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Editorial: Iraq's Death Squads: An Instrument Of The Occupation
December 4, 2006
By Ghali Hassan
On November 14, 2006 militias and death squads dressed as police commandos kidnapped up to 150 staff and visitors in broad daylight raid - one of daily raids throughout Iraq - on the Higher Education Ministry annexe in central Baghdad. Although some hostages have been released, the fate of others is unknown. It is alleged that large number of the hostages have been tortured and others were murdered. The totality of the raids, kidnapping, torture, ongoing civilian massacres and murder were part of the illegal and racist war of aggression perpetrated by the U.S. and Britain against a defenceless nation in disregard of International Law and contempt for International institutions.
Let me state the obvious. The U.S. did not invade Iraq to establish "democracy" and "free Iraqis". The U.S. invaded and destroyed Iraq in order to humiliate and divide Muslims - Arabs in particular - protect Israel's Zionist expansion and control Iraq's natural wealth. So, the U.S.-imposed democracy by force is fraud. 'Democracy is like a plant; it grows from bottom up, not from top down'. The U.S. sabotage of democracy in Palestine and U.S. support for Israel's criminal destruction of Lebanon are just two current examples of U.S. love for democracy. Also the idea that the U.S. and its allies are in Iraq to stabilise the situation is a falsehood. Destabilisation is one of the aims of U.S. foreign policy. The unprovoked war of aggression and the continuing U.S. presence in Iraq, including the illegal building of U.S. military bases and the largest C.I.A. station in the world on Iraqi soil, are major destabilising factors. The U.S. objectives have always been to weaken Iraq, divide the people and control Iraq behind a façade of corrupt stooges, with poorly trained and poorly armed army and police.
Long before the invasion, the U.S. and its allies were involved in the training and arming of tens of thousands of militias and anti-Iraq collaborators. The most conspicuous of these militia groups are: 1. The Iraqi National Congress (INC) led by the indicted conman Ahmed Chalabi. 2. The Iraqi National Accord (INA) led by Iyad Allawi, the U.S./Britain most preferred 'strongman' because of his criminal past. Both groups are comprised of Iraqi expatriates (including ex-Ba'athists), trained and armed by the U.S. and Britain. 3. The Badr Brigade, the armed wing of the Da'awa/SCIRI religious 'parties' led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, Ibrahim al-Jaafari and Nuri al-Maliki. This group constitutes thousands of Iraqi expatriates and illegal Iranian immigrants expelled from Iraq in 1980s. The group trained and heavily armed by Iran and the U.S. 4. The Kurdish militia (the Peshmerga) led by opportunist warlords were trained and armed by the U.S. and Israel. All four groups were involved in acts of terrorism and took arms against the Iraqi State. With U.S. blessing and guns, they have replaced the disbanded Iraqi military and police force.
There is also the Sadr movement (known as the Mehdi Army), the anti-Occupation movement led by Muqtada al-Sadr. The movement bears the brunt of Western media attacks, including demonisation and accusations of crimes. U.S. forces and U.S. collaborators in different parts of Iraq have targeted the movement with deadly attacks. The recent car and mortar attacks on Sadr City, which took the lives of more than 200 civilians and injured many more were coordinated - as always - with U.S. forces. The movement's involvement in crimes against Iraqi civilians remains unproven. It is also unknown how much influence al-Sadr exerts on the many units of the Mehdi Army. However, al-Sadr has yet to publicly denounce those who work against the interests of all Iraqis, including the puppet government.
During the invasion of Iraq, the four groups of trained militia were piggybacked into Iraq by the invading forces to provide support and to terrorise the civilian population. The Badr Brigade armed with tanks and personal carriers, invaded Iraq from Iran to assist the invading U.S./British forces in the invasion. The Kurdish militia attacked Iraqi forces stationed in the Northern provinces. Without exception, the four groups participated in the pillaging and looting of the Iraqi State and Iraq's wealth, including Iraqi cultural heritage under the radar screen of the invading forces. Today, the leaders of the militias form about two-thirds of the U.S.-imposed Iraqi puppet government, and exert significant influence on the newly U.S.-created Iraqi army and security force, including the Ministry of Interior.
Since the invasion, each militia group has mutated into several groups of death squads and criminal gangs such as; the Wolf Brigade, the Karar Brigade, the Falcon Brigade, the Amarah Brigade, the Muthana Brigade, the Defenders of Kadhimiyah, and the special police commandos. They are armed and financed by the U.S. and its allies, and fully integrated into the Occupation. Each group is carefully used by the occupying forces for terrorising the Iraqi civilian population in a campaign designed to erode the civilian population's support for the Iraqi Resistance against the Occupation. U.S. military sources have openly admitted that the population, where support for the Resistance is high, "is paying no price for the support it is giving to the [Resistance] ... We have to change that equation", (Newsweek, 14 January 2004). In other words, Iraqis civilians are deliberately targeted for rejecting the Occupation.
In his Let a Thousand Militias Bloom, Arun Gupta writes that 'the U.S. government is not only aware of these illegal militias but is arming, training and funding them for use in their counter-insurgency operations'. According to Greg Jaffe of the Wall Street Journal, the "special police commandos" - is being used throughout Iraq and has been conducting criminal assassinations known as the "Salvador option" with the full knowledge of U.S. forces. "Pound for pound, though, they are the toughest force we've got", Col. Dean Franklin, a senior officer in Gen. David Petraeus's command told Greg Jaffe (WSJ, February 16, 2005). The occupying forces have also succeeded in turning one militia group against the other using the civilian population as a fodder. "And it's all happening under the eyes of US commanders, who seem unwilling or unable to intervene", revealed Deborah Davies in a special Channel 4 investigation, 'Iraq's Death Squads'.
To destroy Iraq as an independent nation, the U.S. initiated the criminal campaign of "De-Ba'athification", which implied the liquidation of anyone associated with the Ba'ath Party as well as anyone with anti-Occupation nationalist views. "De-Ba'athification" is simply a murderous campaign for inciting violence and destroying the Iraqi society. Together with the Israeli Mossad, U.S. Special Forces, the pro-Occupation militias and death squads have embarked on deliberate campaign of assassinations and ethnic cleansing. Thousands of scientists, including more than 350 scientists specialized in nuclear science have been assassinated. Thousands of professors, prominent politicians, and medical doctors have been murdered in cold blood. The Ministry of Higher Education reported that at least 210 teachers have been murdered and some 3,700 have fled Iraq to neighbouring countries. According to the UN more than 3,000 Iraqis flee to Syria and Jordan every day to avoid being killed. More than 1.7 million Iraqis have fled the country.
The aim is to create a climate of terror and incite civil war among Iraqis in order to justify the ongoing Occupation of Iraq and the fraudulent "war on terror". The growing number of daily civilian massacres, rapes and torture of Iraqis by U.S. forces and their collaborators are deliberately ignored by the media, making Iraq the biggest hidden U.S. atrocity in the U.S. history of violence against defenceless people. It is also possible that the violence is created to provide a "safety net" for foreign troops' withdrawal and discredit the heroic struggle and Resistance against the Occupation and deny Iraqis victory against the most violent and powerful war machine in history.
For example, in his lengthy article (Boston Review, 27 November 2006) Nir Rosen dwells on the manufactured significance of al-Sadr and rarely holds the U.S. accountable for the illegal and criminal destruction of Iraq and the murderous crimes against the Iraqi people. He writes; "The civil war was spreading. Violence between Sunnis and Shias [sic] took on a life of its own, operating outside the reaches of the occupation and its forces. Sectarian violence even extended to the American prisons in Iraq, and prisoners segregated themselves". How the violence operates "outside the reach of the occupation and it forces", and inside the U.S.-run prisons in Iraq"? Rosen provides no explanation. Similarly, Peter Beaumont of the London Observer (08 October 2006), called the Occupation "a brutal conflict" and replaced the illegal invasion with the phrase "American arrival" in Iraq, deliberately shielding the U.S. from any responsibility for the horrific crimes committed against the Iraqi people. According to Rosen, and Beaumont, the 'New Iraq' is occupied by "Iraqis fighting Iraqis", and that the more than 200,000 U.S. troops and foreign mercenaries are nowhere to be seen.
From the outset of the Occupation, the media continue to obfuscate reality on the ground in Iraq, misinform (see Max Fuller Crying Wolf) the public and divert public attention from the Occupation as the generator of the violence, and blame Iraqis themselves. Hence, Iraq is reconstructed according to Western media and pundits. The use of the phrase "sectarian violence" and the labels of "Sunnis" versus "Shi'ites" are invented to cover-up deliberate crimes against civilians, shield the occupying forces from any responsibility and portray the Occupation-generated violence as Iraqis killing Iraqis.
The U.S. policy of "let them kill each other" is an integral part of U.S. foreign policy carefully executed to serve U.S. imperialist interests. Hence, the comment of Senator Carl Levin, "We cannot save the Iraqis from themselves", designed to deflect any U.S. responsibility away from war crimes and misleadingly presenting the Occupation as the saviour of Iraqis. We know that the vast majority of Iraqis disagree and want the immediate end of the Occupation. More than 61 per cent of Iraqis approve of the Resistance attacks against the occupying forces. The U.S. and its allies bear full responsibility for the destruction of Iraq and for the death of more than 700,000 innocent Iraqi civilians.
Iraqis have gone many generations without fighting each other. Iraqi (males and females) worked studied and conducted their business in a safe environment. Regardless of their religious affiliations and ethnic backgrounds, the Iraqi people were living in peaceful environment despite the horror of the West-imposed genocidal sanctions. Why have they suddenly started fighting? Why all these crimes and bloodshed did not take place under the government of Saddam Hussein, even when his government was scrutinised by Western NGOs and human rights organisations? Today, these NGOs and human rights organisations have remained silent, preferring to use the fraudulent and farcical trial of Saddam to claim credibility of "defending" human rights. In less than four years, the U.S. and U.S.-trained and armed death squads and militias have destroyed Iraq beyond comprehension.
The immediate arrest of senior police commandos after the raid on the Higher Education Ministry annexes and the immediate release of some hostages shed light on the extent of U.S. complicity in the ongoing crimes against the Iraqi people. Therefore, the longer the U.S. forces stayed in Iraq, the more violence they generate. Only full and immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces and mercenaries will contribute to the end of violence and ongoing suffering of the Iraqi people.
Original
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Editorial: Corporate Media Uses Fuzzy Math to Minimize Size of Lebanese Demonstrations
Kurt Nimmo
02/12/2006
As usual, here in America, the corporate media has a problem counting. "A siege on Lebanon's American-backed government continued Saturday with tens of thousands of demonstrators sympathetic to the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah militia and its allies packing downtown Beirut and calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and his cabinet," reports the Mercury News.
Meanwhile, closer to the "siege," actually a widespread call for the neolib sponsored government of free trader (or free plundering by international financiers) Siniora to step aside, the counting is a bit more realistic.
"Hundreds of thousands of opposition protesters crammed into the heart of Beirut Friday and besieged the headquarters of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's government in a peaceful show of force to bring down the ruling Cabinet," reports the Daily Star, a Lebanese newspaper. Some observers put the number well over 800,000.
It is interesting, as well, the corporate media prefers to use the word "siege" to characterize the demonstrations.
My dictionary defines "siege" as "the act or process of surrounding and attacking a fortified place in such a way as to isolate it from help and supplies, for the purpose of lessening the resistance of the defenders and thereby making capture possible," and "a series of illnesses, troubles, or annoyances besetting a person or group," in other words, there is nothing positive to say about the massive demonstration, obviously representative of a large segment of Lebanese society.
It is an illness, an attack, an attempt to capture the government of Lebanon, all at the behest of Syria and Iran. Hezbollah, naturally, is a sucker for Syria. "Early last month, a White House spokesman said there was evidence that Syria and Iran were planning to overthrow Saniora's government."
As usual, it's all about Iran and Syria, two targets figuring prominently on the target list of the Israelis and their neocon fellow travelers. It has nothing to do with the Lebanese people sick and tired corruption, neoliberal gangsterism, and the fact Siniora cannot protect the Lebanese from the predatory and psychopathic Israelis to the south, able to dispense a million cluster bombs and landmines with ease.
For all the predictable reasons, the corporate media has not bothered to mention that a majority of the population supports Hezbollah. According to a poll conducted on July 26 by the Beirut Center for Research and Information, "support for Hezbollah soared to 87 percent and crossed all religious lines" after the Israeli attack last summer. Even Christians believed Hassan Nasrallah was more of a leader than the pathetic neoliberal Fouad Siniora, who openly sobbed during his address to Arab League diplomats in Beirut as the murderous Israelis killed civilians with uranium-based weapons and phosphorous bombs, latter proudly admitted, much the same way a serial killer brags about his perverse exploits.
In the terrible wake of Israel's illegal and immoral invasion, the Siniora government was nowhere to be found when it came to rebuilding efforts, while Hezbollah immediately launched a "Construction Jihad," which included participation from the Christian Free Patriotic Movement Party, also known as the "Aounist Current." As to be expected, any American who offers assistance in the Hezbollah effort to rebuild Lebanon will be prosecuted as a supporter of terrorism.
Such cooperation horrified the neocons, prompting Elias Bejjani, a Maronite Catholic and head of the Lebanese-Canadian Coordinating Council, who supported Israel's targeting of Shia civilians as "a legitimate form of self-defense," to declare cooperation between the Christian Free Patriotic Movement as a "bizarre and groundless marriage of opportunism," never mind the effort the shelter the homeless who paid a heavy price, as usual, for Israel's "self-defense."
Facing nearly a million demonstrators yesterday, Michel Aoun declared "Siniora must resign and be replaced by a Sunni prime minister who better understands the Lebanese social fabric. We do not criticize him because of his ethnic origin, but due to his deficient performance. He must go, and his ministers must go, in order for a unity government to be established," according to Yedioth Internet, an Israeli news source.
Of course, the Israelis and the Americans, or at least neocon Americans, no shortage of them Israel Firsters, don't give a whit about the Lebanese social fabric.
In 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon, "Israel's Likud government coalesced around three objectives: the destruction of the Palestinian infrastructure in Lebanon, the redrawing of the political map in Lebanon, and the reduction of Syria to manageable proportions," explains Nasser H. Aruri in the foreword to Livia Rokach's Israel's Sacred Terrorism. "The 1982 'operation,' as well as its predecessor, the 'Litani Operation' of 1978, were part of the long-standing Zionist strategy for Lebanon and Palestine.... [a strategy] formulated and applied during the 1950s [and] envisaged at least four decades earlier."
Siniora and the Arab version of "free traders" are unable to protect the Lebanese people from such vicious provocations, as they are more interested in selling the country wholesale to their bankster associates.
As Sami E. Baroudi writes, the "neoliberal ideology (or orthodox neoliberalism)" has a "great hold ... over the minds and actions of the Lebanese political and economic elite," part of a growing process throughout "the Arab world" where "one sees growing evidence of the rise to dominance of neoliberalism in inter alia: the yearning for open markets ... the reduction in governmental social spending and the broadening of the tax base, the welcoming of advice and intervention from the World Bank, and the breaking of old alliances between regimes and labor in favor of new alliances with local and foreign entrepreneurs."
In essence, this is what 800,000 people encamped outside the office-turned-residence of PM Fouad Siniora is all about, not the facile nonsense pedaled in American newspapers about nefarious Syrians and Iranians pulling the strings of Hezbollah.
Siniora will not be saved by his military or commiserating "German and British foreign ministers and calls of support from a host of Arab leaders and Western officials," as Reuters puts it. "Although the dispute is political, many Lebanese fear the situation could spark sectarian violence. Tension between Sunnis and Shi'ites is high, in addition to bad feeling between Christians who support leaders allied to the rival camps."
Obviously, this would be a preferable situation for the Israelis and neocons, who have managed to reduce Iraq to a bloody quagmire of sectarian violence and insanity, but such is not a foregone conclusion in Lebanon.
Hopefully, the Lebanese will get rid of their neoliberal beholden government and send a message to both Israel and the United States.
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Editorial: Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
Israel Shamir
5 December 2006
The villain kills innocent people in order to frame Roger Rabbit, that much I remember of the marvellous Zemeckis 88' cartoon. The movie spoofs Hitchcock private eye films where the hero wades waist-deep in dead bodies, all killed to frame him. Chandler and Hammett developed this genre being bored by always-safe violin-playing Holmesian detectives: their heroes unravel murders while being accused and pursued by police.
The Russian president Vladimir Putin found himself in the uncomfortable position of Roger Rabbit. Soon after the murder of Anna Polikovskaya, an investigative journalist, the defected spy died in London - and accused him on his death bed. The third death, that of obese ex-Prime Minister Gaidar, was avoided but not a new accusation. It appears that every violent or suspicious death is automatically placed at the doorstep of Putin, in the best Chandleresque tradition. Roger Rabbit was framed in order to take over the Toon Town; Putin is framed in order to take over Russia's policies and resources.
Only a very young, innocent and sincere person may believe that media owners and editors, the Masters of Discourse care about minor Russian political figures like Politkovskaya and Litvinenko. They put Putin on the hot seat so he'll surrender Iran to the US bombers and Sakhalin-2 to the Western oil companies, sell gas and other national assets at cheap price, forget about his independent political course. They show him and us the impressive might of mass media machine, this unique device built to zombify millions. They can establish the world agenda and present Putin as a killer, Clinton as a sex offender, Chavez as an antisemite, Ahmadinejad as a new Hitler, Palestinians as the offenders and Israelis as victims. Not even the Popes had such power in their best days: whatever they say, goes.
They never fail to mention the KGB career of Putin, though CIA past of Bush and Mossad past of Tsipi Livni is never referred to in a polite society. They remind us of a killed 20 years ago Bulgarian defector, but they do not refer to the greatest organised assassin of our days, of the Jewish state, unless with admiration moderated by political correctness as in Spielberg's Munich. However, Israel kills, kidnaps and jails its political opponents on daily basis: all Palestinian leaders active 20 years ago were since then assassinated by the Jews. They use poison as well as guided missiles and bunker-busting bombs, and Nes Tsiona centre for chemical and biological warfare produces poisons and other tools for 007, like "bionic killer wasp"
They used their poison in assassination attempt on Khaled Mashal, the Hamas leader; the assassins were apprehended and caught red-handed. There is no doubt they used poison to assassinate Yasser Arafat: the Haaretz published a clear hint to such an effect; and intelligence-related Israelis are convinced of it. And here we come to the most interesting part: Arafat's post mortem revealed presence of Polonium-210, the same poisonous medium that killed the Russian defector. However, the Masters of Discourse and their world-opinion-producing machine pooh-poohed this discovery and connected it to chemotherapy treatment possibly given to the Palestinian leader. Now they say this isotope points to Putin, though Polonium-210 is sold over internet in the US freely.
Everything points to Putin. In today's Israeli paper, a Russian demand of reciprocity in treatment of arrested criminals (quite an ordinary and usual request) is described as "Putin's blackmail"; a Russian desire to own petrol stations in the West, not only to sell oil at the well, is described as "Putin's world dominance drive". Putin is not made of iron like the old Bolsheviks, and he is liable to submit to pressure, to allow Israel to bomb Iran, to let the western oil companies a free run in his land, like Gorbachev and Yeltsin did. Then he will become a darling of the mass media and his alleged crimes forgotten.
This was the case with Muammar Qaddafi - he was personally accused of every mishap and his country was forced to pay zillions for the Lockerby disaster though they had no connection to it, as admitted international observers at the trial. Qaddafi surrendered to the supreme will of the Masters of Discourse, and all attacks on him ceased immediately. It will happen to Putin, too, if he will just fulfil the desire of Israel and expose Iran to bombs.
Wonderful Indian writer Arundhati Roy wrote that all our leaders are awful; but as long as they let the West to steal their assets they are safe. Only when they object to it, they become monsters in the eyes of ever so docile public opinion. We should try to stop this trend; we can't fight off the US cruise missiles, but we may and must sabotage the Masters of Discourse's most powerful weapon, their mass media brainwashing machine by never accepting their line.
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From Russia With Love
Nuclear Chief Says All Russian Polonium is Shipped to U.S.
01.12.2006
MosNews
Russian nuclear energy chief stated officially that a radioactive element of Polonium 210 which had caused death of former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko could not be obtained illegally in Russia, the Reuters news agency reported Friday.
Traces of polonium have also been found in several passenger aircraft and at several places in London, some of which Alexander Litvinenko -- a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin -- visited before his death. In his last note, made public by friends after his death, Litvinenko said Putin was behind his murder. The Kremlin and Russian secret services have denied any connection with his death.
The head of Russia's state atomic energy agency Rosatom, Sergei Kiriyenko, told the government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta that Russia produces only 8 grams of Polonium 210 a month. "All this amount goes to U.S. companies through a single authorised supplier, Tekhsnabexport company," the newspaper quoted Kiriyenko as saying.
Kiriyenko refused to say how polonium was produced, but said nuclear reactors like the Russian RMBK or the Canadian CANDU were needed to make it.
"In Russia all nuclear reactors, including those used for research, are government property tightly controlled by federal authorities," he said.
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MI5 told Litvinenko: Your life is in danger
Daily Mail
02/12/2006
Alexander Litvinenko was warned by British and American secret agents that his life was in danger because of his ties with exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Litvinenko told Italian security adviser Mario Scaramella at their now-infamous lunch at a sushi restaurant that he had 'interrupted' his work with Berezovsky on 'US and British advice'.
Scaramella then told another Russian intelligence specialist - who is under the protection of the French secret services - that Litvinenko had recently fallen out with Berezovsky. Evgeni Limarev said: 'I had very strong information, confirmed by Mario, that Litvinenko had quarrelled with Berezovsky. I can't say more than that.'
Limarev then produced an e-mail which he said had come from Scaramella on the day of the sushi bar meeting, referring to Litvinenko 'interrupting relations' with Berezovsky on the advice of the US and Britain. Limarev refused to show The Mail on Sunday the whole of the email, which was written in very poor English.
But he said that Scaramella told him that Litvinenko had been warned by agents.
It is the first suggestion of the involvement of Western intelligence agents in the intrigue and the most direct hint that Litvinenko could have been targeted because of his ties to Berezovsky's circle.
The tycoon claimed political asylum to Britain in 2001 after being accused of business irregularities, and is seen as the unofficial leader of the band of Russian dissidents who live in London.
Limarev produced the extract from the email in an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday yesterday morning at a location near his safe house in the French Alps.
Limarev also responded to claims that he sent information to Scaramella which caused him to set up the sushi lunch. He is said to have warned that both Scaramella and Litvinenko were at risk of being killed by renegade members of Spetsnaz, the Russian equivalent of the SAS, because of their criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Spetsnaz, an elite unit attached to the intelligence section of the army, specialises in close quarters hand-to-hand combat.
Limarev, 41, who admits to links with Russian intelligence agencies but denies reports that he was ever a listed KGB officer, fled Russia seven years ago after falling out with influential politicians and businessmen in Moscow.
Chain-smoking nervously, he denied being the sole source of the information which Scaramella used as a pretext to arrange the lunch. 'I was just one of many sources for that information,' he said. 'Scaramella used me to distract attention from himself and because he was scared.'
Astonishingly, Limarev also claimed that he was the victim of a suspicious robbery in Rome on the day that news of Litvinenko's condition broke. While he was in Italy, a bag containing Limarev's personal papers and house keys were stolen. Three days later the keys were used to try to gain entry to his safe house 500 miles away - but the locks had already been changed.
He said: 'What worries me is that very few people knew I was in Italy and knew where I was staying. They tried to enter my house very professionally. The tyres on my car had also been let down.'
Limarev says he first encountered Litvinenko in 2001, contacting him to ask him to speak to Berezovsky about possible business deals.
Litvinenko then introduced Limarev to Scaramella, who invited him to help with his work on an Italian Parliamentary investigation - the Mitrokhin Commissiion - into KGB activity in the country during the Cold War. Limarev says he stopped working for Scaramella in 2005 after he became concerned about the Commission's activities.
He said: 'I don't know who pays Scaramella. My guess is that his money comes from a number of sources - very likely US and Italian, but I really don't know if he gets anything from Russia.
'Scaramella seems to be obsessed with nuclear topics,' he added, referring to Scaramella's work for a mysterious outfit called the Environmental Crime Prevention Program, which apparently uses satellites to track nuclear waste.
'But I don't think Mario was Litvinenko's killer. Maybe the killers contaminated him a little at the same time as they poisoned Alex to implicate him, maybe he was contaminated by accident.
'I also think the two Russians who met Litvinenko later that afternoon were used: the killers will have followed him for weeks, and then decided that this was the perfect day to do the hit.'
Limarev added that he was called by Alex Goldfarb, who has acted as a spokesman for Litvinenko's family during the affair, last Sunday when his picture appeared in The Mail on Sunday over revelations about the mysterious robbery in Rome.
Limarev said that Mr Goldfarb told him: 'Welcome to the club,' - the 'club' being the small group of Russians involved in the drama.
Limarev, whose father was a senior KGB officer, says he retains good sources in the Russian intelligence services.
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British Police See FSB as Prime Suspect in Litvinenko Poisoning - Paper
Created: 05.12.2006 10:39 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 18:27 MSK
MosNews
Intelligence services in Britain are convinced that the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko was authorized by the Russian Federal Security Service, The Times newspaper reports.
Security sources have told The Times that the FSB orchestrated a "highly sophisticated plot" and was likely to have used some of its former agents to carry out the operation on the streets of London.
"We know how the FSB operates abroad and, based on the circumstances behind the death of Mr Litvinenko, the FSB has to be the prime suspect," a source said on Monday.
The involvement of a former FSB officer made it easier to lure Mr Litvinenko to meetings at various locations and to distance its bosses in the Kremlin from being directly implicated in the plot.
Intelligence officials say that only officials such as FSB agents would have been able to obtain sufficent amounts of polonium-210, the radioactive substance used to fatally poison Litvinenko only weeks after he was given British citizenship.
MI5 and MI6 are working closely with Scotland Yard on the investigation. A senior police source told The Times yesterday that the method used to kill the 43-year-old dissident was intended to send a message to his friends and allies.
"It's such a bad way to die, they must have known," the source said. "The sheer organisation involved could only have been managed by professionals adept at operating internationally."
Nine Scotland Yard detectives are in Moscow, and they are determined to question a number of well-connected businessmen, despite a warning yesterday from Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, that speculation over the poisoning is straining relations between the two governments.
"It's unacceptable that a campaign should be whipped up with the participation of officials. This is of course harming our relations," Mr Lavrov said during a visit to Brussels.
He said that he had spoken to Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, "about the necessity to avoid any kind of politicisation of this matter, this tragedy".
British ministers insist that diplomatic sensitivities will not be allowed to obstruct the scope of the Yard investigation.
John Reid, the Home Secretary, who was also in Brussels briefing his European counterparts on the Litvinenko affair, said: "The police will follow the evidence wherever it goes."
The main figure that the British counter-terror team want to question is Andrei Lugovoy, a former FSB agent. He made three visits to London in the fortnight before Mr Litvinenko fell ill and met him four times at various restaurants and bars.
Lugovoy, who is a successful entrepreneur, was briefly imprisoned in Moscow after he left the FSB. After his release his business career thrived and his company is reported to be worth more than GBP100 million.
Two hotels in London in which he stayed had traces of polonium-210, as did a British Airways aircraft that Mr Lugovoy travelled on. He was among three Russians who last met Litvinenko at the Millennium Hotel on November 1, the day that he fell ill.
Last night Lugovoy told The Times that he and two business associates, Dmitri Kovtun and Vyacheslav Sokolenko, were ready to meet detectives.
The men have all denied involvement in any poison plot.
The judgment by British Intelligence has been strengthened by the knowledge that the FSB has legislative approval for eliminating terrorists and enemies of the state abroad, after the passing of a controversial anti-terrorism law in the summer.
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Russia Holds Israeli Prisoners Hostage, Seeks to Swap Them for Wanted Tycoon - Report
Created: 05.12.2006 18:15 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 18:44 MSK, 9 minutes ago
MosNews
Moscow has continuously denied four Israeli nationals convicted in Russia permission to serve their prison terms at home, unless Israel extradites Jewish Russian-born entrepreneur Leonid Nevzlin, once the second-in-command of Yukos and business partner of the jailed Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, leading Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth wrote Tuesday in a report headlined "Putin's Israeli Hostages".
According to the paper, four Israeli jewelers and diamond dealers convicted of illicit diamond smuggling in Russia are currently held in a Moscow prison. The authors of the story insist that the four men are effectively held hostage as Russia, seeking extradition of Leonid Nevzlin, refuses to allow them to serve their terms at home, in violation of diplomatic accords signed by the two countries.
The wrongdoings attributed to the Israeli nationals were decriminalized after the four were convicted. In talks with Israeli officials and families of the convicts the Russian officials reportedly hinted at the possibility of "the exchange".
Moscow and Tel-Aviv signed the extradition agreement two years ago. Russia has already used it once when Israel extradited a Russian-Israeli suspect on condition that if convicted he would serve his prison term in Israel. Russia honored its commitments under the treaty.
But ever since the Israeli jewelers were found guilty in Moscow two years ago numerous requests made by Israel to let them return home have been flatly rejected by Russia. Even personal requests made by top Israeli ministers were ignored, Yedioth Ahronoth reported.
One of the convicts has recently wrote a letter to his relatives where he claimed that in October 2005 he and his inmates were visited in their cell by an unidentified man who informed them that their task was to bring Nevzlin back to Russia and assured them that if they agreed to help Russian law enforcers they would be discharged from prison; if not they would have to serve their entire terms in Russia.
The NEWSru Israel website asked Leonid Nevzlin who currently lives in Israel to comment on Yedioth Ahronoth's report. "I have heard that those convicts were warned that if Israel refused to extradite Nevzlin they could abandon hope for early release or transfer to an Israeli prison. I also know that my extradition has many times been discussed at meetings between top Israeli and Russian foreign ministry officials but those conversations were never officially recorded," the entrepreneur said.
Nevzlin also pointed out to an inaccuracy in Yedioth Ahronoth's report. "In truth, there is no permanent extradition pact between Russia and Israel saying that criminals shall serve their sentences at home. Such an accord was achieved once, on the Zhuravlyov case (Multiple murder suspect Andrei Zhuravlyov, aka Terrazini, was extradited to Russia in 2002, after the court said he had obtained Israeli citizenship unlawfully). As to the jewelers' case a separate agreement was drawn up," Nevzlin said.
Nevzlin said he had no reason to doubt the facts unearthed by Yedioth Ahronoth. "I view [Russia's actions] as a hostage-taking in spite of the fact that those people had been arrested before I moved to Israel. In fact, what we deal with here is blackmail where innocent Israeli are being used as bargaining chips," Nevzlin said.
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Russia Will Veto Kosovo Solution Unless Acceptable for Both Sides - Envoy
Created: 05.12.2006 11:49 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 17:27 MSK, 1 hour 26 minutes ago
MosNews
Russia could use its veto power in the U.N. Security Council to block a solution for Kosovo's status if both sides are not in agreement, Russia's ambassador to Serbia said Monday, according to a news report.
Russia would veto any solution for the contested province that is not agreed upon by both Serbia and the province's separatist ethnic Albanians, Aleksander Alexeyev said, according to B92 Radio and Television.
"In case the status solution is not acceptable to both sides - both Belgrade and Pristina - the Russian side will use its veto power," Alekseyev was quoted as saying.
There was no immediate confirmation of the comments by the Russian Embassy in Belgrade. Alexeyev spoke in Russian with a Serbian translation by B92, The Associated Press reports.
Kosovo is formally part of Serbia, but its majority ethnic Albanians overwhelmingly support independence for the province - the demand that Serbia has vowed never to accept.
International talks aimed at defining a solution for Kosovo started early this year under U.N. mediation, but so far have produced no result because the two sides remain entrenched in their positions.
The Kosovo issue is believed to be the last potential flashpoint in the Balkans.
Following lack of progress in the talks, U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari has started working on a proposal for the province. The draft solution is expected to be presented to major world powers of the so-called Contact Group, and the two sides in the talks early next year.
The future solution also needs approval at the U.N. Security Council - where Russia has veto power - before it can take effect.
Serbian officials repeatedly have said they count on Russia's veto in the Security Council to prevent Kosovo independence, but Alexeyev comments to B92 mark the first time a Russian official confirmed such a possibility. There was no immediate comment from Moscow.
Russia in the past has urged both sides to find a negotiated settlement and warned against one-sided solutions. Moscow fears that Kosovo independence could set a precedent for Russian-backed separatist regions in the former Soviet Union.
Kosovo became an international protectorate in 1999, after NATO intervened in the province to stop a Serbian crackdown against ethnic Albanian separatists.
Russia is considered to be a traditional Serbian ally. Both countries share strong cultural, historic and religious ties.
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Russian Orthodox Church Criticizes Vatican's "Unfriendly" Policy
Created: 05.12.2006 17:27 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 18:12 MSK, 41 minutes ago
MosNews
The head of the Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Alexy II has criticized the Vatican behavior exhibited to Russia and other ex-Soviet states, the Associated Press news agency reported Tuesday.
He said the Vatican was pursuing an "extremely unfriendly policy" accusing Catholic priests of working to convert people baptized as Orthodox believers to Catholicism and discriminating against the Orthodox in western Ukraine.
Russian Orthodox officials accuse Catholic Church representatives of poaching in the traditionally Orthodox regions of Russia and some other ex-Soviet republics. The Vatican has rejected the proselytizing allegations, saying it is only ministering to Russia's tiny Catholic community - about 600,000 people in a country of 144 million.
"I hope the Vatican will undertake concrete steps to change the situation for the better," Alexy II was quoted as saying.
If the situation does not change it will reflect visible coolness in Orthodox and Vatican relations and "will not bring relief to people who suffer from the non-brotherly actions", the head of the Russian Orthodox Church thinks.
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Former Russian PM Gaidar Discharged From Hospital - Spokesman
Created: 04.12.2006 23:43 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 23:43 MSK
MosNews
Former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar was released from a Moscow hospital Monday evening following a mysterious illness, The Associated Press quoted his spokesman as saying.
Doctors could give a final diagnosis of what struck the 50-year-old economist as early as Tuesday morning, spokesman Valery Natarov told The Associated Press.
Gaidar - who served briefly as prime minister in the 1990s under President Boris Yeltsin and is a leader of a Russian liberal opposition party - began vomiting and fainted during a conference in Ireland on Nov. 24, and was rushed into intensive care at a hospital.
He fell ill a day after ex-KGB officer and Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko died in London after being poisoned with the radioactive element polonium-210.
Gaidar's aides initially said doctors treating him in Moscow suspected he had been poisoned and were working to determine how that might have happened. Irish doctors concluded he was not poisoned by a radioactive substance, but said his health had suffered sudden "radical changes."
The illness added to growing speculation in Moscow over Litvinenko's death and who might be responsible. Some critics have tied Litvinenko's death and Gaidar's poisoning to the October killing of Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, also a Kremlin critic.
A top official with Gaidar's party, the Union of Right Forces, told Interfax on Monday that he believed Gaidar had been poisoned.
"They really tried to poison him, possibly in an attempt to discredit the authorities. There might have been other goals, but I am not ready yet to give preference to any," Nikita Belykh was quoted as saying.
"I'd rather not do any guesswork, but as far as I know, they really tried to poison him, especially if we view the situation in the light of the Politkovskaya and Litvinenko incidents," he said.
Gaidar, a liberal economist whose criticism of the Kremlin was largely limited to economic issues, served in post-Soviet Russia's most liberal and democratically oriented government. He is unpopular among many Russians who blame the liberal, Western-backed economic policies he pursued as prime minister for the decline in their living standards following the Soviet collapse.
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Russian Authorities Rule Out Jailed Agent Meeting British Investigators in Litvinenko Case
Created: 05.12.2006 11:19 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 16:52 MSK
MosNews
Russia's prison service on Tuesday ruled out any prospects of a meeting between a jailed ex-agent and British detectives probing the poisoning of former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, the Interfax news agency said.
Lawyers for Mikhail Trepashkin, a former KGB agent serving four years in jail for divulging state secrets, have said he has information relevant to the Litvinenko investigation that he wants to pass on to the detectives, Reuters news agency reports.
"Russia's prison service will not allow somebody sentenced for disclosing state secrets to continue to be a source of information for representatives of the special services of foreign states," Alexander Sidorov, a spokesman for the service, was quoted as saying.
A group of British detectives arrived in Moscow on Monday as part of their investigation into the death of Litvinenko on November 23 from a lethal dose of radioactive polonium 210.
Russia's prosecutor-general's office said on Monday it would provide them with all necessary support to carry out their inquiries.
Trepashkin, held in a Urals prison, said in a letter last Friday that the FSB, the Russian state security service, had created a hit squad to kill Litvinenko and other enemies of the Kremlin.
Litvinenko, also a former KGB agent, was one of President Vladimir Putin's sharpest critics among London's Russian emigre community. Before he died he accused Putin of having ordered his death.
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U.S. Court Allows Orthodox Jews to Sue Russia for Religious Writings
Created: 05.12.2006 11:17 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 11:17 MSK, 7 hours 36 minutes ago
MosNews
Members of a Hasidic Jewish movement may sue the Russian government to recover 18th century religious writings and prayers seized by the Nazi and Soviet armies, The Associated Press news agency quoted a U.S. judge as saying on Monday.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said the case involves violations of international law that can be argued in a Washington courtroom. He dismissed a part of the lawsuit, however, involving a dispute over a library of religious books abandoned when the group's leader fled Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution.
The plaintiffs are members of Chabad-Lubavitch, a Hasidic Jewish movement that follows the teachings of generations of Eastern European rabbis and emphasizes the study of the Torah. The group is suing Russia to recover thousands of manuscripts, prayers, lectures and philosophical discourses by leading rabbis.
Those documents, described in court testimony as "the crown jewels" of the movement, were taken to Latvia and later Poland after Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneersohn fled Russia in 1927. When the Nazis invaded Poland, Schneersohn fled to the United States, leaving behind the archives and manuscripts, which were seized and taken to Germany.
The Soviet Army recovered the documents in 1945 and returned them to Russia, where they are being held in the Russia State Military Archives.
Both the Nazi seizure and the Russian government's appropriation of the archives violated international law, Lamberth wrote, so the case can continue in a U.S. court.
"It's a complete victory for us. We're absolutely delighted," said attorney Marshall B. Grossman, who represents the Jewish group.
Lamberth said he had no jurisdiction to settle a dispute over a library of texts left behind when Rabbi Shalom Dov Baer fled Russia in 1915. Because it involved a Russian dispute and not a violation of international law, it could not be settled in the United States, Lamberth said.
"Clearly the library is very important to Russians," said attorney James Henry Broderick Jr., who represents the Russian government in the case. "They've set up a facility for it and they're trying to afford it the dignity it deserves."
Broderick said he was reviewing Lamberth's opinion and did not know how the Russian government would react to the archives ruling. Grossman said he would push for an early trial.
Alexey Timofeev, a spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Washington, said the government was pleased with the decision but would continue to study the ruling before discussing the judge's decision regarding the archives.
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From Israel With Hate
Israel creates new ministry under Liberman to deal with Iran threat
AFP
03/12/2006
The Israeli government has approved the creation of a new ministry for strategic affairs, to be headed by a controversial ultra-nationalist and deal mainly with
Iran's nuclear ambitions.
During the weekly cabinet meeting, "all the ministers approved the decision to form the ministry for strategic affairs" under Avigdor Lieberman, whose Yisrael Beitenu party joined Prime Minister's Ehud Olmert's government in October, a official said on condition of anonymity on Sunday.
The ministry will be responsible "for coordination between the different bodies regarding the different strategic threats Israel is facing," most notably Iran's nuclear programme, which the Jewish state and the United States believe is aimed at acquiring a nuclear bomb, despite Tehran's denials.
Israel -- widely considered the Middle East's sole, if undeclared, nuclear weapons power -- considers Iran its chief threat, pointing to calls from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the Jewish state to be wiped off the map.
Olmert said last month that "our position is that we must do everything in our power to make sure the Iranians do not cross a technological threshold that would allow them to develop nuclear weapons".
The decision still requires the approval of the parliament, where the government has a broad-based coalition.
Lieberman, whose party's main electorate comes from the large ex-Soviet immigrant community, will also head the Native Agency responsible for ties between Israel and the Jewish community in the former Soviet Union.
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Flashback: World silent as fascist Liberman joins Israel government
Ali Abunimah
The Electronic Intifada
24 October 2006
In a frightening but long expected move, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert has brought the Yisrael Beitenu party into his coalition government. The party's leader, Avigdor Lieberman, is to be vice prime minister and, as "Minister for Strategic Threats," a key member of Israel's "security cabinet" in charge of the Iran portfolio.
Yisrael Beitenu is a dangerous extremist party with fascist tendencies that has openly advocated the "transfer" of Palestinians, including the transfer of Arab towns within Israel to a Bantustan-like future Palestinian entity. It has made clear that a Jewish supremacist state is more important than a democratic one. The party, whose strongest base is among Russian immigrants brought to Israel in the 1990s, surged at the Israeli election earlier this year, taking eleven seats in Israel's 120 seat Knesset.
Last summer, Israel launched a disastrous war of destruction against Lebanon, and continues its siege and onslaught against Palestinians in the occupied territories which has killed nearly three hundred people in three months and left hundreds of thousands without sufficient food, water and electricity. Lieberman has advocated even more harsh and criminal measures against the Palestinians and Israel's neighbors.
It is dismaying that the European Union, a key international actor, seems set to maintain warm, normal relations with this extremist government, thus giving it encouragement and legitimacy.
"You will understand that we cannot interfere with the setting up of a foreign government. This is a matter for which the concerned State alone is responsible," wrote Cristina Gallach, the official spokesperson for Javier Solana, the EU High Representative for foreign policy, in an email responding to a query about whether the EU would impose sanctions on Israel if Yisrael Beitenu joined the government.
Gallach added that "We think that both Israel and the Palestinians are aware of the responsibility they have in creating the favorable conditions for reactivating the Peace Process with the ultimate goal of having two States living side by side in peace and security." Other than such bland and cynical platitudes, Solana's spokesperson offered no hint of EU concern about the horrifying political developments within Israel that are certain to bring about further violence, escalation and needless suffering.
In an interview with an Israeli newspaper in September, Yisrael Beitenu leader Lieberman said: "The vision I would like to see here is the entrenching of the Jewish and the Zionist state...I very much favour democracy, but when there is a contradiction between democratic and Jewish values, the Jewish and Zionist values are more important." (Scotsman, October 23, 2006)
In addition to espousing ethnic cleansing, Lieberman has a long history of inciting discrimination, hatred and violence against Palestinians within the Jewish state and living under Israeli military occupation in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. When he served as minister of transport in a previous government, Lieberman called for all Palestinian prisoners held by the Israeli occupation authorities to be drowned in the Dead Sea and offered to provide the buses ("Lieberman blasted for suggesting drowning Palestinian prisoners," Ha'aretz, July 11, 2002). He has proposed to strip the citizenship of, and expel any Palestinian citizen of Israel who refuses to sign a loyalty oath to the Jewish Zionist state ("A Jewish demographic state," Ha'aretz, June 28, 2002).
In 2002, Lieberman declared, "I would not hesitate to send the Israeli army into all of Area A [the area of the West Bank ostensibly under Palestinian Authority control] for 48 hours. Destroy the foundation of all the authority's military infrastructure, all of the police buildings, the arsenals, all the posts of the security forces... not leave one stone on another. Destroy everything." He also suggested to the Israeli cabinet that the air force systematically bomb all the commercial centers, gas stations and banks in the occupied territories (The Independent, March 7, 2002). And, he has proposed bombing Egypt's Aswan Dam, despite that country's peace treaty with Israel since 1979. What will he propose to do to Iran?
Hebrew University professor Ze'ev Sternhell, a leading Israeli academic specialist on fascism and totalitarianism, was quoted by the Scotsman newspaper as terming Lieberman "perhaps the most dangerous politician in the history of the state of Israel."
 I would not hesitate to send the Israeli army into all of Area A for 48 hours. Destroy the foundation of all the [Palestinian] authority's military infrastructure, all of the police buildings, the arsenals, all the posts of the security forces... not leave one stone on another. Destroy everything. |
Urgent action is needed to stem the growing threat to international peace and security that Israel presents. Rather than do anything of the kind, the office of the EU High Representative has set a new low standard, offering only appeasement and accommodation for Israeli extremism and apartheid. The claim that the EU does not interfere in the internal affairs of foreign governments is just a fig leaf for political cowardice and unwillingness to stand up to Israel or its backers; it is not remotely consistent with past or present practice in other cases.
Most glaringly, since Palestinians under occupation elected Hamas to lead the Palestinian Authority last January, in the Arab world's most free election ever, the EU has interfered in their affairs in the most irresponsible manner, imposing a total siege and cut off of aid that has directly penalized the Palestinian population, causing widespread hunger and deprivation. This siege is explicitly intended to force the Hamas-led authority to abandon the platform on which it was elected, or to force it out of office completely. (The EU claims it wants Hamas to recognize Israel and end violence, even though Hamas has observed a 22-month one-sided truce, halting attacks on Israel, and its leaders have issued repeated statements in favor of reaching a long-term agreement with Israel on the basis of equality and mutual, not one-sided, recognition.) The European Union, under Solana's personal stewardship, orchestrated this gross interference in the development of Palestinian democracy and punishment of those who tried to practice it.
And in 2000, EU countries took the unprecedented measure of imposing diplomatic sanctions on one of their own member states, Austria, after the far-right Freedom Party joined the government following elections. Although many voices criticized the EU for meddling in the internal affairs of a democratic country, one of the most vocal supporters of the sanctions was none other than Javier Solana, who on that occasion declared "I think Europe has given a very good example of how in important things -- things that have to go with principles, with values -- there's no possibility of compromise." ("Sanctions hit Austria," Reuters, February 4, 2000).
But when it comes to EU member states discharging their responsibilities to hold Israel accountable for its escalating violations of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, the Fourth Geneva Convention, numerous UN Security Council Resolutions, and basic human decency, the principles that Solana and many powerful others are so proud to boast of are nowhere to be found.
In this moral and political vacuum, it is ever more urgent to heed the call of Palestinian civil society to join the growing global campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions.
Original
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Palestinian killed in raid
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 05, 2006
4:17 MECCA TIME, 1:17 GMT
Israeli troops opened fire at two men in the West Bank town of Tulkarem as they were trying to flee, killing one, the military said.
The other, who was the target of the arrest raid, was wounded and captured.
Palestinian security officials said the soldiers opened fire at a restaurant on Monday, killing a civilian and wounding two others - the fighter and a teenager.
A day earlier, a Palestinian teenager was shot dead by Israeli troops after a confrontation with stone-throwers in the occupied West Bank.
An Israeli army spokesman said troops patrolling the Askar refugee camp near the city of Nablus stopped to remove a pile of rocks blocking the road when they were attacked by Palestinians, who threw stones at them.
The soldiers shot at them, the spokesman said. Local ambulance workers said soldiers firing at the stone-throwers shot a 15-year-old in the head and he died on the way to hospital.
Shaky ceasefire
Also on Sunday, Palestinian fighters in the Gaza Strip fired a rocket at Israel in violation of a truce in effect since last week, an Israeli military spokeswoman said.
The rocket caused no injuries or damage.
Under the November 26 truce, Palestinian groups said they would halt rocket fire at Israel if Israel stopped attacks against Palestinians.
Israel ended a five-month offensive in Gaza afterwards but has not halted military patrols and searches for fighters in the West Bank, where the ceasefire is not in effect.
Since the truce took effect, Gaza fighters have launched 16 homemade rockets into Israel, the army has said, causing no casualties and little damage - 11 were within in the first hours of the truce.
Abu Obeideh, a Hamas spokesperson, said: "I wouldn't rule out ending the ceasefire in a few short days if the enemy continues like this."
The Gaza offensive, billed mainly as an attempt to stop daily rocket strikes, was launched after armed Palestinian groups in Gaza, including the governing Hamas faction, captured an Israeli soldier in a cross-border raid in June.
Israeli restraint
Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, told the Israeli parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee on Monday that the government would react with restraint to the continuing attacks, adding that the rocket fire didn't cease during Israel's military operations in Gaza, either.
He said: "It was clear that there would not be an absolute halt to hostilities, but we must remember that until now we haven't found an alternative formula to stop the rocket fire and weapons smuggling.
"We will fully explore every possibility that can lead to momentum to begin a diplomatic process, and so we are now giving the truce a chance."
In an effort to bolster the ceasefire, senior military officials said on Monday that they had decided to reduce their West Bank operations, allowing only regional or division commanders to order arrest raids, instead of the lower-ranking brigade commanders.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media.
Palestinian officials called for an end to the raids.
Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian negotiator, said: "We urge [Israel] to stop arrests, incursions, and to give the cease-fire the chance it deserves."
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UN chief 'outraged' over civilian war casualties
AP
05/12/2006
UN humanitarian chief Jan Egeland accused UN member states of failing to live up to the pledge they made last year to protect civilians caught in armed conflicts, saying attacks against non-combatants increased by 55% between 1989 and 2005.
UN humanitarian chief Jan Egeland accused UN member states of failing to live up to the pledge they made last year to protect civilians caught in armed conflicts, saying attacks against non-combatants increased by 55% between 1989 and 2005.
Even though recent analysis indicates that the number of conflicts declined by 40% since 1989, he said, civilians are increasingly the victims, with the most significant increase occurring in the last five years.
In his final briefing to the Security Council before stepping down, Mr Egeland cited several reasons for the increase: the proliferation of armed groups supplied with sophisticated weapons and "the intentional, reckless and often times disproportionate use of military weaponry and tactics with little or no regard for their impact on the civilian population".
For example, Egeland said, more than 100 Iraqi civilians are being killed per day, an estimated 30,000 since May, by sectarian militias targeting men, women and children belonging to the "wrong" ethnic group.
"Nowhere in the world do more civilians die right now from violence directed against them" than in Iraq, he said.
Since September, Israel has launched some 15,000 artillery shells, mostly into densely-populated areas of Gaza, killing civilians and children and destroying essential infrastructure, he said.
Mr Egeland reiterated his "outrage" at Israel's use of cluster bombs during its war against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon this summer, saying "more than a million unexploded bomblets...lie hidden in fields, olive groves, and gardens" preventing people from returning home.
When countries are united, he said, "we have succeeded in providing security" to millions of people caught in conflicts.
But the world is "sadly still far away" from seeing the responsibility to protect translated into protection "for all beleaguered and threatened communities irrespective of time, place and circumstance", Mr Egeland said.
"Your responsibility to protect must be depoliticised, become a truly shared interest and translate into joint action by all members of this council and our global organisation," he said.
There has been "vast progress" in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Congo and south Sudan as a result of united international action to protect vulnerable civilians, Mr Egeland said.
"We have not had the same unity of purpose nor action in Darfur or in Gaza," he said.
"Our readiness to act, to sanction, and to fund must be the same in Uganda, in Chad or Ivory Coast as it is in Afghanistan, Kosovo or Iraq," Egeland said.
"Our responsibility to protect must transcend singular interests and become a core principle of humanity across all civilisations."
At the end of the day-long discussion, the Security Council reiterated its commitment to take concrete actions to enhance the UN's ability to protect civilians in armed conflict.
Council members thanked Egeland, who is leaving his post this month as undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, for his "commitment and dedication".
Comment: After highlighting how the UN and the developed countries of the world have utterly failed to protect innocent life and in fact have helped to place it in ever greater danger, the Council members "thanked Mr Egeland for his commitment and dedication", and then went back to sleep.
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Israel bars Gaza residents from university
Times Union
05/12/2006
In recent years, the Israeli security authorities instituted a policy that prevents Gaza residents from pursuing their education at a university in the West Bank. The prohibition is general and does not relate to the question of whether there is actual security information about the particular individual.
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Official: Abbas to address nation soon
www.chinaview.cn 2006-12-05 19:14:55
GAZA, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) -- Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat on Tuesday denied reports that President Mahmoud Abbas would address the nation on the situation in the Palestinian lands on the day, but said that Abbas would do it in the coming few days.
Earlier, Ramattan news agency reported that Abbas would make an important speech on Tuesday to explain the situation and ways of overcoming a political plight after months of inter-Palestinian talks failed to come up with a unity government.
"The speech will touch on proposed options to seek the situation out of current political crisis," Ramattan reported.
After collapse of unity government talks last week, Abbas' Fatah and the ruling Hamas movement have been trading accusations for the failure.
Some local analysts said that Abbas was likely to ask for the Palestinians' approval for early elections or breaking up the Hamas-led government.
However, Hamas lawmaker Mushier al-Masri said that Abbas had nosuch choices to make, while another lawmaker, Yehia Moussa, warned Abbas that Hamas would not give up to any such decision.
Meanwhile, Abbas will leave the Gaza Strip for the West Bank city of Ramallah to chair a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization to discuss the aftermath of suspension of unity government talks and mechanisms to reinforce a Palestinian-Israeli ceasefire which took effect in the strip last week.
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Sisters, mothers, martyrs
Rory McCarthyTuesday December 5, 2006
The Guardian
With a few famous exceptions, women in Gaza have long been in the background of the struggle for Palestinian national rights. But suddenly they are on the front line - from politicians and human shields to suicide bombers.
On the television screen a woman is reading slowly from a sheet of paper held close to her face. The moment is awkward. Her hands shake, she avoids the camera and a large, black M-16 assault rifle hangs from her shoulders. Her head and neck are wrapped tightly in a white scarf.
This is the final message in the life of Fatma al-Najar, widow, great-grandmother, matriarch of her large family and, a few hours after this brief video was shot, the oldest Palestinian to become a suicide bomber. "I am the living martyr Fatma al-Najar," she says, and praises the armed wing of her beloved Hamas movement, its political rulers and its violent struggle.
She says a few words to her family. "I ask my sons to go to the mosque and keep up their prayers and my daughters to survive and not to cry, and to give out sweets." The film stops and restarts and now she is standing without the paper, looking into the camera, behind her still the green flags and insignia of Hamas. An unseen figure prompts her to speak. "I don't know what else to say," she says, smiling nervously. The film is cut.
A few hours later, the 70-year-old arrived at the Jabaliya refugee camp, not far from her home in the northern Gaza strip, in the final days of a major Israeli military incursion. She walked towards a group of soldiers. They called her to stop a little way off. One soldier, thinking she looked suspicious, threw a stun grenade. She detonated the belt of explosives around her waist, tearing her body to pieces and slightly injuring three soldiers.
There have been a handful of women among the 120 Palestinian suicide bombers of recent years, and their names are recited on the streets of Gaza in the folklore of Palestinian martyrdom. But the past few weeks have seen a remarkable injection of women's activism into the fight. In this conservative and patriarchal society the militancy has previously been almost entirely dominated by men. Now that is changing.
Three weeks before the al-Najar bombing, hundreds of women, mostly Hamas supporters and all clad in long cloaks and headscarves, marched into the town of Beit Hanoun in the middle of an Israeli incursion to free a group of armed male fighters who were holed up inside a mosque. Two of the women were killed, but the crowd succeeded in freeing the fighters and now boast proudly of their bravery.
A few days later, another woman from Gaza, Mirvat Masoud, an 18-year-old university student, blew herself up near a group of Israeli soldiers, again in Beit Hanoun. In the following days, crowds of men and women staged sit-ins at the homes of several militants whose houses, the Israeli military had warned, were about to be destroyed. The Israelis had to call off their air strikes.
As with the men, the women's actions are seen publicly as statements of defiance. And among the first guests at the three days of mourning at the al-Najar household, held under a green woven tent in a courtyard by their bare concrete houses, was Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister, and others from his government. The movement paid the funeral costs and Khaled Meshaal, the all-powerful, exiled head of the movement's political bureau, telephoned the family to tell of the great blow their mother had struck for Hamas.
But the family she has left behind feels less proud than shattered. They struggle to explain what has happened. Al-Najar had seven sons and two daughters. All had children, some had grandchildren. There were around 80 in the family, all living within a few narrow streets of each other, all deferring to her as the head of the household. Several of the sons were jailed, one for nine years, during the first intifada, the Palestinian uprising that began in 1987. The family house, in Jabaliya town, was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike and rebuilt. Then, in the middle of the second intifada, in 2002, her grandson, Adil, aged 18, was killed battling Israeli troops in Gaza. The household is still politically divided. Some of the sons are Fatah supporters and at least one works for Force 17, the Fatah security service. Others, like al-Najar herself, are Hamas activists.
Fathiya, 52, the eldest daughter, last saw her mother mid-morning on the day of the bombing. She came to the house and found her mother making bread. They sat and talked for 20 minutes. Fathiya made as if to leave, but her mother asked her to stay for lunch. Her mother showered and changed and walked to the local market, where she bought clothes for her grandchildren and boxes of sweets. She returned home and a few minutes later, left again. None of the family, it appears, suspected what was on her mind. "When she left she said goodbye, but she asked us to wait for her," says Fathiya. Her mother did not return. Later, at sunset, the mosques began announcing there had been a suicide bombing. Soon they broadcast her mother's name. Later, an ambulance crew collected the remains of her body and buried it under a mound of soft sand in the local graveyard.
"Some people say she must have been depressed," says Fathiya. "But it wasn't true, she was a religious woman. She did this to fight the Israelis and get them out of our land. She blew herself up because she loved her home, she loved paradise and she loved the mujahideen."
Her brother, Samir, 36, the Force 17 soldier, seems less attached to the rhetoric. "Now we are missing a space in our lives. We have only our memories, every moment, every second." He knew his mother had become increasingly politicised, but is surprised at her radicalism. She had, he thinks, been affected by the fighting of recent years, the growing poverty in Gaza, the failures of the long-stalled peace process. "She was changing. She watched the news all the time," he says. "It began to affect her. She started going to marches and funerals." She also started to help support the armed wing of Hamas, though she did not tell her family.
In the middle of November, al-Najar and Fathiya took part in the women's march into Beit Hanoun, one last radical act before the bombing. The sons were worried and spent the day at home waiting for her to return. Fathiya saw no reason for their anxiety. "It was something normal. We went to protect our mujahideen. We have to be shields to protect our men."
One of the organisers of the march was Jamila Shanti, 50, a leading woman within the Hamas movement, a member of the Palestinian parliament and a professor of philosophy at the Islamic University in Gaza. She headed the list of Hamas women candidates in the January elections, when women were crucial in getting out the vote for the movement and propelling it into a position of power for the first time. A single, educated women committed to the most radical of Hamas political positions advocating the destruction of Israel, she is a powerful force in the movement.
Comment: Notice how it is never mentioned in the media that Israel wants the destruction of the Palestinians... but they always manage to slip in that Palestinians want the destruction of Israel.
When Israeli forces occupied Beit Hanoun, Shanti encouraged her women supporters to play an active role in the fight by marching into the city, past Israeli tanks. Some of the women reached the Nasr mosque, where the fighters were sheltering, and helped them leave despite the Israeli military presence all around.
"It was a great success because we freed so many fighters," she says. "We did something our authorities couldn't do. We sent a message to the world." Then Shanti helped organise the sit-ins to defend Hamas houses against Israeli air strikes. It was another role for women in the fight. "As Palestinian women, we feel strong enough to do anything, strong enough to play a great part in our conflict," she says.
The battle of Beit Hanoun was one incursion in a five-month Israeli operation in Gaza that followed the capture of an Israeli corporal in June. The soldier has still not been freed, although a tentative ceasefire began last week that might yet bring his release. The five months of fighting left more than 375 Palestinians and five Israelis dead and left many feeling that a return to serious peace negotiations was further away than ever.
Comment: 375 Palestinians dead. Five Israeli's dead. That shows the difference in firepower between the two sides, but if you read the press or watch TV, you'd think the two sides were evenly matched. No, you'd think that it was the Palestinians who had the greater firepower, because, after all, it's supposed to be the Palestinians that are dangerous, that are "terrorists".
Among the dead was Shanti's sister-in-law, who was killed near her home in an Israeli strike that also killed a Hamas fighter. Days later, Israeli troops rolled up in a tank outside Shanti's house and stormed the building, apparently intent on arresting her. She was away at the time.
Others who went on the Beit Hanoun march came away, despite the risks they faced, with the same sense of assertion. "It was a way of encouraging women to do something. We did something that the Arab leaders couldn't do," says Um Ahmed Kafarna, 40, a Hamas activist and the wife of Beit Hanoun's Hamas mayor. "I think more women will be encouraged to be suicide bombers and leaders and politicians."
Academics point out that Palestinian women have been involved in fighting for many decades, even during the British mandate before the creation of Israel. For a long time the leading Islamist groups, Hamas in particular, refused to send off women as suicide bombers, saying it was a role reserved for men, says Islah Jad, assistant professor of gender studies at Birzeit University, in the West Bank. That began to change about three years ago. What is most striking now are events like the Beit Hanoun march, says Jad.
"To use this collective power of the people is something very new in the political scene here," she says. "Before, the women were glorifying martyrs and martyrdom; now, they speak about their power themselves as women." It was the women within Hamas, partly by design, partly by trial and error, who have begun to push beyond the group's vague assertions of its support for women to seize a much bigger, more practical role.
But although the voice of militancy is often the most powerful in Palestinian society, it is by no means the future everybody sees. There are many who consider the past six years of fighting as a great setback and who argue for negotiations, not war. Others are caught in the middle.
In the town of Beit Lahiya, only a few minutes' drive from Beit Hanoun, is a small, private kindergarten. On Monday November 6, at around 7am, the school minibus was collecting the children for class. It stopped in the Sheikh Zayed neighbourhood to wait for one boy. At that moment an Israeli shell struck nearby and a splinter of shrapnel flew into the minibus and into the neck of Najwa Khalif, 24, a teacher who was sitting in a middle row with her two children, Manar, five, and Wasim, three. She died several days later in hospital. The Israeli military said it had been targeting militants nearby who had launched rockets into Israel the previous night. The teachers say they saw no fighters on the school run that morning.
The children on the bus have been deeply traumatised. The head teacher, Indira Gandhi Hamuda (her father was an admirer of the late Indian prime minister), has had them draw sketches of the attack to help them recover. The crayon pictures show images of the bus, hospital stretchers, a rocket, an Israeli tank and, on almost every one, scribbles of red blood stretching over the page. "This is the occupation. They make no difference between children and fighters," says Hamuda, who, like most women in Gaza, dresses in a conservative headscarf and long cloak.
She is bitterly angry about what has happened, but says she is opposed to women taking up suicide bombing. "I don't support this at all. It is also a jihad to care about your children and to bring them up well," she says. And, after all, she adds, the bombing had hardly achieved a major military objective. "What did it do? It was just a suicide. If I'm facing a tank, there isn't anything I can do," she says. "Women can do something else, like teach their sons and daughters to become doctors and engineers. We don't all need to be martyrs."
While she is watching over a class, two of her younger teaching assistants are in the school office, staring attentively at a computer. They call up the news footage from al-Jazeera about the death of the teacher, gasping when they see her body carried away on a stretcher. Then one calls up a video recorded by another female suicide bomber, Mirvat Masoud, the 18-year-old university student who blew herself up in Beit Hanoun on the same day as the bus attack.
"She's not just anyone. She's a martyr," says Iman, 22, one of the assistants, as they watch the film. "We all want to be like her. I would like to be a bomber, but my family won't allow me."
"I want to go instead of her," says the other assistant, Randa, 23, who was on the bus the day their fellow teacher was hit.
If Fatma al-Najar was the oldest suicide bomber, Mirvat Masoud was one of the youngest. She was in her first year at the Islamic University, studying science. She was the eldest child and already the most religious in the family. When she was growing up, the politics in the household was Fatah, the more moderate of the Palestinian factions. When she went to the Islamic University, one of the best in the Gaza strip, there was no Fatah student movement and she fell in with a group from Islamic Jihad, one of the radical movements.
"When she told me that she had joined, I thought it was just politics," says her father, Amin Masoud, 40. He was protective, refusing to let his daughter join the Beit Hanoun women's march. He shows off her school report cards - most years she was top of the class.
The family live in a UN refugee house, provided because the grandparents fled Israel in 1948. Mirvat woke early on the morning of the bombing, ate a little breakfast with her mother, and went off to university. That afternoon, the family saw on the television news that there had been a suicide bombing in Beit Hanoun. One Israeli soldier had been slightly injured. Soon a man from Islamic Jihad arrived to tell them their daughter was dead.
"We don't expect to send our sons and daughters to die. But when they watch the television news, the killing and the destruction, they are affected by it," says Mirvat's father, Amin. "It creates a deep hatred inside them."
In the video that she made before her death, there are slight, dark rings under the teenager's eyes but she is confident and stares intently into the camera. She is dressed in a headscarf and black baseball cap marked with religious script and a conservative but fashionable patterned cloak. She holds a rifle upright in her right hand and addresses her family. "This multi-coloured life comes to an end," she says to camera. "My mother, please live on and pray God to forgive me. We will meet in paradise. My father, please forgive me if I did anything wrong to you. My uncles and aunts, this is very hard for me, I miss you." She praises other Islamic fighters across the world, "from Iraq to Chechnya, from Palestine to the Philippines". She asks her family to pray, and notes that they should distribute sweets but not coffee at her funeral. Then she says: "I am the living martyr, God willing, Mirvat Masoud".
Fighters, leaders and thinkers: Prominent Palestinian women
Although the Palestinian history of the conflict with Israel has long been dominated by men, there have been several high-profile women figures, often fighters and activists, and occasionally politicians and leaders.
The woman regarded as the first female Palestinian guerrilla fighter is Fatima Barnawi, who in October 1967 planted a bomb in a Jerusalem cinema that left dozens of Israelis injured. She was 28 and a member of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.
Perhaps the most iconic Palestinian woman was the hijacker Leila Khaled. In 1969, she took part in the hijacking of a TWA plane, flying it to Damascus before blowing it up. She had cosmetic surgery to disguise her looks and the next year made a failed attempt to hijack another plane as part of a wave of hijacks planned by the leftwing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Nearly a decade later, Dalal Mughrabi landed with a group of other Palestinian fighters on an Israeli beach, killed an American photographer and seized a bus filled with passengers. After a gunbattle with Israeli soldiers, she blew up the bus, killing 36 people on board. Mughrabi and her fighters were also killed.
Other women became prominent without violence. Hanan Ashrawi, an academic and a Christian, emerged as one of the most articulate voices for the Palestinians. She became a government minister and today holds a seat in the Palestinian parliament. The most high-profile Palestinian woman today is probably Queen Rania of Jordan, who was born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents and has become an important supporter of charities.
Today, a new generation of women are taking part. Wafa Idris, a divorced paramedic, became the first Palestinian female suicide bomber in January 2002 when she detonated a bomb in Jerusalem, killing an elderly Israeli man. Female militants and politicians are now emerging from the Islamist groups, notably Maryam Farhat, known as Umm Nidal, who was elected a Hamas MP this year after three of her sons became suicide bombers.
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Annan raps council over Israel
JTA
04/12/2006
Kofi Annan chided the new United Nations human rights agency for focusing too much on Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.
The outgoing U.N. secretary-general said in a statement to the third session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Wednesday that its attentions would be better invested in major humanitarian crises such as Darfur.
Since being formed five months ago, the 47-state council has approved several resolutions condemning Israeli security tactics, but has not turned its attention to any other country.
"There are surely other situations, beside the one in the Middle East, which would merit scrutiny at a special session," Annan said.
"I would suggest that Darfur is a glaring case in point."
Comment: Ever wondered why nothing has been or ever will be done to stop Zionist genocide of the Palestinian people? Wonder no longer. As some conspiracy nut once said "they're everywhere!"
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"Palestinan Terrorism" Courtesy Of Israel
Was this the first casualty of Lebanon's new civil war?
UK Independent
05/12/2006
A poster of Ahmed Ali Mahoud looked down on the wailing crowd who had gathered to mourn his death. Written underneath the photo of Ahmed, 21, were the words "a martyr for national unity". But many of the people who gathered outside the Husseiniyah, the traditional Shia building of mourning, were fearful of the implications of his death - that Ahmed Mahmoud might have been the first victim of the next Lebanese civil war.
Receiving condolences from the large crowd was Ahmed's brother-in-law Haitham. A tall, quietly spoken man, Haitham, 34, said he believed Ahmed was murdered by Sunni Muslims who were out to kill Shia. "They see we are many and very strong," he says. "And they are very few, those of Saad Hariri's [Sunni] movement."
"We stood against Israel and we will stand against the ones in charge now," screamed an old veiled woman outside the mourning room. "If Saad Hariri wants to make it a sectarian issue, let him come here to Dahieh and we will show him our men".
Inside, the women were sobbing while the men sat quietly with their heads in their hands. "Where is Ahmed, where is Ahmed?" shouted Ahmed's girlfriend, Ishan, 20, as she threw herself to the ground. The young couple were to be engaged this week.
A supporter of the Hizbollah-allied Amal movement, Ahmed and his teenage brother Hassan were returning home late on Sunday night from the large anti-government rally when they walked into a confrontation between Sunni and Shia youths. "We saw people coming down towards us throwing stones," said Hassan. "So we started to run away - but while we were running, the shooting started and that's when my brother was shot in the back."
Hassan did not see who fired the shots, but he said he believed it was young men from the Sunni Future Movement, led by the murdered ex-prime minister Rafik Hariri's son Saad, who shot at them. "It was the Future Youth," said Hassan. "The shots came from their direction."
The second eldest of eight brothers and sisters, Ahmed had finished his compulsory military service and had spent the past two years working in the local mechanic's shop. "They killed a child, just look at his picture," said Ahmed's boss Mazen. "He never hurt anyone."
Ahmed's was one of the very few Shia families in the predominantly Sunni neighbourhood of Tareeq Aljadida. All over the neighbourhood are pictures of the murdered former Sunni prime minister Rafik Hariri and his son. "God be with you, Saad Hariri!" shouts a young man riding past on a motorbike.
Amid the mourning scenes yesterday came the announcement that Ahmed's funeral had been postponed for 24 hours as rumours circulated that another Shia youth had been killed in sectarian violence. Security remains tight in downtown Beirut, where thousands of anti-government supporters are camped out for their fourth day of protests.
But the man whose resignation they are demanding is refusing to make any compromises. Bolstered by Western and Arab support, the Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has insisted that his government will not be affected by the protests.
Following a meeting with the embattled Mr Siniora, the Arab League Secretary general Amr Moussa said that "national consensus is the basis for any Arab action, we are working for Lebanon and must work things out on the basis of national unity." Mr Moussa also held midnight talks with representatives of the Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
In southern Lebanon, the Israelis agreed to withdraw their soldiers from the last part of the village of Ghagar, a Druze hamlet, and allow UN troops to take control. But their overflights continued above Lebanon, despite French protests, and Israel still claims Hizbollah is importing arms from Syria in contravention of UN Security Council resolutions.
The UN has stated that it is not mandated to search for guerrilla weapons in southern Lebanon.
Comment: A little "golden rule" to remember when considering events in the Middle East. Israel and the US want to force the Middle East into the throws of "childbirth" so that a "new" Middle East can be "born". This process requires massive upheaval in Middle Eastern society and massive death and destruction. Naturally, the people of the Middle East are reluctant to engage in such a process. It is logical, therefore, to assume that any major civil or "sectarian" conflict in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Iran etc will not be the work nor the will of people in those countries but rather the work of agent provocateurs working for Israel and/or the US.
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Israeli Arab-lookalike Team Murders Palestinian Man and Boy in Tulkarm
Ynet
05/12/2006
Palestinians say special IDF force raided café in town, shot to death Mahmoud Abed al-Al, Fatah activist from Gaza; witnesses report 12 year-old child critically injured
A special Border Guard police force killed a Fatah activist in the West Bank town of Tulkarm Monday evening. According to witnesses, the man killed is Mahmoud Abed al-Al, a Fatah member from Gaza who is currently residing in Tulkarm.
The Palestinians also reported that 12 year-old Muhammad Abu Shweish was critically injured in the operation, and that a seniorFatah activist - Annan Yaish, sustained moderate wounds.
Immediately after news of the incident broke out, hundreds of the town's residents arrived at the hospital and gathered outside.
The IDF reported that the force encircled a house and called on gunmen hiding inside to come out. During the operation two suspects tried to escape and were fired at. One of the suspects was killed, and the other one was evacuated to an Israeli hospital.
A senior al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades official threatened in a conversation with Ynet that the group's members will not responds with restraint to the killing. "Despite the Brigades' commitment to the calm, although it has only been declared in the Strip, Israel continues to kill the organization's members," he stated.
The Islamic Jihad's military wing announced Sunday that in light of the IDF's continued operations in the West Bank, the group will resume rocket attacks against Israel. A senior member of the organization told Ynet that his men will also carry out suicide bombings inside Israel.
The commander of the group's military wing, the al-Quds Brigades, Walid Abeidi, declared that his operatives will soon carry out suicide bombings inside Israel, in response to the escalation in the military's strikes against the Palestinians in the West Bank.
Comment: This is the work of the well-known Israeli military team who are called "musta'ribeen", i.e., "those who appear to be Arabs" by Palestinians. Ask yourself, what is to stop such teams firing rockets from Palestine into Israel and allowing the blame to fall on Palestinians? You think Israeli politicians would not sanction the murder of Israeli citizens to further their political goals?
Time to get real!
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Flashback: PA police fire on undercover IDF unit in Bethlehem
Ha’aretz
11/30/2005
Palestinian policemen opened fire at undercover Israel Defense Forces soldiers during an operation in Bethlehem yesterday. No soldiers were hurt during the incident, and the IDF said its inquiry revealed that no policemen were hurt. However, the Palestinians said one policeman was wounded. According to the army's initial inquiry, the Palestinian police had not been informed about the army operation. Thus, when the soldiers, who were disguised to look like Arabs, came to arrest a wanted man not far from City Hall, the policemen took them for members of an armed Palestinian gang.
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Flashback: Portraits of Palestinian Resistance
Electronic Intifada
Rima Merriman
8 June 2006
Rima Merriman, a Palestinian American living in Ramallah, wrote this series, "Portraits of Palestinian Resistance", telling the stories of the four Palestinians killed and one of the 57 wounded in Ramallah on 24 May 2006, as they struggled to protect a Palestinian activist and political prisoner from an Israeli undercover unit.
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| Palestinian men at Alsa'a Square, a few hundred yards from Al Manarah Circle. (Al-Quds Newspaper) |
Palestinian resistance to the occupation comes in many shapes and forms, some of which involves armed resistance undertaken by organized groups with various ideologies. These groups are composed of barely trained young men who pit their meager and crude resources against one of the best trained and best equipped military body in the world, the Israeli Occupation Forces. Of the 76 Israeli soldiers who died in 2005, only six were killed as a result of Palestinian attacks. The rest died of illness or accidents. Thirty of them committed suicide.
The imbalance in the resources between the two sides of the conflict predictably yields a steady mowing down on the part of the Israelis of one young Palestinian martyr after another. Most Palestinian deaths, however, are of civilians (and children) simply going about their daily lives, getting caught up in Israeli ground and air attacks, Israeli indiscriminate fire and Israeli raids.
Israel's control of and entrenchment in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, its continual attempts to stamp out Palestinian resistance to the occupation at any cost, relies heavily on intelligence gathered by Shabak, the 5,000-strong Internal General Security Service of Israel, whose motto is "Defender who shall not be seen".
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| Lu'lu'a Building, which houses the Internet Café on the sixth floor. (Rima Merriman) |
With a cadre of well-trained, Arabic-speaking Israeli informants who are indistinguishable physically from the Palestinian population, Shabak has little problem gathering intelligence on a people whose every movement is regulated by hundreds of check points and by total Israeli control on their borders. These infiltrators prey on Arab innate hospitality and friendliness. The Palestinians call them "musta'ribeen", i.e., "those who appear to be Arabs". Palestinians are not surprised when someone, somewhere comes up to them and says: Got you!
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| The interior of the Internet Café. (Rima Merriman) |
On May 24th at about 2:30 in the afternoon, three musta'ribeen walked into the Al Karmi Internet Café on the sixth floor of the Lu'lu'a (meaning "pearl") building on Al Manara Circle in downtown Ramallah. They went up to the snack bar and ordered juice and then coffee. Their quarry, Mohammad Hamed Al Shobaki, leader of Islamic Jihad in Qalqilya, was at one of the computers of the Café.
In the meantime, a white van with tinted windows and a Palestinian license plate came barreling down the street against traffic, parked at the entrance of the building and disgorged 10-15 Israeli soldiers in full gear, four of whom had on black clothes and black caps. They stormed up the stairs and into the Café, herded everybody into a corner and arrested Al Shobaki. They also "arrested" the three musta'ribeen and covered all four with the black garb.
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| Palestinian man trying to prevent Israeli Jeeps from getting to Al Manarah Circle. (Al-Quds Newspaper) |
The outcry on the street was immediate and spontaneous. Palestinian youth who were in the area started gathering stones and rocks and whatever else they could get their hands on. Someone drove the white van away and was stopped by a hail of stones. The van was promptly set on fire, as the driver, shouting that he was a Palestinian, jumped out.
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| Palestinian men running towards Lu'lu'a Building. (Al-Quds Newspaper) |
Soon, Israeli reinforcements arrived on the scene, though not without being challenged on the way by crowds of angry Palestinian youth, who tried to block their passage. A handful of young Palestinian men who had weapons used them in the attempt. To get their quarry and retreat, it took the Israelis more than two hours, fifteen Israeli armored vehicles, two helicopters and an arsenal of weapons that included tear gas, sound bombs, rubber and specifically designed live bullets that explode inside the victim's body causing severe harm and tissue damage (called dom-dom bullets). Four young Palestinians were shot dead and scores were wounded. Israeli live fire was reported to be indiscriminate.
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| Rocks, glass bottles and stones by the Lu'lu'ah Building (Al-Quds Newspaper) |
For the Israelis, it all must have seemed like a minor inconvenience, easily brushed off, with no loss of life on their well-armored parts. The Palestinian security forces, who are hugely out gunned (they are allowed nominal amounts of ammunition) and outnumbered by the Israeli forces, understand in military fashion the terrible consequences of any engagement they might choose to conduct with their occupiers. Their orders are always to withdraw from any confrontation.
But for the young men who spontaneously rushed to defend Palestinian freedom on May 24th, there was no question of looking on helplessly as the Israelis marched into their town in broad daylight to pluck off one of their leaders. The incident was a battle that showed off their mettle, the battle, as they are now calling it, of endurance and defiance.
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| Ja'far Khaled Betilla, one of the martyrs. (Al-Quds Newspaper) |
Already, the events are slipping into legend, the courage and numbers of the participants expanding with every telling. The men and boys proudly recall how fearlessly they fought, what damage they inflicted. They admire the courage of their fallen comrades whom they commemorate with posters and slogans that convey the spirit of their resistance: "The National Liberation Movement 'Fateh' does not forget the blood of its men. Tomorrow, giant-like men will avenge me." So says the legend on Milad Atallah Abu Al Arayes's commemoration poster. He is one of the four young Palestinian men who lost their lives at Al Manarah on May 24th.
[NEXT...]
Rima Merriman is a Palestinian-American living in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
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Flashback: Confusion in PA: Who launched Qassam?
Ynet
27/11/2006
There has been general confusion in the Palestinian Authority after a Qassam rocket was fired from the Gaza Strip into the western Negev. One of the cells of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, Fatah's military arm, has taken responsibility for the firing.
However, Abu Ahmad, one of the group's senior officials in the northern Gaza Strip, said to Ynet that he had no knowledge that his people carried out the shooting.
"As of now, we continue to be committed to the truce, but are reserving our right to respond to Israeli infractions," said Abu Ahmad.
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Flashback: Israeli agents accused of creating fake al-Qaeda cell
Sophie Claudet in Gaza City
AFP
December 9 2002
A senior Palestinian security official says his services have uncovered an Israeli plot to create a fake al-Qaeda cell in the Gaza Strip, a charge Israel has dismissed as absurd.
The head of preventive security in Gaza, Rashid Abu Shbak, said Israeli agents posing as operatives of al-Qaeda recruited Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
"Over the past nine months we've been investigating eight [such] cases," Mr Abu Shbak said.
His claims came after the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, said al-Qaeda militants were operating in the Gaza Strip and in Lebanon, raising fears of an intensification of Israeli military occupations.
A spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry branded the Palestinian claim as ridiculous and "some kind of propaganda campaign", adding that "the Palestinian territories have become a breeding ground for terrorism".
"There is no need for Israel to make up something like this because [the hardline Islamic movements] are all the same as al-Qaeda," the spokesman said.
Mr Abu Shbak said three Palestinians used by Israeli intelligence had been arrested, while another 11 were released "because they came and informed us of this Israeli plot".
Mr Abu Shbak said his services had traced back to Israel mobile phone calls and emails - purportedly from Germany and Lebanon - asking Palestinians to join al-Qaeda. One email had even been "signed" by the al-Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden.
"We investigated the origin of those calls and found out they all came from Israel."
The Palestinians recruited were then paired, unbeknown to them, with Israeli collaborators in Gaza, and received money and weapons, "although most of these weapons did not even work".
The money was provided by "Palestinian collaborators with Israel" directly to the recruits or "was transferred from bank accounts in Jerusalem or Israel", said Mr Abu Shbak, who did not dispute that as many as 11 Palestinians had welcomed the call to join al-Qaeda.
"Those who accepted were mostly members of the military wing of Palestinian organisations," he said, adding that although he could not say "there will never be al-Qaeda here, but at least not for now".
The Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, has called Mr Sharon's al-Qaeda claim "a big, big, big lie to cover [his] attacks and his crimes against our people everywhere".
The Lebanese Government and Hezbollah have also dismissed the accusations.
Mr Sharon's announcement marked the first time Israel has officially claimed that al-Qaeda was operating in the Palestinian territories, and came as a surprise because the Gaza Strip is virtually sealed off by Israeli troops.
Israel has came under heavy international criticism for a raid on a Gaza Strip refugee camp on Friday that left 10 Palestinians dead, including two United Nations employees. The European Union and Arab states joined the UN in condemning the incursion into the densely populated Al-Bureij camp.
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US Bent On Destruction Of Middle East
US Troops Shoot/Bomb To Death 6 Iraq Girls
Tue Nov 28
AP
BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. Marines fought with suspected insurgents in Ramadi on Tuesday, and the battle left six Iraqis dead, including five females ranging in age from an infant to teenagers, the U.S. military said.
The fighting began after a coalition patrol discovered a roadside bomb in the Hamaniyah section of Ramadi, and two men fled to a house, where they took up positions on the roof, the military said.
As coalition forces removed the bomb, the suspected insurgents opened fire on the U.S. Marines, who fought back with machine guns and tanks, the statement said.
Afterward, coalition forces searched the house and found the six bodies, the military said. Another female also was wounded but refused treatment, it said.
One of the gunmen may have been wounded and removed from the scene by other militants, the statement said, adding that there were no coalition casualties.
The military quoted residents as saying the building "was a known anti-Iraqi force safe house."
Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, is located in Anbar province, where many Sunni-Arab insurgent groups are based. It has been the scene of some of the fiercest fighting between Marines and insurgents.
"In a very tragic way, today reminds us that insurgents' actions throughout Iraq are felt by all," said Marine Lt. Col. Bryan Salas, a military spokesman. "Efforts are under way to coordinate and offer available assistance to surviving family members."
Comment: The translation of the above-described US army activity is:
US army discovers road-side bomb. Attacks nearest house killing 6 Iraqi civilians, including 5 female children.
Notice the comment at the end how the US military spokesman blames the dead Iraqis for getting shot by US troops.
About 700,000 Iraqi civilians have been murdered since the US government first deemed to bring them "freedom and democracy", at least half of those were killed directly by US forces in events such as the one described above, the other half were murdered in cold blood by US sponsored death squads. Not bad for a two-term idiot president, eh?
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Russert: Why does Bush keep saying 'al Qaeda, al Qaeda, al Qaeda' while discussing Iraq?
December 3, 2006
Raw Story
On NBC's Meet the Press, host Tim Russert asked National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley to explain why President George W. Bush keeps harping on al Qaeda while discussing the insurgency in Iraq.
"Whenever the administration seems to be having trouble with Iraq, in terms of its message, al Qaeda comes front and center," said Russert, before showing a clip of President Bush blaming insurgent violence on al Qaeda at a press conference during his visit to Estonia last week.
Bush said, "There is a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented, in my opinion, because of these attacks by al Qaeda, causing people to seek reprisal."
However, Russert noted, only two weeks ago, Gen. Michael D. Maples, the Defense Intelligence Agency director, told Congress that "attacks by terrorist groups like al Qaeda and Iraq account for only a fraction of the insurgent violence."
"Only a fraction," Russert repeated, before also pointing out that Hadley's "own book, Victory in Iraq, says al Qaeda makes up the smallest enemy group."
Russert asked, "Why does the president keep bringing up 'al Qaeda, al Qaeda, al Qaeda,' when your own military and your own reports say that they're the smallest component of the enemy?"
"Because it's true, Tim," Hadley responded.
Russert then asked, "It's true, what?"
"It's true," Hadley insisted. "If you look at what Zarqawi said, who was the lead al Qaeda operative in Iraq, he articulated very early on a strategy for provoking sectarian violence by attacking Shi'a so they, in turn, would attack Sunni. This was part of their strategy to sow chaos, to thwart the advance of democracy and make Iraq a safe haven for terror."
Hadley explained that despite the fact that Qaeda attacks comprised the "small[est] fraction of the total of incidents...they are responsible for some of most heinous incidents -- the car bombings and other things that result in the massive -- the large civilian casualties, and it is those casualties and those incidents that have provoked the reprisals that the president has talked about."
"It's very important for the American people to understand that there is a key al Qaeda piece in all of this, and that is why one of the principal responsibilities we have, the challenges we have, is to deal with al Qaeda in Iraq," Hadley said.
Hadley added that Qaeda in Iraq was as much as a threat as Shiite death squads.
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Census Counts 100,000 Contractors in Iraq
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 5, 2006; Page D01
There are about 100,000 government contractors operating in Iraq, not counting subcontractors, a total that is approaching the size of the U.S. military force there, according to the military's first census of the growing population of civilians operating in the battlefield.
The survey finding, which includes Americans, Iraqis and third-party nationals hired by companies operating under U.S. government contracts, is significantly higher and wider in scope than the Pentagon's only previous estimate, which said there were 25,000 security contractors in the country.
It is also 10 times the estimated number of contractors that deployed during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, reflecting the Pentagon's growing post-Cold War reliance on contractors for such jobs as providing security, interrogating prisoners, cooking meals, fixing equipment and constructing bases that were once reserved for soldiers.
Official numbers are difficult to find, said Deborah D. Avant, author of the 2005 book "The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security," but an estimated 9,200 contractors deployed during the Gulf War, a far shorter conflict without reconstruction projects. "This is the largest deployment of U.S. contractors in a military operation," said Avant, an associate professor at George Washington University.
In addition to about 140,000 U.S. troops, Iraq is now filled with a hodgepodge of contractors. DynCorp International has about 1,500 employees in Iraq, including about 700 helping train the police force. Blackwater USA has more than 1,000 employees in the country, most of them providing private security. Kellogg, Brown and Root, one of the largest contractors in Iraq, said it does not delineate its workforce by country but that it has more than 50,000 employees and subcontractors working in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait. MPRI, a unit of L-3 Communications, has about 500 employees working on 12 contracts, including providing mentors to the Iraqi Defense Ministry for strategic planning, budgeting and establishing its public affairs office. Titan, another L-3 division, has 6,500 linguists in the country.
The Pentagon's latest estimate "further demonstrates the need for Congress to finally engage in responsible, serious and aggressive oversight over the questionable and growing U.S. practice of private military contracting," said Rep. Janice D. Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who has been critical of the military's reliance on contractors.
About 650 contractors have died in Iraq since 2003, according to Labor Department statistics.
Central Command, which conducted the census, said a breakdown by nationality or job description was not immediately available because the project is still in its early stages. "This is the first time we have initiated a census of this robustness," Lt. Col. Julie Wittkoff, chief of the contracting branch at Central Command, said in an interview. Those figures do not include subcontractors, which could substantially grow the figure.
In June, government agencies were asked to provide data about contractors working for them in Iraq, including their nationality, a description of their work and locations where they were working. The information was provided by more than a dozen entities within the Pentagon and a dozen outside agencies, including the departments of State and Interior, Wittkoff said. The count increased about 15 percent from about 87,000 since Central Command began keeping a tally this summer, she said, though the increase may reflect ongoing data collection efforts. The census will be updated quarterly, Wittkoff said.
Three years into the war, the headcount represents one of the Pentagon's most concrete efforts so far toward addressing the complexities and questions raised by the large numbers of civilians who have flooded into Iraq to work. With few industry standards, the military and contractors have sometimes lacked coordination, resulting in friendly fire incidents, according to a Government Accountability Office report last year.
"It takes a great deal of vigilance on the part of the military commander to ensure contractor compliance," said William L. Nash, a retired Army general and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "If you're trying to win hearts and minds and the contractor is driving 90 miles per hour through the streets and running over kids, that's not helping the image of the American army. The Iraqis aren't going to distinguish between a contractor and a soldier."
The census gives military commanders insight into the contractors operating in their region and the type of work they are doing, Wittkoff said. "It helps the combatant commanders have a better idea of . . . food and medical requirements they may need to provide to support the contractors," she said.
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FM: Iraqi reconciliation conference to be held soon
www.chinaview.cn 2006-12-05 21:29:34
CAIRO, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) -- Visiting Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Tuesday that an Iraqi national reconciliation conference will be held in Baghdad soon, Egypt's news agency MENA reported.
The conference, grouping all powers, including the government and the opposition factions, is aimed at ending the security deterioration in the war-torn nation, Zebari was quoted as saying.
Zebari, who arrived here for a foreign ministerial meeting of Iraq's neighboring countries to be held in Cairo later on Tuesday, made the remarks after a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
According to MENA, Zebari informed Mubarak the outcome of last week's meeting in Jordan between Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and U.S. President George W. Bush and the latest developments in Iraq as well as efforts exerted to calm down Iraq's situation.
Zebari said situation in Iraq is very difficult given the presence of the international forces and the armed groups, adding Cairo will host within the coming period several meetings by senior Iraqi officials, including President Jalal Talabani and premier Maliki.
On the Iraqi-Syrian relations, Zibari said a new stage has started with the visit of Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem to Baghdad and the Iraqi flag will be hoisted on the Iraqi Embassyin Damascus soon and vice versa.
Despite the assassination of the Egyptian ambassador to post-war Iraq Ihab al-Sharif after being kidnapped in July 2005, Iraq hopes Egypt to send another ambassador to Baghdad, said the Iraqi foreign minister.
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Kuwait appeal court overturns US-imposed terror conviction
AP
05/12/2006
The highest court of appeal in Kuwait today overturned the conviction of a former Guantánamo Bay prisoner, acquitting him of terror-related charges, his lawyer said.
Nasser al-Mutairi, who returned to Kuwait last year after almost three years in the US military prison in Cuba, had been sentenced to five years' imprisonment for joining a foreign military force without permission, harming Kuwait by serving the interest of a "foreign country" and undergoing illegal weapons training.
Al-Mutairi (aged 28), a Muslim fundamentalist, was captured by US forces in Afghanistan in 2001 during the "war on terror" campaign that followed the September 11 attacks on the US.
His lawyer, Nawwaf al-Mutairi, who is not related to his client, said the court had found his client "did not commit anything criminal".
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Beirut witnesses another night of bloody violence
www.chinaview.cn 2006-12-05 17:55:21
BEIRUT, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) -- Renewed clashes were erupted in Beirut on Monday night after the body of an opposition supporter slain was carried through Beirut by his comrades a day earlier, reported Lebanon's local Daily Star on Tuesday.
The witnesses said that opposition demonstrators in downtown Beirut, who were enraged at the site of a coffin being carried through the crowds, ran towards to Sunnis carrying sticks late Monday.
A security source at the scene said that the demonstrators, mostly Shiite members of the Amal Movement to which the late Ahmed Ali Mahmoud, 20, belonged, began wrecking cars and shops in the neighborhood.
Many residents, most of them supporters of late Premier Rafik Hariri and his son Saad Hariri, descended from their homes to fight with the demonstrators and the clashes resulted the injury of 20 people.
The night before, a resident was killed and a number of residents were wounded in the clashes, that coincided with ongoing large protests in downtown Beirut by the opposition camp calling for forming a broader government to include larger representation for the opposition in it.
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American Mendacity
U.S. legislator warns of Bush plot to merge Canada, the U.S. and Mexico
Beth Gorham, The Canadian Press
Published: Tuesday, November 21, 2006
WASHINGTON -- A U.S. legislator who backs tough anti-immigrant measures and more security at the Canada-U.S. border is warning Americans that President George W. Bush is plotting to integrate the continent.
And he says Prime Minister Stephen Harper "buys into it."
Colorado Republican Tom Tancredo, revered by some U.S. conservatives for his efforts to staunch the flow of illegal immigrants from Mexico, said this week that Bush is a dangerous internationalist.
"He is going to do what he can to create a place where the idea of America is just that, it's an idea. It's not an actual place defined by borders. I mean this is where the guy is really going," he told WorldNetDaily, a controversial conservative website.
"I know this is dramatic, or maybe somebody would say overly dramatic. But I'm telling you that everything I see leads me to believe that this whole idea of the North American union, it's not something that's just written about by right-wing fringe kooks," said Tancredo, who is considering a run at the presidency.
"It is something in the head of the president of the United States, the president of Mexico, I think the prime minister of Canada buys into it..."
Tancredo followed up with an interview on the conservative Fox News network, where he said the borders will lose all their significance, serving merely as "speed bumps" in the flow of goods, services and people.
In October, Tancredo demanded the United States suspend work on the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) signed last year by Canada, Mexico and The United States until Congress examines its goals and agreements, which include standardizing regulations and dismantling other barriers to trade.
The deal to collaborate on a wide range of trade and security issues is part of a larger plot to merge the countries in a European Union-like arrangement using a common currency, he said, with no oversight from legislators.
The congressman, who wrote a book on the border security issue called "In Mortal Danger," is one of four members of Congress who've signed a resolution opposed to a union or a free trade "superhighway system."
They're not the only ones worried about closer ties between the three countries.
A coalition of American conservatives is organizing a grassroots effort to make it an issue in the 2008 presidential race and vow to campaign against any candidate, Republican or Democrat, who won't side with them.
The movement was spearheaded in October by Howard Phillips, chairman of the public policy group Conservative Caucus, anti-feminist activist Phyllis Schlafly and author Jerome Corsi.
The group is calling for a congressional investigation into the SPP and full disclosure of all documents when the new Congress run by Democrats begins in January. They're getting support from the Minuteman Project that monitors the borders to deter illegal crossings, a group Bush has called vigilantes.
Supporters of the anti-union stand point out that a prominent three-country task force backed by Canada's business elite has promoted an elaborate vision of a common economy and security perimeter.
The plan, released last year, drew fire from some Canadians who saw it as a dangerous surrender of sovereignty designed to benefit big business.
Tancredo, who has often talked about the "porous" Canada-U.S. border, stirred up controversy last year when he mused on a Florida radio show that America could destroy Islamic holy sites like Mecca if there's another terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
While beloved by many right-wingers and immigration hawks, Tancredo was recently labelled one of the 10 worst congressmen by Rolling Stone magazine.
The publication noted he wants to deport every undocumented worker in the United States, a proposal that would cost at least US$200 billion, and has called for halting all immigration, legal or otherwise.
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'We told America: No rendition here'; Ahern bullish on CIA's 'torture flights'
Daily Mail (London)
December 1, 2006 Friday
DAVID HAWORTH
FOREIGN Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern told a European Parliament committee yesterday that the Government had given the U.S. a strong warning that 'our country or our territory must not be used for extraordinary rendition in any shape or form'.
'I can't be plainer than that', he said. 'We don't want any planes involved in renditions and we've told the Americans that bluntly.' In response, Washington has given explicit assurances to the Government that no such activities would take place in or near Irish airspace.
The Minister had volunteered to give evidence to a special parliamentary committee set up to examine allegations that the U.S. has been using many European Union member countries as staging posts for international flights under the CIA's auspices carrying suspected terrorists to interrogation camps.
But Mr Ahern rounded on the committee members yesterday, protesting that a draft report on renditions had been leaked before he could address the MEPs.
The report alleges that CIA flights have passed through Ireland on 147 occasions, one of them the nicknamed 'Guantanamo Express' which is said to have refuelled in Shannon on its way home after carrying terrorist Abu Omar from Rome to Egypt where he remains in captivity.
'I have to say that I would have the most serious questions about the methodology used in establishing such a figure of allegedly suspicious flights. I would seriously question the draft report's language', the irritatedMinister told the legislators. 'I parinstanceticularly deplore the text,' he added.
In the 'Express' case, allegations about involvement with Omar's abduction only surfaced eighteen months afterwards, by which point it was difficult to prove what the aircraft had been up to. But Mr Ahern said he made his statement on the basis of the strongest political assurances from the Bush administration that no planes had passed through Irish airspace, still less landed in the country with any prisoners on board.
The Minister said it was striking that neither in this or any other had any evidence been produced to prove clandestine American activities on Irish soil.
The Garda SIochna has investigated six complaints from members of the public related to extraordinary rendition. On two occasions reports were passed to the Director of Public Prosecutions but in both investigations no further action was taken because of the lack of evidence.
'The Government have always made it clear that were evidence of criminal activity on Irish territory ever to emerge, we would act immediately.
Boarding planes, applying court orders, criminal prosecution and extradition were all measures which could be applied if the police believed them necessary but the Government can't tell the police what to do,' Mr Ahern pointed out.
The Minister did agree there should be more information-sharing about flights.
However, he said he was under no illusions about the scale of air traffic management. There are between 750 and 1,750 movements of private aircraft through Irish airports each month. In addition there have been 224,614 overflights during the last nine months, he said.
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U.S. presses China, Russia ahead of Iran sanctions meeting
Last Updated: Tuesday, December 5, 2006 | 8:10 AM ET
CBC News
A top American official says he doesn't expect any breakthroughs during a key meeting with major world powers on Iran's nuclear program, but urged China and Russia to agree to sanctions.
"I wouldn't say it's going to be a breakthrough meeting but I do think it is an important meeting along the way. It's high time that we passed a [United Nations] Security Council resolution on Iran," U.S. undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns told reporters in France.
Burns will join officials from Britain, France, China, Russia, and Germany later in Paris for a meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
The group will discuss possible sanctions against Iran, which rejected a UN Security Council deadline to end uranium enrichment by Aug. 31.
Burns urged Russia and China to join the other permanent members of the Security Council in reaching an agreement on sanctions.
"We've waited long enough. We've had hours and hours of discussions and we really do need the Russian and Chinese governments to shift into third or fourth gear ... and to work more quickly to agree with us on the basis of a resolution."
"We know it's going to impinge upon Iran's nuclear and missile programmes. We know that we all want to cut off the ability of Iran to seek financial support, or technological support to continue its enrichment or missile programmes, or heavy water reactor programmes," he said.
France's foreign minister on Monday said agreement on a Security Council resolution was near.
Iran warns Europeans
Earlier Tuesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned European countries that co-operating with the U.S. on sanctions would be "an act of hostility."
"I'm telling you in plain language that as of now on, if you try, whether in your propaganda or at international organizations, to take steps against the rights of the Iranian nation, the Iranian nation will consider it an act of hostility," Ahmadinejad said in a speech before thousands of people in northern Iran.
"And if you insist on pursuing this path," he continued, Iran "will reconsider its relations with you."
It was the first time that Ahmadinejad had threatened to downgrade relations with European nations, which are responsible for a large portion of Iran's international trade.
Ahmadinejad doesn't have the final say in the country's policy, however.
That falls to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Washington and other Western countries believe Tehran is secretly trying to build a nuclear weapon. Iran maintains its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, such as finding new forms of energy.
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Freedom to Choose a Good Book Is the American Way of Civilization
Alan Gregory Wonderwheel
Saturday, December 02, 2006
American fascists are making Keith Ellison a household name. Who, you might wonder? Keith Ellison is the newly elected congressman from Minnesota's Fifth District and is the first Muslim elected to the United States Congress. Much to the consternation of American fascists, Congressman elect Ellison has announced that he will not take his oath of office by placing his hand on the Bible, and instead chooses to be sworn in using the Koran.
I recently learned that a national campaign has begun to oppose the use of the Koran in the swearing-in ceremonies for representatives, senators, and even the President and Vice president. The American fascists are sending emails and letters to legislators asking for a law to prevent the use of any other book than the Bible for taking the oath of office.
Why? Because to use any other book would "undermine American civilization" according to columnist Dennis Prager. The so-called "good Christians" of the American Family Association have endorsed and embraced Prager's fascist views and assert that because Prager is a Jew that it is not just a Christian issue. Of course they don't acknowledge that the first half of the Christian Bible is the Jewish Bible, and therefore for a Jew to advocate the exclusive use of the Christian Bible is actually advocating the exclusive use of the Jewish-Christian Bible. Of course for Prager to place his hand on the Bible to take an oath, if he were an observing Jew, he would have to accomplish the mental gymnastics of having his hand only reach down to the first part of the book and stop before including the New Testament.
Prager's un-American ranting is really something to wonder at. First he says, Ellison "should not be allowed to do so -- not because of any American hostility to the Koran, but because the act undermines American civilization." This silliness is really fascinating from someone who is supposed to be engaging in rational discourse. If one believes that placing one's hand on the Koran is a threat to American civilization, then clearly the holder of that belief is extremely hostile to the Koran. To argue otherwise is just absurd sophism.
Then Prager says, by way of example, "What Ellison and his Muslim and leftist supporters are saying is that it is of no consequence what America holds as its holiest book; all that matters is what any individual holds to be his holiest book." Dennis Prager's education is woefully lacking as he evidently never learned in school that America doesn't have a "holiest" book, because the USA believes in the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. This doctrine by the way is enshrined in our US Constitution's First Amendment, as well as evidenced by the fact that God is not mentioned anywhere in the US Constitution. What a great document it is!.
But the real irony is that the fascists like Prager overlook the very core of the symbology of the oath taking ceremony as it relates to American civilization, that is the very purpose of putting a hand on a book. The person is not swearing allegiance to the book, nor to a religion or a culture, he or she is swearing allegiance to the US Constitution. The ceremony is one in which the person is stating an oath of allegiance, based exactly on their own personal religious and spiritual faith, that they will uphold and protect the US Constitution. We accept this oath precisely because it is based on the person's sincerity and personal integrity as evidenced by their hand on the book that they themselves uphold to be the highest expression of their spiritual and moral life. That's not to hard to understand is it?
Contrary to how Prager and similar totalitarian thinkers see damage "to the fabric of American civilization" if Ellison is allowed to choose his own book, it is squarely this choice that is the fabric of American civilization. The book chosen is intensely personal and individual by design! Other wise the oath of office would be meaningless. If would be as meaningless to a Muslim to make the oath with his hand on the Bible as it would for a Jew to make the oath with her hand on the Koran. Or for either to make the oath with their hands on the phonebook.
There are only two rational positions to have on this question. Either the person being sworn in must get to choose the book that represents to them their most personal and important evidence of their own integrity and sincerity, or the book should be the document to which they are pledging allegiance, that is the US Constitution.
If the fascists want to avoid having the Koran being used in the oath of office, then the only American alternative is to remove all religious books from the ceremony and have the hand placed on the US Constitution itself. This of course would change the central meaning of the act itself. Instead of being the indicator of the source of one's spiritual and moral values, as the book now represents, the hand on the book would simply indicate the object to which the oath is being given. That is workable, but the consequence means that there would be no observable ritual and ceremony showing the personally meaningful traditional source of the moral integrity of the oath taker.
If a person puts his or her hand on a Bible, Koran, Buddhist Sutra, or whatever book that gives them their roots of moral strength, then I feel that is a welcome indication of the character of the person who is taking the oath. Prager's Chicken Little "the sky is falling in on American civilization" warning, of course, only presents his own hubris even as he projects his hubris onto Ellison. For Prager to worry that some elected Nazi might use Mein Kampf, or that an elected Scientologist might use the book Dianetics,is really a baseless worry. If those are the books a newly elected Congressperson would choose, then those books are the evidence of their sincerity. I would much rather have a congressman openly show us that he considers Mein Kampf to be his greatest moral inspiration than to have him secretly embrace it while publically putting his hand on the bible.
Mr. Prager, this is America - with its separation of church and state- if you don't like to have Muslims in office, then don't vote for them, but you don't get to dictate your religions views onto others and prevent them from using the book that means most to their moral character.
Mr. Ellison, thank you for putting your hand on the Koran. You make America a better place to live by showing that a Muslim can get elected and make an oath to support the US Constitution.
Now, when do we get to have a Buddhist or an atheist elected to Congress?
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U.S. prosecutors charge prominent researcher
www.chinaview.cn 2006-12-05 12:58:58
BEIJING, Dec. 5 (Xinhuanet) -- A leading U.S. government researcher was charged Monday by federal prosecutors with engaging in a criminal conflict of interest by accepting 285,000 U.S. dollars in private consulting fees from Pfizer Inc.
The National Institutes of Health's Dr. Trey Sunderland, who specializes in Alzheimer's research, was accused of performing consulting work for the pharmaceutical giant that improperly overlapped with his government duties.
The conflict of interest charge was filed in U.S. District Court in Baltimore and carries a maximum of one year in prison and a 100,000 dollar fine. Prosecutors filed the charge as a criminal information, instead of indictment, indicating there may be a possible plea deal.
Sunderland "did participate personally and substantially as a government employee and officer ... in a particular matter in which, to the defendant's knowledge, he had a financial interest," the court papers said.
The court filing also says Sunderland failed to get proper approval from NIH for his consulting work and did not properly report 285,000 dollars in consulting fees and travel money from Pfizer for work that "directly related" to his federal research responsibilities.
Sunderland's case was spotlighted as part of a congressional investigation examining the large number of NIH scientists who have earned money moonlighting as outside consultants for private biotechnology and drug companies.
That investigation prompted the NIH, the government's premier health research organization, to institute tough new ethics rules that bar such deals. Scientists recently told NIH the new rules are so strict that many are considering leaving the agency.
NIH officials declined to comment Monday.
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Displaced students need more resources, study finds
By Stacy A. Teicher | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
A comprehensive study of schoolchildren scattered by hurricanes Katrina and Rita finds students who were already performing below grade level further stressed by long absences from class and mental-health challenges. Often their new schools lacked resources to meet those needs.
Researchers are just discovering the implications of the largest displacement of students in US history. In Louisiana alone, about 200,000 children - more than one-quarter of the state's public-school students - changed schools in 2005-06, some many times.
Wednesday, a study using Louisiana data and a survey of hundreds of school principals was released by the RAND Corp., a nonprofit research group that has partnered with regional universities to inform posthurricane policies.
"The school system did a tremendous job of absorbing the displaced students," says John Pane, lead author of the study. But he raises concerns about the effects on students and school staff. "Many students missed a tremendous amount of school; under the best of circumstances, missing five weeks or more is a setback, but these children are not in the best circumstances."
Among the other findings:
- Class sizes increased in more than one-third of surveyed schools.
- Minority students were disproportionately displaced. They were 65 percent of those who had to change schools, compared with a 59 percent minority enrollment overall in the most affected parishes.
- Many schools with a high number of displaced students reported increased staffing needs that went unmet the whole year for lack of funds or qualified applicants.
- Most school principals surveyed said that student behavior hadn't changed significantly, despite the changed student body. But a substantial minority said displaced students were more likely to bully, fight, or isolate themselves in school.
Tracking the effects on academic success will take time. RAND researchers are analyzing recent test data, and they hope to expand their study into Texas, Mississippi, and Alabama.
Principals did note some academic problems. In schools with a high rate of displaced students, 47 percent said those students were more likely to struggle academically. And 57 percent said they were more likely to need counseling.
Combined with the pressures of state testing, this led some principals to feel discouraged. One wrote: "We had a couple of cases where the students were so academically below, and of course this [caused] our overall, already low scores to dip even lower.... [We] are always blamed for these problems, and quite frankly, we should be applauded for our tremendous efforts."
Those efforts ranged from calling the homes of absent students to increasing counseling, tutoring, and after-school care. But with teachers and staff facing more stress and tougher job demands, many schools didn't have the resources to offer sufficient professional development.
Outside the state-run Recovery School District (RSD) in New Orleans, most schools affected by the hurricanes have stabilized, says Meg Casper, spokeswoman for Louisiana's Department of Education.
The RSD, which oversees 34 schools in New Orleans, is still seeking to fill 45 openings for teachers. In New Orleans, "we are experiencing a lot of the issues that were outlined in [the summary of] this report," says Ms. Casper, who did not have access to the full report when she spoke with the Monitor. "We're trying to assess students to see exactly where they are in their academic career, not just based on the last grade they passed but how long they've been out of school.... [And we are] trying to get more social workers in."
On a national level, the RAND report suggests the need for a national system to track students' schooling across state borders. Without such a system, RAND researchers were not able to determine how many of the more than 53,000 students no longer in state public schools had enrolled in other schools.
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Send Cheney To The Moon!
US plans permanent base on Moon
Tuesday, 5 December 2006, 01:17 GMT
US space agency Nasa has said it plans to start work on a permanently-occupied base on the Moon after astronauts begin flying back there in 2020.
The base is likely to be built on one of the Moon's poles and will serve as a science centre and possible stepping stone for manned missions to Mars.
The US has already said it plans to build a new lunar spacecraft to succeed the last Apollo mission in 1972.
Funds will be moved from space shuttle flights, due to be scrapped in 2010.
The structure of the base and the exact duties of the astronauts stationed there have not been decided.
Nor is it clear when the base will begin functioning.
Lunar outpost
"We're going for a base on the moon," Scott "Doc" Horowitz, Nasa's associate administrator for exploration, said.
The agency's deputy head, Shana Dale, is quoted by the Associated Press news agency as saying that the "fundamental lunar approach" will be very different to earlier Moon missions.
Nasa has elected to build a lunar outpost rather than operate brief trips to the satellite as it did in the 1960s.
Nasa is also expected to ask other countries - and businesses - to help it build the base.
The permanent base will be built near one of the two poles, as these are felt to have a moderate climate and more sunlight - essential if the base is to use solar energy.
"It's exciting," Shana Dale told the Reuters news agency. "We don't know as much about the polar regions."
According to Reuters, funds for building the lunar base will be diverted from the space shuttle programme, which is to be phased out by 2010.
After the Columbia space shuttle accident, US President George W Bush announced plans to send astronauts back to the moon by 2020.
Nasa announced in August that the Lockheed Martin Corporation will build the next US spaceship to take humans to the Moon.
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Vietnam lashed by tropical storm
Tuesday, 5 December 2006, 04:49 GMT
At least 37 people have died as Tropical Storm Durian lashed Vietnam, sweeping away fishing boats, destroying houses and downing power lines.
Officials said 10 people died in the southern Ba Ria Vung Tau province when the storm made landfall.
Durian later crossed the Mekong Delta, which as a low-lying area is at high risk of flooding.
The same storm caused devastation in the Philippines, triggering mudslides which killed hundreds of people.
The official toll from the mudslides, which struck near the Mayon volcano south-east of Manila and engulfed villages, stands at 520 people. Another 750 are missing.
Forcible evacuation
The BBC's Bill Hayton, in Hanoi, says the government's decision to authorise local authorities to take all the means necessary to move people from the path of the storm may have saved lives.
But, he says, though thousands left voluntarily, many were forcibly removed from their homes.
He says it is highly unusual for southern Vietnam to experience such a storm in the month of December.
Communication with the island of Phu Qui, some 250km (150 miles) east of Ho Chi Minh City, had been lost, officials said.
Over 1,000 homes were damaged and more than 800 fishing boats swept away from their anchors on the island, according to the Associated Press.
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The world's biggest meteor crater
Mary Alexander
Two billion years ago a meteorite 10km in diameter hit the earth about 100km southwest of Johannesburg, creating an enormous impact crater. This area, near Vredefort in the Free State, is now known as the Vredefort Dome.
It was voted South Africa's seventh World Heritage site at Unesco's 29th World Heritage Committee meeting in Durban in July 2005.
The meteorite, larger than Table Mountain, caused a thousand-megaton blast of energy. The impact would have vaporised about 70 cubic kilometres of rock - and may have increased the earth's oxygen levels to a degree that made the development of multicellular life possible.
The world has about 130 crater structures of possible impact origin. The Vredefort Dome is among the top three, and is the oldest and largest clearly visible meteorite impact site in the world.
The original crater, now eroded away, was probably 250 to 300 kilometres in diameter. It was larger than the Sudbury impact structure in Canada, about 200km in diameter.
At 2-billion years old, Vredefort is far older than the Chixculub structure in Mexico which, with an age of 65-million years, is the site of the impact that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Vredefort's original impact scar measures 380km across and consists of three concentric circles of uplifted rock. They were created by the rebound of rock below the impact site when the asteroid hit. Most of these structures have eroded away and are no longer clearly visible.
The inner circle, measuring 180km, is still visible and can be seen in the beautiful range of hills near Parys and Vredefort. It is this area that was named a World Heritage site.
Internationally, there are 812 World Heritage sites, in 137 countries. Africa has 65 sites and South Africa now a total of seven - three cultural, three natural and one of mixed cultural and natural heritage. The Vredefort Dome is a natural heritage site.
South Africa's other six World heritage sites are Robben Island, the Greater St Lucia Wetlands Park, the Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape, the Cradle of Humankind, the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park and the Cape Floral Region.
"The Vredefort site is rich in the symbolic representation of our culture; it demonstrates the meeting between scientific and cultural philosophy and practice," Arts and Culture Minister Pallo Jordan said after the inscription of the site on the World Heritage list.
"At Vredefort, opportunities exist to engage in geological research and explore and understand more sensitively the rich culture of the Basotho, Batswana and Khoi-San and the early evidence of human cognitive and artistic endeavour their cultures boast.
"This demonstrates that heritage can be a tool for nation-building."
The Vredefort Conservancy
Further evidence of the meteorite impact site can be seen in the columns of granite that were injected into existing rock by the force and heat of impact.
In 1937, earth scientists John Boon and Claude Albritton Boon were the first to suggest that the Vredefort structure was the scar of an ancient meteorite impact. Since then the site has been studied extensively by earth scientists from around the world.
The Vredefort Dome Conservancy, as it is now known, is not just of scientific value. It also has great scenic beauty, making it an ideal tourist destination.
The Dome Conservancy contains a finely balanced ecosystem made up of open plains, bushveld, mountains and ravines with abundant flora and fauna. At least 99 plant species have already been identified, of which the world's largest olive wood tree forest is probably the best known.
The area is considered an important birding area, with over 450 species already identified. It also has as many identified butterflies as the whole of Great Britain, and is home to rare animals such as the rooikat, aardwolf, leopard and the endangered rock dassie.
The Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism plans to spend R18-million on tourism and infrastructural development at the site - including the eradication of alien invasive vegetation, creation of hiking trails and construction of a tourism centre.
The Vredefort Dome site fulfils all the criteria set by Unesco for a World Heritage site. It is of outstanding universal value from a scientific point of view, and is remarkable evidence of an important moment in the earth's geologic history.
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Second volcano erupts in Russia's Far East in two days
PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY, December 5 (RIA Novosti)
A second volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia's Far East has erupted, spewing ash up to an altitude of 5,000 meters (26,500 feet), a local seismology center spokesman said Tuesday.
The Shiveluch volcano last erupted in September 2005, the spokesman said. He added that the resulting plume poses no threat to the local residents of a village 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the volcano, but that there is a danger to aircraft flying near the mountain.
Shiveluch, the northernmost active volcano on Kamchatka, is the second to erupt on the Pacific peninsula in two days.
Local emergency services reported Monday that the Karymsky volcano has increased its activity, spewing ash up to an altitude of 6,900 meters (22,637 feet).
Karymsky is one of Kamchatka's most active volcanoes, and rises to 1,486 meters (4,875 feet) above sea level in the southeast part of the peninsula.
According to experts, there are more that 150 volcanoes on Kamchatka, 29 of them active.
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Chavez Charges Ahead
Chávez triumph brings emollient words from US
December 5, 2006
The Guardian
The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, yesterday vowed to push ahead with his self-styled socialist revolution after being re-elected by a landslide.
Returns from 78% of polling stations gave the incumbent 61% of the vote from Sunday's poll, a thumping endorsement for another six-year term at the helm of the world's fifth-largest oil exporter.
His challenger, Manuel Rosales, a state governor, trailed at 38% and conceded defeat, disappointing opposition militants who wanted to use sporadic irregularities as evidence of fraud by someone they describe as a fledgling dictator.
Addressing red-shirted supporters from the balcony of Miraflores, the presidential palace in the capital, Mr Chávez, 52, signalled continued radicalism. "Long live the revolution! Venezuela is demonstrating that a new and better world is possible, and we are building it."
First elected in 1998 and again in 2000, the former paratrooper has spoken of calling a referendum to amend the constitution to allow him to run after this third term ends in 2012. Sunday's turnout was said to be more than 70%.
He dedicated the victory to Cuba's Fidel Castro and took a fresh swipe at the US president, George Bush. "It's another defeat for the devil who tries to dominate the world. Down with imperialism. We need a new world."
However, in a marked softening of Washington's tone, the US undersecretary of state for Latin America, Thomas Shannon, acknowledged Venezuela's democratic expression. Speaking to the Spanish news agency Efe on a visit to London, Mr Shannon called for a thaw. "We do not want a relationship of confrontation."
Confronted with a tide of newly elected leftwing leaders, the US has extended olive branches to Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega and Ecuador's Rafael Correa. The US civil rights campaigner Jesse Jackson and the Centre for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington-based thinktank, urged an end to the war of words waged since the US tacitly backed a failed coup against Mr Chávez in 2002.
Iran welcomed the triumph of an ally who has cultivated ties with the Muslim world, saying it reflected Latin America's resistance to US arrogance. The Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group based in Egypt, also congratulated Mr Chávz.
Analysts said the challenge for Mr Rosales was to rally the opposition by trying to pick off chavista governors and mayors in recall referendums.
Comment: Note the comment that:
"However, in a marked softening of Washington's tone, the US undersecretary of state for Latin America, Thomas Shannon, acknowledged Venezuela's democratic expression. Speaking to the Spanish news agency Efe on a visit to London, Mr Shannon called for a thaw. "We do not want a relationship of confrontation."
Ya know what that means, don't ya? Yep, the US is planning to finance a coup or an assassination and is setting itself up to look all squeaky clean in advance.
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Venezuela's Opposition Concedes: Chavez Is Here to Stay
By JENS ERIK GOULD/CARACAS
Tuesday, Dec. 05, 2006
Time
It's official: Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez will be in office longer than his arch-nemesis, President George W. Bush. Following his reelection to a new six-year term by a wide margin on Sunday, Chavez promised a "new era in the national Bolivarian project," his program to use Venezuela's oil wealth to fund social programs as well as to bolster a regional united front against U.S. influence. Now, the scale of his victory - the National Electoral Council gave him a 23% lead over contender Manuel Rosales with over three-quarters of votes counted - will be claimed as a mandate to deepen his "socialist revolution," with the help of a legislature wholly under the control of his allies after the opposition boycotted last year's parliamentary elections.
Still, this is hardly the first time Chavez has boisterously threatened further radicalization of his revolution, and Venezuela is still far from the Latin American Marxist nightmare that Washington fears it will become. Chavez has certainly cracked down on foreign oil companies and expropriated private property, but he still presides over a far-from socialist society that loves its Scotch whisky and shopping malls.
But revolutions are first and foremost about power, and the most dramatic reform that Chavez may seek - and the most worrisome to his foes - is a constitutional change to remove term limits on the presidency and allow him to run again in 2012. He also says he could create a single party out of the many that support him. The president denied last week that such reforms pointed to increasing authoritarianism, and assured that any constitutional reform would have to pass through a national referendum. "This isn't a dictatorship," he said. "It's democracy."
Chavez's staying power, however, could depend on the opposition's ability to rebound from a demoralizing loss and maintain the unity it established on the campaign trail to end years of self-defeating bickering among its various parties. Rosales' brief concession speech suggested the opposition may have resolved to accept that Chavez won't be ousted any time soon, and to instead take the long view and strengthen their movement through grassroots organizational work - a counterintuitive option for a movement that has its origins in two parties of the political and economic elite that had maintained a lock on power for 40 years.
Rosales surprised many on Sunday by refraining from crying electoral fraud - the opposition had accused the government of rigging the vote in the two previous elections. Supermarket shelves in the capital had been emptied last week in anticipation of chaos sparked by a contested election result. Instead, the streets of Caracas were quiet on Monday. The opposition may finally be abandoning the claim that Chavez can only stay in power by cheating. "The truth is that even with a tighter margin we recognize that today they defeated us," Rosales said Sunday night. "But we'll keep fighting."
It was Chavez's bedrock support among the poor, shored up by the government programs that ensure cheap food and free health care, that once again ensured his victory. Unless the opposition is able to find a message and policies that resonate with the impoverished majority, it will remain in the political wilderness.
For now, the nearly 40% of Venezuelans who voted for Rosales on Sunday still have no representation in the legislature. "I want a change, above all for my son," said Fabiola Pereira, a hairstylist, after voting for Rosales in the upper-middle class Caracas neighborhood of Altamira. "If Chavez takes more power we don't know what else he'll invent. It scares me. Anything can happen in six years."
One thing that may be predictable is that Chavez will continue to rail against Washington. He proclaimed his victory a defeat for the U.S. and dedicated it to the Cuban people and their ailing leader, Fidel Castro. After years of listening to their leader pounding away at Bush, Chavez supporters appear to believe that Washington is their main enemy. "This is a lesson we're going to give to Bush, because he's interested in our oil reserves," said Luis Jose Moreno, a voter in the poor Caracas neighborhood of Petare, about his conviction that Chavez would win. "Get out of here, Bush."
But Bush will, indeed, leave office before Chavez. And the Venezuelan president likes to remind audiences that Bill Clinton was a man he respected. So, if the White House reverts to the Democrats in 2008, Chavez may have more trouble rousing his base with anti-U.S. rhetoric.
Comment: Don't believe for a minute that the opposition to Chavez is going to roll over and play dead. The plans for another coup or assassination attempt have already been drawn up, you can count on that.
Chavez is a danger to the US and other elites because he spends Venezuelan wealth on the country's poor, rather than allowing it to be siphoned offshore or into the Swiss bank accounts of those who rule Venezuela so ruthlessly for forty years before Chavez. The Bolivarian Revolution offers a model to other countries that shows the liberal economic model of the rich is not written in stone or handed down by either god or the invisible hand of the marketplace. Moreover, it is taking place amidst free elections where the disenfranchised can finally have a say in their future.
Such a model cannot be allowed to continue. It might even, one day, begin to influence politics in the United States, where there is no real democracy, where voting is rigged, and where the two parties represent the same corrupt elite.
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Mexico's Short Summer of Liberal Democracy
Víctor M. Quintana S. | December 1, 2006
Translated from: El corto verano de la democracia liberal
Translated by: Alan Hynds
Americas Program, International Relations Center (IRC)
The best assessment of Mexico's recent presidential election is the ruling handed down by the Federal Election Tribunal (TEPJF) on the challenges submitted by the Coalition for the Good of All (Coalición por el bien de Todos). The tribunal found that there had been improper meddling by the president of the republic; an illegal fear-mongering campaign orchestrated against López Obrador by business and some civil organizations; and a smear campaign waged by the national television networks. While acknowledging that all of these irregularities occurred, the tribunal, astonishingly, did not consider them grounds to annul the election. The tribunal's decision is at the center of the country's current political crisis and democratic regression.
A Setback for Alternating
This is the best way to describe the current political situation in Mexico. At both the federal and state level, it is very clear that the process of transition to an alternating-party system of power, which began with the state governorships in 1989 and continued with the presidential election in 2000, has hit an impasse.
The country's institutions were not up to the task. The entire regulatory and institutional framework, forged by Mexican society and political parties as a basic instrument of the transition to democracy, cracked in this year's presidential election. Neither the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) nor the TEPJF were up to the challenge posed by a hard-fought contest marked by the legal or paralegal intervention of extremely powerful economic interests and the de facto powers that rule this country.
The IFE's ineptitude, especially in tallying the votes but also beforehand, in its extreme pusillanimity and its powerlessness to halt the dirty war against López Obrador, raises many questions about its capacity to fulfill its duties. Moreover, the tribunal's ruling that irregularities did occur but "were not sufficient to affect the outcome of the election," leaves no doubt about the bias of those who control that institution.
And not only in federal elections has alternation come to a standstill. In Tabasco's Oct. 15 elections for governor, state deputies, and mayors, all the corrupt practices and dirty tricks that PRI (the former dominating party) governments have always resorted to once again reared their head, including vote buying, busing in supporters to campaign rallies, and threatening activists and leaders of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). Tabasco confirmed that the country's governors have become caciques, or bosses, controlling electoral and other processes in their states. One cacique is Oaxaca governor Ulises Ruiz, who has obstinately remained in power despite nearly five months of a massive popular insurrection demanding his resignation.
With the de facto powers intact, the capitulation of electoral agencies, and governors running their states like fiefdoms, we are led to the conclusion that political transition in Mexico has come to a standstill, is bogged down, and there appears to be no way to pull it out of the quagmire.
The Vigorous Movements from Below
Amid the signs of a democratic regression, the energy of the people at the bottom, the underdogs, has made itself felt. In the spring of 2005, the government attempted to strip López Obrador of his immunity from prosecution to prevent him from running for president. In response, a broad social movement emerged supporting him. This movement evolved and grew stronger when López Obrador won that battle and launched his presidential campaign. It thus became a new expression in civil resistance against electoral fraud and the imposition of the candidate of the National Action Party (PAN).
A very significant moment in the evolution of this movement, the most important in Mexico in recent decades, was the National Democratic Convention (CND) held on Sept. 16. Now named the Broad Progressive Front (FAP), the movement is vigorous, creative, and much more broad-based than the parties that made up the Coalition for the Good of All. Although it has a nationwide presence, its influence radiates out from the Federal District, specifically the via sacra of Mexican politics: the corridor from the city's main square, or Zócalo, to Avenida de la Reforma, which was occupied for 45 days by the CND's rank and file. The encampments set up along the corridor were a hotbed of political, social, and cultural activity, festivities, and rebellion.
Installed in the Zocalo for over a month, the protest camp campaigned for a full recount, which was not granted. Photo Credit: Katherine Kohlstedt, IRC.
The movement's most visible representatives are the deputies who had run on the Coalition's ticket. It has become an authentic alternative power since it prevented President Vicente Fox from delivering his sixth and final State of the Union address before the Chamber of Deputies on Sept. 1. Subsequently, on the night of Sept. 15, Fox was unable to give the traditional "Cry of Independence" at the Zócalo, which had been taken over by Convention representatives. Instead, the "Grito" was given by López Obrador's successor as mayor of the Federal District.
But the civil resistance against electoral fraud has hardly been the last expression of bottom-up democracy. Since June, the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO), an umbrella group representing teachers and social, popular, indigenous, and campesino organizations in that rural state, has practically held the state capital under siege. APPO's main demand is the resignation of the governor, Ulises Ruiz, who also came to power through electoral fraud. The first two years of Ruiz's term have been characterized by repression, disdain for social and popular organizations, corruption, and heavy-handed rule. The movement in Oaxaca is not led by any party or armed group. It emerged as a spontaneous, organized expression of direct social participation, of neighborhood assemblies, of plebeian democracy
Expressions such as this have been seen in several parts of the country, including the uprising of comuneros (rural land holders) in Atenco, the protests by relatives of miners killed in Pasta de Conchos, and the striking workers at the Siderúrgica Lázaro Cárdenas steel plant. Movements that not only express and symbolize the disgust from the depths of society but that have also been instrumental in seeking actions to defend the Earth, community, and union rights.
A Country that is Breaking Apart
All these processes are taking place in an increasingly fragmented country. This social fragmentation is on display in various forms in the country's different regions. There is a great bipolar divide: on the one hand, the Mexico of the integrated, as sociologist Sergio Zermeño calls them-those who have bet on successful globalization, who believe that the key to solving the country's problems is taking the free-market and free-trade model to its extreme conclusion. Most Mexicans who are banking on this model voted for Felipe Calderón and, to a lesser extent, Roberto Madrazo of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI); although they mainly live in the north and the west, many also belong to the urban middle and upper classes elsewhere in the country.
At the other extreme are those who believe that Mexico urgently needs a transformation to bring about greater equity and end the structural poverty preventing the nation's integration and development, which is a cause of the ongoing violence. These are the lower class and working sectors, both urban and rural, above all in the center and south of the country. But they are not only there, since growing numbers of Mexicans in the north and west, and also an important segment of the enlightened middle class, belong to this group. This is the Mexico that supported López Obrador's Alternative Nation Project.
Lastly, there is what Zermeño describes as the broken Mexico: the Mexico of extreme poverty, the lumpen, the mass of underlings who serve as the manpower of criminal organizations, those who live on the edge. This is the sector that failed to turn out at the polls; they have never been interested in voting, because they see no possibility of improving their situation through elections. The few among this sector who did cast a vote sold it to the PRI.
Mexico's Short Summer of Liberal Democracy
Electoral democracy appears to be undermining, rather than consolidating, certainty, stability, and governability in Mexico . Far from serving as an instrument to solve the country's problems it has become a problem in its own right. Why?
Because the postelectoral political crisis is more than that, more than the manifestation of a merely electoral problem; it is the venting of very deep social discontent produced by 24 years of structural adjustment policies.
Reforma Avenue in Mexico City was transformed into a camp for protesters from all areas of the Federal District and around the country, hoping to obtain recognition of electoral fraud. Photo Credit: Katherine Kohlstedt, IRC.
As Ernesto Laclau notes, there is a price to be paid for "the traumatic experience of the virtual destruction of the hemisphere's economies through neoliberal adjustment" and the enormous consequences of this adjustment-vulnerability, a lack of organization, the dismantling of the social safety net, and anomy. These effects go beyond the economic sphere and have shaken the entire social edifice.
In other words, in Mexico there is no social platform for liberal democracy to function properly. The social fabric has been so torn, society has become so fragmented, that an all-out effort to heal the wounds is needed for institutions to work reasonably well.
When a candidacy such as López Obrador's arises, liberal democracy becomes overburdened with expectations, with demands from below. At the same time, in the face of the threat not only of political transition but of change in the model of accumulation, the precarious electoral institutions crumble and show their class orientation. The pressure from the groups that wield economic and political power underscores the deep-seated classicist bias in the IFE, the TEPJF, the executive branch, and the television duopoly.
Hence, we could posit a double hypothesis:
On a social terrain as torn as Mexico's, the prognosis for liberal democracy is poor. Its institutions are being hollowed out from below and from above. From below, by the excessive expectations and demands of the excluded sectors. From above, because, during critical times such as these, those institutions are managed with a classicist bias by power groups intent on perpetuating their privileges.
Therefore, without a concomitant social democratization, political democracy quickly runs its course. In other words, human rights will not be respected if only civil and political rights are enforced, and when the State fails to enforce economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights.
In Mexico, reading Giovanni Sartori is not enough; we also need to read Pablo González Casanova.
Outlooks
The French sociologist Alain Touraine points out that Latin America is in the throes of a crisis of the institutions that make up the political system. There is no effective link between social movements and political parties. The movement headed by López Obrador appeared to be overcoming this obstacle: Many organizations and social sectors have made themselves heard within the political system, not through the PRD, on whose ticket López Obrador ran, or the Labor Party, or the Convergencia party, but through the candidacy of the former Mexico City mayor. The movement being constructed is a break not only with the economic but also with the political elites and with the professional politicians, whom López Obrador has harshly criticized. The groundswell of participation of the masses was more evident in the postelection protest, in the encampments on the corridor from the Zócalo to Reforma, and in the massive, million-person-plus assemblies called by the candidate of the Coalition for the Good of All. Slowly, symbols of identity are being generated and a community is being constructed around civil resistance to the imposition of Felipe Calderón . The cement of all this is the charisma and the unquestioned leadership of López Obrador, who was declared "legitimate president" at the people's National Democratic Convention on Sept. 16.
What is next for the movement and the Convention? There are two possible scenarios.
The first is that the Convention's momentum and energy will fizzle out. There would be two fundamental causes of such an outcome: The attempt of some government sectors and especially the electronic media to corner and destroy López Obrador. In addition, there is the possibility that the Convention will make strategic mistakes, such as remaining solely focused on resistance without proposing alternatives, especially vis-à-vis the sectors that want a more immediate solution to their demands, or that there will be insufficient internal discussion or insufficiently strong ties with other social movements.
If this scenario plays out, we will be entering a period of much greater tension between society and the political system. In the best scenario, this would occur through manifestations of discontent throughout the country, the appearance of direct, plebian democracy; in the worst, it would mean the proliferation of outbreaks of irrational violence, in attempts to vent pent-up rage.
The second possible outcome is that the Convention will consolidate and become an authentic, collective, popular actor, composed of men and women citizens in control of the processes that affect their lives. For this to occur and for the Convention to become a decisive political and social force for the transformation of Mexico, the following conditions need to be met:
Formulation of a solid strategy on the left, with the convergence of all of the country's democratic, popular, and progressive forces.
Maintenance of López Obrador's unquestioned leadership, all while giving the movement systemic mechanisms allowing for joint decisionmaking and dialogue.
Combination of civil resistance with actions in favor of direct democracy and with legislative proposals to establish and consolidate participatory democracy as the general rule and not the exception in the country's most important political and social processes.
Establishment of ongoing, systematic ties with social movements in all regions in the country.
Promotion of the participation of citizens as effective stakeholders rather than as an excuse to channel lavish amounts of money to political parties and electoral institutions, especially the IFE and its state committees and institutes and federal and state agencies charged with ensuring transparency and public access to information, etc.
Reliance on participatory mechanisms to design, reach consensuses on, and carry out a plan for the social transformation of the country and the eradication of inequality and extreme poverty and to lay the foundations for economic development with a sufficient number of dignified, well-paid jobs and with a type of social development that meets the needs of all citizens, both men and women.
The Tasks of Civil-Society Organizations
Civil-society organizations (CSOs), above all those involved in grassroots communication and education, need to actively participate in constructing the new social and political actor who will bring about this social transformation. The most likely actor is the National Democratic Convention. To accomplish this, the CSOs need to contribute all their experience, knowledge, critical capacity, values, and working methods. They also need to overcome some of their limitations, for example, their narrow outlook, their difficulties in moving beyond microsocial levels, and their distance from the masses and lack of access to the mass media.
If the CSOs are unable to construct this social actor, either based on or coming from within the Convention, they should join other forces, for example, the coordinating groups of campesino and labor organizations, to reinforce each other's efforts in that construction.
In any event, as of now they are faced with the urgent, immediate task of rescuing the political system from the monopoly that professional politicians made it depend on. This entails fighting for greater citizen participation in all the institutions referred to above; publicly criticizing the squandering of public monies and the high salaries and generous benefits of the political elites and proposing an ongoing austerity policy; promoting the adoption and implementation of mechanisms for participatory democracy; and, above all and at all times, making a systematic, creative, efficacious attempt to promote a new political culture in Mexico, that is, a new type of relationship between the citizenry and the political system. A relationship in which citizens are the actors, the ones who demand, who insist on accountability, who make proposals, and in which politicians, as neo-Zapatistas say, "lead by obeying."
Translated for the IRC Americas Program by Alan Hynds.
Víctor M. Quintana S. is a colaborator with the IRC Americas Program (www.americaspolicy.org). He is an adviser to the Frente Democrático Campesino in Chihuahua and researcher at the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juárez.
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The Whacky World Of Fake Terrorism
Iran accuses Canadian embassy of spy activity
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Dec. 1, 2006 0:40
Canada has taken steps to ensure the safety of the Canadian embassy in Teheran after Iranian legislators called it a den of spies and demanded it be shut down.
Canadian authorities are monitoring the situation closely and are prepared to take "additional steps if necessary" after hardliners accused Ottawa of plotting with the United States, Canadian Foreign Affairs spokesman Rodney Moore said Thursday.
He would not elaborate on what steps have been taken so far.
Moore said the allegations are "likely an attempt at retaliation" for Canada's role in sponsoring a UN committee resolution effectively condemning Iran's human-rights record.
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Danish journalists acquitted
MONDAY, DECEMBER 04, 2006
0:20 MECCA TIME, 21:20 GMT
Three Danish journalists, who published classified intelligence reports on Iraq's former weapons programme, have been acquitted of charges of endangering national security.
The Copenhagen City Court ruled on Monday that Niels Lunde, the chief editor of the Berlingske Tidende newspaper, and Michael Bjerre and Jesper Larsen, both reporters, acted in the public interest when they published a series of articles in 2004 citing leaked Danish intelligence reports.
The articles said there was no evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction at the time of the US-led invasion in 2003, one of the key reasons cited by the US and Britain for going to war.
Frank Grevil, a former intelligence officer, was previously imprisoned for leaking the documents in the case, which was viewed in Denmark as a landmark test of media freedom.
Lunde called the verdict "a great victory for the open society".
Prosecutor Michael Joergensen said he had not yet decided whether to appeal.
During the trial, which began on November 13, the prosecutor claimed that the newspaper, one of Denmark's largest circulated dailies, violated a law that prohibits media from publishing classified information that could harm national security.
Joergensen had recommended that each of the defendants be given a four-month prison term - the same sentence given to Grevil after he was convicted last year of leaking the documents to the reporters.
In Monday's ruling, Judge Peter Lind Larsen said the "considerable public interest" in the information outweighed the government's concerns that its intelligence-gathering operations were jeopardised.
Press freedom advocates welcomed the decision, which was met with applause in the packed court room.
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France probes 'terrorists' arrested in Egypt
PARIS, Dec 5, 2006 (AFP)
French authorities said Tuesday they have opened an inquiry into the case of nine French citizens arrested in Egypt on suspicion of belonging to an international terrorist group.
The anti-terrorist section of the Paris prosecutor's office said the nine were likely to be deported within days.
Few details were immediately available on the nine, who remained in Egyptian custody.
An Egyptian interior ministry statement issued Monday said the French nationals were arrested along with other foreigners from Belgium, Syria, Tunisia and the United States last month.
They were suspected of having links to terror groups recruiting Islamists for "jihad" in Iraq.
"The investigation revealed that these people were seeking to recruit more elements, convert them to their destructive doctrine, incite them to jihad (holy war) and encourage them to travel to Iraq via third countries to carry out operations," the Egyptian statement said.
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Indigo Kids, Chickens And Neanderthals
Super kids: Indigo kids debate
12/5/2006 5:55 AM
By: Ivanhoe Newswire
ORLANDO, Fla. -- Little Kai looks and talks like any other 3-year-old.
"I like to play chicken games and another game about tigers," he said. But his mother, Lon Bloomfield, says he has supernatural gifts ... and remembers past lives.
"Maybe about a year ago, he told me, 'Remember Mom, when I was your dad?'" Lon said.
Do you know a child like this?
Smart, intuitive, sensitive, strong-willed, and full of energy, they're often called "Indigo children" -- a popular label for kids who are especially gifted. Many psychologists and parents believe these children have psychic powers and are more evolved.
Smart, intuitive, sensitive, strong-willed, and full of energy, they're often called "Indigo children" -- a popular label for kids who are especially gifted.
Shannon Parsons says her four kids are also Indigos. "They're always talking about when they were in heaven and what they knew and who they knew," she said.
Her 7-year-old son Chandler frequently talks to an imaginary friend he says he met in heaven ... "We talk about everything in the world," Chandler added, "[like] what he did on his vacation."
Parapsychologist Nancy Ann Tappe was the first to describe these children more than 20 years ago. She says they're called Indigo because of the dark blue aura that surrounds them. And she believes Indigos are more evolved than past generations.
"They're straight-talkers," Tappe, formerly of San Diego State University and currently represented by Spelling Publishers, explained. "They don't want to be talked down to. They'll catch you at three if you do."
She says you can recognize Indigo children by their large, clear eyes. Other Indigo traits:
- High IQs
- Self-confidence
- Resistance to authority
Tappe continued, "These children demand to be individualistic. It's not a request." She says scientists know humans and animals can evolve over time, but Indigo children are evolving at an unusually fast pace -- what she calls "quantum evolution."
But psychologist Russell Barkley, Ph.D., of Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, says Indigo is just a cover-up for behavior problems like ADHD or bipolar disorder. He said, "It is possible that some parents who have children with psychiatric problems would like them to have a label that is more socially acceptable, more uplifting and positive."
Dr. Barkley says there's no scientific evidence to support Indigos. "These kinds of nonsensical and lunatic fringe ideas literally do prey on the desperation of other people," he said. "And in that sense, I find them morally reprehensible."
But many parents do believe their kids have special gifts. Integral Elementary School/Rainbow Kids Integral Preschool in La Jolla, California -- one of a few emerging schools designed specifically for Indigo children -- has more than 100 attendees.
"They need more stimulation because they're two steps ahead of where we are," Integral Co-Founder Carla Gerstein, said.
Shannon and Lon's children all attend the school. They say their children need to be treated differently.
"[Kai] does not do well if I order him around," Lon said. "So, I've gotten in the habit of talking to him almost like an adult."
They say raising an Indigo is a challenge, but it's one they're prepared to take on -- even if others aren't convinced. "You can be a skeptic all you want, but they're here," Shannon added. "They're here. They're now, and it doesn't matter what you call them. They're different and everybody knows it!"
Special gifts or special problems? That's for you to decide.
Comment: The New Age has softened the minds of enough people that it is very possible that problem kids could end up being labelled "speshul", like these indigo kids. We've been told for years by all sorts of wishful thinkers that we are in a period of transition when global consciousness is being raised. These folks expect that somehow, through the presence of these kids, we're on the threshold of a new, golden age.
Right.
It ain't just gonna happen, folks. There ain't no free lunch. Promise. Anything that happens without tremendous effort is just another aspect of the mechanical nature of reality and of our own lives. It is something that is being done to us or through us, not by our own efforts.
However, many people don't like to hear ideas like this. They prefer to think that our salvation will come automatically, like the Second Coming of Jesus or intervention by our "space brothers" to haul our collective backsides out of the fire we have set burning.
There ain't no tooth fairy, no Santa Clause, and no interstellar 5th Calvary riding in to close the film and save the day. We do it ourselves or we die.
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Poultry trade likely route for bird flu to Americas, experts say
Last Updated: Monday, December 4, 2006 | 5:54 PM ET
CBC News
The H5N1 strain of bird flu is most likely to enter North America through infected poultry trade, researchers say.
British and American researchers studied how H5N1 moved out of China, across Asia and Europe and into the Middle East and Africa. The poultry trade was often the source, with migrating fowl then spreading it, they concluded.
"We conclude that the most effective strategy to prevent H5N1 from being introduced into the Western Hemisphere would be strict controls or a ban on the importation of poultry and wild birds into the Americas and stronger enforcement to curb illegal trade," they wrote in this week's online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The virus has infected 258 people and killed 153, mostly in Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and China. More than 200 million birds have also been killed or slaughtered because of H5N1 since 2003.
In Europe, much of the spread of H5N1 followed a cold period when wild birds moved west looking for warmer climes. Some of the birds carried H5N1, said David Gibbons, head of conservation science with the U.K.'s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
In almost all cases, H5N1 was detected in wild birds that were dead, said Peter Marra, an avian ecologist with the Smithsonian's Migratory Bird Center.
The findings point to the importance of surveillance programs for early detection of bird diseases like H5N1, Marra said, noting that Canada, Mexico and other countries import day-old chicks from other regions while the U.S. does not.
About three-quarters of new diseases originate in animals, the researchers noted.
Genetic testing allowed most of the H5N1 outbreaks to be traced to the poultry trade, migratory birds or wild birds, but some outbreaks remained, such as those in South Korea, Russia, India, Pakistan and Cameroon, the researchers said.
Illegal trade in chicken feces for fertilizer and fish food could be a culprit.
On Monday, international experts said that compensating poultry farmers quickly and fairly is key to fighting bird flu.
The experts released the report ahead of a bird flu meeting by the World Bank, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Food Policy Research Institute.
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Did starving Neanderthals eat each other?
22:00 04 December 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Rowan Hooper
Neanderthals lived a desperately tough life, sometimes so close to starvation that when one of them died their compatriots would fall upon the body and devour it, according to new research.
Scorned as clumsy, idiotic brutes with little in the way of developed culture, our pitiless modern view of Neanderthals may be tempered by new findings that provide insight into the terrible life our evolutionary cousins faced.
Antonio Rosas, of the National Museum for Natural Sciences in Madrid, Spain, and colleagues studied 43,000-year-old Neanderthal remains found in the El Sidrón cave in the north of the Iberian peninsula.
The cave is extraordinarily rich in Neanderthal remains. About 1300 Neanderthal fossils have been excavated since its accidental discovery in 1994. And the picture emerging from analysis of the remains is now enriching our understanding of the much-maligned species.
Spiritual life
Rosas and colleagues examined the teeth of eight individuals found in the cave and found hypoplasia lines - evidence that during growth, the individuals had probably gone through a period of starvation. Moreover, cuts discovered on some of the bones suggest that cannibalism was practiced by the group.
"One possible explanation is that ecological conditions forced these people to eat whatever was at hand, even human flesh," says Rosas. Another possibility is that cannibalism had some symbolic meaning, in a similar way to human hunter-gatherers that practice it. "Signs of cannibalism could tell us something about the spiritual life of Neanderthals," Rosas says.
By comparison with fossils from sites in southern Europe, Rosas's work shows there were morphological differences between Neanderthals in the north and south, with southern individuals having broader faces and jaws. This supports the idea that Neanderthal populations were diverse, possibly as result of different environmental factors.
"Neanderthals were seen as brutish but I want to believe that our picture of them is being changed with new discoveries," says Rosas. "All paleaoanthropologists feel some kind of love for their study species, and in my case, it's the Neanderthals."
Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0609662104)
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