects must crash into the seas. Her work suggests a lot of comets and large rocks have hit the seas, many recently in geologic terms. As recently as a decade ago, most scientists assumed that space-rock strikes powerful enough to cause general devastation happen only every million years or so. Now it looks like they are far more frequent. If a rock comparable to the one that struck the Indian Ocean 4,800 years ago struck today in Kansas, half the population of the United States might die. And as TMQ endlessly points out, what is NASA doing about this? Absolutely nothing.

NASA will fund this if the agency is assured it will be incredibly expensive and serve no purpose.

NASA continues to waste about 10 billion of your tax dollars annually on a space station project that had no scientific value, existing solely to justify money for aerospace contractors and staff budgets at NASA manned-flight centers. NASA plans to waste 200-500 billion of your tax dollars on return-to-the-Moon missions that don't even have a theoretical justification -- the sole purpose of return-to-the-Moon is money for NASA insiders. Yet if a comet or large meteor was spotted heading toward our world, NASA could do nothing. And NASA isn't even researching possible anti-space-rock technology. No agency of your government wastes taxpayers' money more cynically or systematically than the National Aeronautics and Space Agency. If a big space object strikes the Earth, sending humanity's survivors back into the Dark Ages, our descendents will consider the present Washington government history's worst collections of fools for doing nothing while there was time.



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News from Distant Space

By Gregg Easterbrook
TMQ

Previous TMQs have noted that as telescopes improve, astronomers find supernovae are more common and more destructive than assumed -- and this is not necessarily the best possible news. The latest discovery, from a team lead by University of Toronto researcher Andy Howell, is that the "Chandrasekhar limit" on supernova explosions isn't a limit.
Subramanyan Chandrasekhar, one of the leading 20th-century astronomers, won a Nobel Prize for his 1930s studies that maintained the most common category of exploding stars, called the Type Ia supernova, could not exceed about 1.4 times the mass of our sun; this seemed to impose an upper boundary on the amount of destruction such a supernova explosion could cause. But the Toronto researchers observed a Type Ia supernova, dubbed SNLS-03D3bb, that reached about two solar masses before detonating, and thus released far more radiation than was thought possible. There's another implication. Partly owing to Chandrasekhar's arguments, it was assumed all Type Ia supernovae explode with about the same luminosity, meaning their light level could be used to estimate the expanse between the Milky Way and distant galaxies. (If they're all giving off approximately the same amount of light, relative measurements allow you to estimate how far away they are.) Current estimates of the size and age of the universe, and its rate of expansion, rely on the assumption that Type Ia supernovae obey the Chandrasekhar limit. If it turns out this class of exploding stars varies significantly, all bets might be off about how large and old the universe is, or its rate of expansion.

He thought there was a limit to the destructive power of nature. Umm, looks like he thought wrong.

Now consider this. Since Edwin Hubble's discovery in 1929 that the universe was not static but expanding, theorists have debated whether the expansion would continue forever, gradually slow down or eventually reverse as gravity overcame the outward momentum of the Big Bang and pulled the stuff of the firmament back to its starting point. (The latter conjecture is called the Big Crunch.) Researchers using Type Ia supernova as measuring sticks declared in 1998 that cosmic expansion was accelerating, which nobody's theory predicted. The galaxies could not be speeding up unless energy were somehow being added to them, which caused cosmologists to speculate that mysterious "dark energy" permeates the universe and functions as the mirror image of gravity. No physicist has offered even the vaguest explanation of where dark energy originates or what powers it. (General relativity theory does offer an explanation of how gravity derives its power to pull.) Yet even though the dark energy concept requires you to believe that most of the energy of the universe is undetectable and so far inexplicable, physicists rapidly have accepted the idea that dark energy exists and even might be the dominant force of the cosmos. What if it turns out the universe is not accelerating, that the apparent rising rate of expansion is a data error caused by the false assumption that all Type Ia supernovas have a standard brightness? Then physicists will have to announce that dark energy never existed in the first place. But trust us, we're experts!



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'UFO' sightings most likely meteors

The World Today - Wednesday, 29 November , 2006 12:46:00
Reporter: Nance Haxton

ELEANOR HALL: Over the last two days, police and news organisations in South Australia and western Victoria have been inundated with reports of mysterious lights in the night sky.

Some have described a fireball shooting across the horizon just before sunset, while callers in north-west Victoria have reported seeing a bright object flying across the sky.

The Astronomical Society of South Australia's Dr Tony Beresford has told Nance Haxton that while the sightings have sparked some UFO speculation, the cosmic mystery is most likely a meteor.
ELEANOR HALL: Over the last two days, police and news organisations in South Australia and western Victoria have been inundated with reports of mysterious lights in the night sky.

Some have described a fireball shooting across the horizon just before sunset, while callers in north-west Victoria have reported seeing a bright object flying across the sky.

The Astronomical Society of South Australia's Dr Tony Beresford has told Nance Haxton that while the sightings have sparked some UFO speculation, the cosmic mystery is most likely a meteor.

TONY BERESFORD: It was just one particular meteor which was widely observed. It was observed from around the metropolitan area to, I suspect, over in the border regions of Victoria and New South Wales.

NANCE HAXTON: And how do we know that it was a meteor?

TONY BERESFORD: Well, it was a short time, it was moving quite fast, faster than a satellite would've and there were no satellites due to come in.

NANCE HAXTON: And are there any reports of what happened to that meteor? I mean, does it burn up before landing or...

TONY BERESFORD: This one almost certainly did. It's... in fact, I have several reports which indicated at the end it more or less exploded.

NANCE HAXTON: How common is it for meteors such as this to be seen so brightly and be reported by people?

TONY BERESFORD: Well, about once a year or so, maybe twice.

NANCE HAXTON: So meteors are really falling from the sky all the time, it's just sometimes we see them?

TONY BERESFORD: Some, yes. We're in a cosmic shooting gallery. There are several moderately recent craters in the Australian continent, but the most recent appreciable-sized one is of course the very famous meteor crater in Arizona, only about 50,000 years ago.

NANCE HAXTON: 50,000 years ago? So hopefully our number's not coming up for a while yet?

TONY BERESFORD: Well, you don't... you never know. I'm one of these people who think we should do proper surveys for an asteroid that could possibly impact the earth, because we... if we did find one then we could probably divert it enough. You don't have to change its orbit very much.

The Australian Government doesn't believe in it, but the Americans are spending money employing two people up at Siding Spring looking for it.

NANCE HAXTON: You think that the risk of an asteroid hitting earth is enough that Australia should really look at taking more note of the risk?

TONY BERESFORD: Yes, yes they should. The risk is very small, but the number... the possible global consequences are enormous.

ELEANOR HALL: That's the Astronomical Society of South Australia's Dr Tony Beresford speaking to Nance Haxton.



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UFO crashes in Krasnoyarsk

08:02 GMT, Dec 01, 2006
Interfax Information Service

KRASNOYARSK. Dec 1 (Interfax) - An unidentified flying object has
reportedly crashed between the towns of Yeniseisk and Lesosibirsk in the
Yenisei district of the Krasnoyarsk territory.

Local residents say they observed the crash at about 10 a.m. local
time, adding that they also saw traces of fire in the taiga, the main
department of interior affairs of the territory told Interfax.
"An investigative group of the department of interior affairs of
the Krasnoyarsk territory and representatives of the transport
prosecutor's office and Rosavianadzor were sent to the scene of the
crash," the department said.

The Siberian regional center of the Russian Emergency Situations
Ministry told Interfax it cannot confirm the crash. A Mil Mi-8
helicopter flew over the scene and no traces of any crash were detected,
it said.



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Ancient tsunami engulfed Mediterranean coastline

www.chinaview.cn 2006-12-01 15:03:51

Maximum wave crests heights predicted by a computer simulation of the ancient event. Blue lines are arrival times of the first tsunami waves.

BEIJING, Dec. 1 (Xinhuanet) -- Imagine a volcano avalanche generated tsunami 10 stories high containing enough sediment and rock to cover the entire island of Manhattan with a layer of debris thicker than the height of Empire State Building.

According to a computer simulation, that's what happened 8,000 years ago in Sicily when Mt. Etna erupted and produced an avalanche that hurled six cubic miles of dirt and rock into the water, creating a tsunami that spread across the entire Mediterranean Sea and onto the shore of three continents in only a few hours.
The mountain of rubble swept into the sea at more than 200 mph, pulverized the sea bed and changed thick layers of soft marine sediment into jelly. It also started an underwater mudslide that flowed for hundreds of miles.

Researchers at the National Institute of Geology and Volcanolgy in Italy have also linked the tsunami with the mysterious abandonment of Atlit-Yam, a Neolithic village located along the coast of present-day Israel.

When archeologists discovered the village about 20 years ago, they found evidence of a sudden evacuation, including a pile of fish that had been gutted and sorted but then left to rot.

"A tsunami was not suspected before," said lead researcher Maria Pareschi.

To create their computer simulation, researchers used sonar-equipped boats to survey seafloor sediment displaced by the Mt. Etna avalanche.

Their recreation suggests the tsunami's waves reached heights of up to 130 feet and maximum speeds of up to 450 mph, making it more powerful than the Indonesian tsunami that killed more than 180,000 people in 2004.

According to Pareschi, if the same tsunami struck today, Southern Italy would be covered with water within the first 15 minutes. An hour later the waves would reach Greece's western coasts. After an hour and a half, the city of Benghazi in Northern Africa would be hit. At the three and a half hour mark, the waves would have traversed the entire Mediterranean to reach the coasts of Israel, Lebanon and Syria.

"Should the Neolithic Etna tsunami have occurred today, the impact is tremendous because the Eastern Mediterranean coasts are very inhabited ones," Pereschi said.

Avalanches and minor eruptions still occur on Mt. Etna today, but so far, nothing approaching the magnitude of the ancient event.



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Not a fortress, or a temple, or a calendar. Stonehenge was a hospital

Simon Jenkins
Friday December 1, 2006
The Guardian

The Stonehenge mystery is solved. I always knew there was something odd about the "Amesbury archer". He died circa 2300BC and was rediscovered near the henge in Wiltshire in 2002, one of the most sensational prehistoric corpses ever found. His hair was laced with gold, the earliest found in England. His grave contained traces of fine clothes and implements of archery and copper-working. Analysis of his bones and teeth revealed that he came from central Europe, probably Switzerland, with possessions from Spain and France. Was this evidence of invasion? Was the Amesbury archer a Beaker lord of Stonehenge and were foreigners perhaps responsible for moving its giant bluestones from Wales?
One thing about the archer was strange. He was missing a kneecap, requiring him to walk with one leg rigid. Bone deterioration suggested that the deformity took place years before his death. He was an improbable warrior, more likely a rich trader. Besides, near him lay a younger male revealed (such being the wonders of science) as a close relative brought up in south-east England. So what was this wealthy but disabled man doing in the shadow of Stonehenge, far from his and his putative son's birthplace?

Cut to the hallowed meeting room of the Society of Antiquaries in London last October. It was packed with excited Stonehenge pundits (the serious ones), gathered to hear news from the front. The origin of Stonehenge is British archaeology's oldest unsolved mystery, its Fermat's last theorem. How the four-ton bluestones were brought to Salisbury Plain from the Preseli hills of south Wales has been answered by engineers, but nobody has found out why.

Why go to the colossal expense of such transportation, when Stonehenge's sandstone monoliths were dragged from down the road at Marlborough? What was so special about the bluestones? To this the Gog and Magog of Stonehenge studies, Professors Geoff Wainwright and Timothy Darvill, were to give their answer. Theirs was archaeology's noblest endeavour, to pull the sword of meaning from the stone of time.

Darvill teased his audience by asking it to vote on half a dozen Stonehenge theories, many of them beloved by colleagues in the hall. Was it perhaps a fortress, a temple, an astronomical device, or a ring of ancestors turned to stone? None of these explained the need for such a gargantuan effort of trans-shipment. What was it about Wales that Wiltshire could not offer?

The answer had to lie in Preseli itself, in the hills of Carn Menyn and Carn Goedog where Stonehenge's dolerite and rhyolite bluestones were quarried. (They are still littered with the prehistoric quarrymen's discarded monoliths.) This rolling landscape has become intensive archaeological hunting ground. Wainwright, Darvill and Bournemouth University have crawled every inch. Somewhere in these wild moors and rocky outcrops must be the key to Stonehenge.

What is most remarkable about Preseli is the plethora of springs on the hillside. Many "holy wells" have been ascribed miraculous healing powers throughout history. But Preseli's are remarkable for their number and for the dolmens, enclosures and barrows surrounding the area. More remarkable still, in front of each are bluestones, rearranged and decorated as if to create an altar and a pool. This was clearly a place of prehistoric pilgrimage, and the bluestones were thought to hold its magic.

By the agrarian revolution of the third millennium BC Stonehenge was already an important site, but its extension about 2300BC was clearly intended by its guardians to make it a major pilgrimage attraction. This needed some sensational draw, and what could be more sensational than a henge composed of the fabled Preseli bluestones, fount of a hundred holy wells? It was worth any Olympian expense.

The medieval historian Geoffrey of Monmouth told of a belief in the healing power of Stonehenge's stones, brought by Arthur's magician, Merlin, "from Ireland", where stones have long had magic properties. Geoffrey's stories are ridiculed, but his folk memory might contain a grain of truth. Could the appeal of the bluestones lie not in ancestor worship or astronomical ritual but in the power these objects were thought to hold back in Preseli? In his new book, Stonehenge: Biography of a Landscape, Darvill points out that the arrangement of the stones at Stonehenge even reflects their geological location back in Wales.

Stonehenge was distinct among British henges - in its scale and spacious setting, and in the exceptional number of burial mounds round it. As Darvill says, it was "constantly being remodelled and changed over a period of perhaps a thousand years ... getting larger, more grand and more complicated". True its architecture is dominated by astronomical calculations, implying a priesthood and time-related rituals. But this would have meant nothing to ordinary mortals. What drew them to Stonehenge from across Europe must have been specific, a reputation for relief from disease and disability.

Throughout history religion has sold itself as offering salvation in this life as well as the next. The mass appeal of the early church lay in the quackery of relics and miracles. In many cultures priests are still medicine men. This may embarrass theologians, but it rarely embarrassed monks or missionaries. Monasteries were the teaching hospitals of their day and reliquaries their medicine chests. Miraculous relics changed hands for vast sums (and vast wars). Pretending to save bodies was as profitable as pretending to save souls, if more vulnerable to disproof.

That is why the 10th-century monks of Ely stole the remains of St Withburga from her church at East Dereham, eager for its large pilgrim income. That is why the canons of Windsor in 1478 robbed the tomb of "Doctor" Schorne of North Marston in Buckinghamshire. Schorne was a quack rector who invented a cure for gout (getting his patients to wash in his hugely profitable well). He was even revered as a saint. By relocating his corpse to Windsor the canons hoped to raise funds for their new St George's Chapel - and did. They were even forced to pay compensation to North Marston. The shrine of Holywell in Clwyd is still visited by devout Catholics, who change into swimming costumes to plunge into the holy waters. The line between faith healing and alternative medicine has always been a fine one.

The curative properties in wells relate, if at all, to their cleanliness and chemical composition. To the best of my knowledge there has been no analysis of Preseli's water to see if it has any "spa" components such as iron salts. Either way, moving the bluestones was a massive leap of medical faith. But it was one that clearly worked. As Darvill points out, the burial mounds round Stonehenge are not just unprecedented in their number but also in the deformities of their inmates.

I find this theory convincing. The joy of archaeology is that it licenses wild conjecture by subjecting it to the relentless test of science. Here it cries, plus ça change ... In the third millennium BC - as in the third AD - the rich would go anywhere and believe any nonsense if they thought it might win them health and longevity. The Amesbury archer was a Swiss migrant taken by his son to Europe's most famous faith healers, with their magic stones and astronomical mumbo-jumbo. Stonehenge's appeal was not religious. It answered to the simplest of human cravings, the relief of pain and the postponement of death. The Great Cursus points not to heaven but to Harley Street.



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Pyramids were built with concrete: Study

December 01, 2006

The ancient Egyptians built their great Pyramids by pouring concrete into blocks high on the site rather than hauling up giant stones, according to a new Franco-American study, The Times, London reported.

The research, by materials scientists, adds fuel to a theory that the pharaohs' craftsmen had enough skill and materials at hand to cast the two-tonne limestone blocks that dress the Cheops and other Pyramids. Despite mounting support from scientists, Egyptologists have rejected the concrete claim, first made in the late 1970s by Joseph Davidovits, a French chemist.
The stones, say the historians and archeologists, were all carved from nearby quarries, heaved up huge ramps and set in place by armies of workers. Some dissenters say that levers or pulleys were used, even though the wheel had not been invented at that time, the paper reported.

Until recently it was hard for geologists to distinguish between natural limestone and the kind that would have been made by reconstituting liquefied lime. But according to Professor Gilles Hug, of the French National Aerospace Research Agency (Onera), and Professor Michel Barsoum, of Drexel University in Philadelphia, the covering of the great Pyramids at Giza consists of two types of stone: one from the quarries and one man-made.

"There's no way around it. The chemistry is well and truly different," Professor Hug told Science et Vie magazine. Their study is being published this month in the Journal of the American Ceramic Society. The pair used X-rays, a plasma torch and electron microscopes to compare small fragments from pyramids with stone from the Toura and Maadi quarries. They found "traces of a rapid chemical reaction which did not allow natural crystalisation. The reaction would be inexplicable if the stones were quarried, but perfectly comprehensible if one accepts that they were cast like concrete."

The pair believe that the concrete method was used only for the stones on the higher levels of the Pyramids. There are some 2.5 million stone blocks on the Cheops Pyramid. The 10-tonne granite blocks at their heart were also natural, they say. The professors agree with the "Davidovits theory" that soft limestone was quarried on the damp south side of the Giza Plateau. This was then dissolved in large, Nile-fed pools until it became a watery slurry.

Lime from fireplace ash and salt were mixed in with it. The water evaporated, leaving a moist, clay-like mixture. This wet "concrete" would have been carried to the site and packed into wooden moulds where it would set hard in a few days. Davidovits and his team at the Geopolymer Institute at Saint-Quentin tested the method recently, producing a large block of concrete limestone in ten days.

The concrete theorists also point out differences in density of the pyramid stones, which have a higher mass near the bottom and bubbles near the top, like old-style cement blocks. Opponents of the theory dispute the scientific evidence. They also say that the diverse shapes of the stones show that moulds were not used. They add that a huge amount of limestone chalk and burnt wood would have been needed to make the concrete, while the Egyptians had the manpower to hoist all the natural stone they wanted, the paper said.



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Older than the sun, the meteorite scientists call 'the real time machine'

Ian Sample, science correspondent
Friday December 1, 2006
The Guardian

- Rock which hit lake is oldest object ever found
- Tests reveal fragment created before solar system

As lumps of rock go it looks much like any other, unexceptional despite the deep red of its cool, smooth surface. The pieces range in size from pea-sized lumps to larger fist-sized chunks. But today, scientists will announce this is no ordinary stone. Prised from a frozen lake in northern Canada, it has become a prime candidate for the oldest known object on Earth.
The chunk came from a meteorite that scored an arc of fire across the skies before slamming into Lake Tagish in British Columbia in 2000. It has been pored over by scientists ever since, and is today revealed to contain particles that predate the birth of our nearest star, the sun.

The Tagish Lake meteorite was already regarded as exceptional because its mineral composition linked it to the earliest days of the formation of the solar system, more than 4.5bn years ago. The fragments of meteorite that still exist are among the most pristine in the world, as they were protected from contamination when they became wedged in blocks of lake ice.

The latest research shows that peppered throughout the meteorite are grains that formed even earlier, in a frigid cloud of molecules, possibly at the edge of the swirling disc of dust that ultimately collapsed to form the sun and all the planets of the solar system.

The discovery suggests that while the first light from the sun fell on the fledgling Earth, as the dinosaurs rose and died out and humans gained dominance, the meteorite was hurtling around the heavens on a billions-of-years-long journey destined to terminate with a thud in Yukon territory.

Researchers at Nasa's Johnson Space Centre in Houston examined a two gram fragment of the meteorite and focused on tiny, hollow, carbon spheres embedded within it. Each "globule" measured just a few thousandths of a millimetre across.

Using electron microscopy and isotope tests, the scientists looked at the chemical make-up of the grains and discovered they had unusual ratios of different forms of nitrogen and hydrogen. Ratios of the isotope nitrogen-15 to nitrogen-14 were nearly twice those on Earth, while the ratio of deuterium, a heavy form of hydrogen, to normal hydrogen, was between 2.5 and nine times higher than usual.

Reporting in the journal Science today, a team lead by Keiko Nakamura-Messenger and Michael Zolensky show the levels of the isotopes in the meteorite could only arise from chemical reactions taking place in an extremely cold climate, where temperatures were as low as -260C. Those conditions would only be found in remote molecular clouds before the formation of the solar system, or at the very edge of what is known as the protosolar disc that was later to coalesce into the celestial bodies of the solar system. "These little particles within the meteorite seem to predate everything else. We don't know exactly how old they are, but they could be billions of years older than the rest of the meteorite," said Dr Zolensky.

Between 40,000 and 60,000 tonnes of meteorite matter is believed to land on Earth every year, and around 90% of this rains down steadily as fine particles that are rarely even identified.

Much of the material immediately disappears beneath the waves, and significant amounts are lost in the world's deserts and forests. Only a few tens of kilograms, in larger chunks, are usually recovered from any year's fallout.

Fragments of the Tagish Lake meteorite were recovered after locals spotted the fireball it created as it tore through the atmosphere at 20 miles per second. Large clumps of the meteorite were collected from the surface of the frozen lake, but other chunks were removed later embedded in blocks of ice, and transported to research labs. Around one tonne of fragments from the meteorite is now held in the Natural History Museum in London and at other sites in the US, Canada and Germany.

"These are the real time machines, the material that goes back to the earliest formation of the solar system," said Caroline Smith, meteorite curator at the Natural History Museum.

The meteorite is known as a carbonaceous chondrite and contains what many scientists regard as the building blocks for life: carbon, myriad clay minerals and even amino acids. Scientists say the clay layers, principally silicates, can form protective pockets around the organic chemicals and act as reaction chambers where more complex molecules can form. The possible role of these pockets in the ultimate emergence of life has lead some scientists to refer to them as "wombs".

"These things tell us what kind of chemicals are out there in interstellar space. They could have been the original seeds for life to get started," said Dr Zolensky.



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Meteor shower could be sign of comet that could come dangerously close to earth

HELSINGIN SANOMAT

Jarmo Moilanen, a municipal computer expert and amateur astronomer in the Finnish community of Vaala, has detected a new shower of meteors in the tale of a hitherto unknown comet.

Moilanen's two monitoring cameras that he keeps pointed at the sky and linked to his computer, registered an unexpected meteor shower already in October last year.
The discovery was published in the Finnish astronomy magazine Tähdet ja avaruus ("Stars and Space") on Wednesday. Moilanen's article was written with the help of NASA meteor expert Peter Jenniskens, who is considered one of the world's leading authorities in the field.

The comet itself has not yet been pinpointed, but it is believed to have an orbit around the sun that is about 4,000 years long. It comes closest to Earth just inside this planet's orbit, and is considered one of the five most potentially dangerous comets for Earth in the long term.

Nevertheless, experts say that the likelihood of a collision with Earth in the coming millennia is vary small.

"It could be coming, or then the meteor shower could be material that it has left behind, such as dust or grains of sand. There is no sense in being too frightened by it", Moilanen says.

It was confirmed this autumn that the shower can be seen each year in October. The name that was proposed for the the event is the October Camelopardalis, because the meteor showers linked with the comet appear in the sky near the constellation Camelopardalis, or giraffe.



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America's Iraq Success Story

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Bush sees no 'graceful exit' from Iraq

AFP
1 Dec 06

US President George W. Bush, set to rule in weeks on a possible course change in Iraq, warned against expecting him to lay out plans for "a graceful exit" from the war-torn country.

"We'll be in Iraq until the job is complete," Bush said after talks in Amman, Jordan, with embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

A heavyweight panel led by former US secretary of state James Baker and ex-representative and foreign policy expert Lee Hamilton has wrapped up its review of US policy in Iraq and is expected to give Bush its advice December 6.
The Pentagon has been conducting its own review, and the White House has also commissioned a sweeping government-wide reassessment of US policy in Iraq, amid soaring sectarian violence and fears of all-out civil war.

"There's a lot of speculation that these reports in Washington mean there's going to be some kind of graceful exit out of Iraq. We're going to stay in Iraq to get the job done, so long as the government wants us there," said Bush.

"This business about 'graceful exit' just simply has no realism to it at all. We're going to help this government," said the US president, under heavy pressure at home to overhaul his strategy in the nearly four-year old war.

The bipartisan Baker-Hamilton commission -- created by the US Congress and officially known as the Iraq Study Group -- will call on Bush in its report to order a measured withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, US media said.

The New York Times reported that the panel agreed to recommend withdrawing 15 US combat brigades in Iraq -- the bulk of the US fighting presence -- but leaving 70,000 or more American trainers, logistics experts and members of a rapid reaction force. The recommendations are not binding.

The United States currently provides the vast majority of the 160,000-strong multinational force in Iraq.

The group did not say where the troops would go, and did not present a withdrawal timetable, which Bush has opposed. But it made clear that the US military commitment should not be open-ended.

Asked when Bush would reach a decision on implementing the advice, US national security adviser Stephen Hadley told reporters: "It's going to be weeks rather than months" but offered no further details.

"I look forward to hearing their recommendations. I want to hear all advice before I make my decisions about adjustments to our strategy and tactics in Iraq to help this government succeed," Bush said in Jordan.

At the same time, Maliki told ABC television that Iraqi forces will be ready to take charge of security in the country in June 2007.

"I can say that Iraqi forces will be ready, fully ready, to receive this command and to command its own forces, and I can tell you that by next June our forces will be ready," Maliki said, speaking through a translator.

Maliki and Bush also ruled out partitioning Iraq.

Bush, wounded by November 7 elections in which his Republicans lost control of the US Congress to opposition Democrats, has also signaled resistance to another likely piece of advice: direct talks with Syria and Iran.

Democrat Joseph Biden, expected to be the next chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said talks with Iraq's neighbors were only a starting point.

"Bringing the neighbors in and starting to get our troops out are necessary, but not sufficient," he said.

"I'm concerned the Iraq Study Group may miss the most important point: the need for a strategy to build a sustainable political settlement in Iraq," he said.

Senator Carl Levin, in line to chair the Senate Armed Services Committee, said US moves toward withdrawal will alleviate the violence in Iraq, contrary to Bush's assessment.

"I believe the announcement of a date to begin the redeployment of US forces from Iraq would increase the pressure on Iraqis to reach the political settlement that is essential to ending the sectarian violence," he said.

Separately, former US president Bill Clinton, who has been interviewed privately by the Iraq Study Group, told CNN television that "some redeployment" was necessary but warned that setting a withdrawal timetable will reduce US leverage on neighboring countries and on Iraqi leaders to help quell the violence.



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USA Inc recalls faulty post-invasion democracy products

THE WRY SIDE
Emma Tom
November 22, 2006

PRODUCT Recall: Yankee-Style Democracy. The United States of America Incorporated (also trading as Adore Us or Feel Our Wrath Pty Ltd) wishes to inform customers that a quality problem is affecting certain batches of our Yankee-Style democracy product.

This is an isolated issue relevant only to the following brands:

* Yee-Ha Yankee-Style Democracy (issued in Afghanistan from October 2001); and

* Sucked In Saddam Yankee-Style Democracy (issued in Iraq from March 2003).
USA Inc is conducting a voluntary recall of both these products as a safety measure due to the identification of several small problems by our company's quality control team.

In Afghanistan, shortfalls in manufacturer supervision mean that the Yee-Ha merchandise has become contaminated by foreign substances, including remnants of Taliban. As a result, there is a strong possibility that this product may dilute beyond recognition or spontaneously combust under certain operating conditions. Other likely side effects include electricity shortages, school closures, forced marriages, underage brides, women-whipping, widespread poverty, attacks by tribal militias, systemic corruption, a raging heroin trade, escalating warfare, increased suicide bombings, beard length policing and the arrest of kite fliers.

USA Inc apologises for any inconvenience.

Affected customers are asked to sit tight and continue enduring specious Western grandstanding about constitutions, parliamentary elections and well-dressed presidents. Reminding us that these democratic trappings have become little more than a tokenistic facade, that Afghanistan has seen a four-fold increase in violence in the past year and that a vital opportunity for nation-building has been squandered will not be appreciated.

The good news vis-a-vis Iraq is that no traces of peanuts have been identified in the Sucked In Saddam stock to date. USA Inc is pleased to report that incidents of allergy-related anaphylactic shock probably aren't occurring more frequently in Iraq than anywhere else.

A number of other issues, however, have been brought to our firm's attention.

USA Inc acknowledges that structural cracking in the police, media and justice components of this commodity may be contributing to poor democratic performance and - of particular concern to head office - oil leaks. The Sucked In Saddam brand has also been found to contain fragments of glass, gravel, exploded cars and body parts, as well as presenting a choking (and pink misting) hazard to children.

Other unexpected side effects may include hostage-taking, fundamentalist rampages, torture, staggering daily body counts and all-out civil war. Once again, sorry about that.

If you've had contact with the affected product, simply contact USA Inc on one of our toll-free phone lines, quote the relevant bar code number and wait for your full, no-strings-attached refund.

Ha. Just joking. As you've probably guessed, the only way we can weasel out of this one is to suggest that you, the Iraqi customer, are to blame. We have, therefore, decided to ignore accusations that the culprit here is actually our hubris, short-sightedness and failure to plan an exit strategy by stamping a best-by date on our product's lid.

After all, despite extensive publicity campaigns, most of you Iraqis have ignored the detailed instructions accompanying your Sucked In Saddam shipment.

This is obvious from your stubborn failure to have hidden weapons of mass destruction, your self-centred refusal to welcome US soldiers as liberators and your antisocial insistence on blowing up your neighbours in the aftermath of our stock's arrival.

Like certain conservative American media commentators, we here at USA Inc are sick to death of hearing about squabbling Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds, and your country's overall lack of gratitude to us for freeing you from the clutches of Saddam.

Don't bother pointing out that even the vile mustachioed one was better at imposing law and order and delivering basic utilities than we have been.

Caveat emptor is the relevant proverb here. (Oh, OK, maybe the Latin for invaded beware would be more accurate, but we're a busy company and don't have time for trivial matters such as foreign languages, foreign nuances and foreign histories of entrenched sectarian violence.)

Once again, thank you for your attention and - provided you manage to sort out this silly mess you've got yourselves into - we hope to liberate you at USA Inc again soon.



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U.S. to send more GIs to Iraq

By Brian Knowlton and David S. Cloud / The New York Times
Published: November 29, 2006

WASHINGTON: As President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki flew to Amman for talks aimed at finding ways to quell rising violence in Iraq, the United States on Wednesday announced a concrete step that seemed designed to underscore its unwavering commitment: the deployment of four additional combat battalions to Baghdad.
But the deployment, announced by Pentagon officials, came on the heels of new political ferment in Baghdad, continuing violence in Iraqi streets, and a conflicting message about Washington's confidence in Maliki that may have led to a temporary postponement of his meeting with Bush.

In Baghdad, the fragility of Maliki's situation was underscored when Iraqi legislators and cabinet ministers loyal to the anti-American cleric Moktada al- Sadr suspended their participation in the Parliament and government to protest the Amman meeting. The move was seen as a step to paralyze the government and make Sadr's influence clear.

And the confidence of the United States in Maliki was called into question when The New York Times printed the text of a memo from a top White House adviser expressing doubts about the prime minister's ability to rein in the sectarian violence.

The memo, by the national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said of Maliki that while "his intentions seem good," conditions on the streets of Baghdad suggested that "Maliki is either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions, or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into action."

The president, who was accompanied by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice after a NATO summit meeting in Latvia, was originally to have met with Maliki both Wednesday and Thursday. But the first day's session was put off with little notice, and some reports suggested that this was because of the Iraqi leader's fury over the release of the Hadley memo.

The two leaders had been set to explore ways to quell violence, which has surged recently after nearly a year of steadily rising intensity and steadily spreading geographic scope. Some analysts fear that, unless strong measures are taken, it could tip beyond the U.S. ability to maintain even rough control.

"We will discuss the situation on the ground in his country, our ongoing efforts to transfer more responsibility to the Iraqi security forces, and the responsibility of other nations in the region to support the security and stability of Iraq," Bush said Tuesday in Riga.

"We'll continue to be flexible, and we'll make the changes necessary to succeed. But there's one thing I'm not going to do: I'm not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete," he said.

Bush is also expected to ask Sunni Arab leaders to help in Iraq by pressing Sunni insurgents to lay down weapons.

Both leaders face increased international and domestic pressure to find solutions. Bush is awaiting the results of both an independent review and an administration study of options for Iraq.

Meanwhile, Pentagon officials are planning to boost the U.S. troop level in Iraq by sending another 3,500 soldiers to Baghdad to help restore security there, Defense Department officials said Wednesday.

The increase has not been formally approved by the Bush administration, but the decision could be made in the coming weeks and the first of the additional troops may begin arriving in Iraq early next year.

The additional forces are likely to come from four reserve combat engineer battalions in the United States, though planners have not notified the units that would be sent, the officials said. Sending more engineers to Baghdad would allow the building of more checkpoints, trenches and other measures aimed at limiting the movements of insurgents and sectarian militias.

But the units also bring additional combat power that would help make up for a shortfall in Iraqi troops in the capital, the official said. To further increase troop levels in Baghdad, a U.S. brigade equipped with fast-moving, armored Stryker vehicles is being shifted from northern Iraq to Baghdad, officials said.

In Baghdad, the pro-Sadr lawmakers boycotting the government said that they would resume participating on two conditions: that the Iraqi government be given more oversight over security forces, and that it improve services to the people.

Sadr controls one of the biggest blocs of seats in Parliament; last week he reiterated his claim that the American presence was the root cause of the rising violence in Iraq. Maliki, a conservative Shiite, relies on Sadr for political support against Shiite rivals.

In Amman, there were signs that the U.S. president would be greeted with a decidedly blunt message. Slogans on banners condemned American hegemony; details of a possible march were being worked out, and DVDs of a British movie depicting the fictional assassination of Bush sold briskly.

Bush's arrival in Amman was also overshadowed by the publication of the Hadley memo.

The leak of the sensitive secret document was seen by some as an attempt to goad Maliki into taking more dramatic steps to achieve reconciliation, disarm militias and bring calm - or else to begin laying blame should the United States decide to leave.

One senior analyst, Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in Washington, questioned whether that approach would be fruitful. "It is not frankly meaningful," he said, "to try to blame the Iraqi government for the problems that exist today."

The White House has not disputed the contents of the Hadley memo but suggested that, taken in its entirety, it reflected confidence in Maliki.

Before departing Riga, Latvia, the White House spokesman, Tony Snow, said that Bush had confidence in Maliki and that the administration was working with him "to improve his capabilities in terms of dealing with the fundamental challenges in Iraq" including security. A draft report by an U.S. bipartisan commission that is studying new strategies for Iraq will urge the United States to open direct talks with Iran and Syria, according to U.S. officials who have seen all or part of the document. Its report is expected by mid-December.

The administration review will include Pentagon input from a team headed by General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He declined to offer details Wednesday, except to say, "We are looking at the whole spectrum of possible military actions."

Privately, Cordesman, a respected former Reagan administration official, recently completed a review of the options available to the U.S.-led coalition.

The situation in Iraq, he concluded is still fixable. But, he cautioned, there are no silver bullets. The odds are that no combination of these options can prevent a serious further deterioration of the situation. People should think about progress over the coming three to five years, he said, not the next 18 to 24 months - and only if the United States remains willing to pay the high costs of the war there.

Pace also dismissed reports that the U.S. military had decided to give up on the troubled western province of Anbar while shifting troops to Baghdad.



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Bush delays meeting with Maliki as leaked memo casts doubt over Iraqi PM

By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
30 November 2006

George Bush and Nouri al-Maliki put back their summit in Amman until today amid political turmoil in Baghdad and a leaked US memo that casts embarrassing doubt on the ability of Iraq's Prime Minister to get a grip on the crisis.

The political stage for the meeting, hosted by Jordan's King Abdullah because Baghdad itself was deemed too dangerous, was set yesterday in the bluntest of terms by the memo from the US National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley. It portrays Mr Maliki as either ignorant or mendacious, either unable or unwilling to take the tough measures necessary to restore stability.

The leak to The New York Times of the five-page document in its entirety may or may not have been a deliberate move by the White House. But it came as Washington's entire strategy in Iraq seemed to be unravelling, with America's patience all but exhausted at the sight of US troops trapped in what amounts to a civil war.

It sets out what the Bush administration expects the Iraqi government to do and what steps the US might take to help the Prime Minister ­ in whom, officials say, Washington still has confidence.

But the undeclared message is more sombre: that time is running out, as Republicans as well as Democrats increasingly conclude that Iraq is a lost cause and the war no longer worth fighting. The summit has thus taken on the character of a last chance before the bipartisan Iraq Study Group releases its long-awaited proposals for an exit strategy in seven days time.

Mr Hadley does not mince his words about Mr Maliki. The Iraqi Prime Minister, he says, "impressed me as a leader who wanted to be strong, but was having difficulty figuring how to do so". His intentions " seem good", but the bloody reality in Baghdad suggested the Prime Minister was "either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions, or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into action."

In Amman, confusion reigned, as Mr Maliki failed to attend a scheduled threeway dinner with King Abdullah and Mr Bush. Iraqi officials said he opposed the King's efforts to broaden the agenda to the Israeli-Arab conflict. Others saw his absence as a retort to the deeply embarrassing memo.

But the weakness of Mr Maliki was brutally underlined yesterday as parliamentarians and ministers loyal to the anti-American Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr temporarily at least pulled out of the ruling coalition in Baghdad in protest at the Amman summit, saying it was "provocative and against the will of the Iraqi people".

In Washington, reports abounded of a major reorganisation of the 145,000-strong US troop presence that would send more units to Baghdad, where a reduction in violence is essential if the country is to be stabilised.

The Pentagon last night dismissed an ABC News report that US forces may abandon Anbar province, the heartland of Sunni resistance, where 20,000 Marines are tied down trying to contain the insurgency.

* Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, is visiting the Middle East today for talks with Palestinian and Israeli leaders.Her trip appears to be a response to Arab allies, who say a new US push for a Palestinian-Israeli settlement is essential if the region's interlocking crises are to be tackled.



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Wars wearing down military gear at cost of about $2 billion a month

By Matt Kelley
USA TODAY
29 Nov 06

WASHINGTON - About $2 billion worth of Army and Marine Corps equipment - from rifles to tanks - is wearing out or being destroyed every month in Iraq and Afghanistan, military leaders and outside experts say.

That's equal to about a quarter of the $8 billion per month in military war costs. The wear and tear may lead to future equipment shortages and cutbacks in more advanced weapons, such as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter being developed with allies around the world and the Army's new, high-tech family of weapons and equipment, says William Cohen, secretary of Defense from 1997 to 2001.
Pressure to keep spending under control can lead to cuts in both current maintenance and future weapons, Cohen says, but "the longer we defer on that, the more expensive it's going to be."

The Pentagon needs $50 billion to $60 billion to re-equip and restore units returning from Iraq, says Leon Panetta, the former Clinton White House chief of staff and member of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.

On Monday, the Pentagon said it had issued more than $1.7 billion in equipment repair and replacement contracts during November alone. This summer, the leaders of the Army and Marine Corps said their services rack up a combined $23 billion a year in repair costs.

Army Gen. Peter Schoomaker and Marine Gen. James Conway told Congress that repair money comes only in special requests for war funding, not in annual budgets. That, they said, makes it hard to plan for future needs.

"They've been falling badly behind," says Winslow Wheeler, a former congressional budget analyst now at the independent Center for Defense Information.

The Pentagon is considering $127 billion to $160 billion in requests for war funding next year.

Vehicles and other equipment are far more complex now than they were in previous conflicts such as Vietnam, making repairs and replacements even more expensive, Wheeler says. The Congressional Research Service says the entire Vietnam War cost an estimated $650 billion in today's money, while the global war on terrorism, including Iraq, has cost more than $500 billion so far.

The Army and Marines have reported using about 40% of their ground combat equipment in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Units departing Iraq leave much of their heavy equipment behind, which further delays major maintenance and leaves holes in training for future missions, the report says.

A separate GAO report this month urged the incoming Democratic-controlled Congress to investigate the Pentagon's planning for repair, maintenance and replacement of war equipment.

If the United States entered another war, "it would be difficult for us to accomplish anything," says retired lieutenant general Donald Kerrick, who served on the National Security Council under presidents Clinton and Bush.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has acknowledged the problem and said he is working with the White House to get more money for repairs.

"I think we have some reasonable understandings about the coming year and the importance of not having a two- or three-year lag," Rumsfeld said last month.

- Charities such as Bake Sales for Body Armor, Soldiers' Angels and Operation Helmet, a favorite of singer Cher, have sprung up to provide some gear, though not heavy equipment.



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Iraqi PM: Troops to be ready to take over from U.S. by June

Last update - 23:34 30/11/2006By Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz Correspondent, and Agencies

AMMAN - Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Thursday his government's forces would be able to take over security command from United States troops by June 2007 - a move which could allow the U.S. to start withdrawing.

"I cannot answer on behalf of the U.S. administration but I can tell you that from our side our forces will be ready by June 2007," al-Maliki told ABC television after meeting U.S. President George W. Bush in Jordan.
Bush offered him strong backing in their talks and said Iraqi forces would be trained more quickly to take over but rejected suggestions he was seeking a "graceful exit" for U.S. troops.

According to a transcript released by ABC, the Iraqi leader said: "At the beginning of next year we will increase the training of our forces ... when they reach an acceptable level, we can talk about transferring power from multinational forces to Iraqi forces.

"I can say that Iraqi forces will be ready, fully ready to receive this command and to command its own forces, and I can tell you that by next June our forces will be ready."

Bush: U.S., Iraq agree to speed security responsibility handover

U.S. President George W. Bush said Thursday that he and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki have agreed to speed a turnover of security responsibility to Iraqi forces, but that U.S. troops would remain in the country as long as needed to strengthen the prime minister's authority.

"One of his frustrations with me is that he believes that we've been slow about giving him the tools necessary to protect the Iraqi people," Bush told a press conference after the two met in the Jordanian capital.

"Today we had a meeting that will accelerate the capacity for the prime minister to do the hard work necessary to help stop this violence."

The two also agreed during the high-stakes talks that Iraq should not be partitioned into separate, semiautonomous zones.

"The prime minister made clear that splitting his country into parts, as some have suggested, is not what the Iraqi people want, and that any partition of Iraq would only lead to an increase in sectarian violence," Bush said after he and the Iraqi prime minister met for nearly two and a half hours.

While Bush continued to reject drawing Iran into helping Iraq in its struggle for peace, Maliki left the door open for countries like Iran and Syria to play a part.

Bush told Maliki that American troops would remain in Iraq "to get the job done so long as the government wants us there."

Their breakfast meeting coincided with reports that the Iraq Study Group will recommend that the U.S. military shift from a combat role to a support role in Iraq, and will call for a regional conference that could lead to direct U.S. talks with Iran and Syria, both accused by the United States of fomenting violence in Iraq.

A source familiar with the deliberations of the independent, bipartisan group said the idea was to shift U.S. combat forces to bases inside Iraq and elsewhere in the region over the next year or so. "It's basically a redeployment," the source said.

Bush had expected to meet Maliki on Wednesday, along with Jordan's King Abdullah, but found out on the way from Latvia where he attended a NATO summit that the Jordanians and Iraqis had decided a three-way gathering was unnecessary.

It had originally been billed as two days of meetings between Bush and Maliki aimed at strengthening the Iraqi leader as he grapples with an array of security, political and economic challenges gripping his country.

In the end, Abdullah met both leaders separately.

U.S. officials insisted the change had nothing to do with a memo by White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley that questioned Maliki's ability to control the turmoil in Iraq.

White House spokesman Tony Snow rejected any suggestion the Wednesday meeting had been called off as a snub to Bush.

"If you want to take the temperature of the president and the prime minister you'll have an opportunity to see them tomorrow," Snow told reporters late on Wednesday.

The memo said the Iraqi leader appeared to have good intentions, "but the reality on the streets of Baghdad suggests Maliki is either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into actions."

The memo, reported by The New York Times, was written after Hadley visited Iraq at the end of October.

Bush was informed on board Air Force One heading to Jordan that the Jordanians and Iraqis jointly decided they did not believe it was the best use of time to hold a trilateral meeting on Wednesday, and Bush agreed, a U.S. official said.



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U.S. May Pursue Iran Sanctions Even if Russia Balks

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 1, 2006; Page A22

DEAD SEA, Jordan, Nov. 30 -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice signaled Thursday that the United States is willing to risk a breach with Russia if the Russians do not soon sign on to a U.N. Security Council resolution to punish Iran for its nuclear activities.

"I am all for maintaining unity, but I am also in favor of action," Rice told reporters traveling with her as she devoted much of her day to other Middle East crises: trying to nurture a fledgling truce between Israel and the Palestinians, and attending talks in Amman, Jordan, between President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Six months ago, the United States said it would join European-led talks on Iran's nuclear programs if Iran agreed to halt uranium enrichment. Officials said at the time that they would give Iran "weeks, not months" to comply. But since Iran rejected the offer, the administration has engaged in difficult negotiations with Russia over the terms of a U.N. resolution to impose sanctions.

Until now, a key administration goal has been to keep the five nations on the Security Council that hold veto power, plus Germany, unified on the Iran issue. But Rice's remarks suggested that the administration's patience is waning and that officials could soon offer a resolution, daring Russia to veto it. Officials say they believe Russia would abstain instead, allowing passage of a resolution under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter.

Russia has strong business ties with Iran and is building a nuclear reactor in Bushehr, which it has sought to shield from the sanctions resolution.

"Obviously, we'd like to keep the unity of the P5-plus-one," Rice said, referring to the five permanent Security Council members and Germany, "but unity is not an end in itself. The goal is to get a resolution that makes sense in terms of convincing the Iranians that their behavior is not acceptable in the international community. We have to do something."

Rice, who is at this Jordanian resort to attend a conference on Arab democracy, devoted much of her day to trying to revive long-stalled peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Palestinian factions and Israel agreed this past weekend to a tenuous cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered to release some Palestinian prisoners, reduce controls on the movement of people and goods in Gaza and the West Bank, and restart negotiations to create a Palestinian state.

Rice met first with the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, in the West Bank city of Jericho before traveling to Jerusalem, where she met with Olmert and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

In Jericho, Abbas announced that months of talks to establish a unity government had "unfortunately reached a dead end." The victory by the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, in legislative elections in January resulted in a cutoff of international aid, so Abbas, who heads the rival Fatah party, said the failure of the talks "is very painful for us because we know how badly the people have been suffering over the last nine months. All options are open, with the exception of civil war, which we will never accept."

Saeb Erekat, chief Palestinian negotiator and a Fatah legislator, said Abbas sought Rice's help on several issues. He asked her to work with Egyptian officials to support a so-far elusive exchange of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails for Israeli army Cpl. Gilad Shalit, who has been held by Palestinian gunmen since late June.

Abbas also urged Rice to press Israeli officials to adhere to the terms of an agreement she helped broker last year governing the operation of the crossings between Israel and Gaza, Erekat said. Citing security concerns, Israel has kept the key cargo passages closed for much of the year.



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Saddam's Double refutes testimonies of U.S. experts on mass graves

www.chinaview.cn 2006-11-30 22:23:04

BAGHDAD, Nov. 30 (Xinhua) -- The ousted leader Saddam Hussein Thursday refuted the testimonies of U.S. experts over mass graves of Kurdish minority during the Operation Anfal in 1987-1988.

Saddam made the refusal when the trial of the former Iraqi president and his six codefendants on genocide charges against Iraqi Kurdish minority in 1980s resumed in a Baghdad court.

"These slides of the mass graves is irrelevant to the Anfal case," Saddam told the court, adding "I refute all the testimonies submitted by the Americans in this court."
He, however, expressed that experts from countries out of the U.S.-led coalition, which invaded Iraq, could be accepted for the court credibility.

On Thursday's session, the court heard a fourth American forensics expert, Michael Trimble of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who submitted evidences about how he found the remains of hundreds of Kurdish women and children in three mass graves in northern and southern Iraq discovered since march 2003.

He said that in one of his excavations in a mass grave in northern Nineveh, he found a woman and her baby among bodies of 25women and 89 children, some of them were blindfolded and were shot with a bullet in the back of their heads.

Up to 301 corpses were found in the mass graves, including 183Kurdish children killed during late 1980s, Trimble said. "In all these graves, 90 percent of the children are less than13 years of age," he said.

Chief Judge Ureibi ordered the trial be adjourned until Monday. If convicted in the trial of Operation Anfal, Saddam could get his second death penalty following the first one he got from the trial of Dujail.



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Psychopaths At Play

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Putin Enemy Litvinenko May Not Have Been Killed by Putin, But by Another Putin Enemy

by Wayne Madsen
30 Nov 06

Was the use of polonium to kill Litvinenko a clue to the identity of the killer or killers?

There is increasing evidence that the radioactive poisoning assassination of ex-KGB and FSB agent and Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko was the result of a plot by anti-Vladimir Putin criminal syndicates based in Britain, Israel, Ukraine, and Poland to embarrass the Russian government.
Suspicions about the role of the exiled Russian-Israeli criminal syndicates in the poisoning of Litvinenko, including that headed by Litvinenko's friend, wanted oligarch Boris Berezovsky, re-surfaced after former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar became violently ill after eating breakfast at a conference he was attending in Dublin, Ireland. Ireland's banking secrecy laws has made it a favorite location for the Russian-Israeli Mafia.

Gaidar's sudden illness occurred a day after Litvinenko died in a London hospital from poisoning from polonium-210, a deadly radioactive isotope when ingested. Radioactive traces were later discovered at sites around London, including Berezovsky's offices in the West End.

Gaidar was moved from a Dublin hospital to a Moscow hospital where he received a telephone call from Putin wishing him a speedy recovery. Putin's Mafiosi critics in Britain, Israel, Moscow, and other countries have accused the Russian leader of poisoning Litvinenko and attempting to kill Gaidar.

However, Russian officials are claiming that the attacks were carried out by Putin's criminal opponents who want to create tension between Moscow and the West.

Their arguments appear to have merit when the choice of radioactive isotope used to kill Litvinenko is considered. Intelligence experts point out that polonium was discovered by Marie Curie (nee Maria Sklodowska) in 1897 and named after her native homeland Poland (Polonia in Latin) to express her support for Polish independence against its partition by Russia, Prussia and Austria.

Before Putin moved in to take over Yukos Oil from the Russian criminal syndicates, there were plans to build a Russian-German gas pipeline through Poland. After Poland was taken over by a neo-con team of identical twins Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who serve as President and Prime Minister, respectively, Poland not only began to conduct a witch hunt against ex-Communists but also became a base of operations for the anti-Putin Russian-Israeli exiled gangsters and oligarchs.

Named as Defense Minister was former American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Radek Sikorski, who also happens to be married to Washington Post editorial board member and leading neo-con journalist Anne Applebaum, also a leading critic of Putin (along with a number of so-called "liberals," including Clinton ambassador to the UN Richard Holbrooke).

After Putin decided, along with former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, to bypass Poland and build the Russo-German pipeline under the Baltic Sea, Sikorski unleashed a barrage against Russia and Germany. He likened the pipeline deal to the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Agreement that carved up Eastern Europe, including Poland, between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Sikorski asked German Chancellor Angela Merkel to cancel the pipeline deal but she refused.

We now know that Litvinenko was working on unspecified "energy issues" in London. We also know he has been described as a Russian-Israeli "double agent" and was reported to have transferred classified Russian documents in Yukos to a Russian-Israeli exiled oligarch in Tel Aviv. Double agents are always in danger from the party they are working against.

Litvinenko's killers' use of polonium, named by Marie Curie in support of Polish independence, may mean that the assassins are more likely found in Warsaw's Russian-Israeli mob infested intelligence apparatus than in the Kremlin.

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com



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Litvinenko contact tests positive for radiation

Fred Attewill and agencies
Friday December 1, 2006
Guardian Unlimited

An Italian terrorism expert who met the Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko on the day he was allegedly poisoned has also tested positive for the radioactive isotope polonium 210, it emerged today.

Mario Scaramella, who has been in hiding since Mr Litvinenko died, met the former spy in a London sushi restaurant just hours before he fell ill.

Experts believe the fact that the academic, a contact of Mr Litvinenko, has also tested positive for polonium 210 indicates that the poison was delivered at the restaurant.
Mr Scaramella has since been taken to hospital for further tests. Italian doctors said he had tested positive for a "significant" amount of the poison.

Meanwhile, doctors wearing specialist protective clothing have started the post mortem examination of Mr Litvinenko at a hospital in east London.

Detectives investigating the death of the 43-year-old, who died last Thursday, are investigating letters smuggled out of Russia. The letters purportedly show the existence of a secret squad set up to target him and others, it was claimed today.

Scotland Yard has been passed copies of two letters apparently written in jail by the former Russian intelligence officer Mikhail Trepashkin. In one, Mr Litvinenko is warned that he and his family are at risk.

Mr Litvinenko's London friend Alex Goldfarb said scans of the letters came into his possession yesterday, and he passed them to Scotland Yard.

Mr Trepashkin - who worked for the KGB's successor, the FSB, until 1997 - was tried in 2004 on accusations of being a British spy and passing secret information to Mr Litvinenko and his close friend Boris Berezovsky, the tycoon in exile in the capital.

Mr Litvinenko believed he was being targeted for criticising the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

However, British intelligence sources increasingly suspect that the former spy, killed by polonium 210, was the victim of a plot involving "rogue elements" within the Russian state, it was reported today.

While ruling out any official involvement by Vladimir Putin's government, investigators believe only those with access to state nuclear laboratories could have mounted such a sophisticated plot.

Three pathologists are carrying out his post-mortem examination at the Royal London hospital. One is representing the government and one Mr Litvinenko's widow, Marina, while an independent pathologist is gathering evidence for any criminal investigation.

Also today, the foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, met her Russian counterpart and received renewed assurances that Moscow would cooperate fully with the investigation into Mr Litvinenko's death.

"When the questions are formulated and sent through the existing channels, we will consider them thoroughly," the Russian ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Sergei Lavrov as saying. "Now the ball is on the English side, and everything depends on the British investigators."

Mrs Beckett's conversation with Mr Lavrov, which followed an earlier phone call between the two, did not mean Russia was being obstructive, the prime minister's spokesman said.

The investigation into possible rogue Russian agents centres on a group of men who entered the UK among a large crowd of Muscovite football fans.

The group of five or more, who arrived shortly before Mr Litvinenko fell ill, attended CSKA Moscow's match against Arsenal at the Emirates stadium on November 1 and flew back shortly afterwards.

While describing them only as witnesses, police believe their presence could hold the key to the former spy's death.

Yesterday, the Irish government said it was launching a separate investigation focusing on the former Russian prime minister Yegor Gaidar, who fell ill during a visit to Ireland a week ago.

At first, Mr Gaidar's entourage thought he was suffering from something he had eaten, but one of his aides yesterday said doctors suspected he had been poisoned.

The Gardaí said it would question everyone Mr Gaidar had been in contact with, but there was no immediate link to the Litvinenko case.

In London, the number of locations searched by police for traces of radioactive material rose to 24 yesterday, with polonium 210 found at 12 of those.

The home secretary, John Reid, told the Commons there was a "high level" of contamination at some of the locations, but said the risk to the public was low.

It was reported that the levels of radiation were highest in the toilets of the Millennium hotel in London, where Mr Litvinenko had a meeting shortly before falling ill.

These levels were above the safe public dose limit, Channel 4 News reported. There were also traces at the Itsu sushi bar, where he went later, but they were far lower.

Explaining the increasing belief that Mr Litvinenko's death involved Russian state elements, one official said yesterday: "Only the state would have access to that material."

Officials have now gone so far as to say that the involvement of individuals within the FSB in the affair is "probable". However, they insist it is far from definite, and the evidence is still circumstantial.

Intelligence sources do not rule out the possibility that the perpetrators were "rogue elements" either still in the FSB or former members of it.

Three British Airways aircraft have been taken out of service in connection with the investigation, with traces of polonium 210 found on two of them. One has now been cleared to return to service, the airline said today.

The culture secretary, Tessa Jowell, and Lord Coe, who flew to Barcelona, are among those known to have travelled on one of the contaminated planes.

"I'm feeling absolutely tiptop," Ms Jowell said today. "This was a scare that never was."



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Family believes former Russian prime minister also poisoned

Tom Parfitt in Moscow and Owen Bowcott
Friday December 1, 2006
The Guardian

Doctors in Moscow said yesterday that the former Russian prime minister, Yegor Gaidar, had been poisoned with an unidentified toxic substance on a recent visit to Ireland, adding a new twist to the Alexander Litvinenko affair.

Mr Gaidar, an economist and one of the "young reformers" responsible for privatising Russia in the early 1990s, lost consciousness and was rushed to hospital last Friday during a conference near Dublin. Last night his daughter said she believed it was "a political poisoning". Doctors saw "no other grounds" for his sudden illness, she told the BBC's News 24.
The poisoning came a day after Mr Litvinenko, a former Russian security service officer, died in London, apparently after ingesting a radioactive isotope, polonium 210. Some public figures in Russia were quick to link the two incidents.

Mr Gaidar, 50, fainted as he was finishing a speech at the university college in Maynooth, west of the Irish capital.

A colleague, Ekaterina Genieva, told the Noviye Izvestia newspaper: "I went up to him. He was lying on the floor unconscious. There was blood coming from his nose; he was vomiting blood. This went on for more than half an hour," she said.

Mr Gaidar was flown to Moscow and is in a stable condition at an unnamed hospital. President Vladimir Putin telephoned him yesterday to wish him a speedy recovery.

The economist's spokesman, Valery Natarov, said preliminary information from doctors suggested he had not suffered from food poisoning. "They think it is a substance they cannot so far identify - it is not a natural poisoning," he said.

Mr Gaidar said he ate a fruit salad and drank a cup of tea on the day he fell ill. His family declined to comment on whether he was affected by a radioactive substance. But his daughter, Masha, who runs a political movement called Democratic Alternative, said he had lost half his weight. "He's very pale and he looks like he hasn't eaten for a week," she said.

Officials at the Russian embassy in Dublin, where Mr Gaidar stayed on Saturday night claimed that he had been suffering from gastroenteritis.

However, Mr Natarov told the Guardian that Mr Gaidar had not had medical problems before the incident. "He works so hard, travels so much, he's always on the run - he just wouldn't be able to do all that without good health."

Another of the "young reformers", Anatoly Chubais, now head of the Russian electricity monopoly Unified Energy System, linked Mr Gaidar's illness to the assassination of investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya in Moscow in October. "It is unquestionable for me that a mortal construction of Politkovskaya, Litvinenko and Gaidar, which did not come into being by miracle, would have been exceedingly attractive for supporters of unconstitutional scenarios envisioning a change of power in Russia by force," he said.



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Radiation traces found at 12 locations in Britain

www.chinaview.cn 2006-12-01 04:24:56

LONDON, Nov. 30 (Xinhua) -- Experts investigating the death of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko have found radiation traces at 12 locations, British Home Secretary John Reid said on Thursday.

Reid revealed that 24 locations including two British Airways planes have been monitored, Sky news reported.
Litvinenko, an ex-KGB man who was a strong critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin, died last week of radiation poisoning.

Traces of the same radiation substance were found on two BA planes on Wednesday. A third is being held in Moscow until it is safe to return.

Reid said examinations had been carried out on a fourth plane which is leased by Transaero and flew into Heathrow from Moscow on Thursday morning, but was later cleared.

There have been concerns about a fifth plane, also a Russian aircraft, he added.

BA is contacting some 33,000 passengers and 3,000 staff since announcing on Wednesday night that "low levels of radioactive traces" had been found on two of its aircraft at Heathrow Airport in London.

A BA spokesman said the planes which had been flown between London and Moscow were being examined because "individuals involved in the Litvinenko case" had traveled on them.

The alert involves 221 flights within Europe made by the three short haul 767s.

In a statement made to the public, the British Airways said it has been advised that "this investigation is confined solely to these three B767 aircraft, which will remain out of service until further notice."

About 5,500 passengers have rung a BA helpline since the radiation alert was issued on Thursday night, whereas some 1,700 calls have been made to the National Health Service following the radiation scare.

Some 69 people have been referred to the Health Protection Agency as a precaution. Of the 29 tested, none had worrying results. Another 18 had been referred to specialist clinics, according to Sky news.



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Post-mortem due on former Russian spy as more people tested for radiation

AFP
1 Dec 06

Pathologists are preparing to carry out a potentially hazardous post-mortem on former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, as growing numbers of people were tested for possible exposure to radiation.

The specialist autopsy was due to be carried out at a London hospital, a week after the defector and Kremlin critic's urine was found to have large quantities of the radioactive substance polonium-210.

Those present were to wear protective clothing to avoid contamination by traces of the highly-toxic isotope, believed to be responsible for ravaging Litvinenko's body before his death last week, the BBC reported.
The Russian's death last Thursday has triggered a growing health scare as traces of radiation have been found at more locations, and on board aircraft, apparently linked to the ex-spy or those who allegedly killed him.

According to the latest figures, about 1,700 people have called the government-run health service's hotline saying they were at the locations Litvinenko is said to have visited on the day he fell ill.

Of those, the Health Protection Agency (HPA) -- the body managing the unprecedented situation -- has followed up on 139 cases. As of Thursday, a total of 24 had been referred to specialists for an exposure assessment.

Home Secretary John Reid told parliament Thursday that traces of radiation had been found at around 12 locations, out of a total of about 24 venues which were under investigation.

Among people concerned about possible exposure to a radioactive substance found on two British Airways planes so far were Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell and 2012 London Olympics organising committee chairman Sebastian Coe.

They travelled to Barcelona on one of the BA aircraft. They have spoken to the authorities and the plane has since been given the all-clear.

Britain's top police officer Sir Ian Blair said the cost of the police investigation so far was 300,000 pounds (590,000 dollars, 445,000 euros).

The probe has gradually homed in on a string of London locations -- including two hospitals, a sushi bar and a hotel -- and three BA planes used on London-Moscow flights.

BA said it was doing everything it could, after taking calls from more than 7,500 concerned customers so far on its special helpline and receiving more than 60,000 hits on its Internet page relating to the radiation alert.

The airline said earlier that about 33,000 of its passengers may have come into contact with a radioactive substance.

British police and intelligence services increasingly suspect that "rogue elements" within the Russian state are behind Litvinenko's death on November 23, The Guardian reported on Friday, and they have apparently ruled out official Kremlin involvement.

Citing sources within the police and intelligence services, the paper said investigators were hunting a group of five or more men who arrived in London shortly before Litvinenko fell ill on November 1, and watched a Champions League football match between London club Arsenal and CSKA Moscow the same day.

The group, described thus far only as witnesses, flew back to Moscow shortly afterward.

Meanwhile, Russia's Kommersant newspaper reported that Russian businessman Andrei Lugovoi said that he was in London to attend the CSKA game with Dmitry Kovtun and Vyacheslav Sokolenko, all three of whom met with Litvinenko at the hotel on November 1.

Police also believe that Litvinenko was poisoned at or near the sushi bar, The Independent reported on Friday.

Meanwhile, stricken former Russian prime minister Yegor Gaidar's spokesman said he was the victim of an "unnatural" poisoning, fuelling fears his case may be linked to that Litvinenko and Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, also a critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was murdered in October.

Police in Ireland, where Gaidar fell ill, have started an inquiry into what caused his illness. Gaidar is currently at a hospital in Moscow.



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The Sociopaths That Have Taken Over the Op-Ed Pages

David Sirota
29 Nov 06

Is it me, or in the last year have we seen a shocking rise in the number of major pundits who have acknowledged (perhaps inadvertently) their own sociopathic tendencies? I ask this after reading this from the Washington Post's Richard Cohen:

"I originally had no moral qualms about the war...I was encouraged in my belief by the offensive opposition to the war - silly arguments about oil or empire or, at bottom, the ineradicable and perpetual rottenness of America...In a post-Sept. 11 world, I thought the prudent use of violence could be therapeutic."

This came days before the New Republic's Jonathan Chait, a cheerleader for the Iraq War, published an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times headlined "Bring Back Saddam Hussein":

"Just maybe our best option is to restore Saddam Hussein to power...Yes, I know. Hussein is a psychotic mass murderer. Under his rule, Iraqis were shot, tortured and lived in constant fear."

I would be quick to dismiss these statements as the insane blatherings of merely two lunatics who are clearly so embarrassed by their advocacy for the Iraq War, that they have lost all control of their faculties. But such absurd comments have now become a mainstay of today's op-ed pages. Just a few months ago, the New York Times' David Brooks wrote that "voters shouldn't be allowed to define the choices in American politics." Then there was was columnist Mort Kondracke on Fox News saying the veterans health care system "doesn't work" even though by all objective measures, it is the best health care system in the entire country.

And of course, we have the New York Times' billionaire columnist Tom Friedman appearing on national television to admit that he regularly uses his space on the op-ed page to push free trade deals that he hasn't even bothered to read. He's the same guy who pushed the Iraq War, then criticized the war, and now, just today, published a piece saying we should consider "reinvading Iraq with at least 150,000 more troops" and staying there for 10 more years. He's also the same guy who has taken to destructive proportions the famous laugh line in the Money Pit about the house being fixed in "two weeks," using his column since 2003 to keep claiming that all in Iraq will be finished in a matter of another "six months."

But I must admit, as funny/sad as it is to watch Friedman's house of credibility come crashing down as he does his best Walter-Fielding-on-the-collapsing-stairway impression, nothing is more enjoyable these days than to watch the Wax Figure himself, George Will. His entire column today is about how "uncivil" it was for Sen.-elect Jim Webb to tell President Bush he wants the troops brought home, and how nauseating it is to the Washington pundit class that a U.S. Senator would have the gall to talk about economic inequality. I mean, you need to read this thing - Wax Figure even goes off on Webb for using blunt language, saying he is supposedly "turning out slapdash prose that would be rejected by a reasonably demanding high school teacher."

Yes, folks - the sociopaths on the right have been relegated to grammar criticism and demands that everyone in Washington attend Miss Manners. Because what really offends someone like George Will is not Americans dying in a war based on lies (Why should it? He's a Washington insider with connections, dammit, and he's not personally affected by such dirty things); it's not an economic class war being waged on working people (Why should it? he's a well-paid pundit who can't be bothered with such trifles); it's not even his fellow Washington Post pal Richard Cohen saying that violence is "therapeutic" (what a message for the kids!). No - what really truly offends the Wax Figure's Capital Grille sensibilities is "incivility" and grammar. Oh, except for one thing - that's not offensive when it comes from people like Dick Cheney who told other Senators to "f*&! off" and George W. Bush, that world famous master of the King's English.

None of this is normal, socially acceptable behavior in the real, non-pundit world. These are the kind of sociopathic outbursts that, outside the Beltway, get people fired from their jobs, expelled to pariah status, and ridiculed as having "lost it." But I guess the laws of regular society just don't apply to these people. That's not all that surprising. As I documented in an earlier post, most of the supposedly "national" opinionmaking apparatus resides not throughout the nation, but instead inside elite circles in Washington and New York City - places that apparently aren't subjected to the normal rules of America, places where sociopathic behavior gets you labeled a Serious Person.

But here's the deal, folks - just because you read sociopathic claims on your op-ed pages from the Washington opinionmaking machine about how violence is supposedly "therapeutic," how we should supposedly bring Saddam Hussein back to power, how voters suppposedly shouldn't be able to make choices in America and how new Senators have no right to tell the President they want the troops home - remember, that doesn't make these claims truthful or acceptable out here in the real world, and it doesn't make you crazy for thinking that the people who make these claims ARE crazy.




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Eye Spy

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Navy submariner will plead guilty in espionage case

By TIM MCGLONE
The Virginian-Pilot
November 28, 2006


NORFOLK - A Navy submariner accused of espionage and desertion has agreed to plead guilty next Monday before a military judge, forgoing a trial.

Petty Officer 3rd Class Ariel J. Weinmann was scheduled for a court-martial next week but will instead plead guilty in a Norfolk Naval Station court to some of the six charges against him, Weinmann's civilian attorney said Monday.

"Pre trial negotiations have been going on and have been met with some success," said the attorney, Phillip Stackhouse of Jacksonville, N.C.
"A pre trial agreement has been signed."

Stackhouse declined to say which charges his client plans to plead guilty to. Stackhouse said the plea agreement between Weinmann and the Navy includes a maximum possible sentence but, again, declined to provide specifics.

Navy Mid-Atlantic Region spokeswoman Beth Baker would not comment on the development.

Weinmann, 21, of Salem, Ore., has been in the Norfolk Naval Station brig since his arrest in March. He is charged with espionage, desertion, failing to properly secure classified information, copying classified information, communication of classified information to a foreign agent, and stealing and destroying a laptop computer.

The Navy at one point had considered the death penalty against Weinmann but rejected it for undisclosed reasons. The maximum punishment for espionage under military code is life in prison.

Weinmann, a fire control technician who had been stationed aboard the Connecticut-based submarine Albuquerque, was arrested March 26 at a Dallas airport as he was re-entering the country from Mexico.

Navy officials have said in court that Weinmann was carrying $4,000 in cash, three CD-ROMs and other computer equipment. He left his post in July 2005 - while his sub was stationed in Bahrain - and is accused of taking a Navy laptop with him.

The charges allege that Weinmann passed classified information to a foreign government representative in Vienna, Austria, and Mexico City. The Navy has not disclosed what information was passed, nor has the foreign government officially been named.

News agencies, including CNN, have named Russia as the foreign government, but Time magazine, citing anonymous military sources, reported in August that the Navy had not confirmed Russia as having received anything from Weinmann.

Efforts to reach Weinmann's family in Oregon were unsuccessful Monday.



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Flashback: Petty officer spy held in secret for 4 months

By TIM MCGLONE
The Virginian-Pilot
August 4, 2006

NORFOLK - A petty officer has been in the Norfolk Naval Station brig for more than four months facing espionage, desertion and other charges, but the Navy has refused to release details of the case.

The case against Fire Control Technician 3rd Class Ariel J. Weinmann is indicative of the secrecy surrounding the Navy military court here, where public affairs and trial court officials have denied access to basic information including the court docket - a listing of cases to be heard.

After months of requests, the Navy this week provided The Virginian-Pilot with Weinmann's name, rank and the charges he faces.
In an e-mail, Theodore Brown, a spokesman for Fleet Forces Command, said, "It is sometimes a challenge to balance the desires of the media, the public's right to know, and the rights of an individual accused of a crime."

"In this case," he concluded, the command "is attempting to provide as much unclassified information as is reasonable, while maintaining an appropriate concern for the privacy of the individual involved. "

A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment Thursday.

The Navy's position was challenged by military legal affairs experts and First Amendment advocates who say the nation's courts, whether civilian or military, historically have been open to the press and public.

A docket listing Weinmann's preliminary hearing, called an Article 32, was never produced. The Navy would not disclose when the hearing was held.

"That's hogwash," said Eugene R. Fidell, president of The National Institute of Military Justice and a Washington lawyer .

"I know of no authority to keep the proceeding closed," he said. "I've never seen an Article 32 classified."

The command's e-mail to The Pilot this week said that Weinmann was arrested at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport on March 26 after he had been listed as a deserter. Fleet Forces officials refused to release the so-called charge sheet, which would detail the accusations against the sailor.

Weinmann had been serving aboard the submarine Albuquerque until he deserted in July 2005, according to Brown. Weinmann enlisted in July 2003, he said.

The enlisted man could face a court-martial. An investigative officer who presided over the Article 32 is expected to release a report to Weinmann's command in the coming weeks. Besides espionage and desertion, Weinmann is charged with failure to obey an order and acts prejudicial to good order and discipline, according to Brown.

Espionage is defined, in part, by the Uniform Code of Military Justice as the communication to a foreign government of any information relating to U.S. national defense. It carries a maximum punishment of death.

Military defense lawyers say secret military hearings and the refusal to release basic charge information have become more common since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Court precedents and federal laws have established the right of public access to court-martial proceedings, including Article 32 hearings, the lawyers and First Amendment advocates say.

The Army Court of Criminal Appeals said in a 1997 case involving an attempt to close a criminal proceeding, "We believe that public confidence in matters of military justice would quickly erode if courts-martial were arbitrarily closed to the public."

The court said the public and the media have a right to attend military court proceedings, "absent extraordinary circumstances."

The Supreme Court has ruled that the closure of a court proceeding or the sealing of any criminal case must be decided by a judge on a case-by-case basis.

Lucy Dalglish, executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in Washington, said that, even in military courts, an order must be issued closing or sealing a case.

Brown acknowledged Thursday that "there is no order," but said that the charge sheet in the Weinmann case would not be released.

Dalglish and others said protecting someone's privacy has never been a legally acceptable reason to exclude the public from a court proceeding or to withhold the identity of someone who's been in custody for four months.

"We don't lock up people in this country secretly," Dalglish said. "Personal embarrassment has never been found to be a justification for closing a proceeding."

Other than the Weinmann case, Norfolk Naval Station has refused to provide The Pilot with copies of the military court docket since at least November. The docket lists cases heard in military court each day. In March, The Pilot filed a Freedom of Information request for the past year's dockets but has received no written response.

Beth Baker, a spokeswoman for the Navy Mid-Atlantic Region, has said that computer problems have made it difficult for the Trial Services Office at Norfolk Naval Station to generate a docket.

In two e-mails sent to The Pilot in January and February, Baker said the dockets should be available "soon."

"The docket for the Trial Service Office has been transferred to a new system that is not user friendly to us at all," Baker told The Pilot in a March e-mail.

More recent requests for the docket went unanswered.

Some military courts, including Marine Camp Pendleton in San Diego County, Calif., post their court dockets on a Web site.

The National Institute of Military Justice has begun a project to collect military court dockets and post them on its own Web site. Fidell, of the institute, said law students hope to begin pos ting them by the end of the summer.

"Why this continues to be an issue in 2006 is beyond me," Fidell said.



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Flashback: Update: US sailor spied for Israel

By DAVID KEYES
Jerusalem Post
Aug. 9, 2006

Summary: A US Navy sailor, Ariel J. Weinmann, is suspected of spying for Israel and has been held in prison for four months, according to an article published Monday in the Saudi daily Al-Watan. It reported that Weinmann is being held at a military base in Virginia on suspicion of espionage and desertion.

According to the navy, Weinmann was apprehended on March 26 "after it was learned that he had been listed as a deserter by his command." Though initial information released by the navy makes no mention of it, Al-Watan reported that he was returning from an undisclosed "foreign country." American sources close to the Defense Department told Al-Watan that Israel was the country in question.

Al-Watan speculated that if Weinmann spied on behalf of the Mossad, it would be the biggest espionage case since Jonathan Pollard's arrest. Pollard, who worked as a civilian intelligence analyst for the US Navy, was caught in 1985 and convicted of spying for Israel. He is currently serving a life sentence in the US.
A US Navy sailor, Ariel J. Weinmann, is suspected of spying for Israel and has been held in prison for four months, according to an article published Monday in the Saudi daily Al-Watan. It reported that Weinmann is being held at a military base in Virginia on suspicion of espionage and desertion.

According to the navy, Weinmann was apprehended on March 26 "after it was learned that he had been listed as a deserter by his command." Though initial information released by the navy makes no mention of it, Al-Watan reported that he was returning from an undisclosed "foreign country." American sources close to the Defense Department told Al-Watan that Israel was the country in question.

"The US Navy concluded Article 32 proceedings [a pretrial investigation] in the case of Fire Control Technician Third Class Ariel J. Weinmann on July 26, 2006," Ted Brown, a media relations officer at the US Fleet Forces Command, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday. The US Fleet Forces Command is the "convening authority of the case... and will make the decision with respect to what charges, if any, will be referred to a general court-martial."

The veracity of Al-Watan's claim that Weinmann is suspected of spying for Israel remains in question, and military and Pentagon spokesmen are remaining tightlipped. A public affairs officer at the Office of Naval Intelligence told the Post that he was unaware of the allegations against Weinmann.

Al-Watan speculated that if Weinmann spied on behalf of the Mossad, it would be the biggest espionage case since Jonathan Pollard's arrest. Pollard, who worked as a civilian intelligence analyst for the US Navy, was caught in 1985 and convicted of spying for Israel. He is currently serving a life sentence in the US.

According to the navy, "Weinmann was assigned to the USS Albuquerque (SSN 706) and had deserted on or about July 3, 2005." The Albuquerque is a Los Angeles-class attack submarine.

Though the navy's initial press release contained no reference to Israel, Brown stated that more detailed information about the case would be released shortly.



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Flashback: CNN Reports: Navy sailor suspected of spying for Russia

From Barbara Starr
CNN Washington Bureau
Wednesday, August 9, 2006

WASHINGTON -- A sailor facing espionage and desertion charges has been held at a Norfolk, Virginia, brig since March, the U.S. Navy said Wednesday.

Ariel Weinmann, 21, is suspected of having worked on behalf of Russia, said military sources close to the case.

He was likely to have had access to technical manuals and other material on submarine systems, Navy sources said. No one else in the Navy is suspected of having worked with Weinmann, they said.
The fire control technician third class, assigned to the submarine USS Albuquerque, attempted on three occasions to pass classified information to foreign agents, the charges against him state.

Those incidents occurred in March 2005 in Bahrain; October 2005 in Vienna, Austria; and March 2006 in Mexico City, Mexico, according to the charges.

In addition to the espionage allegations, Weinmann also faces desertion charges, which could result in the death penalty. He is accused of deserting in July 2005 during his first tour of duty.

A customs agent took Weinmann into custody March 26 at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport when he tried to re-enter the United States.

The case is the second involving allegations of military spying by Russia. The Defense Department has said it suspects Russia collected information about American intelligence in Iraq from U.S. Central Command in Doha, Qatar, in 2003.

Comment: That's funny. Yesterday, we ran an article stating he was working for Israel's Mossad. Later in the day, CNN apparently jumped on the story and reported it was Russia...

The Associated Press, on the other hand, is sticking to the "unknown government" story.

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Flashback: US Navy now says Weinmann was not an Israeli spy (claim suspect)

Jpost
10/08/2006

The US Navy has categorically denied that Petty Officer Ariel J. Weinmann was spying for Israel, The Jerusalem Post has learned. According to a Navy official, reports that Weinmann was an Israeli spy are "absolutely not true."

Weinmann was apprehended on March 26 after being listed as "a deserter by his command," according to the US Navy.

On Monday, the Saudi daily Al-Watan wrote that Weinmann had recently returned from Israel and implied that he may have been working for the Mossad.

"I can tell you definitively that is not true," the Navy official said in a phone interview with the Post on Tuesday. "This is not a case of an individual spying for Israel...The Al-Watan report is erroneous," he continued.
The official said he had no idea where the Saudi paper got their information from, and that his sources at the Pentagon also knew that Weinmann, suspected of spying, was not a spy for Israel.

To date, the navy has completed an initial investigation and brought a set of initial charges, called preferred charges, against Weinmann. The preferred charges include desertion, larceny, destroying US military property, failure to obey orders or regulations, and espionage.

Specifically, it is alleged that while serving at or near Bahrain, Mexico, and Austria, Weinmann "with intent or reason to believe it would be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation, [attempted] to communicate, deliver or transmit classified CONFIDENTIAL and SECRET information relating to the national defense, to a representative, officer, agent or employee of a foreign government."

The preferred charges also include stealing a military laptop "of a value of more than $500.00," and "willfully [destroying] a laptop computer hard drive, of some value, by smashing it with a mallet and cutting off the pins," the Navy charge sheet states.



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Is Bush Insane? Are They All?

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Like Hitler and Brezhnev, Bush is in denial

Robert Fisk
UK Independent
01 December 2006

History's "deniers" are many - and all subject to the same folly: faced with overwhelming evidence of catastrophe, they take refuge in fantasy, dismissing evidence of collapse as a symptom of some short-term setback, clinging to the idea that as long as their generals promise victory - or because they have themselves so often promised victory - that fate will be kind. George W Bush - or Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara for that matter - need not feel alone. The Middle East has produced these fantasists by the bucketful over past decades.
More than half a million deaths, an army trapped in the largest military debacle since Vietnam, a Middle East policy already buried in the sands of Mesopotamia - and still George W Bush is in denial. How does he do it? How does he persuade himself - as he apparently did in Amman yesterday - that the United States will stay in Iraq "until the job is complete"? The "job" - Washington's project to reshape the Middle East in its own and Israel's image - is long dead, its very neoconservative originators disavowing their hopeless political aims and blaming Bush, along with the Iraqis of course, for their disaster.

History's "deniers" are many - and all subject to the same folly: faced with overwhelming evidence of catastrophe, they take refuge in fantasy, dismissing evidence of collapse as a symptom of some short-term setback, clinging to the idea that as long as their generals promise victory - or because they have themselves so often promised victory - that fate will be kind. George W Bush - or Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara for that matter - need not feel alone. The Middle East has produced these fantasists by the bucketful over past decades.

In 1967, Egyptian president Gamel Abdul Nasser insisted his country was winning the Six Day War hours after the Israelis had destroyed the entire Egyptian air force on the ground. President Carter was extolling the Shah's Iran as "an island of stability in the region" only days before Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic revolution brought down his regime. President Leonid Brezhnev declared a Soviet victory in Afghanistan when Russian troops were being driven from their fire bases in Nangahar and Kandahar provinces by Osama bin Laden and his fighters.

And was it not Saddam Hussein who promised the "mother of all battles" for Kuwait before the great Iraqi retreat in 1991? And was it not Saddam again who predicted a US defeat in the sands of Iraq in 2003? Saddam's loyal acolyte, Mohamed el-Sahaf, would fantasise about the number of American soldiers who would die in the desert; George W Bush let it be known that he sometimes slipped out of White House staff meetings to watch Sahaf's preposterous performance and laugh at the fantasies of Iraq's minister of information.

So who is laughing at Bush now? Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, almost as loyal a retainer to Bush as Sahaf was to Saddam, receives the same false praise from the American president that Nasser and Brezhnev once lavished upon their generals. "I appreciate the courage you show during these difficult times as you lead your country," Bush tells Maliki. "He's the right guy for Iraq," he tells us. And the Iraqi Prime Minister who hides in the US-fortified "Green Zone" - was ever a crusader fortress so aptly named? - announces that "there is no problem". Power must be more quickly transferred to Maliki, we were informed yesterday. Why? Because that will save Iraq? Or because this will allow America to claim, as it did when it decided to allow the South Vietnamese army to fight on its own against Hanoi, that Washington is not to blame for the debacle that follows? "One of his frustrations with me is that he believes that we've been slow about giving him the tools necessary to protect the Iraqi people." Or so Bush says. "He doesn't have the capacity to respond. So we want to accelerate that capacity." But how can Maliki have any "capacity" at all when he rules only a few square miles of central Baghdad and a clutch of rotting ex-Baathist palaces?

About the only truthful statement uttered in Amman yesterday was Bush's remark that "there's a lot of speculation that these reports in Washington mean there's going to be some kind of graceful exit out of Iraq [but] this business about a graceful exit just simply has no realism to it at all." Indeed, it has not. There can be no graceful exit from Iraq, only a terrifying, bloody collapse of military power. The withdrawal of Shia ministers from Maliki's cabinet mirror the withdrawal of Shia ministers from another American-supported administration in Beirut - where the Lebanese fear an equally appalling conflict over which Washington has, in reality, no military or political control.

Bush even appeared oblivious of the current sectarian map of Iraq. "The Prime Minister made clear that splitting his country into parts, as some have suggested, is not what the Iraqi people want, and that any partition of Iraq would only lead to an increase in sectarian violence," he said. "I agree." But Iraq is already "split into parts". The fracture of Iraq is virtually complete, its chasms sucking in corpses at the rate of up to a thousand a day.

Even Hitler must chuckle at this bloodbath, he who claimed in April 1945 that Germany would still win the Second World War, boasting that his enemy, Roosevelt, had died - much as Bush boasted of Zarqawi's killing - while demanding to know when General Wenck's mythical army would rescue the people of Berlin. How many "Wencks" are going to be summoned from the 82nd Airborne or the Marine Corps to save Bush from Iraq in the coming weeks? No, Bush is not Hitler. Like Blair, he once thought he was Winston Churchill, a man who never - ever - lied to his people about Britain's defeats in war. But fantasy knows no bounds.



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The Commander in Chief Must Be Relieved of His Command

by Roger Harkness
1 Dec 06

Let me tell you a story about the aircraft carrier called the Forrestal. When I was in the Navy, we used to call it the Forestfire. They would show the movie to us almost every chance they would get about how the Forrestal just about burned up, but thanks to a brave crew, they were able to put the fire out and save the ship, unfortunately though, hundreds died. Everybody on that ship received a medal for their bravery, but the Captain of that ship was relieved of his command because that fire should not have happened and he was the Captain, the one responsible for the ship.

Now we have a Commander in Chief who has lost thousands of lives because of his mistake and he should be relieved of his command.
I can remember back in the days of Noe's Ark when they were talking about impeaching Clinton because he lied to the American people about an affair he had with another women, must have crushed his wife so; unable to take it anymore, she became a Senator. How embarrassing it must have been for America when it was decided to publish all the lurid details on the new Internet for all to download, because the truth must be told.

We know that Bush isn't as bad as Clinton, he didn't really lie, he just didn't tell the truth. Because he knew that the Intel was iffy and he just failed to include that in his presentations, could have been a mistake, we all make mistakes. Too bad though that thousands have died, but hey, they volunteered to die, that's what people tell me.

Let me tell you a story about the aircraft carrier called the Forrestal. When I was in the Navy, we used to call it the Forestfire. They would show the movie to us almost every chance they would get about how the Forrestal just about burned up, but thanks to a brave crew, they were able to put the fire out and save the ship, unfortunately though, hundreds died. Everybody on that ship received a medal for their bravery, but the Captain of that ship was relieved of his command because that fire should not have happened and he was the Captain, the one responsible for the ship.

Now we have a Commander in Chief who has lost thousands of lives because of his mistake and he should be relieved of his command.

We the people are the ones responsible for demanding just that, and if we were good leaders, we would do just that. We would demand that Bush be impeached because thousands have died because he didn't tell the truth and it is not ok.



http://okcitykid.bravejournal.com

14 years us navy 77-92



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Judge: Bush can't designate groups as terrorists

8:42 p.m. ET Nov. 28, 2006
The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES - A federal judge struck down President Bush's authority to designate groups as terrorists, saying his post-Sept. 11 executive order was unconstitutional and vague, according to a ruling released Tuesday.

The Humanitarian Law Project had challenged Bush's order, which blocked all the assets of groups or individuals he named as "specially designated global terrorists" after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

"This law gave the president unfettered authority to create blacklists," said David Cole, a lawyer for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Constitutional Rights that represented the group. "It was reminiscent of the McCarthy era."
The case centered on two groups, the Liberation Tigers, which seeks a separate homeland for the Tamil people in Sri Lanka, and Partiya Karkeran Kurdistan, a political organization representing the interests of Kurds in Turkey.

U.S. District Judge Audrey Collins enjoined the government from blocking the assets of the two groups.

Both groups consider the Nov. 21 ruling a victory; both had been designated by the United States as foreign terrorist organizations.

Cole said the judge's ruling does not invalidate the hundreds of other designated terrorist groups on the list but "calls them into question."

Justice Department reviewing options
Charles Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, said, "We are currently reviewing the decision and we have made no determination what the government's next step will be."

A White House spokeswoman declined to immediately comment.

The judge's 45-page ruling was a reversal of her own tentative findings last July in which she indicated she would uphold wide powers asserted by Bush under an anti-terror financing law. She delayed her ruling then to allow more legal briefs to be filed.

She also struck down the provision in which Bush had authorized the secretary of the treasury to designate anyone who "assists, sponsors or provides services to" or is "otherwise associated with" a designated group.

'Services' section of order still stands
However, she let stand sections of the order that penalize those who provide "services" to designated terrorist groups. She said such services would include the humanitarian aid and rights training proposed by the plaintiffs.

The Humanitarian Law Project planned to appeal that part of the ruling, Cole said.

"We are pleased the court rejected many of the constitutional arguments raised by the plaintiffs, including their challenge to the government's ban on providing services to terrorist organizations," Miller said Tuesday. "However, we believe the court erred in finding that certain other aspects of the executive order were unconstitutional."

The ruling was still considered a victory, Cole said.

"Even in fighting terrorism the president cannot be given a blank check to blacklist anyone he considers a bad guy or a bad group and you can't imply guilt by association," Cole said.



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U.S. warns financial firms of al-Qaida cyber threat

www.chinaview.cn 2006-12-01 11:44:34

WASHINGTON, Nov. 30 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned financial companies on Thursday that al-Qaida might be planning cyber attacks on banking and financial institution Web sites.

The threat apparently was posted on a Web site, and was discovered by the department on Monday, a report posted on CNN's Web site quoted Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knockeas saying.
The department decided to send an advisory out to financial institutions out of caution, Knocke said.

The department nevertheless had no evidence to verify the threat.

"There is no information to corroborate this aspirational threat," said the spokesman.

The report said the threat warned that denial-of-service attacks would be launched against U.S. stock market and banking Web sites during the month of December.



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Bush Signs Animal Terrorism Act into Law

USAgNet
11/29/2006

President Bush has signed the 'Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act,' which expands criminal prohibitions against the use of force, violence, and threats involving animal enterprises and increases penalties for violations of these prohibitions.

As defined by the bill, 'animal enterprises' include commercial and academic enterprises that use or sell animals or animal products for profit, food, agriculture, education, research and testing. This definition also includes equine activities such as rodeo, horse shows and similar lawful equine events.

Sponsored by Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), this bill amends the Animal Enterprise Act of 1992. The American Horse Council was a major supporter of that legislation and worked hard with other industry groups to make sure that the final legislation protected horse events.

The Senate passed the bill by unanimous consent in September, just prior to the Congressional recess. A similar bill, H.R. 4239, was approved by the House of Representatives this month.


Comment: Have you noticed how everything is described in terms of "terrorism" these days? Do ya think they are trying to program us with some concept or idea?

From this bill one would think that Bush is very concerned about the welfare of animals, yet he presides over a government that is responsible for the murder of 655,000 innocent Iraqi civilians over the past 3 years. Could he and his cohorts in Israel be a bunch of whacked out psychopaths? D'ya think?

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1,245 Secret CIA Flights Revealed by European Parliament

November 28, 2006 4:56 PM
Brian Ross and Maddy Sauer Report:

The CIA flew 1,245 secret flights into European airspace, according to a European Parliament draft report obtained by ABC News.

The report is the result of a year-long investigation into secret CIA "extraordinary rendition" flights and prisons in Europe.

No European country has officially acknowledged being part of the program.
But citing records from an informal meeting of European and NATO foreign ministers last December that included Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the Parliament's draft report concludes "member states had knowledge of the programme of extraordinary rendition and secret prisons."

The report said the recently fired head of Italian intelligence, General Nicolo Pollari, "concealed the truth" when he appeared before the Parliament's investigating committee and stated "that Italian agents played no part in any CIA kidnapping."

The report detailed the involvement of many European countries in what it called the CIA's "illegal" program.

It listed the number of CIA flights, or stopovers, it found in a number of countries.

Italy: 46 stopovers.

United Kingdom: 170 stopovers.

Germany: 336 stopovers.

Spain: 68 stopovers.

Portugal: 91 stopovers.

Ireland: 147 stopovers.

Greece: 64 stopovers

Cyprus: 57 stopovers.

Romania: 21 stopovers.

Poland: 11 stopovers.



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The "Democratic" Process

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Segolene in Beirut to kick off Mideast tour

BEIRUT, Nov 30, 2006 (AFP)

French Socialist presidential candidate Ségolène Royal, campaigning to become her country's first woman head of state, arrived in Beirut on Thursday at the start of a Middle East tour.

Royal's arrival comes on the eve of a demonstration called by the opposition, led by the powerful pro-Syrian militant group Hezbollah, to force the resignation of the Western-backed government.
France, which continues to have strong relations with Lebanon after the end of its mandate over the country in 1943, co-wrote a 2004 UN Security Council resolution calling on Syrian troops to leave Lebanon and for militias - indluding Hezbollah - to be disarmed.

Former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri - whose February 2005 killing led eventually to the exit in March of Syrian troops from Lebanon - was among foreign dignitaries most often received by French President Jacques Chirac.

In a statement ahead of her arrival, Royal said "I want to find out for myself about the reality in Lebanon and see what role France can play in helping Lebanon out of the current crisis."

"In the current, worrying situation in Lebanon, I am here to affirm my condemnation of any political assassination and my faith in democracy, and to convey my friendship to the entire Lebanese people."

Royal was received at Beirut airport by anti-Syrian Druze leader MP Walid Jumblatt, head of the Progressive Socialist Party who had invited her to Lebanon, as well as Information Minister Ghazi Aridi and Telecommunication Minister Marwan Hamadeh, an AFP photographer said.

Royal was due to meet with Prime Minister Fuad Siniora and the pro-Syrian parliament speaker Nabih Berri, and will also be received by the parliament's foreign affairs committee later Thursday.

On Friday, she is to visit the former Lebanese president Amine Gemayel, whose son Pierre Gemayel, a Christian Lebanese cabinet minister, was gunned down last week, to present her condolences to the family.

Also Friday, she will meet members of the UN force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, to which France is the largest contributor with 1,650 out of a total of 10,500 troops.

Royal said her meeting with members of the UNIFIL force was meant to "show them our support and gratitude".

"A more credible UNIFIL is a factor for stabilisation and peace for Lebanon and the region," she said.

Royal's trip is due to take her to Israel, the Palestinian territories and Jordan, with top-level meetings scheduled with leaders across the region, according to her press office.



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Hyperactive and with a sense of destiny: Sarkozy

PARIS, Nov 29, 2006 (AFP)

Nicolas Sarkozy, who declared his candidacy for the presidential election on Thursday, is a hyperactive rightwinger who believes France is failing because it has ducked essential reforms - and that he alone is destined to see them through.
The 51-year-old son of a Hungarian immigrant has come to dominate France's political scene in the last five years, during which he has served as interior minister (twice), finance minister and - since November 2004 - president of the ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP).

With relentless energy, constant media exposure and a succession of new laws, he has sought to impose himself as the natural candidate to lead France into "rupture" from a discredited past.

Polls show he has a popular touch - many in France respond well to his plain-talking and 'man of action' persona - but they also expose his biggest weakness: that more than other mainstream politicians he has polarised the public. People either love him or hate him.

The man who set up the country's first ever official Islamic body and argues for US-style positive discrimination to favour disadvantaged immigrants is thus reviled on the political left and in the poor "banlieues" (suburbs) for his hard line on law-and-order.

Much-reported remarks before the 2005 riots, when he described delinquents as "racaille" or yobs, convinced many that he is a more presentable version of far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, and his biggest handicap is the fear that as president he will divide rather than unite the nation.

Born in January 1955, Sarkozy had a privileged upbringing in the affluent Paris suburb of Neuilly where he served as mayor from 1983 to 2002. He studied law and - unlike most of France's ruling class - avoided the elite National Administration School (ENA).

His political career began in the 1970s as a supporter of future president Jacques Chirac, with whom his career became closely entangled. Chirac initially saw him as a possible heir to the Gaullist mantle, but the two fell out after Sarkozy's support for a rival in the 1995 election.

Recently Sarkozy's own presidential ambitions have been dogged by suspicions that Chirac, and his ally Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, are trying to block his path to power.

Sarkozy served as budget minister from 1993 to 1995, and was later secretary-general of the RPR party, precursor of the UMP. In 1999 he led the RPR to a disastrous defeat in European elections.

With Chirac's reelection in 2002 Sarkozy was overlooked for the post of prime minister and instead took over at interior, where he began his hectic progress towards the 2007 presidential deadline.

Anxious to break with what he sees as an outdated state-centred economic system, Sarkozy urges the need for France to adapt to globalisation via reforms that he says are now commonplace in the so-called 'Anglo-Saxon world'.

He has called for looser labour laws to bring down unemployment, the sell-off of public housing, cuts in the number of civil servants and private investment in the university system. His support for positive discrimination is highly controversial in a land wedded to the principal of equality.

On Europe Sarkozy has called for a slimmed down mini-constitution to replace the text that was rejected by France in a 2005 referendum, and he opposes Turkish entry to the European Union.

He wants to improve links with the US, saying in a recent book that he "feels much closer to American society than to many others."

Twice married, Sarkozy has three children - the third by his current wife Cecilia with whom his stormy relationship has received widespread coverage in the gossip magazines.

Short of stature, dark of hair and burning with ambition, Sarkozy has been called a latterday Bonaparte, bent on transforming the country by authority and will-power.

Opposing him across the divide is the socialist Ségolène Royal, whose ability to harness popular fervour behind a dream of renaissance has evoked comparison with another national hero: Joan of Arc.



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Venezuela battle lines drawn as Chavez goes for third term

By Andrew Buncombe in Los Teques, Venezuela
01 December 2006

In this factory perched on a hillside blessed with sweeping views, the workers do not just make valves for Venezuela's oil industry. Rather, when their seven-hour shifts are finished, they take night classes, complete extra training or else hold meetings of the workers' committee. They also - overwhelmingly - express their support for President Hugo Chavez.

In 2002, the owner of this then private company reportedly closed down the plant. Three years later, Mr Chavez expropriated the plant and turned it into a collaboration between the state and a workers' cooperative. It was named Inveval, an acronym for the Venezuelan Indigenous Valve Industry.
With Venezuelans going to the polls on Sunday, the story of Inveval provides a insight into Mr Chavez's vision for Venezuela. As polls show the President poised to secure re-election easily, Venezuelans are wondering whether the experience of Inveval will be repeated throughout the country.

"Chavez is very much with the working class. In the past no president did what Chavez has done," said Jorge Paredes, who bears the title of company president but receives the same wage as each of the other 60 workers at Inveval.

So far only around half a dozen privately owned companies have been expropriated by the government. In the countryside, a million acres of state-owned land have been turned over to peasants and co-operatives, while only a handful of private estates have been seized. But Mr Chavez has said his third term will be his most radical as he develops his vision to build "socialism for the 21st century".

Mr Chavez's opponents - who have gathered around Manuel Rosales, the centrist governor of Zulia state - say they fear the president wishes to transform the country into Cuba, with whose leader he has a close relationship. The views of Yvonne Vidal, a Rosales-supporter in Caracas, were typical. "We have the option of a Cuban-style system versus democracy," said the 42-year administrator. "There should be no middle ground with [Chavez]. He says you are either with him or against him."

But the President's aides dispute such claims. His spokesman, Martin Pacheco, said: "It's completely false ... Those who don't have anything are going to be included and they are going to be given [help] and land." Asked if this required the wholesale seizing of private land, he replied: "No. We have enough land. We have a land law that guarantees a better distribution of land."

Most polls give Mr Chavez a 20-point advantage over Mr Rosales, though the incumbent is aiming even higher - hoping to secure 10 million votes out of an estimated electorate of around 16 million. This would place him on more than 62 per cent. A poll published this week by the US-based Evans/McDonough Company suggested a 57-38 victory for Mr Chavez over Mr Rosales.

The President's supporters are overwhelming the country's poor who have been helped by thousands of "missions" established with the country's oil wealth to provide soup kitchens, free clinics and subsisided foods. The government estimates that 1.5 million people have been taught to read and the country's adult literacy rate is an estimated 93 per cent.

Mr Chavez's ability to overcome a coup in 2002 and then a recall vote in 2004 involving a variety of groups have also undoubtedly bolstered his position. He has won international support among those on the left by his readiness to denounce Washington's "imperialism". While Mr Rosales's campaign posters ask voters to "Dare to Change", Mr Chavez's placards read "Vote Against Imperialism" and "Vote Against the Devil" - a reference to his description of Mr Bush during a recent speech at the UN. Returning to that theme earlier this week, he told hundreds of thousands of supporters in Caracas: "We are confronting the devil, and we will hit a home run off the devil next Sunday. On 3 December we're going to defeat the most powerful empire on earth by knockout."

Analysts say that aside from such rhetoric, Mr Chavez has developed his influence throughout the region by acting as a source of credit for countries such as Bolivia and Argentina. By buying bonds and providing an alternative source of finance, the Venezuelan leader has greatly lessened the influence of IMF in South America.

Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington, said: "What he is saying is that free trade is all right but not necessarily on Washington's terms. Washington's terms make such trade, especially in agriculture, impossible to wisely engage in."



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Huge crowd demands Lebanon government quit

By Yara Bayoumy
Reuters
1 Dec 06

BEIRUT - Hundreds of thousands of Hezbollah-led protesters rallied on Friday at the doorstep of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to force the resignation of his U.S.-backed government.

"We want a clean government," one banner read. "Siniora out, we want a free, free government," the crowd chanted.

Hezbollah, Lebanon's most powerful Shi'ite Muslim group, and its pro-Syrian allies had called on Lebanese from across the country to take part in the protest in the capital Beirut, to be followed by an indefinite sit-in near the government offices.

Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, has branded the government a U.S. puppet.
"I call on the prime minister and his ministers to quit," Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun said to the cheers of protesters in downtown Beirut. Speaking on behalf of the opposition, Aoun demanded a national unity government.

A senior opposition source said opposition supporters were imposing an open-ended blockade to the government offices where Siniora and most of his ministers were holed up.

"Tents are being put up for protesters to encircle the government's headquarters to stop movements to and from it until Siniora falls," the source said.

Large numbers of security forces, backed by armored troop carriers, were deployed. Scores of soldiers, using barbed wire and metal barriers, cordoned off the complex housing the government's offices in downtown Beirut.

Siniora and many ministers were inside while meters away, the crowds massed, waving red-and-white Lebanese flags under banners demanding a government of national unity.

Sources close to the organizers estimated the crowd at more than one million, and Hezbollah deputy chief Sheikh Naim Kassem said before the protests the campaign would continue until Siniora's cabinet fell.

"This government will not take Lebanon to the abyss. We have several steps if this government does not respond but I tell them you will not be able to rule Lebanon with an American administration," he told Hezbollah's al-Manar television.

"NEGLIGENT GOVERNMENT"

Hezbollah has been at loggerheads with Siniora's government over what it says was its failure to back the group during the July-August war with Israel.

"The government was negligent during the war. That's why we want a national unity government," said resident Ali Aboud.

"We're here to bring down the government. We, the resistance, don't want any influence from the United States," opposition supporter Najwa Bouhamdan, 41, said.

Siniora said on Thursday his government would not quit. The anti-Syrian politicians who control the cabinet say the Shi'ite Muslim group and its allies want to stage a coup.

The government was weakened last month by the resignation of six opposition ministers and the November 21 assassination of anti-Syrian Christian cabinet minister Pierre Gemayel.

His funeral drew tens of thousands into central Beirut, with many mourners accusing Damascus of being behind the killing.

Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, the most prominent anti-Syrian leader, urged supporters to remain calm and avoid street confrontations. He said Hezbollah wanted to instate Syrian and Iranian tutelage over the country.

"Very calmly, we will remain steadfast," he told a news conference on Friday. "We will confront (the opposition) calmly. We will remain in our houses and fly the Lebanese flags... We will wait for a month, for two months... and watch them."

Many Lebanese fear protests could turn violent. Tension between Sunnis and Shi'ites is high, as is bad feeling between Christians who support leaders allied to the rival camps.

The anti-Syrian camp accuses the opposition of aiming to bring down the government to derail an international tribunal to try suspects in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, whose killing in 2005 many blame on Damascus.

Syria denied involvement but was forced to pull its troops out of Lebanon in April 2005 by international pressure led by the United States and France and huge anti-Syrian protests.

A U.N. inquiry has implicated Syrian and Lebanese security officials in the killing. Siniora's depleted cabinet approved U.N. plans last week for the Hariri court.



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Mexico's Calderon takes power, faces fierce protest

By Kieran Murray
Reuters
1 Dec 06

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Felipe Calderon took power as Mexico's president on Friday and pleaded for an end to months of unrest led by leftists who claim he stole July's election and have vowed to block him from taking the oath of office.

Calderon replaced outgoing President Vicente Fox, an ally and fellow conservative, in a solemn midnight ceremony at the presidential residence in Mexico City.

But he was set for a hostile reception from left-wing lawmakers later on Friday morning when he was to take the oath of office and put on the presidential sash for the first time at his formal inauguration in Congress.
"I do not ignore the complexity of the political situation or our differences, but I am convinced that today we must put an end to our disagreements," Calderon, 44, said in a televised speech after hugging and shaking hands with Fox and swearing in some of his key cabinet members.

The bitterly contested July 2 presidential election has split Mexico, with left-wing parties claiming it was rigged.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a fiery anti-poverty campaigner who narrowly lost the vote, has drawn hundreds of thousands of supporters onto the streets.

Although a top electoral court threw out his fraud claims, Lopez Obrador says he is "legitimate president" and will lead a new protest on Friday in the capital's vast central square.

Conservative and leftist lawmakers punched and shoved each other in an ugly brawl in Congress earlier this week and both sides have camped out there since, with Lopez Obrador's allies insisting they will not let Calderon in for his inauguration.

Despite the threat of fresh violence, Calderon refused to back down and insisted he would go to Congress. He called on his opponents to respect the law and let him be sworn in.

Former U.S. President George Bush and Spain's Crown Prince Felipe are among the few prominent foreign dignitaries here for the inauguration, set for 9:45 a.m. (10:45 a.m. EST/1545 GMT).

IRON WILL

Calderon's election victory bucked a trend of left-wing gains across Latin America in recent years and he will be a key ally of the United States in the region.

A career politician who has an iron will but little charisma, he will also try to push pro-business reforms through Congress and keep a tight rein on government spending even as he promises to cut the vast gap between rich and poor.

Calderon, a Harvard graduate and former energy minister in Fox's government, faces other serious challenges in trying to assert control over an increasingly violent country.

A vicious war between rival drug-smuggling gangs has killed nearly 3,000 people in the last two years, and the popular tourist city of Oaxaca has been wrecked by six months of violent street protests against a state governor.

In Calderon's home state of Michoacan, more than 500 people have been killed this year in a brutal drugs turf war. Severed heads are regularly dumped in the streets and in one case five were tossed onto the dance floor of a seedy nightclub.

Calderon pledged on Thursday to crack down on crime gangs.

"It will be a battle that lasts years. It will cost great effort, economic resources and probably the sacrifice of Mexican lives. But it is a battle we are determined to fight and we are going to win," he said. "To do that, we have to be united."

Mexico won full democracy in 2000, when Fox swept to power in an election that ended seven decades of one-party rule.

The optimism that Fox inspired when he took power six years ago has long since faded. He failed to meet promises of fast growth, millions of jobs and a deal with Washington to help Mexicans living and working illegally in the United States.

Still, the often affable rancher is widely liked and leaves power with approval ratings above 60 percent.



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Beirut protest piles pressure on PM

Fred Attewill and agencies
Friday December 1, 2006
Guardian Unlimited


The Lebanese prime minister was under intense pressure today after tens of thousands of protesters descended on central Beirut in a mass rally orchestrated by Hizbullah in an attempt to force his resignation.

The US-backed premier, Fouad Siniora, whose position has grown increasingly precarious since the Israeli invasion this summer, stayed in his compound, ringed by police and troops.

Hizbullah said the fight was against "American tutelage" and vowed the protests would continue until the government fell.
The protest was to be followed by a sit-in near the government offices.
A defiant Mr Siniora insisted his government would not fall, warning in a nationally televised speech last night: "Lebanon's independence is threatened and its democratic system is in danger."

Some of the protesters shouted through loudspeakers, "Siniora out," and, "We want a free government," amid approving roars from the crowd and the deafening sound of Hizbullah revolutionary and nationalist songs.

One placard read: "We want a clean government." This has become the opposition's motto in what some newspapers have called the "great showdown".

Hizbullah and its pro-Syrian allies have arranged to bus in supporters from all over Lebanon and handed out petrol coupons to people in far-flung regions of the country.

Heavily armed soldiers and police closed all roads leading to the sprawling prime minister's headquarters that overlooks the demonstration site. They unfurled barbed wire and placed barricades to prevent any protests from spilling over into the stone-walled historic building.

The organisers have pledged the protest will be peaceful and Hizbullah's security men separated protesters and police, but there are widespread fears protests may turn into street clashes between pro and anti-Syrian factions.

The government also believes Hizbullah supporters could try to storm Mr Siniora's headquarters.

Tension are running high in the country between Sunni Muslims, who generally support the anti-Syrian government; Shias, who lead the pro-Syrian opposition, and Lebanon's Christians, who are divided.

In a clear sign of the divide, the spiritual leader of Lebanon's Sunnis, Grand Mufti Mohammed Rashid Kabbani, gave Friday prayers at the prime minister's headquarters, in a show of support for his fellow Sunni Mr Siniora.

"Fear has gripped the Lebanese," Mr Kabbani said, appealing for the protests to end.

"The constitution guarantees freedom of expression, but trying to overthrow the government in the street is a call for stirring up discord among people, and we will not accept this."

Hizbullah had threatened the demonstrations unless it and its allies obtained a veto-wielding share of the cabinet. Mr Siniora rejected the demand.

The government was weakened last month by the resignation of six opposition ministers and the assassination of the anti-Syrian Christian cabinet minister Pierre Gemayel.

Hizbullah appears to have been emboldened after its resistance to the Israeli invasion saw its support among Shia rocket.



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Going For Broke

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So the dollar's worth 50p. Stay cool

Gerard Baker
The Times
1 Dec 06

Being of an evangelical persuasion, President Bush could be forgiven for wondering whether something apocalyptic isn't afoot as he surveys the world from his Washington bunker this winter.

At home, the End Times have already been clearly signalled by the triumph of the Anti-Christ, otherwise known as the Democratic Party, in the midterm elections. Abroad, the leader of the world's sole superpower must hear the ominous clatter of horses' hooves and the steady swish of their riders' scythes through the burning fields of his foreign policy.
War in Iraq is melting down US resolve. In Lebanon, another assassination and another political crisis have highlighted America's weakness and the ascent of its adversaries, Iran and Syria, in the struggle for power in the Middle East. On the streets of London, lethal radiation strikes down an enemy of Mr Bush's old friend, Vladimir Putin.

And just when you think War, Death and Pestilence have the field all to themselves, along on the rails comes the fourth horseman - the nightmare of every beleaguered US president - a collapsing dollar.

The US currency has been in something of a crisis this week, falling by three cents against the once-derided euro and by almost seven cents against the pound. Measured against a basket of the world's main currencies it is down by more than 2 per cent in a week. That may not sound like much, but when you consider it is more than the dollar has moved over the previous six months, it qualifies as an Event.

Nothing seems to capture the symbolism of a nation's decline better than a falling currency. For some countries - I'll name no names, but think pasta and a penchant for loud, animated chatter - a foreign-exchange crisis is part of the national culture: a condition so habitual they contrive to achieve it even when they no longer even have their own currency.

For others, the spectacle of traders dumping the national currency down the nearest obliging central bank is unnerving but not always as devastating as it first appears. We used to have such crises periodically in Britain until we cured ourselves one night in September 1992 when Norman Lamont announced his humiliation and the pound's liberation from the European exchange-rate mechanism. The dollar is still different, however. Its value on the foreign exchanges doesn't matter to most Americans, who have little need of foreign money, But for years now policymakers have seen a strong dollar not only as protection against runaway inflation but as a sign of global confidence in the US.

With the currency closing in on its lowest level against the euro, and the mythically significant two-dollars-to-the-pound rate, that leadership looks as challenged on the trading floors of London and New York as it does among the sandbags of Anbar and Fallujah.

The last time the dollar fetched only 50 British pence for longer than a trading day or two was in the spring of 1981, when America was in its deepest recession since the 1930s, inflation was more than 10 per cent and the nation was still in shock from the attempted assassination of its president.

Is the dollar's latest swoon another signal of declining American heft, an economic shock to match the political-military blows of the past few years? The short-term factors behind the dollar's decline would suggest so. The immediate changes this week seem to have been prompted by a firming in trader sentiment that, for the first time since the euro was founded, conditions in Europe look rosier than in the US. This would mean the US Federal Reserve cutting interest rates next year, while British and European rates are going up.

In the longer-term perspective too, the dollar's fall looks like a kind of great reckoning for profligacy. The fall this week has merely extended a decline that has been in place since January 2002. In that five-year span, the US currency has fallen by about 18 per cent against those of its main trading partners. This seems to have been driven in large part by America's indebtedness to the rest of the world. The US is running a current account deficit of roughly $800 billion, or about 7 per cent of its total national output.

But none of this means the American economy is doomed. The exchange rate merely reflects the changing premium that investors demand for investing in the US. Investors may have grown more concerned about placing their money in the US in the past year, especially as European and Japanese performance has improved. But that simply means they demand a lower price for investing there to protect them against further dollar depreciation. The dollar surely needs to keep on falling. What matters is that its drop is an orderly and stable one, not a sudden collapse.

So far the decline has been remarkably steady over the past five years, and there is no real reason to think it will not continue - thanks mainly to China. While private investors may have grown wary of the US, the Chinese Government has been doubling its bets there, investing in US official debt, keeping American interest rates low and the economy expanding, and at the same time ensuring that American consumers keep buying Chinese-made goods.

The Chinese understand that the dollar needs to fall much further; but a sharp and disorderly drop is no more in Beijing's interests than it is in Washington's. They can presumably be relied on to manage the dollar's decline.

Uniquely in the modern history of international financial markets, the world's most important currency is underwritten by the economic policies of another country. That may be uncomfortable for both of them. But it represents far from an Apocalypse for the US economy - more a kind of Revelation for a beleaguered president.



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France in 'vigilance' plea on falling dollar

By Martin Arnold in Paris, George Parker in Brussels and Ralph Atkins in Frankfurt
Financial Times
November 27 2006

France on Monday led European concern over the rising euro in an apparent attempt to put pressure on the European Central Bank not to jeopardise eurozone growth prospects ahead of next year's French presidential election.

Thierry Breton, France's finance minister, urged "collective vigilance" in the face of the falling US dollar. He promised to raise the euro's recent rally with fellow eurozone finance ministers at their monthly meeting in Brussels on Monday night.
In spite of recent foreign currency movements, the ECB is expected to press ahead with another quarter-point rise in its main interest rate to 3.5 per cent next week. But, if sustained, the euro's appreciation could curb the scope for further rises in borrowing costs in 2007. Mr Breton's initiative may have been aimed at setting the tone in the debate on monetary policy action beyond the December 7 ECB meeting.

French anxiety, which compared with a more relaxed mood in Germany, has been heightened since the economy ground to a halt unexpectedly in the third quarter, after an exceptionally strong second quarter. That has prompted economists to cut their growth estimates for the year to the bottom of the government's target of 2-2.5 per cent.

A French official said Mr Breton had deliberately changed his tone on the euro, from saying it was "fully valued" when it was trading at $1.24-$1.28 against the US dollar, to calling for "collective vigilance" now it was above the $1.30 mark.

But Olivier Garnier, economist at Société Générale asset management, said the ECB was becoming "a favourite scapegoat for politicians", letting them score points with voters by criticising the euro or interest rates, without being punished by financial markets.

Ernest-Antoine Seillière, president of Unice, the European employers' organisation, also said the ECB and eurozone finance ministers should be "more concerned about currency developments" and that the ECB should put interest rate increases on hold.

However, Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg prime minister and political head of the eurozone, played down fears about the impact of the rising euro on exporters. "I don't think we have to be concerned now," he said. "We are lengths away from the critical zone."

Mr Juncker believes the eurozone economy's revival is robust enough to survive a rise in the exchange rate and says he was more concerned when the euro was so weak that it was trading below parity with the dollar.

In recent months, Mr Juncker has tried to restrain fellow ministers from making implicit criticisms of the ECB's interest rate policy, which he fears are counterproductive.

However, his colleagues around the table are less phlegmatic, particularly those from countries such as Spain, with industries struggling to maintain competitiveness on world markets.



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Shoppers look to US as two-dollar pound nears

Katie Allen
Monday November 27, 2006
The Guardian

It is one of the magic numbers of the financial world and a phenomenon that grabs the attention of mobile British shoppers - the two-dollar pound.

This week, with experts predicting that the value of the dollar will continue to sink, the magic $2 to a pound is tantalisingly close. And, with demand for transatlantic flights surging and Christmas on the minds of consumers, it represents perfect timing for a cross-Atlantic shopping frenzy.
Virgin Atlantic reports that bookings to New York are up a fifth on a year ago, while reservations for Christmas holidays to Miami and the Caribbean are also flooding in. The airline will announce today it is raising Caribbean capacity by 20% to cope with mounting demand.

"Brits will always look for a bargain and if the bargain is in New York on the back of better exchange rates then they will take it," said Virgin's Paul Charles. He even suggested that many travellers were celebrating their cheaper holidays by booking seats in first-class and business.

One of the most popular items on the dollar-denominated shopping is the iPod. The new video version costs around £190 this side of the pond while in the United States they can be snapped up for the equivalent of £128. One transatlantic shopper, Laura Collett, a 27-year-old accountant from the Midlands, said a recent trip to New York was also easier on the mental maths than usual.

"It was good because you could just basically halve the price to get sterling," she said. Jumpers from Abercrombie, a necklace from Tiffany's and make-up from Bloomingdales department store all came in at a pleasantly lower price. "Nice surprise when the credit card statement came through," she said.

The pound's rise has less to do with strength over here than with the weakness of the dollar. The US currency came close to a two-year low against the pound and tumbled against other currencies last week on the back of a gloomy outlook for the world's largest economy. Traders expect softer inflation and slower spending could usher in interest rates cuts within months. All of which could mean that the dollar soon breaches $2 to a pound for the first time since 1992.



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Pound breaks through $1.98

Angela Balakrishnan, economics reporter
Friday December 1, 2006
Guardian Unlimited

Sterling broke through the $1.98 barrier this afternoon, hitting a fresh 14-year peak of $1.9847 as manufacturing activity in the US plunged to the lowest level in three-and-a-half years, sparking fears of a hard landing for the US economy.
The Institute for Supply Management index on US manufacturing activity fell unexpectedly to 49.5 in November from 51.2 in the previous month. Economists had forecast a slight rise to 51.5.

This was the first time since April 2003 the figure has dropped below the 50 level, which marks expansion from contraction. Within the overall index, new orders, which gauges future growth within the sector, tumbled to 48.7 from 52.1 in October. Employment also showed contraction, with the index falling to 49.2 from 50.8.

At the same time the prices paid index, a measure of inflationary pressures within manufacturing, climbed a hefty 6.5 points to 53.5. The dollar continued to weaken on the news and looks set to remain under pressure, with one economist describing the US currency as "toast." Analysts said it is only a matter of time before sterling hits the magical $2 level, with some suggesting it might even be breached later today.
Omer Esiner, an analyst at Ruesch International, said: "I think this number will definitely continue to fan fears of a hard landing for the US economy."

Today's US data follows figures on Thuesday which showed a large contraction in manufacturing activity in the Midwest, raising expectations that the Federal Reserve will cut rates next year.

The continued dollar weakness weighed down Wall Street, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropping 80 points to 12,142 by 3.45pm.



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Oppressing Humanity

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Sudan rejects Rice demands on Darfur force

By Sue Pleming
Reuters
01 Dec 06

DEAD SEA, Jordan - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice strongly urged Sudan on Friday to accept a "hybrid" international force for Darfur but was told the African Union could do the job, a senior Sudanese official said.

Sudanese minister of state for foreign affairs al-Samani al-Wasiyla met Rice on the sidelines of a conference at the Dead Sea in Jordan to promote democracy and development in the Middle East.

"I asked that we should work together and she said she would work together but only on the condition that we accept a hybrid (force)," Wasiyla told Reuters after the meeting.

"We know as Africans what we need."

The United States and its allies have been pushing hard for a United Nations force to go into Sudan's troubled western Darfur region and finally offered a joint U.N.-African Union (AU) force which Sudan initially appeared to accept but later rejected.

A U.S. official traveling with Rice said Washington's top diplomat "was very direct" in the meeting about the need for Sudan to accept a hybrid force.

"The secretary said we are all in favor of broadening the peace but the issue here is the protection of civilians," the official, who declined to be identified, said.

"We are obviously worried about a humanitarian catastrophe. We need to protect against that."

The African Union on Thursday extended the mandate of its under-funded peacekeeping force in Darfur for six months.

The authorization of about 7,000 AU troops in the vast desert region had been due to expire at the end of the year.

Experts estimate that 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million uprooted in nearly four years by the violence, which the U.S. government has labeled genocide.

"PEACE SPIRIT"

Wasiyla said a hybrid force would complicate issues on the ground. Sudan was prepared to accept U.N. technical help in Darfur but not troops, he added.

"We want to give it (the peacekeeping role) to the African Union. They have the experience," Wasiyla said.

He also urged the United States to improve relations with Sudan, which he said would send a positive message and encourage a "peace spirit."

"Anger will not solve the problem," Wasiyla said.

Washington's special envoy to Sudan, Andrew Natsios, last month set a deadline of January 1 for Khartoum to make progress on Darfur or have the United States and others resort to what he called "Plan B."

Warning that time was running out, Natsios declined to say what Plan B comprised, but he made clear Khartoum must accept a joint U.N./African Union force in Darfur by January 1 or a tougher line would be taken against Sudan's government.

The United States has notably held back on threatening more punitive measures against Sudan in the hope it will allow international troops into Darfur.

But a forced military intervention is very remote and any punitive measures after January 1 would probably be economic or diplomatic in nature.



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Chinese justice system under fire after two high-profile verdicts

AFP
1 Dec 06

Chinese courts have quashed efforts by a New York Times researcher and a blind activist to be freed from jail, in separate cases that triggered strong criticism of China's justice system.

Zhao Yan, 44, a Chinese assistant for the New York Times lost his appeal at Beijing's High Court against a three-year sentence on charges of fraudulently obtaining 20,000 yuan (2,500 dollars), his lawyer said.

At the same time in China's eastern Shandong province, a court upheld a sentence of four years and three months for Chen Guangcheng, 35, a self-trained lawyer who exposed rights abuses committed under the nation's one-child policy.
Lawyers for both men said their clients were innocent and that the legal procedures leading up to Friday's announcements were unfair.

International rights groups said Zhao and Chen were the victims of an ongoing campaign by authorities in communist-ruled China to silence and intimidate voices of dissent.

"This is one big charade," Mickey Spiegel, a senior researcher in the Asia Division of Human Rights Watch, told AFP.

"It was all scripted beforehand. This is nothing about justice, it's all about politics."

In Zhao's case, he was found guilty of fraud in August after being cleared of a much more serious charge of leaking state secrets to the New York Times, which could have seen him jailed for 10 years.

Zhao was arrested in September 2004 after the New York Times correctly reported that former president Jiang Zemin was about to resign from his last official post as the country's top military leader.

At the time, Jiang's retirement was a closely guarded state secret, although it was widely expected.

The charge of illegally receiving 20,000 yuan from a farmer while working for a newspaper in northeast China's Jilin province in 2001 came after his arrest.

Zhao's sister said in August that the fraud charge was laid as an "excuse" for the authorities to jail him, while his legal team complained they were not allowed to cross-examine witnesses at the closed-door trial and appeal hearing.

"This case has not been handled in accordance with the law," Zhao's lawyer, Guan Anping, told reporters outside the High Court on Friday.

Zhao's daughter, Zhao Jingtian, also expressed frustration.

"The decision is very regrettable, the trial was not fair," she said.

In Shandong, a court in Linyi city sentenced Chen in August to four years and three months in jail on accusations of organizing a protest by locals who were upset at his detention by police.

A higher court in October dismissed the verdict due to a lack of evidence and ordered a retrial, although the case was sent back to the same Linyi city court that delivered the original sentence.

His wife and lawyers complained that local officials went to extraordinary lengths to hinder his defense, and that the protest charges were only laid because he had exposed their illegal actions.

Chen had accused Linyi authorities of forcing thousands of women to be sterilized and have late-term abortions as part of efforts to enforce China's one-child population control policy.

"This is an illegal verdict... his lawyers had much evidence showing that he was innocent but the court would not allow it," one of his legal advisors, Teng Biao, told AFP.

"This kind of verdict is sad for China's legal system."

Hu Jia, a prominent Beijing-based activist, said Friday both cases were meant to intimidate others not to challenge those in power.

"They want to set an example as a warning to others not to challenge authority," Hu said.



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Curfew in Indian towns after caste riots leave 4 dead

AFP
1 Dec 06

Four towns in western India are under curfew and over 1,500 people were arrested as authorities sought to avert more violence after riots by low-caste Hindus claimed four lives.

Rampaging low-caste Hindu mobs, angered by damage to a statue of their leader, set two passenger trains on fire Thursday after asking passengers to alight, damaged more than 100 state-run buses and clashed with police in several cities and towns of Maharashtra state.

Police put the number of people injured at 60 but ambulance personnel and volunteers said more than 150 were injured in the rioting.
"We arrested 1,500 people (Thursday) for the violence. Some were caught red-handed rioting while others were arrested as a preventive measure," state police chief P.S. Pasricha said.

The curfew was imposed late Thursday in four towns in Maharashtra state of which India's financial hub, Mumbai, is the capital.

There were no reports of violence Friday and police said they would consider lifting the curfew later in the day.

Police arrested the man who allegedly damaged the statue of the late B.R. Ambedkar -- a political leader and scholar who fought for the rights of low-caste Hindus -- in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

"We arrested a man called Arun Balmiki. He was drunk when he pelted stones at the statue, breaking an arm and damaging its head. He has confessed to the crime," P.C. Meena, police chief of Kanpur city, told AFP.

The Maharashtra police have also asked the state government to declare a holiday next Wednesday, because it marks the anniversary of Ambedkar's death, to avert any fresh violence.

"We are taking precautionary steps to maintain order in Mumbai on December 6, when thousands of Ambedkar's followers will gather in the city for the leader's death anniversary," deputy chief minister Patil said.

Low-caste Hindus or "dalits", who used to be called "untouchables", are on the lowest rung of India's ancient caste heirarchy. They make up some 16 percent of India's 1.1 billion population.

Ambedkar, one of the key authors of India's constitution, fought for equal rights for the low-caste during and after the freedom movement from British colonial rule, which ended in 1947.

The Dalits have faced discrimination in employment, housing and education for centuries from upper caste members, many of whom hold positions of authority in government and business.

Despite legislation banning caste discrimination, they are still regularly abused, badly treated and sometimes killed.

Meanwhile, in New Delhi, there was uproar in parliament over the attack on Ambedkar's statue, forcing brief adjournments of both houses.

Dalits were being "harassed and insulted," said Brajesh Pathak, a member of Bahujan Samaj Party which champions Dalit rights.



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Everyone Hates The Zionists

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Not sporty, but nicer than US or Israel - all around the world people do not like America

By Terry Lane
The Age
November 26, 2006

We rank near the bottom of the pile for cultural richness, along with New Zealand, Singapore and the US. And here lies the paradox in assessing national brand power. How can the US, the richest English language culture in the world, rank at the bottom?

The answer is that all around the world people do not like America. For this reason, they volunteer an obviously ridiculous opinion on its soft values, such as culture.
The latest Anholt Nations Brand Index was published last week.

Researcher Simon Anholt polls 25,903 individuals around the world to see how they regard a group of nations. Australia comes in at number 10 on the overall rankings and is seen as a beaut place to visit, with friendly natives, but not too good at sport.

What? Billions spent on pampering children at the various sports institutes around the country and the world reckons the Poms do better than us on the field? (Britain is ranked sixth for sporting prowess.)

Simon Anholt put Israel in the list of nations assessed for the third-quarter index and found that it ranked absolute dead last for perceived cultural heritage. He writes that this is a ranking that is arguably very much lower than the country objectively deserves.

The political aspects of the country's image appear to be contaminating perceptions of other areas of national interest that, in theory, should be unrelated.

In fact, of 36 national brands tested, Israel's ranked last on just about every criterion.

Even in countries whose governments are vehemently pro-Israel, the ordinary people hold negative perceptions of Israel.

The advertising firm Saatchi and Saatchi, according to a Reuters report in September, is helping the Israeli Government in a branding campaign to deal with such negative perceptions.

Anholt is pessimistic about the usefulness of such a campaign.

"I find it inconceivable that any country can change the way the world views it as a whole purely through marketing campaigns and forms of deliberate propaganda."

He points out that the only other nation to challenge Israel for bottom spot in world opinion is Bhutan and that was because few of the respondents had ever heard of it. Israel, by contrast, "is one of the most famous countries in the world".

Anholt likens Israel to America in that they share a delusion: to know us is to love us. He says that his surveys show the opposite to be true: the more they know about the US, the less they like it, and the same may well be true for Israel. He makes the aside that as popular opinion in America moves against George the Smaller and the Republicans, the more we will like them, and it is likely that a similar dynamic applies to Israel.

While dislike and distrust of Israel is universal, no politician in a democracy will dare to campaign on an even-handed Middle East policy. To do so would be political suicide - or so they assume.

However, if Anholt is right, the Israel lobby is more bluff than substance, but it would be a brave politician who would put the idea to the test.

Australia's ranking at number 10 on the national brand index is due to us being seen as dopey, cuddly and incompetent - a threat to no one.

And the most admired nation in the world? The United Kingdom. Britannia rules!



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Analyst faces discipline for doubting Blair's influence

By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
01 December 2006

The State Department is considering disciplinary action against the analyst at its intelligence unit who delivered a scathing assessment of the so-called "special relationship" between Britain and the US, describing it as "a sad business", and "totally one-sided, with no payback, no sense of reciprocity".
Kendall Myers, a veteran specialist on British and European affairs, has been summoned to explain his remarks by his superiors at the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Tom Casey, the department's deputy spokesman, said yesterday. The remarks were "ill-informed, and I think, from our perspective, just plain wrong", said Mr Casey.

Mr Myers' comments - at an open discussion of British/US relations on Tuesday at the Paul H Nitze School of Advanced International Studies - have caused much embarrassment in Washington.

However, Mr Myers contended that the war had left Britain in a diplomatic no-man's land, and "ruined" the reputation of the Prime Minister. "What I think and fear is that Britain will draw back from the US without moving closer to Europe. In that sense, London's bridge is falling down," he said.

He unfavourably compared Blair's participation in the Iraq war with Harold Wilson's skilful performance more than a generation ago, when he maintained decent relations with the US while refusing to send British troops to Vietnam.

But Mr Casey flatly rejected those assertions. The two countries "have worked together to successfully deal with some of the most difficult issues before the international community".

In London, the Foreign Minister in charge of Iraq policy, Kim Howells, told Sky News: "I don't know if Kendall Myers is trying to sell a book or not. These individuals in Washington have got a great sense of self-importance, they try to lay off this impression that they have got the ear of the President, that they've got this great role."



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International forum opens in Jordan on Arab reform

AFP
1 Dec 06

Foreign ministers from the G8 industrialised nations, Arab, European and Muslim countries opened a conference on the shores of the Dead Sea to promote reforms in the region.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is attending the Forum of the Future meeting in Shuneh, along with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett.

Jordan has invited 56 countries and organisations to attend the third annual forum, after Morocco and Bahrain, since Washington launched the Broader Middle East and North Africa initiative at a G8 summit in 2004.
Jordanian Prime Minister Maaruf Bakhit will address the opening session, which will also hear key note speeches from Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdel Ilah Khatib, Lavrov, Beckett and Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmad bin Mohammad al-Khalifa of Bahrain, who hosted the second forum last year after Morocco.

The forum will look at ways of developing political empowerment as well as economic and education empowerment all the way from North Africa and the Middle East to Pakistan.

It will conclude by a press conference in the mid-afternoon.

Arab activists meeting ahead of the forum have called on world leaders to take urgent measures to resolve regional conflicts before pushing ahead with reforms amid concern from analysts that Arab regimes still lack the will for change.

Ahead of the forum Rice met foreign ministers of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, Egypt and Jordan for talks on moves required to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, as well as the situations in Iraq and Lebanon.

"I found a great deal of interest in what can concretely be done to support the Maliki government," Rice told reporters after the 90-minute meeting, referring to embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

She said the group agreed to organise a meeting of senior diplomats to discuss "how that support might be signalled", without elaborating.

Maliki's government has been overwhelmed by sectarian violence pitting majority Shiites against minority Sunni Muslims, who dominated the country under the regime of Saddam Hussein.

US President George W. Bush and Rice met with Maliki on Thursday in the Jordanian capital Amman to discuss how his government can do more to combat the violence and gradually take responsibility for Iraq's security from US forces.



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Bill Frist Naked On Crack?

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Gator Attacks Naked Man On Crack

LAKELAND, Fla., Nov. 30, 2006

(CBS/AP) A 45-year-old man was hospitalized after four sheriff's deputies rescued him from the jaws of a nearly 12-foot alligator Wednesday, while he was naked and high on crack cocaine.
The Polk County deputies were responding to multiple calls about a man yelling for help at about 4 a.m. They could not shoot the animal because it was too dark and they might have hit the victim or one another, the sheriff's office said.

Adrian J. Apgar was taken to the hospital in critical condition with an apparent broken right arm, leg injuries and his left arm hanging by a tendon. Hospital officials did not immediately release information about his condition.

"It is an incredibly bacteria-filled environment that he was exposed to," Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said.

It was not clear why Apgar was in the lake. Judd said Apgar was naked and told deputies he had been smoking crack.

The deputies - Michael Parker, Billy Osborne, David Clements and Sgt. Andrew Williams - carried Apgar about 40 feet, up a steep incline and to an ambulance ashore. None of the four was injured in the gator-infested waters.

"I remember him saying, 'I'm over here, get here quick, he's still got me, he's going to kill me, my arms are broken,"' Parker said.

The deputies' boots sunk in mud with each step they took, and the water lapped chest-high on some. It took several efforts to get the 6-foot-1, 250-pound man out of the water even after the gator let loose because they were exhausted. They had to find the man by sound, through thick brush and cattails in the middle of the night.

A state wildlife official said investigators are unsure whether Apgar was on land or in the water when he was attacked. Apgar told officials he fell asleep on the beach before the alligator dragged him into the water. However, Judd said deputies aren't sure the man's account is accurate because of his drugged condition, reports the Orlando Sentinel.

At various points, one or two of the deputies were standing by, weapons pulled, on the lookout for other gators. Apgar told them he felt at least one more in the water.

"I was holding my shotgun. It's kind of hard to walk through that with a flashlight and a shotgun," Parker said.

Osborne said he pulled Apgar's arms while the gator gripped his lower half. The reptile loosened his jaws and Osborne thought he was free, but the animal lunged again.

The deputies said they were scared, but didn't have time to think.

"It was a human being, he was dying. He needed help," Osborne said. "I knew my partners were behind me. They were watching; I wasn't too afraid another gator was going to get me."

The alligator believed to have bitten the man was caught at about 1 p.m., roughly seven hours after Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission trappers set out bait. Though there's no way to be certain it's the right one, the animal caught was aggressive and found near the attack site.

"I said, 'Well how big did you think the alligator was?' (The deputies) said 'about the size of a school bus,"' Judd said.

It took 15-20 minutes to pull Apgar to shore from the moment they arrived on scene, the deputies estimated.



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Frist pulls out of race for Republican nomination

By Rupert Cornwell
30 November 2006

The battle to replace George Bush in the White House claimed another high-profile victim yesterday as Bill Frist, the outgoing Senate majority leader, announced he would not seek the Republican nomination but return to his previous medical career.

Mr Frist, a heart surgeon by training who has represented Tennessee in the Senate since 1995, had long been planning a run, as champion of the conservative religious wing of the party. But a series of blunders and setbacks, most lately the unexpected loss of the Senate in this month's mid-term elections, had badly dented his prospects.
"In the Bible, God tells us for everything there is a season, and for me, for now, this season of being an elected official has come to a close. I do not intend to run for president in 2008," Mr Frist said.

His decision leaves the Arizona senator John McCain; Rudolph Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, and Mitt Romney, the outgoing governor of Massachusetts, as leading contenders for a wide-open nomination. But it also opens up a clear vacancy on the right, which could lure new candidates. Mr Frist is the second senator this month to rule out a presidential bid, after Russell Feingold of Wisconsin said he would not seek the Democratic nomination. Earlier Mark Warner, the former governor of Virginia once seen as the most potent rival to Hillary Clinton, also bowed out.

But Barack Obama, the 45-year-old first-term Illinois senator and the hottest Democratic property, is sending signs that he plans a bid. Next month he and other potential candidates will attend a dinner celebrating the Democratic mid-term sweep in New Hampshire, the bellwether early primary.



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Fidel Castro Free of Hatred

Havana, Dec 1 (Prensa Latina)

Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque summarized President Fidel Castro s main qualities, saying that those who wish him dead are wrong because his thoughts and principles will never disappear.

"Enemies of the Cuban Revolution, justice, truth and dignity are counting minutes waiting for Fidel s death, without understanding that Fidel is not only Fidel, rather his people," said the minister at the closing ceremony of the international colloquium Memory and Future: Cuba and Fidel held in this capital.
Perez Roque stated that the Cuban leader "hopes that not only his ideas live on and that he recovers and returns to work to give those enemies a new defeat."

In his one-hour speech, the Cuban diplomatic head enumerated 15 qualities of the statesman, who did not directly attended the colloquium s debates, still recovering from complicated intestinal surgery in July.

Among his qualities, Perez Roque highlighted his honesty, coherence in principles, personal example, internationalism, modesty and total absence of hate toward any people, including his enemies.

"Fidel hates injustice, starvation and racial discrimination, but not people, even if they are his enemies," stated Perez Roque.



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