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The media are getting all gushy about Herbert Walker Bush breaking down crying during an event honoring his younger son, Jeb.
I'm sorry. I don't feel gushy. I see a doddering disease vector who has personally produced the most despised, hated reviled, so-called human in the history of the planet.
I see a crooked past president who Bill Clinton failed to pursue charges against (Iran Contra), who, because of Clinton's failure to prosecute, was able to help his lying, cheating, chronic failure son go on to become president.
I see the son of a man who was involved in doing business with the Nazis.
No nostalgia.
Not touchy feely, weepy warm fuzzy stuff.
I wonder if he, unable to control himself, for a longer time than one would expect, is starting to slide mental-health-wise.
I wouldn't wish that on anyone. But we know how fried Reagan was by the time he left the White House. Perhaps he also weeps because he has an idiot, shallow, empty-hearted son who has treated him like dirt.
DIRT. When you have the experience, competence and credentials that George Herbert Walker Bush has, and your son is the President of the USA and ignores you, it has to hurt-- a lot. It has to ache with a deep pain that, probably, year after year, gets heavier and worse.
So when George Herbert Walker Bush, the elder, was speaking about his younger son, the Governor, who surely would have done a better job as president, and who probably does a better job as a son, staying in touch more frequently than the ever two weeks or so that Dubya admits to, it is no wonder that he broke down in tears, probably bittersweet tears.
BITTERSWEET-- sweet, because he probably is proud of his son Jeb, and bitter because he faces the sweetness of his relationship with Jeb, clearly a healthier, smarter, better person than Dubya, which must make the bitter, sour empty relationship with Dubya stand out all the more.
We citizens of the US don't have the sweet part. We just get the bitter part. Dubya's relationship with his father is a metaphor for his relationship with America and the world. He is out of touch, disconnected, arrogant, unwilling to tap the wisdom and intelligence readily available...
And we too weep-- for America, for the thousands of dead soldiers, the tens of thousands of physically maimed soldiers the hundreds of thousands of soldiers and their families who will live lives damaged by post traumatic stress disorder, the millions of Iraqis who have to deal with the deaths of hundreds of thousands of murdered Iraqis, the thousands of freedom fighters, the people who stand up for democracy who are already being tortured, with new justifications that the dictators have the right, "after all Bush does it."
I pray your tears end soon, Mr. Bush. We're doing all we can to end your frustration at not being consulted by the current president. Soon, your pain should be over. The sooner the better.
On Saturday at 4pm a human rights worker based in Nablus received a call from some fellow HRWs at Huwwara checkpoint, that hundreds of Palestinians including a mother with a sick child weren't being allowed through after the checkpoint had been closed.
When the HRW arrived there were hundreds of people waiting to pass through the illegal Israeli checkpoint. A middle aged woman was pleading with soldiers to be able to pass as she was cradling a sick child who required treatment.
The HRWs attempted to ask the Israeli soldiers the reason for the closure and whether it would be possible for the women and child to pass through, but his pleas were met with stony silence. After further inquiries, the soldiers informed the HRW that if he didn't go away he would be "punished". The woman continued to remonstrate with the soldiers in the presence the HRW, at which point the soldiers wrestled him to the ground and handcuffed him.
During the arrest the HRW was lightly injured and his camera was damaged. He was then detained in a small holding cell for an hour before being taken to Ariel settlement police station where he was questioned and detained for a further 4 hours.
Police claimed that the HRW had struck one of the soldiers and asked him to sign a document promising never to visit Nablus again. The aggrieved HRW refused, pleading wrongful arrest and physical abuse. He was then asked to sign a document promising not to argue with Israeli soldiers at Huwwara checkpoint for a period of 15 days, before being released without charge at approximately 10pm.
Huwwara checkpoint is notorious for long unexplained closures, which have become more common of late. In the last few weeks Palestinians have had to spend up to 2 hours waiting to pass through. As well as Huwwara checkpoint, Palestinians have to travel through other permanent and temporary checkpoints on their way to Ramallah, resulting in journey times of up to 5 hours for a journey of 20 miles, if they are allowed through them.
There are currently 72 permanent military checkpoints throughout the West Bank along with at least 25 temporary and flying checkpoints set up randomly by Israeli occupying forces.
Checkpoints can be a major deterrent for Palestinians on any road because of the extensive delays, security searches, as well as physical and psychological abuse by Israeli soldiers.
The checkpoints and Israel's closure policy are often used as a means of enforcing collective punishment on the inhabitants of a certain area, or even the entire population of the Occupied Palestinian Territories .Collective punishment is illegal under international law.
The system of Israeli checkpoints in the Occupied Palestinian Territories violates international humanitarian law as codified in the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949.
Original
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The
unfortunate reality is that Israel's campaign of ethnic cleansing has
never stopped and is now more active
than it has been for decades.
"The term ethnic cleansing refers to various policies of forcibly removing people of another ethnic group. At one end of the spectrum, it is virtually indistinguishable from forced emigration and population transfer, while at the other it merges with deportation and genocide."
According to this definition, and others including those emerging in the 1990s, following the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, Palestinians have been and remain victims of a determined and unwavering ethnic cleansing policy that began in 1947-48 and continues until today.
However, it is important that when we examine the subject of ethnic cleansing in Palestine, we take into account its various dimensions, one of which is the accompanying racist discourse, which has become part and parcel of Israel's ethnic cleansing policies.
Any act of collective punishment - whether ethnic cleansing or genocide or any other - is often preceded and or adjoined by a racist discourse that dehumanizes the victim and justifies the crime on baseless grounds, a concoction of lies and fibs that may appeal to national or religious psyches, but fails the test of law, morality or basic human norms and expectations.
Without such discourse, which depicted the original inhabitants of Palestine as cancerous, subhuman and a nuisance in the face of civilization and progress - as defined by the founders of the Zionist movement - it would not have been possible to carry out a systematic campaign of murder and ethnic cleansing in 1947-48, which saw the killing of an estimated 13,000 Palestinians, the forcible eviction of 850,000 and the depopulation and subsequent destruction of nearly 500 villages and localities. Without such a racist discourse it would have been difficult, to say the least, to carry out scores of preempted massacres, including Deir Yassin, Tantoura, Abbasiyya, Beit Daras, Bir Al-Saba', Haifa and so forth.
Were it not for a decided campaign of institutionalized racism that occurred on such a large scale and which is maintained until today, it would have been impossible and implausible to gun down scores of innocent people after lining them up against the crumbling wall of the old Tantura mosque in May of 1948, or to bulldoze the home of a crippled man in Jenin in April 2002 without giving his mother the chance to evacuate him. Or to describe as a "great success" the killing of 14 civilians, including children when a one-ton Israeli bomb slammed into their apartment building in the Zeitun neighborhood in Gaza in July 2002. Or the wanton murder of 19 people, most of them women and children of the same extended family in Beit Hanoun earlier this November. But according to Israeli officials, every other method has been tried, and failed. "With murderous, bloodthirsty terrorism that wants to wipe you off the map, you have to respond accordingly: Wipe it out," as Ben Caspit commented following the brutal massacre of Beit Hanoun.
But if what purely motivates Israel is the fear of its own annihilation, then, how can the Zionist state's morally flexible supporters explain Israel's continuous colonization of the West Bank and Jerusalem? According to a 2004 Foundation for Middle East Peace report, the total settler population in the West Bank and East Jerusalem has neared 420,000: 220,000 settlers in the West Bank and 200,000 in East Jerusalem. Expectedly, the number stands at a much higher figure.
New settlements are being erected while existing settlements are ever-expanding. According to a recent report drafted by the PLO's Negotiations Affairs Department, Israel approved tenders for 690 new settlement units in two major east Jerusalem settlements: Ma'aleh Adumim and Beit Illit. The housing units could accommodate up to 2,800 new Jewish settlers.
If the idea was indeed to shield Israel from Palestinian attacks, then why is 80 percent of the wall being built on ethnically cleansed Palestinian land? Why encircle the Palestinian population of the West Bank from east and west, and those of Qalqilia from all directions? Why do thousands of Palestinian schools kids have to stand for hours in front of their gated villages to acquire permission from an Israeli soldier to allow them access to their schools and back?
Ethnic cleansing is indeed back on the Israeli political agenda, as Avigdor Lieberman, an Israeli politician who has for long advocated the ethnic cleansing of the Arab inhabitants of Palestine, was recently appointed as Israel's new deputy prime minister. One of his early ideas since the new post, aside from sending Palestinians packing, was the killing of the entire leadership of the elected Palestinian government. "They...have to disappear, to go to paradise, all of them, and there can't be any compromise," he told Israeli radio last week.
The unfortunate reality is that Israel's campaign of ethnic cleansing, though it might have changed tactics and pace throughout the years, has never stopped and is now more active than it has been for decades. It's also clear that the adjacent racist discourse that made such a policy sustainable for six decades is also at work, making advocates of war crimes heroes in the eyes of most Israelis.
Moreover, amid unabashed American backing of such policies and almost total silence or helplessness of the international community, Israel knows that the success of its colonial project in the West Bank is dependent on the element of time.
What's even more disheartening is the fact that Palestinian infighting is distracting and wasting energies that should be put to work to provoke and sustain an international campaign against Israeli atrocities. Infighting over governments that have no sovereignty, the lacking of any national cohesion or consensus or a clear political program that unifies Palestinians at home and in diaspora around one political and national agenda, will certainly ensure the success of the Israeli program and further contribute to the racist discourse that sees Palestinians as incapable of taking on the task of leadership and self-determination.
-This article is based on a speech delivered by the author at a London conference entitled: "Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine: Methods and Consequences" and broadcast by Al-Jazeera television.
-Ramzy Baroud's latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto Press) is available at Amazon.com and in the United States from the University of Michigan Press.
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Bush? Lie? Never!
Iraq Study Group to call for troop withdrawal
Peter Walker
Wednesday December 6, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
A much-anticipated US report on future policy in Iraq will recommend the withdrawal of all American combat troops from the country by early 2008, as well as diplomatic overtures to Iran and Syria, US media reported today.
The bipartisan Iraq Study Group (ISG) is due to release its report later today, a day after the new secretary for defence, Robert Gates, told Congress he did not believe the US was currently winning the war in Iraq.
ABC News said it had received leaked extracts of the 142-page ISG report, titled The Way Forward: A New Approach, and containing a raft of recommendations, some of them contrary to current US policy.
Among the 79 separate conclusions is that Washington should shift the "primary mission" of its troops in Iraq towards a supporting role.
"It's clear the Iraqi government will need US assistance for some time to come, especially in carrying out new security responsibilities," ABC quoted the report as saying.
"Yet the United States must not make open-ended commitments to keep large numbers of troops deployed in Iraq.
"The most important questions about Iraq's future are now the responsibility of Iraqis," the report adds. "The United States must adjust its role to encourage the Iraqi people to take control."
Comment: !!!!!
The committee, co-chaired by former secretary of state James Baker and former congressman Lee Hamilton, says all US forces not involved in training and support for the Iraqi military could leave the country by "the first quarter of 2008".
According to the Washington Post, quoting an official familiar with the report, the ISG also recommends Mr Bush should apply pressure on Iraq's government by threatening to reduce economic and military support if it fails to meet specific targets on security.
The 10-member group - which, ABC said, unanimously agreed on every point - also call for direct talks with Syria and Iran, as well as fresh efforts to deal with the Palestinian issue.
"The United States cannot achieve its goals in the Middle East unless it deals with the Israeli-Arab conflict and regional instability," ABC quoted the report as saying, adding that talks should include Israel, Lebanon and Palestinian leaders who recognise Israel's right to exist.
While Mr Bush appears as keen as the ISG to begin withdrawing US troops from Iraq, he is likely to be far less eager to deal with Iran and Syria, something he has thus far rejected.
But with violence in Iraq still seemingly out of control and the political pressure mounting after last month's Republican defeats in the midterm elections, the Bush administration is likely to be more open than previously to new ideas.
Illustrating this, Mr Gates - himself a former ISG panel member - marked a sharp break with his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld - by telling Congress yesterday that "all options are on the table" when it comes to Iraq.
He was twice asked if he thought the US was winning, replying both times: "No, sir."
The former CIA director said US forces would continue to support the Iraqi military, but said this could be done "with a dramatically smaller number of US forces than are there today", while arguing that total withdrawal would be a mistake.
"Developments in Iraq over the next year or two will, I believe, shape the entire Middle East and greatly influence global geopolitics for many years to come," he said.
"The United States will face a slowly but steadily improving situation in Iraq and in the region, or will face the very real risk and possible reality of a regional conflagration."
Comment: Well! Thank God for "study groups"! Otherwise we would never has spotted the screamingly obvious fact that the US invasion of Iraq is a crime against humanity and that US troops should be withdrawn immediately. But there is more to this than meets the eye. Notice the time frame for withdrawal - "early 2008" - the beginning of Dubya's last year in office. Here's how it's going to play out between now and then (which was the plan all along):
Things will "get worse" in Iraq. Most people with think that things are "getting worse" all by themselves, but smarty pants like you and me know that mass murder is not a force of nature but rather of men, or more appropriately, policy makers in Western governments. So the death toll continues to increase until someone says "why, someone has to DO something about this!" Then, a small voice from the back of the room will be heard to say "partition Iraq! It's the only way!".
From there, the plan will take shape and Iraq will ultimately be divided into three separate states for Shia, Sunni and Kurd, just in time for the last US soldier to leave Iraq, well...the last "official" soldier to leave. Tens of thousands will, of course, stay on to man the permanent US military bases in the newly-formed countries - for "peace-keeping", you understand. Bush will leave office in Jan 2009 to little fanfare and lots of rotten tomatoes, but secretly he will be given a pat on the back for a job well done. At least that is how it is MEANT to play out. There will, of course, be a few unseen twists and turns in the road as we progress. So sit back and watch the show! Oh yes, and don't forget to expose the psychopathic murderers to everyone that will listen.
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Iraq Study Group: "The Situation In Iraq Is Grave And Deteriorating'
AP
December 6, 2006
"A Risk Of A 'Slide Toward Chaos (That) Could Trigger The Collapse Of Iraq's Government And A Humanitarian Catastrophe....The Global Standing Of The United States Could Be Diminished'"
A commission on the war in Iraq recommended new and enhanced diplomacy Wednesday so the United States can "begin to move its combat forces" out of the country responsibly.
"The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating," the commission warned after an eight-month review of a conflict that has killed more than 2,800 U.S. troops and grown increasingly unpopular at home. The report was obtained by The Associated Press.
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New Defense Secretary: United States is 'losing war in Iraq'
Wed Dec 6 2006
AP
The man picked by George W Bush to be America's next defence secretary has conceded that the US is losing the war in Iraq.
Robert Gates made the admission a few hours before the president receives a major report on future options in the conflict.
The former head of the CIA was asked by Senators at his confirmation hearing: "We are not winning the war in Iraq. Is that correct?"
Mr Gates said: "That is my view. Yes sir."
He was then asked: "Therefore the status quo is not acceptable?"
He responded: "That is correct sir."
Mr Gates went on to warn that if Iraq is not stabilised in a year or two, the whole Middle East could implode.
He said: "There needs to be a change in our approach in Iraq. In my view all options are on the table."
The Iraq Study Group is now due to report, and they are expected to call for the biggest change yet in US strategy in Iraq, recommending a gradual pull-out of combat troops over the next 18 months, although they are not likely to fix a timetable.
It is thought the report will link that withdrawal to stronger efforts from Iraq's government to end the violence and recommend talking to Iran and Syria directly to help stop the killing.
Comment: Ya really gotta love the way no member of the Bush administration wants to say the word "losing". So are we eh...not winning the war? Eh yes, that is correct. Ok, just as long as we're not LOSING!
Seriously, these people are the biggest bunch of cretins the world has ever produced, how, in the name of Jesus did they manage to become our "leaders"?? Ya know, the "cream" of society??
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Tony Snow: Bush Disagrees With Gates...We Are "Winning" In Iraq
December 5, 2006
AP
At today's meeting with reporters at the White House, the major topics for Press Secretary Tony Snow, as expected, were the pending release of the Iraq Study Group's report -- and today's surprise, the admission by Robert Gates, at his confirmation hearings as new Pentagon chief, that the U.S., indeed, is not winning the war in Iraq.
Snow said that, as far as he knows, the president has not backed away from his recent statement that the U.S. is actually "winning" in Iraq. He also suggested that Gates, elsewhere in his testimony, seemed to say that maybe we weren't losing and we weren't winning. And he charged that the press was being too negative about all this: "What I think is demoralizing is a constant effort to try to portray this as a losing mission," he said.
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Blair: We Are Not Winning In Iraq
BBC News
December 6, 2006
Tony Blair has agreed with the incoming US defence secretary's assessment that the war in Iraq is not being won.
Asked by Tory leader David Cameron if he agreed with Robert Gates' assessment of the war, Mr Blair said: "Of course."
Comment: Blair must be so relieved that he has been given leave by his superiors in Washington to agree that that which is patently obvious is in fact patently obvious. Constant lying can take its toll ya know.
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Iraq: One by one, they tell the truth
Published: 06 December 2006
The Independent
As Tony Blair flies out to meet George Bush, the latest admission of failure in Iraq has made the two leaders appear even more isolated
Colin Powell
After telling the UN assembly in 2003 that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, the former Secretary of State admitted in May 2004 the claims were "inaccurate and wrong and, in some cases, deliberately misleading".
Colonel Tim Collins
The Army colonel made a famous rousing speech to troops on the eve of battle. But in September 2005, he declared:
"History might notice the invasion has arguably acted as the best recruiting sergeant for al-Qa'ida ever."
Paul Bremer
The former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq admitted in January 2006:
"It [the invasion] was a much tougher job than I think I expected it to be... we really didn't see the insurgency coming."
Zalmay Khalilzad
Contradicting the usually upbeat rhetoric, the US ambassador in Iraq said in March: "We have opened a Pandora's box". And unless the violence abated, Iraq would "make Taliban Afghanistan look like child's play".
Jack Straw
The former foreign secretary, one of the cheerleaders for the war, said in September: "The current situation is dire. I think many mistakes were made after the military action - there is no question about it - by the United States administration."
Gen Sir Richard Dannatt
The British General admitted in an interview in October: "I don't say that the difficulties we are experiencing round the world are caused by our presence in Iraq but undoubtedly our presence in Iraq exacerbates [them]."
Richard Perle
Regarded as one of the intellectual godfathers of the war, Perle changed his tack in November, admitting that "huge mistakes were made" in the invasion of Iraq. "The levels of brutality we've seen are truly horrifying," he added.
Ken Adelman
Last month, the noted neoconservative said: "The national security team... turned out to be among the most incompetent in the post-war era. Not only did each of them have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly."
Donald Rumsfeld
A memo from the hardline former defence secretary revealed this week that he had been looking for a change of tactics. "In my view, it is time for a major adjustment... what US forces are doing in Iraq is not working well enough..."
Robert Gates
Yesterday, Mr Rumsfeld's proposed successor was asked at a Senate hearing whether the US was winning the war in Iraq. "No, sir," he replied. And he warned that the situation could lead to a "regional conflagration".
Tony Blair ...
George Bush ...
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U.S. senate panel approves Gates' nomination as defense secretary
www.chinaview.cn 2006-12-06 06:53:41
WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday unanimously approved the nomination of Robert Gates to be the next Defense Secretary.
The confirmation process now goes to a full Senate vote, which is expected sometime before the weekend.
The Senate panel endorsed Gates' nomination by a 21-0 vote after a daylong hearing, and now it appears very likely that he will be confirmed by Senate within this week.
In a hearing that centers on the Iraq policy, Gates said the country is not winning the war in Iraq and risks regional disaster in one or two years.
The view is apparently not shared by U.S. President George W. Bush, who said as recently as October that the United States was winning the war.
Gates gave no timeline for ending the conflict in Iraq, but repeatedly referenced "the next year or two" when discussing U.S. options.
"Our course over the next year or two will determine whether the American and Iraqi people and the next president of the United States will face a slowly but steadily improving situation in Iraq and in the region or will face the very real risk and possible reality of a regional conflagration," he said.
Situation in Iraq by that time will "greatly influence global geopolitics for many years to come," Gates noted.
The former CIA director said his greatest worry is that "if we mishandle the next year or two and if we leave Iraq in chaos, is that a variety of regional powers will become involved in Iraq, and we will have a regional conflict on our hands."
Gates also said if confirmed, he would quickly consult military commanders in the field and politicians back home to determine the best course of action in Iraq, but "I will give most serious consideration to the views of those who lead our men and women in uniform."
Before the hearing, Bush said in a statement that he hopes for "speedy confirmation so he (Gates) can get sworn in and get to work."
Gates was nominated on Nov. 8 to replace current Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, two days after Democrats took control of both houses of Congress in midterm elections dominated by concerns about the Iraq war.
Gates, 63, currently president of Texas A&M University, had served as national security adviser and CIA director during President George H.W. Bush's administration.
Comment: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
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Saddam to boycott 'comedy' trial
Tuesday December 5, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
Saddam Hussein no longer wants to attend his trial for genocide, he told the chief judge in a letter released today, saying he was angry at not being allowed to speak after raising his hand.
In a handwritten note to Judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa, Saddam complained about what he called repeated "insults" during the trial over his role in the 1987-88 military campaign against the Kurds, in which thousands died.
"I wasn't given the chance to speak when I tried to clarify the truth by raising my hand three times," Saddam wrote in the one-page letter dated yesterday. At the time, he said, he wanted to respond to a prosecution allegation that he had stashed away $10bn (£5.07bn) of public money in overseas banks.
Referring to himself in the third person, the former dictator said: "Saddam, who taught pride and dignity to many people, refuses to attend (the trial) and be subjected to insult by agents and their followers."
Referring to the trial as "this new comedy", Saddam told he judge he could "do whatever you want" in response to the boycott.
The letter, handed to the press by Saddam's lawyers, referred to him as "president of the republic and commander in chief of the mujahedeen (holy warriors) armed forces".
The current hearing, in which Saddam and six former members of his regime face charges of war crimes and genocide, is separate to the trial which saw Saddam sentenced to death last month for crimes against humanity, linked to an earlier massacre in the Iraqi town of Dujail.
Much of the testimony in the current trial has been harrowing accounts by Kurdish survivors of massacres the prosecution claims were carried out by Saddam's regime.
Yesterday, a Kurdish teacher described the death of 40 fellow villagers, including his mother and two daughters, in a chemical attack in 1988.
"My wife was lying on her back, holding my two daughters - Shovan, six months, and Tabga, four years, tight in her arms," Abdulla Qadir Abdulla, 58, told the court, saying his wife had only survived because she took an antidote.
The charges on which Saddam has already been sentenced to hang were chosen for the first trial as they were considered relatively straightforward and simple to prove.
Comment: The man in the dock refers to "himself" in the third person, just as if he wasn't actually the real Saddam Hussein.
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Two More Years
By Paul Krugman
12/04/06
New York Times
At a reception following the midterm election, President Bush approached Senator-elect James Webb.
"How's your boy?" asked Mr. Bush. "I'd like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President," replied Mr. Webb, whose son, a Marine lance corporal, is risking his life in Mr. Bush's war of choice.
"That's not what I asked you," the president snapped. "How's your boy?"
"That's between me and my boy, Mr. President," said Mr. Webb.
Good for him. We need people in Washington who are willing to stand up to the bully in chief. Unfortunately, and somewhat mysteriously, they're still in short supply.
You can understand, if not condone, the way the political and media establishment let itself be browbeaten by Mr. Bush in his post-9/11 political prime. What's amazing is the extent to which insiders still cringe before a lame duck with a 60 percent disapproval rating.
Look at what seems to have happened to the Iraq Study Group, whose mission statement says that it would provide an "independent assessment." If press reports are correct, the group did nothing of the sort. Instead, it watered down its conclusions and recommendations, trying to come up with something Mr. Bush wouldn't reject out of hand.
In particular, says Newsweek, the report "will set no timetables or call for any troop reductions." All it will do is "suggest that the president could, not should, begin to withdraw forces in the vaguely defined future."
And all this self-abasement is for naught. Senior Bush aides, Newsweek tells us, are "dismissive, even condescending" toward James Baker, the Bush family consigliere who is the dominant force in the study group, and the report. Of course they are. That's how bullies always treat their hangers-on.
Even now, it seems, the wise men of Washington can't bring themselves to face up to two glaringly obvious truths.
The first is that Americans are fighting and dying in Iraq for no reason.
It's true that terrible things will happen when U.S. forces withdraw. Mr. Bush was attacking a straw man when he mocked those who think we can make a "graceful exit" from Iraq. Everyone I know realizes that the civil war will get even worse after we're gone, and that there will probably be a bloody bout of ethnic cleansing that effectively partitions the country into hostile segments.
But nobody - not even Donald Rumsfeld, it turns out - thinks we're making progress in Iraq. So the same terrible things that would happen if we withdrew soon will still happen if we delay that withdrawal for two, three or more years. The only difference is that we'll sacrifice many more American lives along the way.
The second truth is that the war will go on all the same, unless something or someone forces Mr. Bush to change course.
During his recent trip to Vietnam, Mr. Bush was asked whether there were any lessons from that conflict for Iraq. His response: "We'll succeed unless we quit."
It was a bizarre answer given both the history of the Vietnam War and the facts on the ground in Iraq, but it makes perfect sense given what we know about Mr. Bush's character. He has never been willing to own up to mistakes, however trivial. If he were to accept the failure of his adventure in Iraq, he would be admitting, at least implicitly, to having made the mother of all mistakes.
So Mr. Bush will keep sending other men's children off to fight his war. And he'll always insist that Iraq would have been a great victory if only his successors had shared his steely determination.
Does this mean that we're doomed to at least two more years of bloody futility? Not necessarily. Last month the public delivered a huge vote of no confidence in Mr. Bush and his war. He's still the commander in chief, but the new majority in Congress can put a lot of pressure on him to at least begin a withdrawal.
I'm worried, however, that Democrats may have counted on the Iraq Study Group to provide them with political cover. Now that the study group has apparently wimped out, will the Democrats do the same?
Well, here's a question for those who might be tempted, yet again, to shy away from a confrontation with Mr. Bush over Iraq: How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a bully's ego?
Comment: What Krugman and other liberal commentators in the US do not understand is that chaos is the desired Goal. Civil war is the desired goal. The whole point of the war was to force the dismemberment of Iraq, to create conflict, and to prepare the way for a wider and more devastating conflagration in the Middle East.
As long as they do not understand this, they'll never come to grips with the real terror of the situation.
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Something Not Right...
Richest 2% own 'half the wealth'
BBC News
05/12/2006
The richest 2% of adults in the world own more than half of all household wealth, according to a new study by a United Nations research institute.
The report, from the World Institute of Development Economics Research at the UN University, says that the poorer half of the world's population own barely 1% of global wealth.
There have of course been many studies of worldwide inequality.
But what is new about this report, the authors say, is its coverage.
It deals with all countries in the world - either actual data or estimates based on statistical analysis - and it deals with wealth, where most previous research has looked at income.
What they mean by wealth in this study is what people own, less what they owe - their debts. The assets include land, buildings, animals and financial assets.
Different assets
The analysis shows, as have many other less comprehensive studies, striking divergences in wealth between countries.
Wealth is heavily concentrated in North America, Europe and some countries in the Asia Pacific region, such as Japan and Australia.
These countries account for 90% of household wealth.
The study also finds that inequality is sharper in wealth than in annual income.
And it uncovers some striking differences in the types of assets that dominate in different countries.
In less developed nations, land and farm assets are more important, reflecting the greater importance of agriculture in those economies.
In addition, the report says the weighting is the result of "immature" financial institutions, which make it much harder for people to have savings accounts or shares.
In contrast, some citizens of the rich countries have more debt than assets - making them, the report says, among the poorest in the world in terms of household wealth.
However, they are presumably better off in terms of what they consume than many people in developing countries.
Comprehensive
The survey is based on data for the year 2000. The authors say a more recent year would have involved more gaps in the data. As it is, many figures - especially for developing countries - have had to be estimated.
Nonetheless, the authors say it is the most comprehensive study of personal wealth ever undertaken.
Why does it matter? Because wealth serves as insurance against times when income tends to fall, such as unemployment, sickness or old age.
It is also a source of finance for small businesses, a particularly important point since it is the countries with lower levels of personal wealth which also tend to have weaker financial systems without the funds, ability or inclination to lend to small firms.
The report is not about policy recommendations.
But one of the authors, Professor Anthony Shorrocks, says it does draw attention to the importance of enhancing banking systems in developing countries to help generate the funds for business investment.
Comment: Oh well, we all know that this massively disproportionate distribution of wealth "just happens", there is no mechanism that makes it so.
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World's richest 1% own 40% of all wealth, UN report discovers
Wednesday December 6, 2006
The Guardian
- First ever study of global household assets
- 50% of world's adults own just 1% of the wealth
The richest 1% of adults in the world own 40% of the planet's wealth, according to the largest study yet of wealth distribution. The report also finds that those in financial services and the internet sectors predominate among the super rich.
Europe, the US and some Asia Pacific nations account for most of the extremely wealthy. More than a third live in the US. Japan accounts for 27% of the total, the UK for 6% and France for 5%.
The UK is also third in terms of per capita wealth. UK residents are found to have on average $127,000 (£64,000) each in assets, with Japanese and American citizens having, respectively, $181,000 and $144,000. All data relate to the year 2000.
The global study - from the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations - is the first to chart wealth distribution in every country as opposed to just income, for which more comprehensive date is available. It included all the most significant components of household wealth, including financial assets and debts, land, buildings and other tangible property. Together these total $125 trillion globally.
Anthony Shorrocks, director of the research institute at the United Nations University, in New York, led the study. He affirmed that the existence of a nest egg provided an insurance policy that helped people cope with unforeseen events such as ill health or a lost job. Capital allowed people to drag themselves out of poverty, he added. "In some ways, wealth is more important to people in poorer countries than in richer countries." It was more difficult in developing countries to set up a business because it was harder to borrow start-up funds, he said.
His team used detailed data from 38 countries, but had to rely on incomplete information from the rest.
The report found the richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of the world total of global assets. Half the world's adult population, however, owned barely 1% of global wealth. Near the bottom of the list were India, with per capita wealth of $1,100, and Indonesia with assets per head of $1,400.
Many African nations as well as North Korea and the poorer Asia Pacific nations were places where the worst off lived.
"These levels of inequality are grotesque," said Duncan Green, head of research at Oxfam. "It is impossible to justify such vast wealth when 800 million people go to bed hungry every night. The good news is that redistribution would only have to be relatively small. Such are the vast assets of the rich that giving up a small part of their wealth could transform the lives of millions."
Madsen Pirie, director of the Adam Smith Institute, a free-market thinktank, disagreed that distribution of global wealth was unfair. He said: "The implicit assumption behind this is that there is a supply of wealth in the world and some people have too much of that supply. In fact wealth is a dynamic, it is constantly created. We should not be asking who in the past has created wealth and how can we get it off them." He said that instead the question should be how more and more people could create wealth.
Ruth Lea, director of the Centre for Policy Studies, a thinkthank set up by Margaret Thatcher, said that although she supported the goal of making poverty history she did not think increasing aid to poorer countries was the answer. "It's no use throwing lots of aid at countries that are basically dysfunctional," she said.
The UN report was issued as the Swiss magazine Bilan released a list of the richest Swiss residents. Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of Ikea, topped the list with an estimated fortune of $21bn.
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U.S. predicts bumper year in arms sales
Mon Dec 4, 2006
Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government is on its way to brokering about $20 billion in arms sales in the fiscal year that began October 1, steady with last year's near-record total, the Pentagon official responsible for such sales said on Monday.
"We're forecasting in the $20 billion range" for fiscal 2007, Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kohler, director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, told the Reuters Aerospace and Defense Summit in Washington.
In fiscal 2006, which ended on September 30, foreign military sales notified to Congress reached $20.9 billion, nearly double the $10.6 billion the previous year.
Last year's total was second only to 1993, which topped $30 billion, swollen by sales to the Middle East after the first Gulf War.
Regional security concerns tied to Iran and North Korea were helping drive current sales, Kohler said.
He said Saudi Arabia, for instance, was talking to the United States about shore-hugging littoral combat ships that could cost billions of dollars in coming years.
The ships were of particular interest to the Saudi Navy's Eastern Fleet "that would first confront Iranian aggression if there is any." The Eastern Fleet also was largely responsible for protecting Saudi oil infrastructure in the Gulf, Kohler said.
Such ships, costing some $220 million apiece, are designed to counter submarines, small surface attack craft and mines in heavily contested areas near shore. Different versions are being built for the U.S. Navy by teams led by Lockheed Martin Corp. and General Dynamics Corp..
The United Arab Emirates also was considering purchases designed to boost its naval capabilities, missile defense and command and control, Kohler said.
Sales to Iraq, including armored personnel carriers, plus equipment for Afghan government forces would total about $3 billion in fiscal 2007, about the same as last year, he said.
North Korea, which defied global pressure this year to test-fire missiles and carry out a nuclear test blast, is also spurring arms purchases, Kohler said.
Comment: Yaaay! Even more innocent people are gonna die this year than last year! Doesn't it just make ya wanna scream?!
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Income of Top 0.1% of Americans up 348% - Income of 60% of Americans down 5% while 20% of Americans live on $7 per day
By Matthew Rothschild
28 Nov 06
George Bush likes to tout the success of the economy, citing recent job growth, and until Monday, the climbing stock market.
But most Americans can see through that mirage.
You know you're wallet isn't any fatter, and your bank account's no healthier.
A story on the front page of The New York Times business section on November 28 spells out the problems.
Average real incomes fell by 3 percent between 2000 and 2004.
Looked at over the past 25 years, things don't get any better. From 1979 to 2004, 'the bottom 60 percent of Americans, on average, made less than 95 cents in 2004 for each dollar they reported in 1979,' the Times reports. For those on the top 95th to top 99th rungs of the income ladder, the past quarter century was splendid: Their income went up 53 percent. And those on the top 0.1 percent rung? Their income went up 348 percent.
That is obscene.
We have a plutocracy in this country, not just of the rich or the very rich but of the unbelievably rich. This 0.1 percent are the ones who benefit most from the George Bush economy.
As he once put it, "Some people call you the elite. I call you my base."
Meanwhile, the poorest 60 million Americans "reported average incomes of less than $7 a day."
Seven bucks a day! That barely gets one meal at McDonald's.
Our economy is a sin.
We cannot call ourselves a moral people and let this kind of maldistribution continue, particularly when it brings suffering to millions and millions of people.
I do believe we should have higher taxes on that top 5 percent, and especially on that top 0.1 percent.
I do believe in preserving, or even increasing, the estate tax.
But I'd settle simply for a floor of decency, so that no one has to go hungry or survive on only that one McDonald's meal a day, no one has to go without health care coverage, no one has to cut prescription pills in half to make the medicine stretch, no one has to work 50 or 60 or 80 hours a week just to take care of family.
To build this floor of decency, we need to guarantee every American health care, every American the right to a free college education, every American an annual income of, say, about $20,000 or $25,000.
This guaranteed annual income, an idea espoused by people stretching from Martin Luther King Jr. to Milton Friedman, would remove the cruel coercion of the marketplace and outlaw the immorality of letting tens of millions of people suffer.
In some ways, our economy would still be grossly unfair, with that top 5 percent and that top 0.1 percent raking in enormously disproportionate amounts.
But at this stage, the greater sin is not gluttony. It is poverty. It is hunger. It is economic uncertainty. It is lack of opportunity.
So I don't care as much about there being no ceiling for Paris Hilton.
I care more about there being no floor for tens of millions of people.
We need to start building that floor of decency today.
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Denver housing market in free-fall as foreclosures eclipse record
05/12/2006
AP
Denver's 2006 real estate foreclosure rate is now officially the worst on record.
With one month left in the year, foreclosures have already eclipsed the record set during the 1988 oil industry collapse which sent Colorado's economy into a tail-spin.
Experts are saying Denver's spiraling market should serve as a warning to the rest of the country.
An analysis shows many of the year's nearly 18,000 Denver metro-area foreclosures fall in what is being called the "foreclosure belt" of Adams and Weld counties and north Aurora, while upscale neighborhoods are nearly unscathed.
Observers say Denver's hot market for mortgage fraud has created what one called a "Wild West" atmosphere that has left buyers trapped in bad loans with no way out.
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The Economics of John K. Galbraith and Milton Friedman
December 4, 2006
Rodrigue Tremblay
Economist John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) died on April 26, 2006 at the age of 97. Economist Milton Friedman (1912-2006) died on November 16, 2006 at the age of 94. Along with the great John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), these two economists dominated the field of economics during the second half of the 20th Century. There existed such an intellectual competition between the two economists-not unlike the rivalry that prevailed between President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) and President John Adams (1735-1826), who both died on the same day- that Galbraith's death may have influenced the time of Friedman's death.
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
John Kenneth Galbraith
"The Great Depression [1929-39], like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy."
Milton Friedman
"Economic freedom is... an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom."
Milton Friedman
"People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage."
John Kenneth Galbraith
Economist John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) died on April 26, 2006 at the age of 97. Economist Milton Friedman (1912-2006) died on November 16, 2006 at the age of 94. Along with the great John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), these two economists dominated the field of economics during the second half of the 20th Century. There existed such an intellectual competition between the two economists-not unlike the rivalry that prevailed between President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) and President John Adams (1735-1826), who both died on the same day- that Galbraith's death may have influenced the time of Friedman's death.
Both were influential in framing the general economic debate and in steering general economic policies within their own country, but also abroad. For one, Galbraith was an advisor to Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Similarly, Friedman's ideas strongly influenced the economic policies of, among others, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, American President Ronald Reagan and Chilean President Antonio Pinochet. He also persuaded the Nixon administration to abolish military conscription.
John K. Galbraith's most influential book was The Affluent Society (1958), in which he proposed the idea that post-war private expenditures were generating marginal social benefits that were lower than would be derived from increased public expenditures on needed economic infrastructures and social programs. The general principle here is that public expenditures should be increased until one marginal dollar spent publicly generates the same marginal social benefit as one marginal dollar spent on private goods and services. This is still a fundamental precept of modern economic welfare theory.
Milton Friedman, for his part, espoused the 18th Century French physiocrats' economic philosophy that government should interfere as little as possible with the efficient functioning of free markets, according to the fundamental law of supply and demand. He advocated laissez-faire capitalism and free market economics. In his most important work, Capitalism and Freedom (1962), Friedman became the universal champion of all those who advocate low taxation and small government.
Both economists, just as Keynes previously, were influenced by the pressing economic problems requiring solutions at specific times. During the immediate post-war years, after the onslaught of the Great Depression, and after the war-time price controls and rationing, private wealth was increasing at a fast pace (new houses, new cars, etc.) while schools, hospitals and roads were not catching up with the new demand for economic infrastructure. The international environment was also characterized by fixed exchanges rates, a high level of trade protectionism, and controls on international capital movements. In such a context, fiscal policy was deemed to be more potent and useful than monetary policy. Thus Galbraith's fiscal approach to solving society's problems of resource allocation and economic stabilization.
In the 1970's and 1980's, after two damaging, successive oil supply shocks, and the rise of inflation, the need was to isolate the economy from these external shocks, through the adoption of flexible exchange rates and through a more predictable monetary policy. Thus Friedman's emphasis on flexible exchange rates and on a more responsible management of the money supply. To a large extent, Galbraith's more Keynesian approach to economic management and Friedman's more monetarist approach to economic stabilization were a reflection of the different economic environments in which they applied their theories.
As far as economic stabilization is concerned, for example, that remains an empirical appreciation if, for a given economy, at a specific time, fluctuations in government surpluses and deficits are more or less efficient than fluctuations in interest rates in influencing private investment and private consumption. There are situations where private expenditures are very responsive to movements in real interest rates, i.e. to nominal interest rates minus inflation expectations. In such normal times, monetary policy alone can be relied upon to stabilize the overall economy, while public budgets remain balanced.
However, there arise situations of market failures when excessive market power by a few large corporations or excessive herd-like speculation by the many create destabilizing bubbles in crucial sectors of the economy. Economic psychology could become so universally depressed that no amount of monetary stimulus could jump start the economy. Japan is an economy that found itself in such a predicament during the 1990's. At that time, nominal interest rates were pushed to near zero, their absolute low, but real interest rates remained high due to a generalized deflation and high deflationary expectations. When an economy falls in such a 'liquidity trap', fiscal policy may become the only avenue left to stimulate the economy, with increased public deficits. It becomes a matter of political ideology if such deficits should be generated through tax reductions or through increased public expenditures, or both.
Philosophically, 'liberal' Galbraith would be more inclined to favor enlarged public expenditures, while 'conservative' Friedman would prefer to keep as much money as possible in private hands. Both would agree, however, that the government is the last arbiter when economic conditions in the private economy deteriorate, either through destructive inflation, imported or domestically produced, or through an economic slump, that generate widespread unemployment of both workers and machines. It should be no surprise if Friedman's prescriptions are more welcomed in times of prosperity, while those of Galbraith and Keynes would be readily adopted in times of economic crisis. This has been a pattern often observed in the past. For example, before the Great Depression, 'Laissez-faire ' capitalism was politically dominant. However, the role of government was rediscovered when poverty, income inequalities and unemployment became widespread. This is to be expected in a democracy, where the wishes of the median voter normally carry the day. The same ambivalence toward economic policies will no doubt prevail in the future, as people ride the consequences of economic cycles. Thus, there will surely be future Galbraiths and future Friedmans in the economics profession.
Posted, December 4, 2006, at 5:30 am
http://www.TheNewAmericanEmpire.com/tremblay=1047
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Scientists say a 'silent earthquake' is overdu
06:01 PM PST on Tuesday, December 5, 2006
By GLENN FARLEY / KING5 News
SEATTLE - Seismology experts and geology researchers are literally waiting for the earth under the Pacific Northwest to move at any moment. The earthquake will be strong but it's certainly not going to knock plates off the wall or homes off their foundations. Experts say it will last a long time - about two weeks - and that's why you won't feel it.
The seismic event the scientists are waiting for is called a deep tremor or silent earthquake and the scientists have known about them for less than a decade.
Normally, the North American tectonic plate moves in a northeast direction, about 8 millimeters a year. We don't even notice its movement. But scientists have found that every 14 months or so, the plate seems to reverse course, sliding backwards for between 6 and 15 days. It happened in July 1998, August 1999, December 2000, February 2002 and September 2005. It's now due.
In anticipation, researchers have set out an array of monitors and are watching them closely.
In November, those monitors began picking up movements in the Vancouver Island area but they stopped after a just a few days. Scientists don't believe those shakes are linked to a silent earthquake. They say once the deep tremors start they'll definitely know it.
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Austria's hills aren't alive with sound of skiing
Wednesday December 6, 2006
The Guardian
For the Austrian village of Hochfilzen it was a disaster. As it prepared to welcome the world's best cross-country skiers and shooters for a biathlon event this weekend there was a problem: no snow.
With climate experts confirming that the Alps are in the grip of the warmest temperatures for 1,300 years villagers borrowed some snow from a nearby mountain, trucking in snow from Grossglockner, Austria's highest peak, 20 miles away. Over five days lorries deposited the snow in the village, allowing a 6-metre wide by 45cm deep (20ft x 17inch) track.
"There's normally snow here. Unfortunately this year it didn't arrive in time," Martin Frieder, the town's tourist office spokesman said, adding: "Last winter we had 8.7 metres of snow."
An unseasonably warm autumn has wreaked havoc in Alpine ski resorts, postponing the winter season in Austria, France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. Instead of snow all around, most slopes are still covered in green grass.
Yesterday climate experts confirmed that the warm temperatures - including 22.4C recorded last week in Grenoble, the capital of the French Alps - were unusual.
"We are experiencing the warmest period in the Alpine region in 1,300 years," said Reinhard Böhm, a climatologist at Austria's Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics. "It will undoubtedly get warmer in the future."
The lack of snow has also affected ski resorts further afield, with all 31 skiing areas in Spain and Andorra closed, said the newspaper El País.
Andrea Händel, of the German Alpine Association in Munich, said it is too warm for artificial snow machines to work. Snow is now forecast within days.
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How Deep The Rabbit Hole?
Litvinenko's Italian Contact Says Ex-FSB Agent Poisoned by "Clandestine Organizations"
Created: 06.12.2006 09:54 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 10:15 MSK,
MosNews
An Italian contact of poisoned former Russian FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko accused "clandestine organisations" from Russia that were not under direct control of the Kremlin of targeting his dead friend, Reuters news agency reports.
Mario Scaramella, in a London hospital after doctors found traces of a radioactive substance in his urine, told CNN in an interview broadcast on Wednesday he was feeling well despite the discovery.
The expert on the KGB and its successor organization recalled meeting Litvinenko on November 1 at a sushi restaurant in London and sharing with him emails from a source warning the pair their lives might be in danger.
"(The emails said) him and in a certain sense me - I was mentioned as well but for different reasons - were under the special attention of hostile people and so to take care," Scaramella said.
Asked who these "hostile people" were, he said: "People linked with some clandestine organizations not directly under control of (the) Russian establishment but from Russia ... generally retired people from the security service."
On Saturday, when Scaramella said urine tests had detected traces of polonium 210 - the substance that killed Litvinenko - in his body, he did not accuse anyone of the poisoning.
Litvinenko, a critic of the Kremlin, accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering his death. The Kremlin denies any involvement.
Speaking to CNN from his hospital bed, Scaramella said he felt fine. "Doctors confirmed that I have no symptoms, no effect of the poisoning, so again I am perfectly well."
He also doubted whether the poisoning took place at the sushi restaurant as has been widely speculated.
"I don't believe it happened there simply because there were no other people, any strange situation," Scaramella said, adding that he did not think he had been a target himself.
The probe into Litvinenko's death on November 23 moved to Moscow on Monday as a team of British detectives flew there to look for leads.
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Russia Should Carry Out Own Probe Into Litvinenko's Death - Official
Created: 06.12.2006 16:19 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 17:55 MSK, 1 hour 21 minutes ago
MosNews
Russia should carry out its own investigation into the poisoning death in London of former intelligence agent Alexander Litvinenko, the deputy justice minister was quoted by a newspaper in Moscow as saying, Agence France-Presse reported.
Given that Litvinenko was a Russian citizen, as well as having British citizenship, "our security agencies should not be indifferent to what happened," Vladimir Kolesnikov said in quotes carried by the Kommersant newspaper, deriving from the Interfax news agency. "We should take a procedural decision and carry out our own full, multi-faceted, objective investigation... cooperating with the security agencies of other countries including Britain," he said.
On Tuesday Russia laid down strict ground rules for visiting British counter-terrorism police probing the poisoning and ruled out the extradition of any suspects.
The British team flew in to a frosty reception in the Russian capital on Monday and, according to a British Embassy spokesman here, has already begun their inquiries into a case that has created serious tensions between London and Moscow. While the Russian side has promised to cooperate with the investigation, Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika made it clear that the British officers would only be allowed to work under tight controls.
At a tense press conference, Chaika stressed that only Russian investigators had the right to actually question witnesses in Russia and ruled out any possibility of the British team making any arrests while here or extraditing suspects. "They can't arrest Russian citizens," he said. "If they have to be investigated, we can do that in Russia according to a convention. We can open an inquiry... and put them on trial in Russia."
Chaika also questioned claims made in the British media that the radioactive substance apparently used to poison Litvinenko, polonium-210, originated from Russia.
"We believe there haven't been any losses of polonium here," he said, adding that the British authorities would have to provide hard evidence to the contrary before prosecutors could open an investigation.
Litvinenko, who died in London on November 23, accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering his poisoning -- a charge sternly denied by the Kremlin which has taken umbrage at coverage of the case in the British media.
"I see no grounds for speculation actively held in Western media that this was the long arm of the KGB or FSB, that Litvinenko knew a lot and was an important intelligence officer. But that does not at all correspond to reality," Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov told the Greek Eleftherotypia newspaper Tuesday. According to Ivanov, himself a secret service veteran, Litvinenko was working in a minor role in the interior ministry when he was hired by the FSB in the mid-1990s for a newly created department combatting organised crime, and was thus unlikely to have been much of an insider.
Andrei Lugovoi, one of three Russians who met with Litvinenko in London on the day he fell ill, said Tuesday that he was willing to be interviewed by the British police team. "I am counting on meeting them in the coming days," Lugovoi, who like Litvinenko is a former secret service agent, said in a telephone interview broadcast on NTV television. "If they show me a list of people that they want to meet and if there are names missing from that list, names that I believe would be interesting to propose to them, then I certainly will," Lugovoi said.
According to the Kommersant newspaper, police are investigating why traces of radiation were found on the planes on which Lugovoi flew to London and returned to Moscow, and also in rooms in two London hotels where he stayed.
Traces of polonium-210 have also been at London football club Arsenal's Emirates Stadium, Britain's Health Protection Agency said Tuesday.
Police last week listed a dozen locations where the substance, of which large quantities were found in Litvinenko's urine, had been detected, but the Emirates Stadium was not one of them. "Minute quantities (of polonium-210) were found which were barely detectable in a couple of localised areas ... there was no risk to public health," a HPA spokeswoman told AFP. "Even the traces that were found were at barely detectable levels."
Because there are levels at which polonium is simply "naturally occurring", the HPA had to check it out and ensure that there was no public health risk, she added.
Three Russian men, Lugovoi, Dmitri Kovtun and Vyacheslav Sokolenko, who met with Litvinenko at a central London hotel on November 1, the day he fell ill and three weeks before he eventually died, also watched a football match between Arsenal and CSKA Moscow at the Emirates Stadium, the Russian newspaper Kommersant said earlier this month.
Meanwhile Italian police raided the home and offices of Mario Scaramella, an Italian contact of Litvinenko, suspecting him of violating Italian waste management laws, the ANSA news agency said Tuesday. Scaramella is allegedly connected to a scheme involving the illegal use of building site waste.
He is in hospital in London after testing positive for a radiocative substance, but doctors have so far failed to detect any symptoms of the radiation poisoning that killed the former Russian spy Litvinenko. The raids targeted Scaramella's home and several offices in Naples, as well as offices he regularly used in Torre del Greco, Marigliano and San Sebastiano in the Naples region.
The mass circulation daily Izvestia repeated allegations that Litvinenko had been involved in trading in radioactive materials and may have been involved with Chechen militants trying to create a "dirty bomb".
Given links between Litvinenko, the exiled Russian businessman Boris Berezovsky and Chechen envoy Akhmed Zakayev, "one can't exclude that the bomb was being created in Britain," Izvestia said.
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Doctors Unable to Diagnose Former Russian PM's "Mysterious Illness"
Created: 06.12.2006 10:25 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 10:25 MSK, 9 hours 2 minutes ago
MosNews
Doctors who have failed to diagnose former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar's mysterious illness say they suspect poisoning but are unable to detect a toxic substance, an aide is quoted by Xinhua news agency.
Gaidar, a 50-year-old economist 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 November 24, and was rushed into intensive care at a hospital.
Spokesman Valery Natarov said doctors treating Gaidar in Moscow concluded his condition "did not correspond to any disease known to medicine and a toxic factor was possible."
Natarov said Gaidar was taken a clinic in Moscow 60 hours after falling ill, which made it impossible to trace any possible toxic substance which usually remains in the system for up to 48 hours.
Gaidar was discharged on Monday and was feeling "quite well," but would remain under the doctors' supervision, Natarov said.
Gaidar fell ill a day after ex-FSB officer and Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko died in London after being poisoned with the radioactive element polonium-210.
Irish doctors concluded he was not poisoned by a radioactive substance, but said his health had suffered "radical changes."
The illness added to growing speculation in Moscow over who might be responsible for Litvinenko's death. Some critics have tied Litvinenko's death and Gaidar's illness to the October killing of Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, also a Kremlin critic.
Gaidar is a liberal economist whose criticism of the Kremlin was largely limited to economic issues. 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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Traces of Polonium Found at London Stadium
December 6, 2006
Associated Press
LONDON - Traces of the radioactive isotope polonium-210 have been detected at a London stadium that hosted a soccer match attended by a key figure in the probe of the fatal radiation poisoning of a former Russian spy, a British official said Wednesday.
The key figure, Andrei Lugovoi, who is hospitalized in Moscow and being tested for possible polonium contamination, was to be interviewed by British investigators Wednesday, according to a Russian news agency report confirmed by a Lugovoi associate.
"I have been officially informed that our meeting with Scotland Yard detectives will take place today and proceed with the participation of employees of the Russian Prosecutor General's Office,'' Lugovoi said, according to ITAR-Tass.
Vyacheslav Sokolenko, a business associate, confirmed in an interview with The Associated Press that Lugovoi would be meeting with British investigators.
Lugovoi, who is also a former Russian agent, attended a soccer match at Emirates Stadium on Nov. 1 after meeting Alexander Litvinenko. Litvinenko fell ill that day and died Nov. 23 in London. Toxicologists found polonium-210 in his body.
The radiation found at the soccer stadium was "barely detectable'' and posed no public health risk, said Katherine Lewis, spokeswoman for the Health Protection Agency.
ABC News reported that British detectives had identified Lugovoi as a prime suspect in the poisoning. The report cited an unnamed senior British official.
Alexander Goldfarb, a friend of Litvinenko's, said he doubted that Lugovoi played a role in the killing.
"I frankly doubt that he was the hit man because hit men are usually people hiding in the dark,'' Goldfarb told the AP. "I think it's one of his associates, I think he was used unawares ... Now his life is in danger because he knows a lot.''
On Tuesday, Russian Prosecutor-General Yuri Chaika said that his office would fully cooperate with the British investigators, but all figures in the case would be questioned by Russian prosecutors in the presence of the British officers.
On his deathbed, Litvinenko, a strong critic of the Russian government, blamed President Vladimir Putin for the poisoning. The Kremlin has vehemently denied the accusations.
Lugovoi, who had become a businessman, has said that he knew Litvinenko for a decade. He said Litvinenko had contacted him from London about a year ago with some business-related proposals, and that they had met intermittently in London since then.
Lugovoi traveled to London three times during the month before Litvinenko's death and met with Litvinenko four times, according to Russian media.
The case has further strained already tense relations between Russia and Britain, which has infuriated the Kremlin by giving asylum to tycoon and fierce Kremlin critic Boris Berezovsky and Chechen rebel envoy Akhmed Zakayev in addition to Litvinenko, a former Federal Security Service officer.
Lugovoi was at one point a bodyguard for former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar, who also recently fell ill with an illness that Russian doctors have been unable to diagnose. They say they suspect poisoning, but are unable to detect a toxic substance, a Gaidar aide has said.
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Russia blocks questioning of spy poison suspects
By Andrew Osborn in Moscow and Cahal Milmo
Published: 06 December 2006
Detectives dispatched to Moscow to investigate the death of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko heard yesterday they would be barred from personally questioning witnesses and no suspects will be returned to Britain to face charges.
In comments that appeared to sharply limit the activity of the Scotland Yard team, Yuri Chaika, Russia's General Prosecutor, made it clear that if there is to be a "Litvinenko trial," it will be in Russia. British courts have repeatedly refused high profile Russian extraditions, including that of Mr Litvinenko's allies, the oligarch Boris Berezovsky and the Chechen exile Akhmed Zakayev. It seems Moscow is in no mood to help now the boot is on the other foot.
Though Mr Chaika vowed that the Russian side would do its "utmost" to help the British investigation, everything he said appeared to indicate the opposite, a state of affairs that mirrors increasingly icy relations between London and Moscow on the subject.
Efforts by the Yard's anti-terrorist command to talk to one of the central figures in the case - businessman and former KGB bodyguard Andrei Lugovoi - were also facing unexpected delay after it emerged that he was being treated in a hospital for an unexplained ailment. Mr Chaika said: "According to our information, he is ill and currently in hospital. If doctors allow, he will certainly be questioned." News that Mr Lugovoi is in hospital was unexpected: last week he was tested for polonium-210, the lethal radioactive isotope which killed Mr Litvinenko, and allegedly given the all clear.
Mr Lugovoi emerged as a key actor in the month-long drama of Mr Litvinenko's poisoning and subsequent death after he visited London three times in October. Mr Lugovoi met Mr Litvinenko four times on those trips to discuss potential business ventures.
But he again denied any involvement in the poisoning and claimed he is being set up as a suspect. He told Russia's ITAR-Tass news agency: "Once I give all the necessary testimony to the law enforcement organs, I intend publicly to put an end to speculation about my supposed involvement in this story that has caused such a stir."
Mr Chaika indicated that his own officials would conduct the interrogation of any witnesses, with the British allowed only to listen in but not allowed to interject or pose its own questions spontaneously.
A list of individuals who the Yard officers want to question has been submitted to their Russian counterparts. It is understood to include two Russian men who were in London at the time Mr Litvinenko fell ill.
Mr Chaika said Russia's Federal Security Service would not be dragged into the investigation.
A team of nine anti-terrorism officers arrived in Moscow on Monday briefed to find out all it can about Mr Litvinenko's death.
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Russia Holds Israeli Prisoners Hostage, Seeks to Swap Them for Wanted Tycoon - Report
05.12.2006
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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Kyrgyz National Fatally Shot Dead by U.S. Serviceman at Local Army Base
Created: 06.12.2006 17:07 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 17:07 MSK
MosNews
A U.S. serviceman in Kyrgyzstan fatally shot a local resident on Wednesday, The Associated Press reported citing a a senior police official.
The incident took place at the U.S. military base in Manas, outside the capital, Bishkek, said Deputy Interior Minister Temerkan Subanov.
Subanov said he had traveled to the base but did not have details on the victim or the serviceman.
A spokesman for the base was not immediately available for comment.
The United States maintains the Manas base mostly in support of U.S. forces operating in nearby Afghanistan.
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Top Kyrgyz Official Says Nation Will Not Follow U.S. Model of Democracy
Created: 06.12.2006 15:19 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 16:54 MSK
MosNews
The adoption of the American model for development has not created prosperity in Kyrgyzstan, the Central Asian republic's state secretary was quoted by the RIA Novosti news agency as saying on Wednesday.
Political turmoil and economic hardship has continued to plague the country since the overthrow of the government in March 2005 known as the 'tulip revolution', widely believed to have been backed by U.S.-funded NGOs.
"Kyrgyzstan's friends in the person of the U.S. are pushing the country toward democracy, where freedom of speech reigns, but we are not getting richer or better-fed from this democracy," Adakhan Madumarov told professors and students of the Kyrgyz State University.
He cited ex-Soviet neighbor Kazakhstan with its authoritarian government, whose economy has been developing rapidly in recent years on the back of oil and gas revenues.
"For example, in Kazakhstan there is discipline, while democracy reigns in Kyrgyzstan," Madumarov said.
Madumarov also said Kyrgyz mass media negatively impact the state's development, because they write about murders and scandals. He urged the media to stop "shattering the process of strengthening statehood" and to "serve the unification of society."
After the mass opposition protests that ousted long-serving leader Askar Akayev, Kurmanbek Bakiyev came to power in a democratic vote. However, his term in office has been marred by corruption scandals and mass poverty. At the beginning of November, thousands of opposition supporters gathered in the center of the capital, Bishkek, demanding that Bakiyev resign or delegate some of his powers to parliament.
Bakiyev signed a new constitution November 9, based on a compromise agreement drafted by opposition and pro-government lawmakers. The president lost the right to dissolve parliament, and parliament gained the authority to appoint the prime minister and the cabinet.
is quoted by RIA Novosti news agency as saying.
Political turmoil and economic hardship has continued to plague the country since the overthrow of the government in March 2005 known as the 'tulip revolution', widely believed to have been backed by U.S.-funded NGOs.
"Kyrgyzstan's friends in the person of the U.S. are pushing the country toward democracy, where freedom of speech reigns, but we are not getting richer or better-fed from this democracy," Adakhan Madumarov told professors and students of the Kyrgyz State University.
He cited ex-Soviet neighbor Kazakhstan with its authoritarian government, whose economy has been developing rapidly in recent years on the back of oil and gas revenues.
"For example, in Kazakhstan there is discipline, while democracy reigns in Kyrgyzstan," Madumarov said.
Madumarov also said Kyrgyz mass media negatively impact the state's development, because they write about murders and scandals. He urged the media to stop "shattering the process of strengthening statehood" and to "serve the unification of society."
After the mass opposition protests that ousted long-serving leader Askar Akayev, Kurmanbek Bakiyev came to power in a democratic vote. However, his term in office has been marred by corruption scandals and mass poverty. At the beginning of November, thousands of opposition supporters gathered in the center of the capital, Bishkek, demanding that Bakiyev resign or delegate some of his powers to parliament.
Bakiyev signed a new constitution November 9, based on a compromise agreement drafted by opposition and pro-government lawmakers. The president lost the right to dissolve parliament, and parliament gained the authority to appoint the prime minister and the cabinet, RIA Novosti reported.
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The Suffering Of The Palestinian People
Apartheid Israel
By VIRGINIA TILLEY
December 5, 2006
Johannesburg, South Africa
On November 27, Ehud Olmert responded to frantic international pressure and US hand signals by delivering what was billed as a "landmark" policy speech. The BBC has raised a faint cheer for the "new mood" it seems to signal. But the occasion, an annual memorial for Ben Gurion, was appropriate: in silky language, Mr. Olmert baldly reiterated the same terms and conditions that have blocked all progress toward Middle East peace for years.
Talks with the Palestinian Authority, Mr. Olmert declared, will begin only after a newly elected Palestinian government "renounces violence", recognizes Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, abandons the right of return on behalf of the entire Palestinian people, and agrees that the large urban Israeli settlements that now dismember the West Bank will be permanently annexed to Israel.
After this abject betrayal of all Palestinian national aspirations and social needs, Mr. Olmert said, Israel will then open "negotiations" with the new government (unless Israel doesn't like that government), "significantly diminish the number of roadblocks" (how many does Israel consider "significant"?), "improve the operation of the border crossings to the Gaza Strip" (what does "improve" mean?), and release Palestinian VAT funds that Israel is illegally withholding.
In this dubious context, what about progress toward a regional peace agreement? Of the Arab states' 2002 peace initiative, which offered Israel a full peace upon its withdrawal from the West Bank, Mr. Olmert says that "some parts" are "positive" but responds only with diplomatese: "I intend to invest efforts in order to advance the connection with those States". Well then, how about talks with the Palestinians? He hopes the Arab states will "strengthen their support of direct bilateral negotiations between us and the Palestinians." But the Palestinian Authority and Fatah have been scraping their knees asking for bilateral talks with Israel, so this is meaningless - unless it means that the Arab states should pressure the Palestinians to capitulate to the model he is proposing, which even Arab quisling governments cannot successfully do.
Israel will also "assist" the new Palestinian government "in formulating a plan for the economic rehabilitation of the Gaza Strip and areas in Judea and Samaria," which might sound promising until we consider that "assist in formulating a plan" does not mean Israel will assist in implementing any plan. But "areas in Judea and Samaria" is especially ominous wording. First, "Judea and Samaria" are biblical-era terms for the West Bank used by Israelis to conceptualize the West Bank as an intrinsic part of Israel. Using them in diplomatic language regarding peace negotiations signals that Mr. Olmert is now so secure in this notion that he is willing to deploy it casually as a political given. Second, Israel will evacuate only "areas" (plural) of the West Bank. Later, Mr Olmert again uses the plural form when he says that Israel "will agree to the evacuation of many territories and communities which were established therein". To everyone else, the West Bank is one territory. Now carved up by Israeli settlements, it is several territories only if those settlements remain.
In other words, we are back to Olmert's old Convergence Plan, already combusted on the altar of Lebanon. The entire speech was a stale reiteration of the same old hogwash.
Israel-Palestine sits at the eye of the Middle East blood-bath that now rightly obsesses world security debates. No serious analyst of Middle East politics believes that regional stability, and therefore world stability, is remotely obtainable without resolving this conflict. Yet the best Israel can offer are talks for which no legitimate Palestinian government can conceivably qualify, which cannot achieve anything, and that, given the prerequisites, cannot even be launched in the first place. Instead of the serious emergency summit we so urgently need, we have a tableau of foolery: Mr. Olmert scraping to save his hollow leadership; a compliant media bleating again about "hope"; Mr. Abbas shuffling and grinning.
The bankruptcy of Mr. Olmert's speech did accomplish one useful task: it highlighted and capped the current state of world paralysis. In fact, no one knows what to do. Daily in the West Bank, land is taken, people are confined, jobs are ruined or lost, families are divided, hopes are crushed. Daily in Gaza, conditions are far worse, as close to a million people face starvation while mortars, bulldozers, and tanks grind up people's lives. Anguished cries from Beit Hanoun "why? why?" - receive no answer from Israel or anyone else. As one commentator noted, no one notices Gaza as long as the Palestinians' daily death toll remains in the single digits. We leave the Palestinians only the job of dying more dramatically to get any attention at all.
Flailing for direction, some eyes still turn mechanically to the US hegemon: e.g., Zahi Khouri (San Diego Union-Tribute), who insists that "America alone has the influence" to do something. But the "do-something" mantra cannot be sensibly directed toward the Bush administration now that it has openly urged Israel to smash Lebanon and Gaza both. The spotlight turns to the Democrats, but what hope is there for a party that takes every chance to pronounce on Israel's outrages by ritually enthusing over Israel's "right to defend itself"? Kathleen and Bill Christison have put it flatly: "The Democrats don't care". Indeed, the Bush administration's only response to meltdown in Palestine and Iraq is to argue for bombing Iran, on the idiot notion that this trauma will trigger regime change and solve the Palestinian problem by cutting off its regional support networks. Hence the whole world remains hostage to the absurd neocon and Zionist fantasy that Hizbullah and Hamas oppose Israel only because they are paid to do it.
But indeed, few still ask or expect the US to act on Israel-Palestine. Getting the imperium's shredded talons out of Iraq will be hard enough.
As for Europe, its moral bankruptcy is emblemized by the UK official who admitted that Israel's blasting a sleeping eighteen-member Palestinian family into fragments was "hard to defend." (One wonders what she might have said if a Palestinian rocket barrage had smashed eighteen Israeli Jewish citizens to bloody fragments in their beds. "Hard to defend" seems unlikely.)
Still, some things are happening. The Palestinians are slowly winning the propaganda war, at terrible cost. Israel's stunning crimes in Lebanon and Gaza have turned the tide: Israel has never been such an international pariah in all its years. The Arab states finally ended the financial boycott of the Hamas government that they should be ashamed before their families and clans that they ever deployed in the first place. The heroic new international boycott movement, finally standing up to shrieking Zionist slander and charges of anti-Semitism, expands rapidly through cyber-space and into serious and principled activism. Hopeful eyes turn to Ireland's victories and bold statements from Canada.
But direction is lacking, and that lack is dangerous. "End the occupation" is an empty call as Israeli city-settlements drape ever more broadly over the West Bank. Solidarity movements focus mainly on negative goals - trying to stop Israel from bombing helpless Palestinian civilians or bulldozing their houses. Lacking positive goals, activists remain in reaction mode and exhaust themselves battling Israel's defenders in the "letters" columns of newspapers. Worn-out editors eventually close their forums to these wars, leaving activists fuming to each other in cyberspace.
We know the agents of this debacle: the complicit US government and the brilliant Zionist lobbying machine; dithering Europeans; legless Arab states; a rhetorically heated but intimidated and divided global South. But to sort out what to do, we need to consider how we got here.
First, let's finally face it: The two-state carrot, dangled before the diplomatic donkey for the past fifteen years, has led us straight to this debacle.
The Oslo and Road Map processes were not only fruitless. They were deceptions. Preying on collective hopes for a Palestinian state, Israel never actually agreed to one. The Oslo Accords, which Israel signed, never mentioned a Palestinian state. The Road Map explicitly called for one, but Israel signed onto it only with fourteen "reservations", the first of which precluded any Palestinian state. Before it would lift a finger toward its own obligations, Israel required the PA to ensure complete cessation of all Palestinian resistance, collect and turn over all "illegal" weapons, stop all smuggling of arms (how?), "dismantle" Hamas and the other militant groups "and their infrastructure" (how?), submit all Palestinian resistance fighters to arrest, detention, and interrogation, support a system of laws that ensures their continuing arrest, detention, and interrogation, cease "incitement" (what is that?) and "educate for peace" (again vague - instil an ethos of surrender in Palestinian youth?). Complete success in all these measures was required to proceed even within the Road Map's three stages. Moreover, the Palestinians must give up the right of return and any claim on Jerusalem.
Since no rational observer can consider these conditions workable, they clearly signified Israel's intention not to comply with the Road Map. That a wilfully gullible world has pretended that this sham was meaningful, and therefore placed a moral and legal onus on the Palestinians to fulfil their obligations to the Road Map, is only more shame.
No wonder Israel bombed Lebanon to smithereens. Its leadership was fatuous with victory.
Second, Israel's sovereignty in Mandate Palestine has moved into a new stage. Israel has long controlled the airspace, sea, ports and border controls, economy, land, water, infrastructure, and the social management of the entire territory's population. But Israel has also become sovereign in Max Weber's famous sense: "a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory." Of course, Israel's claim to a monopoly on violence is not "successful" as long as the Palestinians continue to resist it. And certainly Israel's brutal methods are not considered "legitimate" by the Palestinians or by anyone with moral sensibilities the world over. But consider: the international community has endorsed Israel's insistence that Hamas and all Palestinians are required to "abandon terror" and "recognize Israel". These conditions signal that continuing Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation is now considered illegitimate.
This shift is immensely important. The right of a population to resist occupation is enshrined in the UN Charter. Resistance to occupation becomes illegitimate only if and when the occupier is recognized as the legitimate sovereign. Of course, the international community has not admitted openly that Israel is sovereign in all of Mandate Palestine, because that would wreck the already-shaky collective pretence that the West Bank and Gaza Strip are territories from which Israel can be expected to withdraw someday. But denying Palestinians the right to resist occupation demonstrates that Israel's occupation itself has been tacitly redefined.
Israel's own model is not occupation. The word "occupation" rarely appears in Israeli government parlance. (Ariel Sharon used it once or twice, but it caused an enormous stir, and it appears now only in the formula "Israel ended its occupation of Gaza", patently untrue in any case.) Israel's model regarding the West Bank is openly one of sovereignty. Jewish-Israeli settlers potter about peacefully in their gardens in the West Bank because they know it is "Israel". The big settlements around Jerusalem, which divide the West Bank in half, are called "neighbourhoods". Israeli government maps of the country still do not show the green line. The West Bank, as we know it, is not there for Israel.
In sum, Israel has used the Road Map only to mask its own one-state program: retain sovereignty over all the land and exclude the native people. Israel is even being treated like a sovereign power. But here is the trick: Israel is getting away with its astoundingly brutal treatment of the Palestinians and Israeli Jewish citizens sustain their impressive immunity from caring about it - only through the collective fiction that Israel is not sovereign.
Israel evades any open claim to sovereignty over all Palestine because its hands would then be tied. No government that styles itself a democracy could get away with slaughtering and terrorizing its own citizens this way or, alternatively, refusing to enfranchise parts of its territory's permanent population this way. Israel excuses its treatment of the Palestinians on grounds that they are, in fact, aliens. The world has accepted this formula, viewing the territory's native people as citizens of some other country that exists only in the future, in territory that no one can find. Israel is understood to be "at war" with this nonexistent country, represented by these aliens. (That the native people have no weapons worthy of the term "war" is an inconvenient fact very poorly veiled by nuclear Israel's thumping accusations that the impoverished Palestinians, with their automatic rifles and hand-painted homemade rockets, still stubbornly want to "destroy Israel".)
Political power often lies in defining the situation. Right now Palestinians are in the grip of Israel's definition. Israel does not claim openly to have consolidated sovereignty over all Palestine because it would then face the logical consequence: the moral and legal onus of abandoning racial exclusion and making the native people citizens. In Israel's dual model, the Palestinians remain aliens in their own country, who have no rights. Their politicians are legitimate only when they collaborate. Their fighters, lacking uniforms, are "illegal enemy combatants" to whom Israel owes only bullets and torture.
The way out? Change the definition to suit the facts. Right now, one state power is sovereign in Palestine and that state is Israel. It is an apartheid state because it excludes the territory's indigenous people from citizenship solely on the basis of ethnicity. For let us remember: The Palestinians' original sin - the "failing" has consigned them collectively to expulsion, dispossession, exile, and a cruel and humiliating occupation - is not bad leadership, missed opportunities, stubborn insistence on their demands, Arafat, or any of the usual shibboleths. It is that they are not Jewish.
And, just as apartheid did in southern Africa, Israel's fearful and zealous commitment to racial exclusion of the indigenous people is tearing the entire region apart.
What do we get from recognizing this fact? We may take clues from public indications that Ariel Sharon before his stroke and Mr. Olmert after him have been terribly anxious that we not do so. For what can Israel do if it is truly held accountable for denying its territorial population the right to vote? How can it exclude its native people from equal citizenship if they ask for it? The common defence, the need to preserve Jewish statehood, will instantly ring hollow. For Israel styles itself a western-style democracy. Yet no western democracy is presently attacking its own territory's population with mortar barrages and helicopter gunships solely because of their ethnic identity. No western democracy is blasting whole families to bits with mortars solely because their ethnicity is unwelcome. No western democracy is now encircling millions of people within walled cantons solely on the basis of their religion or ethnicity.
Like "White Australia" and apartheid South Africa before it, Israel is attempting to be racial state and a democratic state at the same time. No western democracy has survived the obvious contradictions of this formula: they all had to give it up. And apartheid Israel will not survive it if we call the shots as they are. Like the US, South Africa, New Zealand, and "White Australia" before it, Israel must admit its Muslim and Christian population as citizens and then grapple with the ensuing tough work of pluralist democracy like the rest of us.
This was the hard-won South African solution, where the state now represents everybody. Seventeen languages and differing historical narratives are recognized and dignified. Whites have retained their property and wealth, while black Africans are rising rapidly to join the middle and upper classes. After some early economic missteps, the government has launched new social policies and steered booming trade with the African continent that are channelling wealth and rapid growth throughout the country. The press is free and vibrant. Is South Africa still struggling for racial equality and economic justice? Sure. Is it plagued by the racial legacy of settler colonialism? Sure. But ongoing struggles for equality and mutual respect are the human condition and the noble burden of democracy. South Africa is a vigorous, growing, vital society. And there is peace.
John Dugard, the eminent South African legal scholar and UN Special Rapporteur on the Question of Palestine, wrote frankly in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that racial oppression in Israel is worse than it was in South Africa. But his assessment also offers hope. Identifying that we presently have a one-state solution - Israel's apartheid version - allows us to affirm a different one: a unified secular-democratic state, in which everyone is equal in dignity and rights, and where the Jewish and Palestinian national homes can share the land as they should. With that shared goal, disparate activist struggles around the world can find, at last, true direction.
Virginia Tilley is a professor of political science, a US citizen working in South Africa, and author of The One-State Solution: A Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Deadlock (University of Michigan Press and Manchester University Press, 2005). She can be reached at tilley@hws.edu.
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An Appeal For An Abandoned People
By Donald Macintyre in Gaza
06 December 2006
The Independent
Maybe they are just conveniently forgetting other periods in Gaza's turbulent and blood-stained history, but most Gazans will tell you that 2006 is the worst year they can remember.
In Gaza City's deserted gold souk, people are not even coming to sell their jewellery any more. "We just sit and drink tea," said Yasser Moteer, 35, who runs a jewellery stall. "It's worse than any time in the 20 years I've been here. It's crazy."
The gold-selling started soon after the international and Israeli boycott of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority started to plunge Gaza's economy into collapse last March. But having long ceased to buy here, the poor now have nothing left to sell.
Certainly, the 1.3 million population of this ancient coastal strip of territory, a mere 225 square miles, can never have experienced as intense a swing of hope to despair as they have in little more than 12 months. Ariel Sharon's decision to withdraw Israel's settlers and troops in August 2005, unilateral and circumscribed in both its genesis and its implementation as it was, made many Palestinians here, almost despite themselves, hope for a better future.
It was not just the sudden freedom to travel from north to south without the endless delays at the hated Abu Houli checkpoint, or that children in the southern town of Khan Younis could run west through what were now the ruins of the Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim and plunge into a Mediterranean they had only ever dreamt about.
It was the sense that for the first time in five dark, stifling and dangerous years, Gaza could breathe, psychologically, and just maybe, economically.
As 2006 nears its close and The Independent launches its Christmas appeal partly focused on Gaza, it is easy to see how cruelly those hopes have been mocked by what has happened this year.
Since Hamas and other Gaza militants seized the Israeli corporal, Gilad Shalit, and killed two of his comrades in late June, shells, drones and machine gun-fire from Israeli forces have killed some 400 Palestinians, civilians, women and children among them, in an operation Israel stated was to free Cpl Shalit and stop the Qassam rockets being fired from Gaza.
For five long months, electricity was cut to eight hours a day, damaging water supplies, after a surgically accurate bombing condemned by Israelis as well as foreign human rights groups as collective punishment in breach of humanitarian law.
Reaching a peak in July, the use of sonic booms, often deliberately timed as children were going to school, created misery and fear. As if that was not enough, a far lower but significant number of civilians, also including children, have been killed or wounded in the sporadic fighting between Fatah and Hamas, the two dominant factions in Palestinian politics, or in clan battles.
For the immediate survivors of the Israeli shells that killed 17 members of the Athamneh family as they tried to flee their home in Beit Hanoun as it was attacked, the bereavement is, if anything, harder to bear now that more than three weeks have elapsed since it happened. In late afternoon sunshine on Sunday, in the now eerily peaceful alley where the carnage was perpetrated, Hayat Athamneh, 56, a strong woman who lost three adult sons, all fathers themselves, sat with their still devastated and injured brother Amjad, 31, and his wife, who lost their own son Mahmoud, 10. "Now I feel it," said Hayat, covering her eyes as they fill with tears. " It wasn't so bad at the beginning. There were a lot of people around. Now there is nobody."
As she reeled off the list of Palestinian and foreign dignitaries who had visited the site, her daughter-in-law Tahani, 35, said: "They all came. But nothing happened." Tahani talks about the three surviving Athamneh members, two of them children, who lost limbs in the attack.
"We have to worry about the ones who lost arms and legs now and will see the others who haven't. We have to look after them and then worry about where we are going to live."
Arriving to join them, her brother-in-law Majdi Athamneh, who lost his 12-year-old son Saad, says that not only do the extended family fear to go back to their shelled house because of the structural damage, but they no longer think they should live together as they did for so many years.
"When so many members of one family were killed, it is better to make sure it doesn't happen again and live apart," he said.
Five miles away in Gaza City, Adeeb Zarhouk, 44, is a man used to hard work and 4am starts to support his wife Majda, 44, and their seven children in the 20 years he was employed in Israel as a freelance metalworker and electrician, and then for five working for an Israeli company in the now flattened Erez industrial zone on the northern edge of Gaza. But this morning he apologises for being asleep when we call.
Each day, he hopes for a request to install a TV satellite or do another odd job. "But the phone hasn't rung for two weeks," he says. " Nobody has any money to do these things." Mr Zarhouk is part of the 64 per cent increase in "deep poverty" among Palestinian refugees in the past year.
He is naturally cheerful but, as his wife prepares a three-shekel (36p) family breakfast of beans, felafal and a few tomatoes, he says: "When I'm at home by myself I start crying. When your son asks you for half a shekel and you do not have it ..."
Mr Zarhouk gets up to wash the tears from his eyes. Then he says that although as a refugee he earned $240 (£120) a month on a three-month UNRWA job programme, he now owes $540 in rent and that the family eat meat only when his 20-year-old policeman son has an irregular 1,500-shekel handout in lieu of his salary as a policeman.
Who does Mr Zarhouk, who voted Fatah in the last election, blame? "I blame democracy," he says with a flash of sarcasm. "The whole world wanted us to have democracy and said how fair had been our election. The problem is they didn't like our results."
The world's boycott since those elections did not only end salaries for the PA employees on whom Gaza's economy disproportionately depends. The health service, in many ways highly professional but desperately under-equipped, is also suffering. In her bed at Shifa Hospital, Intisar al Saqqa is waiting for the drug Taxoter which doctors said she needs to treat a breast cancer which has spread to her lung and her liver. "Every week, they say it will come on Monday," says her mother, Hadra, 62. "But it doesn't. Inshallah, it will come soon." Her daughter says: "I don't blame anybody. I just want this [the political problems beyond her control] to end. "
The EU-sponsored Temporary International Mechanism was supposed to get a full range of drugs and badly needed new equipment to Gaza long before now but because of its own bureaucratic delays has failed to do so.
Similarly, a year after Condoleezza Rice brokered an agreement to open up Gaza's borders, a UN report said last week that Gaza's access to the outside world was "extremely limited" and that commercial trade was " negligible".
That is diplomatese for saying Gaza is the word every Palestinian uses a prison again. Israel refuses to take the blame, saying the boycott and closures result directly from security anxieties and from the refusal of Hamas to modify its stances on recognition and violence.
The power is back on and a fragile ceasefire holding. But with Fatah-Hamas talks collapsed, there is little political hope in sight; and plenty to do for the NGOs and charities like Merlin and the Welfare Association which are trying to keep Gaza alive.
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Israeli Soldier Shoots Palestinian Boy In Head
Al-Jazeerah
05/12/2006
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.
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Haniya reaffirms Palestinian right to resist Israel
(AFP)
5 December 2006
DAMASCUS - Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniya of the Islamist movement Hamas insisted on Tuesday on the right of the Palestinians to resist Israeli occupation of their land.
"The Hamas government wants to preserve the right of Palestinian refugees to return and the right of resistance against occupation until an independent (Palestinian) state is established," Haniya told a press conference in the Syrian capital.
"We want to preserve national unity (and) deploy all efforts to break the blockade," he added, referring to the Western boycott imposed on the Palestinian Authority after Hamas took power in March.
Haniya was in Damascus for talks with exiled Hamas supremo Khaled Meshaal, as well as leaders of other factions based in the Syrian capital.
On Monday, he met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to discuss efforts, which have so far failed, to form a national unity government with the mainstream Fatah faction which Hamas defeated at the polls.
Haniya is on his first foreign tour as premier.
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Israeli troops arrest 30 Palestinians in W Bank
www.chinaview.cn 2006-12-06 18:00:24
RAMALLAH, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- Israeli troops carried out one of the biggest arrest campaign in the West Bank at predawn on Wednesday, detaining 30 Palestinians, Palestinian security sources said.
The sources said that most of the detained were taken away from northern West Bank city of Jenin when at least 50 military vehicles stormed the area.
Apart from those activists involving in attacks against Israeli army, relatives of the wanted militants were also among the detained, according to the sources.
Israel's arrest campaign in the West Bank further agitated the Palestinian militant groups.
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, armed wing of President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement, announced on Wednesday its withdrawal from the ceasefire with Israel.
Abu Awad, the spokesman of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in Gaza Strip, told reporters that his group decided to resume firing rockets into Israel because of the "daily Israeli violations of the ceasefire".
The Palestinian militants have been demanding Israel to extend the ceasefire to the West Bank, but was rejected by Israeli side despite Palestinian militants' threat of breaking down the truce.
Hamas has dropped out the truce with Israel as early as Sunday when Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz said clearly at a cabinet meeting that Israel would not extend the ceasefire to the West Bank.
Comment: Israel, of course, is not breeaking the truce when 50 military vehicles "storm" the area. The IDF is carrying out these raids in the West Bank, where there is no truce.
If the Palestinians react in any way to these acts, then Israel can claim that the Palestinians broke the ceasefire, and that will justify reprisals that will make last summer look moderate. That was the plan all along. Israel pretends to back off, but it is only to better prepare the terrain for a future escalation.
And the entire Israeli manipulation is played out in full view of the world. It is not like it is something carried out in secret. All the data is there for people to see, even in the biased reports in the media. People of conscience have enough information to take a decision and make a stand. If you don't follow closely and understand how it is working in Palestine, you're not going to see it when comes to your street and neighbourhood. And when you do finally see it, it will be too late.
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Israeli Soldiers Threaten Palestinian Child With Rape During Interrogation
IMEMC & Agencies
05 December 2006
A Palestinian child detainee, who was taken prisoner by the Israeli forces two months ago, said that he was threatened with rape by Israeli interrogators unless he confesses to what they accuse him with. The child also said that he was tortured for 25 days and was confined to solitary in Petah Tikva prison.
In an affidavit singed in front of lawyer of the Palestinian Prisoner Society, Hanan Al Khateeb, detainee Dhia' Mahdi Al Bostami, 15, from Nablus, said that he was taken prisoner on October 2, and was forced to sign a "confession" written in Hebrew without knowing what it states.
Al Bostami said that the interrogators repeatedly threatened to rape him, and continuously kicked and punched him in his legs, hands and other parts of his body. The interrogators uttered repeated verbal threats to rape and sexually abuse him.
He also suffered breathing difficulties as a result of torture, especially after an interrogator kicked and punched him in his chest.
He added that he was allowed to take a shower 33 days after he was taken prisoner, and then he was moved to the Ha-Sharon prison awaiting for his trial.
The Palestinian Prisoner Society slammed the illegal Israeli practices and violations against the Palestinian detainees, especially the children, and said that these violations contradict with the international conventions, and the principle of Human Rights.
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The Evil Of Zionism
There has to be equality
Ismail Patel
Tuesday December 5, 2006
The Guardian
If Britons can join the Israeli army, those who fight for Palestine can't be treated as terrorists
The Arab-Israeli conflict is unlike any other regional conflict. As the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, put it: "No other conflict carries such a powerful symbolic and emotional charge among people far removed from the battlefield." Not surprisingly, this has had its impact on multicultural Britain, with different communities aligning themselves to varying degrees with the Israeli and Palestinian causes.
Everyone in a democracy has the right to argue for their views and engage in public debate. But there is no equality when it comes to how the British government treats those who want to give physical support to Israel and those who want to do the same for the Palestinians. Such double standards feed resentment in Britain's Muslim community at the government's failure to recognise its legitimate grievances, as highlighted in yesterday's report by the thinktank Demos.
In recent months the media have reported on the recruitment of British Jews to fight in the Israeli army, now in its 40th year of occupation of Palestinian territory in defiance of international law and UN resolutions. Some are intending to emigrate; others to return to Britain after serving in the Israeli army. But we have not had a word of concern from the British government. In the Muslim community, however, the question is widely raised as to how British citizens can travel to another country and fight in its army of illegal occupation without any repercussions. Would that be the case if, say, a young Muslim or Briton of Palestinian origin travelled to the occupied Palestinian territories - let alone occupied Iraq - to protect his or her homeland or co-religionists? Of course not: such volunteers could expect to be arrested under this government's anti-terrorism legislation as soon as they returned.
These Britons who go to fight for Israel are volunteering to serve in the frontline of Israel's war in the illegally occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza. Some have acknowledged that they have been or will be engaged in the killing of Palestinians. Under international law they and those who facilitate their enlistment are committing war crimes.
Presumably the politicians' silence can be explained by Britain's support for the Israeli government, both diplomatic and military. But how does that sit with the government's regular homilies to the Muslim community about citizenship and loyalty to the flag? It might be argued that as Israel is a state - unlike the Palestinian Authority or Palestinian political organisations - and Britons are entitled to dual citizenship, with any military-service obligations that entails, there can be no objection. But the fact that the Palestinian people have no state is of course at the heart of this uniquely internationally inflammatory conflict. And those fighting against the illegal occupation of their land are entitled to do so under international law.
The British government's indifference to this recruitment is feeding the alienation and radicalisation of young Muslims, who can be labelled terrorists for even voicing support for the Palestinians.
Perhaps British citizens should not serve in foreign armies full stop. But the essential point is that there must be equality. If Britons are allowed to join the Israeli army, the same right should be accorded to those - particularly of Palestinian origin - who wish to volunteer to defend lands Israel occupies. Alternatively, both should be barred.
We need a shift in approach at the top. Tony Blair has expressed his desire to bring peace to the Middle East, but his actions - most recently his refusal to condemn Israel's Beit Hanoun massacre at the UN - scarcely suggest an honest broker. At home and in the Middle East, it is time the British government showed some real even-handedness.
- Ismail Patel is chair of the Leicester-based campaign Friends of Al-Aqsa
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This is incredible: not really.
Angry Arab News Service
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
It will surprise only those who have liberal illusions about the US media. On the first page of the New York Times today is a "report" by official propaganda, and the Israeli government did not have to pay for the free ad.
And notice how transparent and objective the process that sent the "report" to the New York Times: "The detailed report on the war was produced by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies, a private research group headed by Reuven Erlich, a retired colonel in military intelligence, who worked closely with the Israeli military. An advance copy was given to The New York Times by the American Jewish Congress, which has itself fought against the use of "human shields," provided consultation and translated the study."
Of course, all those are organizations that have no interest in peddling Israeli propaganda. Those are outfits that seek the truth. Imagine if an Arab "center" offers the New York Times (through a Muslim American organization) a "report" to prove the crimes of Israeli military.
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Carter's compromised statesmanship
By David A. Harris
The Jerusalem Post
December 5, 2006
Whatever else one might have said about the presidency of Jimmy Carter, he was a statesman. As much as any international figure before or since, he took advantage of the opportunity of the day to advance peace between Israel and her neighbors.
But it is Carter himself who constantly reminds us in his outlandishly titled book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, of the necessity of being an honest broker in advancing peace. It thus is startling that a former president who prides himself on his ongoing contribution to world peace would write a crude polemic that compromises any pretense to objectivity and fairness.
The book's inflammatory title is a case of false advertising, conjuring up comparisons between Israel and Apartheid South Africa, a comparison Carter never makes. South Africa's policies were racial in nature and deprived black subjects of basic rights in their own country. The only just solution was to give blacks full rights in the same state.
Carter never claims that Israel is engaging in racially-motivated policies and rightly argues for a two-state solution to the conflict. His use of the word "apartheid" is misleading, referring instead to his view that Israel's security fence and the "honeycomb" of settlements and roads behind it constitute a permanent Israeli control regime over Palestinian life. He neglects to mention that Israel's planned re-deployment from the West Bank would effectively remove such controls. That is precisely what happened in Gaza.
Carter leaves out what any reasonable observer, even those that share his basic views of the conflict, would consider obvious facts, but does include stunning distortions. I'll cite just two of the numerous examples of such mendacity.
First, discussing president Bill Clinton's peacemaking efforts, Carter discounts well-established claims that Israel accepted and Arafat rejected a generous offer to create a Palestinian state. "The fact is that no final offer was ever made," Carter asserts. To prove his point, he disingenuously cites a quote of then-prime minister Ehud Barak that there were "no negotiations" but "non-binding contacts" at the later stage talks in Taba. Barak made this statement in order to cut his political losses during an election, and to preclude the Palestinians from pocketing yet more concessions for future negotiations.
Moreover, anyone who read Clinton's account of the post-Camp David negotiations knows that he offered final "parameters" that substantially sweetened the pot for the Palestinians and met Carter's own stated standards for a fair settlement.
"I brought the Palestinian and Israeli teams into the cabinet room and read them my 'parameters' for negotiations," wrote Clinton. "In December the parties had met at Bolling Airforce Base for talks that didn't succeed because Arafat wouldn't accept the parameters that were hard for him." Carter must have known this history. But he conveniently ignores it in his book, leaving the reader to think that Barak's quote was the final commentary on the matter.
In another manifest distortion, Carter states that Israel plans to build a security fence "along the Jordan River, which is now planned as the eastern leg of the encirclement of the Palestinians."
Once again, any informed observer knows that Israel has modified the projected route of the security fence on numerous occasions (the current route roughly tracks the parameters that Clinton advanced to the parties in negotiations) and that there is no plan to hem the Palestinians in on the eastern border. Again,
Carter overlooks these well-known developments, leaving readers to think that a route that was once contemplated in proposed maps but never adopted or acted upon represents current reality.
The extent that Carter goes in propping up an extreme version of the Palestinian narrative, and in burying and devaluing any trace of the Israeli and American versions of events, is deeply disappointing. In accepting the Palestinian narrative, Carter has conveniently revised history, excused the Palestinians for their tragic failure to come to terms with Israel each time the chance presented itself, and blithely ignored Israel's very legitimate security concerns.
Many Israelis, including those that once greatly admired his role in fostering peace with Egypt, may never again trust Carter's diplomacy, including his vaunted role as an election monitor.
He can no longer claim to be an honest broker.
This book will not help the cause of peace, and with its publication, the world has lost a statesman at a time when one is most needed.
The writer, based in New York, is executive director of the American Jewish Committee.
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With Street Protests, Hezbollah Gambles in Quest for Dominance
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 6, 2006; Page A14
BEIRUT, Dec. 5 -- Hezbollah has entered territory uncharted in its 24-year history as armed militia, social welfare group and nascent political party, effectively seeking an unprecedented, decisive say in Lebanese politics to protect what it sees as its interests from foes at home and abroad.
The month-long political crisis that has roiled Lebanon, hurtling it dangerously close to the precipice of civil war, marks a revealing shift for the Shiite Muslim movement that for years, at least rhetorically, tried to stay above politics, entering the cabinet for the first time in 2005.
Clashes erupted over the weekend between Shiites and Sunnis as protests continue in Beirut. Thousands of opposition demonstrators took to the streets last week to call for the resignation of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.
Now, by mobilizing its rank and file and pouring them into downtown Beirut to topple the government, the movement has framed that pursuit for political power in the same martial language of this summer's war with Israel.
The imagery is often blunt: "Just as I promised you victory in the past, I promise you victory once again," goes a recording by Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah played over and over, igniting cheers each time. Banners on tents, housing thousands of supporters camped out in front of the government headquarters, display the slogan: "As with victory, change is coming, coming, coming."
"Everything is at stake for Hezbollah," said Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, an analyst on Hezbollah and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment Middle East Center in Beirut. "There is no way that Hezbollah would back down."
"They're putting this political struggle on a par with the military struggle to show how significant it is strategically," she added. "It's basically an existential struggle for Hezbollah. It's an extension of its war with Israel."
The protests that began last week continued Tuesday, part carnival, part show of force. The crisis has myriad dimensions: notably a contest over ideology toward Israel and a battle over whose patrons -- the United States and France on the government's side, Syria and Iran on Hezbollah's -- will have a greater say here.
And the protests are rife with irony. In pursuit of its political aims, Hezbollah has employed tactics praised by the Bush administration when mass demonstrations took place after the assassination of former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri in February 2005 helped end Syria's 29-year military presence in the country.
In the street today is a somewhat unlikely coalition of Shiites loyal to Hezbollah and to the allied Amal movement, and Christian supporters of Michel Aoun, an influential former general. The protests themselves represent an unprecedented attempt at popular pressure by Islamic movements that often act, or are forced to act, clandestinely in the Middle East.
But there remains a relentless logic to today's demonstrations: an attempt by Hezbollah to resolve in its favor the political uncertainty that has reigned since the Syrian withdrawal from a country in which two camps contest nearly every aspect of Lebanese political life. At stake, almost everyone agrees, is the direction of the state.
"This is not about one more cabinet minister or one less for either them or us. It is a battle equally important for them and for us," said Samir Geagea, veteran of a civil war militia who supports Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's government.
Nayla Moawad, the minister of social affairs, was more direct. "This is a coup d'etat," she said.
"A balance of power within the government will be a guarantee for both sides," countered Amin Sherri, a Hezbollah member of parliament. "Before they were giving us a choice between bad and worse. We don't want to go on like this."
"We don't want to be merely witnesses to decision-making on important issues," he added.
Since Hezbollah's creation with Iranian patronage in the wake of the 1982 Israeli invasion, the group has often operated in different environments. During the civil war that ended in 1990, there were no rules. Afterward, Syria, long the kingmaker here, protected Hezbollah's interests, as well as determined the country's foreign policy. After the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah's popularity swelled, its militia credited with what most in Lebanon considered a victory.
Comment: Do they ever comment on the US patronage of Israel? No. We're supposed to think of Iran as "evil" because it has given money to Hizbullah while the US pouts billions of dollars a year into propping up Israel.
But in the tumult and uncertainty of Lebanese politics today, once unasked questions are up for grabs: whether Hezbollah can keep its arms; its ties to Syria and Iran; the country's posture toward Israel and the United States; and the balance of power among Sunnis, Shiites and divided Christians. Underlying them is another question, sharpened by the contention of Hezbollah's foes that it started the latest war with Israel: Who has the right to make war and peace in Lebanon?
"The state, before the assassination of Hariri, was used to protect and embrace Hezbollah. The whole state served to protect it. And now this state has ended. So Hezbollah is looking for an internal role, to enter the political equation, and its entry into politics represents a huge upheaval," said Hazem al-Amin, an analyst of Shiite politics and writer for al-Hayat newspaper.
"Hezbollah wants to try its political training on us," he added.
Hezbollah's transformation over the years marks one of the most striking transformations of any Islamic organization in the Middle East. In its early years, it was notorious for imposing draconian restrictions in southern Lebanon -- banning mixed sunbathing and women's swimsuits at beaches, closing coffee shops, and prohibiting parties and dancing. Since then, it has evolved from a shadowy organization blamed for two attacks on the U.S. Embassy and the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks here, killing 241 soldiers, into a sprawling movement that fields a crack militia, serves in parliament and delivers welfare -- from education to compensation for war damages -- for its Shiite constituency, Lebanon's largest community.
Through that evolution, the movement has adapted itself at turning points in Lebanon's history. It took part in parliamentary elections in 1992 after the civil war. After the Syrian withdrawal, it entered the cabinet for the first time. As pressure built for its disarmament, as called for by U.N. Resolution 1559, it struck its alliance with Aoun a year ago. Each turn can be read as defensive: protecting its weapons, preventing Lebanon from growing too close to the United States, and promoting the ambitions of the Shiite community, long disenfranchised and still sometimes perceived as second class.
But the protests underway mark a far less certain tactic for Hezbollah than past decisions to participate in parliament or the cabinet. The stakes are higher -- bringing down the government -- and the outcome for a group that prides itself on deliberation, caution and prudence is by no means certain. The implications for its Shiite constituency are similarly ambiguous. A debate remains in Lebanon over what precisely Hezbollah wants and how much the rest of Lebanon is willing to give.
"They sort of painted themselves in a corner, and it's very difficult to back out now," said Timur Goksel, a former spokesman and adviser to the U.N. peacekeeping force here. That strategy entailed risk in Lebanon's notoriously mercurial, even cynical politics, he said. "At the moment, they are spending a lot of the capital they made out of this summer's war. Getting involved in local politics can erode the party's popularity very quickly."
In some ways, he added, "fighting Israel is much easier."
In the protests themselves, canvas tents sprawling across downtown during the day, engulfed by crowds at night, Hezbollah has played down any sectarian ambitions. Rather, it has promoted the protests as a campaign for "national unity." "One, united," banners read at the protest and on the movement's television station, al-Manar. On a recent night, a Hezbollah guard discouraged a couple from bringing a Hezbollah banner to the stage. "Please, only Lebanese flags tonight," he said.
Another dominant theme is resistance to American influence in Lebanon. That message appeals to its constituency, bitter over U.S. support for Israel in this summer's war, and underlines the almost existential threat that Hezbollah, backed by Syria and Iran, perceives in a government too closely allied with the United States and its ambitions in the region.
"Hezbollah was extremely anxious where the country was heading. It seemed to be heading straight into the U.S. orbit. It was turning into a satellite state," said Saad-Ghorayeb, the analyst. "If they back down now, they will have effectively given up on Lebanon. That would mean Lebanon falls to their enemy, the United States and Israel."
Banners condemn Jeffrey D. Feltman, the U.S. ambassador in Lebanon, who is often a target of Nasrallah's speeches. "The government of Feltman," one slogan reads, "We'll bring it down." A homemade billboard was set up near Hussein Ismail, a 15-year-old protester from the southern town of Kafra. Under a picture of Siniora and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, it read, "Congratulations to the bride and groom." Another pictured the two shaking hands. "Peace with the enemies," it read.
"This is a struggle with a government that is not Lebanese but rather American," he said. "We want a Lebanese government that doesn't take its decisions from the Americans and the Zionists."
Behind Ismail was another poster of Nasrallah. "He promised a victory, and a victory is coming, just like he said."
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Zionist regime against a powerful Iran: speaker
Tehran, Dec 6, IRNA
Majlis Speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel said here Wednesday that the Zionist regime was against any event that would display Iran's power.
Haddad-Adel made the remarks while speaking to domestic reporters who asked him to comment on the Zionist regime's move of establishing a ministry to deal with Iran's peaceful nuclear activities.
"This move of the Zionist regime has no value and meaning.
"Even before the Zionist regime created this ministry, it clearly wanted to slow down the pace of Iran's progress. The ministry issue is not linked to Iran's peaceful nuclear program," he said.
He said that Iran would continue down the road to achieving peaceful nuclear energy, saying the country's "nuclear scientists are faithfully doing their work and there has never been any doubt on Iran producing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes."
"The world's six major powers (Russia, China, Britain, France, the US -- plus Germany) should explain why they still insist on imposing sanctions on Iran when International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei had time and again cleared Iran of any alleged diversion in its nuclear activities."
The speaker said that Iran was determined to take the final step to nuclear victory and fulfill the nation's aspiration of gaining access to peaceful nuclear energy despite American and European pressure.
"But enemies will never step aside. They will continue their efforts to derail us from our nuclear path."
He added that enemies are now trying to discourage investment in the country.
But, he said, "those who live in Iran will confirm that the Iranian nation supports the country's peaceful nuclear activities and there is no cause for concern for investors who may want to invest in the country."
The Iranian nation is willing to pay the cost of its battle to enforce its nuclear right in today's world, Haddad-Adel concluded.
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Fantasy War On Terror
Held in darkness for the rest of his natural life
UK Telegraph
04/12/2006
At six feet four inches tall, Richard Reid makes a forbidding figure, even from behind the iron grates, steel doors and automated locks that separate him from his prison guards in this place they call Terrorist Central.
Hunched on a stool that is moulded to the floor of his broom-cupboard-sized cell, he turns the pages of the newspaper spread out on the concrete desk before him, soaking up stories and pictures from an outside world that he will never see again.
"Do you need anything today?" a prison guard asks him politely every morning.
"Yeah, toothpaste," he might answer, or "Pencil and paper" or "I want a shower."
"It's not like he exchanges pleasantries with you, it's strictly business both ways, but he doesn't go out of his way to be rude either," said Cory Hodge, 37, a former correctional officer at the unit.
"Other than maybe some incidental whining, he's a fairly compliant inmate and I never had problems with him, which is good because he's a big man. But remember that Richard Reid was in prison in England even before he became the Shoe Bomber. He's a convict through and through, and that makes him an extra special danger. He understands the system and how to manipulate it if he wants to."
His docile demeanour as inmate number 24079-038 is a far cry from the behaviour that landed him here at the US Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility - also known as ADX, Super Max, Bombers' Row, and the Alcatraz of the Rockies - just outside the town of Florence, Colorado. Five years ago, on December 22, 2001, Reid, of Bromley, Kent, boarded American Airlines flight 63 from Paris to Miami, intending to blow it up by detonating plastic explosives hidden in one of his shoes. As he tried to light the fuse he was spotted by a flight attendant and, following a violent struggle, was overpowered.
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Just over a year later the young fanatic who had attended Finsbury Park mosque in London where Abu Hamza preached was sentenced to life in prison.
The first British al-Qaeda convict was dragged from the federal courtroom in Boston still shouting his allegiance to Osama bin Laden. "I'm at war with your country," he yelled at the judge.
Comment: "He's a convict through and through, and that makes him..." well, it also makes him perfect terrorist patsy material...
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Flashback: Al-Qaeda cleric exposed as an MI5 double agent
By Daniel McGrory and Richard Ford
March 25, 2004
ONE of al-Qaeda's most dangerous figures has been revealed as a double agent working for MI5, raising criticism from European governments, which repeatedly called for his arrest.
Britain ignored warnings - which began before the September 11 attacks - from half a dozen friendly governments about Abu Qatada's links with terrorist groups and refused to arrest him. Intelligence chiefs hid from European allies their intention to use the cleric as a key informer against Islamic militants in Britain.
Abu Qatada boasted to MI5 that he could prevent terrorist attacks and offered to expose dangerous extremists, while all along he was setting up a haven for his terror organisation in Britain.
Among the scores of young militants who came to visit him in London was the chief suspect in the Madrid train bombings. His followers also included people who wanted to be suicide bombers for al-Qaeda, such as Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber".
A special tribunal that has investigated his operations in Britain described him as "a truly dangerous individual". A ruling by the Special Immigrations Appeals Commission revealed yesterday that there was evidence to show that Abu
Qatada "has been concerned in the instigation of acts of international terrorism".
A security source in Madrid said yesterday: "Who knows how much violence and bloodshed could have been prevented if Britain had heeded the warnings about this man a long time ago."
With terrorism at the top of the agenda at the European Union summit today in Brussels, Tony Blair is bound to be asked about MI5's history with Abu Qatada and other militant clerics who have used Britain as their base.
Spain, France, Italy, Germany, the United States and Jordan all asked to question Abu Qatada about his links to al-Qaeda but were refused.
Instead, MI5 agents held three meetings with the cleric, who bragged of his influence among young Islamic militants and insisted that they were no risk to Britain's national security.
He pledged to MI5 that he would not "bite the hand that fed him".
He also promised to "report anyone damaging the interests of this country". Instead, he was recruiting for al-Qaeda training camps. [...]
Indignant French officials accused MI5 of helping the cleric to abscond. While he remained on the run, one intelligence chief in Paris was quoted as saying: "British intelligence is saying they have no idea where he is, but we know where he is and, if we know, I'm quite sure they do."
Almost a year later Abu Qatada was found hiding in a flat not far from Scotland Yard.
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The War on Terror claims doughnuts
The Register
4th December 2006
Airport security is a serious business, but why was a Reg reader refused a Krispy Kreme doughnut at Heathrow airport?
Admittedly, the sugared snacks contain enough cooking oil and sugar to power a trailer park, but who knew they could be fashioned into bombs?
On Saturday afternoon a Reg reader was dropping some friends at Heathrow and stopped off at Krispy Kreme doughnuts outside Terminal 3.
But the reader was directed to the unstuffed ring doughnuts rather than a full-fat, fully stuffed Krispy Kreme special because the fillings fall foul of security restrictions.
"Imagine our confusion when the guy serving us advised that we could only buy ring doughnuts, not filled, circular doughnuts. A moment or two's wrangling in broken English and we discovered that he thought we were outbound passengers.
On further questioning, apparently the liquid contents of a filled doughnut fall foul of the new restrictions on liquids in carry on luggage. Quite how the authorities imagine that a terrorist could blow up a 747 by rubbing two Krispy Kremes together was a bit beyond us.
But a spokesman for BAA denied they were stamping on Homer's favourite food. He said: "Passengers can take liquids in 100ml bottles carrried in a clear plastic bag. But passengers use common sense on foodstuffs. Sandwich fillings and the like are not restricted."
In fact, the only foods still on the restricted list are: "Liquid-based foods, sauces, stews, soups over 100ml in size."
Drinks suffer the same restrictions, but there is no mention of doughnuts.
Comment: This is the logical end result when the power of government and the media is used to turn a complete fantasy into reality. Insanity becomes the norm.
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Plane diverted after passengers smell burning matches
Times Dispatch
04/12/2006
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- An American Airline flight bound for Dallas-Fort Worth was diverted in Nashville after passengers reported smelling burning matches.
Airport officials had 99 passengers and five crew members disembark the plane after it landed around 6:40 a.m. Monday, Nashville Airport Authority spokeswoman Lynne Lowrance said.
The plane, which was en route from Reagan National Airport in Washington, was searched and luggage was screened.
Matches were found in the seat of one passenger, who was detained and questioned by the FBI. The matches were safety matches allowed in carry-on luggage under Transportation Security Administration rules.
"It turned out she was trying to conceal body odor," Lowrance said.
The woman, who was not identified, was released without being charged, but was not allowed back on an American Airlines flight.
The remaining passengers were screened, and the plane resumed its flight around 10:30 a.m.
Comment: This woman was clearly a terrorist, I mean, who else but a "crazy Arab terrorist" would attempt to blow up a plane by igniting their own body odor?!
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Prewar attacks fuel whispers of conspiracy
Signs On San Diego
040/12/2006
Historians agree that imperial Japan, hoping to cripple United States forces in the Pacific, scored a major - although fatally incomplete - victory 65 years ago this week at Pearl Harbor.
But there's a version of the tale you won't find in textbooks. In this alternative history, Dec. 7, 1941, was also President Franklin Roosevelt's triumph. He had withheld information that would have warned the Pacific Fleet, willingly sacrificing a dozen ships and more than 2,400 Americans to achieve his goal.
FDR had dragged America into World War II.
That's the gist of the "backdoor to war" conspiracy theory, originally championed by Roosevelt's right-wing foes in the 1940s. This revisionist view of Pearl Harbor was dying when Sept. 11, 2001, cast it in a new light. The notion that an American president would welcome a surprise attack as a pretext for war was taken up anew. This time, though, the argument came from leftist commentators.
Underground, unofficial versions of history have flourished in most countries. In fact, some Japanese conservatives advance their own "backdoor to war" theory. In one Tokyo museum, photos, charts and texts prove that American actions in Asia and the Pacific had left Japan with no choice short of hostilities.
If history was ever a static and universally accepted account of the past, that notion now is as outmoded as a stovepipe hat.
In the United States, it's increasingly a mainstream view that secret forces with mysterious aims shape our destiny. In 1998, CBS News found that three out of four Americans believe that the truth behind John F. Kennedy's assassination has been covered up. This summer, a Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll found that more than one out of three Americans believe it is "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that federal officials planned 9/11 or at least did nothing to stop the attacks.
Why people embrace conspiracy theories is a complex topic, touching on ideology and psychology. In our time, two factors have made these tales more pervasive:
The Internet accelerates the pace at which isolated mutterings can become national phenomena, exposed to a potential audience of billions. Video clips and documents, real and manufactured, zip through the ether and buttress tales that might otherwise be dismissed as cockamamie speculation.
From the Pentagon Papers to Watergate, late 20th-century scandals proved that the official version of events can be a smoke screen hiding a more sinister and more accurate story.
"Americans tend to be particularly receptive to anti-government conspiracy theories," said Kathryn Olmsted, a University of California Davis history professor who is writing a book on this subject.
In the early 20th century, though, government was not the most popular villain. Then, Olmsted noted, various plots were blamed on forces based outside the United States, including religions (the Catholic Church, Judaism) and industries. The first World War, one theory held, was caused by an unholy alliance of European arms dealers and international bankers.
But as Washington's power grew, conspiracy theorists "found" more masterminds - past and present - within the federal government. In 1937, a book titled "Why Was Lincoln Murdered?" gave a startling answer. The Great Emancipator, author Otto Eisenschiml argued, fell victim to a plot cooked up by his secretary of war, Edwin Stanton.
"That attracted a lot of attention at the time," noted William Hanchett, history professor emeritus at San Diego State University and an authority on Lincoln's assassination. "But it's been completely discredited."
Many conspiracy theories meet a similar fate - they rise on the hot air of controversy; wobble as experts poke holes in their fragile underpinnings; and then drop into oblivion.
Scarred cathedrals
The Pearl Harbor conspiracy theories, though, floated anew in the aftermath of 9/11.
There are undeniable parallels between the events. Gazing into the battleship Arizona's watery grave is not unlike peering through the fence surrounding ground zero. In each of these scarred, secular cathedrals, Americans died in a sneak attack and America changed course.
All according to a secret White House plan, some claim. In the Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll, 36 percent of all Americans suspected that the federal government planned or allowed 9/11 because "they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East."
This echoes the arguments about Roosevelt and Pearl Harbor found in books such as John Toland's "Infamy" (1982) and Robert Stinnett's "Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor" (2000).
"In these two conspiracies," said Emily Rosenberg, author of "A Date Which Will Live: Pearl Harbor in American Memory" and a history professor at the University of California Irvine, "the conspiracy is at the heart of the government. That buys into the anti-government rhetoric that is so prevalent."
Unfortunately, there is reason for such rhetoric. In 1990, a New York Times/WCBS-TV poll found that black Americans most apt to embrace conspiracies were also most familiar with U.S. history. They knew that the FBI had infiltrated the civil-rights movement in the 1960s and that the U.S. Public Health Service had withheld effective treatment from black men in the Tuskegee syphilis study of 1932-72.
For Americans of all races and backgrounds, well-documented government scandals have diminished faith in "the official story." At the same time, though, even the most elaborate conspiracy theory can offer an odd sort of comfort.
"There is a natural tendency when a tragedy or catastrophe happens to try to make it comprehensible," Olmsted said. (Full disclosure: Olmsted is married to Bill Ainsworth, a Union-Tribune reporter.)
People often reduce complicated issues to a single cause - the bigger the issue, the bigger the cause, said Patrick Leman, a British psychologist who studies the origins of conspiracy theories.
Leman's research also indicates that people who are inclined to believe conspiracy theories are also inclined to discard facts that run counter to those theories.
"It's called confirmatory bias," said Michael Shermer, author of "Why People Believe Weird Things" and executive director of the Skeptics Society. "People tend to look for or recognize evidence that supports their ideas and ignore everything else."
Case in point: Olmsted notes that every war that the United States has fought since 1900 has spawned a conspiracy theory, often inspired by the conviction that Americans love peace.
"Opponents of war, at the time or often later, argue that this is basically a peaceful country," she said. "If everyone had known all the facts, we wouldn't have gone to war."
Conversely, more commonplace, non-conspiratorial explanations can shake our faith in order and reason. Rosenberg cites the "clutter and noise" view, that catastrophes sometimes happen because authorities are distracted or incompetent. This can be a difficult, if not intolerable, reminder of chance's role in life.
A 'war frenzy'
Reviewing World War II, the first prominent "backdoor to war" advocates were Sens. Owen Brewster and Homer Ferguson, two Republican opponents of Roosevelt. Sitting on the 1945-46 Senate committee on Pearl Harbor, they argued that the White House was covering up Roosevelt's role in the war's outbreak.
The committee - dominated by Democrats, 6-4 - concluded its review by placing the sole blame on Adm. Husband Kimmel and Lt. Gen. Walter Short, the senior commanders at Pearl Harbor.
Kimmel and Short's long campaign for exoneration drew bipartisan support. In 1999, when the Senate voted 52-47 that Kimmel and Short had performed "competently and professionally," the supporters included Democrats Joseph Biden and John Kerry. One of the "nays" came from John Warner, R-Va., and a former Navy secretary.
Still, Rosenberg said, this campaign played into the 1990s' culture wars, with some Republicans using the occasion to take potshots at Roosevelt, a venerated Democrat.
After 9/11, though, conservatives stopped hammering Roosevelt. Speculation about a U.S. president using a surprise attack as a pretext for sending troops into combat had politically uncomfortable echoes. "9/11 has so overshadowed Pearl Harbor," Rosenberg said. "I don't think it is a right-wing Republican cause célèbre as it really had been for 50 years."
Now the drumbeats are heard from the opposite direction, to "prove" another point.
Roosevelt's nefarious plot "is trotted out now by the 9/11 conspiracy theorists who want a historic precedent," Olmsted said.
In a recent article in Australia's New Dawn magazine, "War on Terror: The Police State Agenda," Richard K. Moore asserts that both Roosevelt and the Bush administration "intentionally set the stage for a 'surprise' attack" to whip the American people into a "war frenzy."
"Unbelievable as this may seem," Moore wrote, "this is a scenario that matches the modus operandi of U.S. ruling elites."
Unbelievable or not, this backdoor has moved. Once a staple of the far right, it is now attached to the extreme left.
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Say Hello to the Goodbye Weapon
Wired News
05/12/2006
The crowd is getting ugly. Soldiers roll up in a Hummer. Suddenly, the whole right half of your body is screaming in agony. You feel like you've been dipped in molten lava. You almost faint from shock and pain, but instead you stumble backwards -- and then start running. To your surprise, everyone else is running too. In a few seconds, the street is completely empty.
You've just been hit with a new nonlethal weapon that has been certified for use in Iraq -- even though critics argue there may be unforeseen effects.
According to documents obtained for Wired News under federal sunshine laws, the Air Force's Active Denial System, or ADS, has been certified safe after lengthy tests by military scientists in the lab and in war games.
The ADS shoots a beam of millimeters waves, which are longer in wavelength than x-rays but shorter than microwaves -- 94 GHz (= 3 mm wavelength) compared to 2.45 GHz (= 12 cm wavelength) in a standard microwave oven.
The longer waves are thought to limit the effects of the radiation. If used properly, ADS will produce no lasting adverse affects, the military argues.
Documents acquired for Wired News using the Freedom of Information Act claim that most of the radiation (83 percent) is instantly absorbed by the top layer of the skin, heating it rapidly.
The beam produces what experimenters call the "Goodbye effect," or "prompt and highly motivated escape behavior." In human tests, most subjects reached their pain threshold within 3 seconds, and none of the subjects could endure more than 5 seconds.
"It will repel you," one test subject said. "If hit by the beam, you will move out of it -- reflexively and quickly. You for sure will not be eager to experience it again."
But while subjects may feel like they have sustained serious burns, the documents claim effects are not long-lasting. At most, "some volunteers who tolerate the heat may experience prolonged redness or even small blisters," the Air Force experiments concluded.
The reports describe an elaborate series of investigations involving human subjects.
The volunteers were military personnel: active, reserve or retired, who volunteered for the tests. They were unpaid, but the subjects would "benefit from direct knowledge that an effective nonlethal weapon system could soon be in the inventory," said one report. The tests ranged from simple exposure in the laboratory to elaborate war games involving hundreds of participants.
The military simulated crowd control situations, rescuing helicopter crews in a Black Hawk Down setting and urban assaults. More unusual tests involved alcohol, attack dogs and maze-like obstacle courses.
In more than 10,000 exposures, there were six cases of blistering and one instance of second-degree burns in a laboratory accident, the documents claim.
The ADS was developed in complete secrecy for 10 years at a cost of $40 million. Its existence was revealed in 2001 by news reports, but most details of ADS human testing remain classified. There has been no independent checking of the military's claims.
The ADS technology is ready to deploy, and the Army requested ADS-armed Strykers for Iraq last year. But the military is well aware that any adverse publicity could finish the program, and it does not want to risk distressed victims wailing about evil new weapons on CNN.
This may mean yet more rounds of testing for the ADS.
New bombs can be rushed into service in a matter of weeks, but the process is more complex for nonlethal weapons. It may be years before the debates are resolved and the first directed-energy nonlethal weapon is used in action.
The development of a truly safe and highly effective nonlethal crowd-control system could raise enormous ethical questions about the state's use of coercive force. If a method such as ADS leads to no lasting injury or harm, authorities may find easier justifications for employing them.
Historically, one of the big problems with nonlethal weapons is that they can be misused. Rubber bullets are generally safe when fired at the torso, but head impacts can be dangerous, particularly at close range. Tasers can become dangerous if they are used on subjects who have previously been doused with flammable pepper spray. In the heat of the moment, soldiers or police can forget their safety training.
Steve Wright of Praxis, the Center for the Study of Information and Technology in Peace, Conflict Resolution and Human Rights, notes that there are occasions when this has happened in the past. He cites British soldiers, who increased the weight of baton rounds in Northern Ireland.
"Soldiers flouted the rules of engagement, doctoring the bullets by inserting batteries (to increase the weight) and firing at closer ranges than allowed," says Wright.
There may also be technical issues. Wright cites a recent report on CS gas sprays which turned out to be more dangerous in the field than expected.
"No one had bothered to check how the sprays actually performed in practice, and they yielded much more irritant than was calculated in the weapon specification. This underlines the need for independent checking of any manufacturers' specifications. Here secrecy is the enemy of safety."
Eye damage is identified as the biggest concern, but the military claims this has been thoroughly studied. Lab testing found subjects reflexively blink or turn away within a quarter of a second of exposure, long before the sensitive cornea can be damaged. Tests on monkeys showed that corneal damage heals within 24 hours, the reports claim.
"A speculum was needed to hold the eyes open to produce this type of injury because even under anesthesia, the monkeys blinked, protecting the cornea," the report says.
The risk of cancer is also often mentioned in connection with the ADS system, despite the shallow penetration of radiation into the skin.
But the Air Force is adamant that after years of study, exposure to MMW has not been demonstrated to promote cancer. During some tests, subjects were exposed to 20 times the permitted dose under the relevant Air Force radiation standard. The Air Force claims the exposure was justified by demonstrating the safety of the ADS system.
The beam penetrates clothing, but not stone or metal. Blocking it is harder than you might think. Wearing a tinfoil shirt is not enough -- you would have to be wrapped like a turkey to be completely protected. The experimenters found that even a small exposed area was enough to produce the Goodbye effect, so any gaps would negate protection. Holding up a sheet of metal won't work either, unless it covers your whole body and you can keep the tips of your fingers out of sight.
Wet clothing might sound like a good defense, but tests showed that contact with damp cloth actually intensified the effects of the beam.
System 1, the operational prototype, is mounted on a Hummer and produces a beam with a 2-meter diameter. Effective range is at least 500 meters, which is further than rubber bullets, tear gas or water cannons. The ammunition supply is effectively unlimited.
The military's tests went beyond safety, exploring how well the ADS works in practice. In one war game, an assault team staged a mock raid on a building. The ADS was used to remove civilians from the battlefield, separating what the military calls "tourists from terrorists."
It was also used in a Black Hawk Down scenario, and maritime tests, which saw the ADS deployed against small boats.
It might also be used on the battlefield. One war game deployed the ADS in support of an assault, suppressing incoming fire and obstructing a counterattack.
"ADS has the same compelling nonlethal effect on all targets, regardless of size, age and gender," says Capt. Jay Delarosa, spokesman for the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, which decides where and how the ADS might be deployed.
"It can be used to deny an area to individuals or groups, to control access, to prevent an individual or individuals from carrying out an undesirable activity, and to delay or disrupt adversary activity."
The precise results of the military's war games are classified, but Capt. Delarosa insists that the ADS has proven "both safe and effective in all these roles."
The ADS comes in a variety of shapes and sizes. As well as System 1, a smaller version has been fitted to a Stryker armored vehicle -- along with other lethal and nonlethal weapons -- for urban security operations. Sandia National Labs is looking at a small tripod-mounted version for defending nuclear installations, and there is even a portable ADS. And there are bigger versions too.
"Key technologies to enable this capability from an airborne platform -- such as a C-130 -- are being developed at several Air Force Research Laboratory technology directorates," says Diana Loree, program manager for the Airborne ADS.
The airborne ADS would supplement the formidable firepower of Special Forces AC-130 gunships, which currently includes a 105-mm howitzer and 25-mm Gatling guns. The flying gunboats typically engage targets at a range of two miles or more, which implies an ADS far more powerful than System 1 has been developed. But details of the exact power levels, range and diameter of the beam are classified.
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Power To The People? Overpowering The People
Millions may resist database, says poll
05/12/2006
UK Telegraph
The first signs of a significant popular revolt against the Government's identity card scheme have been uncovered by a YouGov poll for The Daily Telegraph.
It suggests that hundreds of thousands of people, maybe even millions, would refuse to register on the proposed database that will underpin the scheme, even if this meant a fine or going to jail.
Despite ministerial claims during the passage of the ID Cards Act through parliament that there was widespread public support for the multi-billion pound plan, the opinion survey shows a country split in two on the issue. It also indicates growing public concern at the encroachment of the so-called "surveillance society", with large proportions suspicious of the Government's intentions.
While people appear to accept measures like CCTV cameras, which they believe help tackle specific problems like crime, they increasingly resent the rapid expansion of databases collecting information about everybody.
Overwhelmingly, the public is unwilling to trust Government promises not to misuse personal information and fears the national ID database will contain inaccurate and unreliable information about them.
Although half of those questioned said they still support the idea of national identity cards, this represents a big fall from the 80 per cent backing claimed by ministers a few years ago.
Many still do not associate the card with the national ID database that will accompany it. When pressed, a majority were unhappy that their personal details were to be recorded and worried that inaccurate information could cause them harm, denying access to services or jobs.
Most worrying for the Government is that a large proportion of those interviewed would accept a penalty rather than be registered. Half those opposed to the ID scheme would pay a fine or risk prison by refusing to hand over their details. Fifteen per cent said they would go to prison.
Even if a large proportion of these "refuseniks" eventually fell into line, the potential exists for a huge popular backlash. If just two in every 100 person over 16 refused to sign up, the Goverment would be pursuing one million people.
The ID Card Act deliberately did not make refusal to register a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment because ministers wanted to avoid the creation of "ID martyrs". The main penalties are a £2,500 fine for not registering and a £1,000 fine for failing to inform the authorities of a change of address. However, if people decline to pay their fines, the prospect then arises of going to prison.
The Act also does not make it a requirement to carry an ID card, again to avoid the so-called "Clarence Willcock effect", named after the last person to be prosecuted for refusing to show his wartime ID cards in 1952, leading to their abolition.
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People will either have to produce a card at a police station if required or will simply have their biometrics, which will be stored on the national database, checked by special readers.
The poll is the first major test of opinion since Tony Blair sought to revive public interest in the ID scheme last month. Writing in The Daily Telegraph, he said: "We can't ignore the advances in biometric technology in a world in which protection and proof of identity are more important than ever. . . it will enable us to cut delays, improve access and make secure a whole array of services by giving certainty in asserting our identity and simplicity in verifying it."
However, the YouGov poll shows that many people, aware of the Government's poor record on IT, do not believe this. Substantial numbers think the database will contain inaccurate and unreliable information. Two thirds said they did not trust the government to keep the information confidential despite safeguards built into the legislation.
Support for the ID cards was strongest among Labour voters and weakest among Tories and Liberal Democrats, whose parties have said they would scrap the scheme.
There is also compelling evidence that Mr Blair is wrong to assert that there is no civil liberties issue at stake, merely an argument about cost and practicality. Of those unhappy with the database, 70 per cent object in principle.
Phil Booth, national co-ordinator of the NO2ID campaign group, said the survey confirmed a continuing decline in support for the ID scheme that would grow when people saw the costs involved and had to submit to giving their biometrics by visiting one of a network of ID centres being set up across the country.
"From next year, people as young as 16 applying for their first adult passport will have to attend their nearest centre where they will be subject to background checks, questioning to test their story against official records, photographs, and, before long, fingerprinting," Mr Booth said. "When that starts happening, public support will slide away even more. The vast majority of people do not want to be treated like numbers or common criminals."
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World's youth believe 'war on terror' counterproductive
Monday December 4, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
Young people overwhelmingly believe the US-led "war on terror" is not making the world safer, according to a poll conducted in major cities across the globe.
The survey of youngsters aged 15 - 17, which was conducted for the BBC in New York, Nairobi, Cairo, Lagos, Rio de Janeiro, Baghdad, Delhi, Jakarta, Moscow and London, found that only 14% of respondents thought US policy in Iraq and Afghanistan was making the world a safer place, while 71% said it was not. The remaining 15% did not know or declined to answer.
Negative views of the "war on terror" were strongest in Baghdad (98%) and Rio (92%).
Asked if they "would consider taking action that could result in innocent people dying if they felt very strongly about a cause", 17% said they would. The figure was highest in Baghdad (34%), followed by Jakarta (31%) and London (25%).
Religion figured strongly in the teenagers' lives, with 86% saying they believed in God or a higher being. Although 66% thought religion a force for good, a significant proportion - 20% - viewed it as a source of conflict. In Baghdad, 64% considered it so.
Just over a third (34%) said they were prepared to marry someone from a different religion. That figure was highest in Nairobi (52%) and New York (50%), and lowest in Baghdad (4%).
The teenagers also took a favourable view of immigration, with 79% saying people should be able to live in whichever country they choose. Sixty-four percent said they would emigrate to secure a better future and 14% said they would risk their life to do so.
Oddly, the largest numbers of those who had no intention of emigrating were found in the troubled city of Baghdad (50%).
Opinion was divided as to whether those who move to a new country should keep apart to maintain their own beliefs and culture (38%), or integrate and adopt the culture of their new country (49%).
Only 51% of respondents said they had heard of climate change and understood what it was, and among those only 34% have changed their behaviour as a result. A majority (52%) said they would not lower their standard of living to reduce the effects of climate change.
The vast majority (85% overall) thought crime was generally increasing in their country, but only 6% said they would consider stealing if they really wanted something and could not afford it. Sixteen percent said they would commit a crime in order to become an instant millionaire if they knew they could get away with it - a figure which rose to 37% in Nairobi and 31% in London.
Overall, 17% said they would consider cheating to get into university.
The poll, for the BBC World Service, was conducted by research agency Synovate in October, with 300 or more interviews in each city. Questions about religion and terrorism were not permitted in Egypt because of government restrictions.
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Poles are bringing solidarity back into fashion in Britain
Duncan Campbell
Wednesday December 6, 2006
The Guardian
As Woody Guthrie used to remind Americans in song, migrant workers are often the most exploited and the lowest paid, and the only way they can change that is to get organised. Events in Britain in the last few weeks indicate that that is just what may be happening here now. For the first time since the second world war a trade union branch consisting entirely of migrant workers has been formed in Britain. The creation of Polish branches in Southampton and Glasgow, with others to be launched across the country in the next few weeks, could have a profound and revitalising effect on the union movement in Britain and help to break down the barriers between the new arrivals and those who have voiced suspicions that they are being used mainly to undercut the existing workforce.
More than 200,000 Poles have registered to work in Britain since the EU expanded, and the actual number now working here is thought to be much higher. Many have found that employers try to pay them lower wages than British workers and take advantage of their ignorance of employment laws. Now unions, particularly those that recruit from the catering, security and building trades, are reporting a sudden growth in membership and involvement.
"This is very significant for the trade-union movement," says Brendan Barber, the TUC's general secretary. "It's not enough any more to think only about traditional workplace organising. We have to see what unions can do to reach out to vulnerable workers and find out how well they get their rights enforced."
It is not hard to see why some Polish workers might be examining the new Polish-language sections of union websites as they compare their payslips to those of British colleagues. Once the exhilaration of earning five times the average wage in Poland has abated, many of them realise that the cost of living here eats up most of their pay packet and the agencies that have found them work take their own handsome slices.
In the 1990s California witnessed an enormous upsurge in union membership and activity when the predominantly Latino janitors and cleaners in Los Angeles realised that their only hope of challenging their employers was in an organised fashion. Strikes and lively demonstrations shamed corporate LA into paying them more. Last week London got a little taste of how things might go here when cleaners staged their own protest about pay and conditions at Goldman Sachs.
"People have a feeling of being lost when they arrive," said Paulina Tomasik, the 24-year-old secretary of the new Polish-speaking GMB branch in Southampton. Ms Tomasik, who moved to Britain from Radom, sees the union as playing a crucial role in helping Poles adjust to life in Britain: "It's not easy when you don't have a place to live and you don't speak the language very well. Some agency workers are paid £120 a week and then told they have to pay £80 in rent. When one person objected to this he was sacked by text message."
Many Polish workers in the catering trade are also realising that they can easily be taken advantage of. One Polish waiter in Southampton recounted how his management took a percentage from all the tips paid by credit card and were refusing to pay them extra for working Christmas Day or bank holidays.
Ross Murdoch, a GMB project coordinator, said that when a public meeting for Polish workers was held a few weeks ago in Southampton, "we were expecting around 20 to come and were amazed when 130 arrived". The Polish branch was swiftly formed and similar projects are planned for Swindon, Slough and Brighton, where there are large pockets of Polish workers.
The experience has been mirrored around Britain. Groups in Bristol, London and East Anglia have contacted unions for advice and help. In Glasgow the Transport and General Workers' Union set up a Polish branch after holding a meeting attended by 150 Polish workers. "We have recruited several thousand into the union nationally," said Andrew Brady of the T&G in Glasgow. He described the influx of Poles into the union movement as "a shot in the arm".
Links have also been established with Polish unions, and the North West TUC brought over a national organiser from Solidarnosc to give advice on employment rights. The TUC now attends job fairs in Warsaw, and many unions have Polish-language websites and application forms. Discussions are also under way about whether to allow Poles to join unions before they arrive in Britain and pay dues when they have started work.
Trade unions were formed because employers were otherwise able to threaten individual workers with the sack if they complained, to divide and rule and to exploit the weakest parts of a workforce. When Solidarnosc first flexed its muscles in Poland in the early 80s, it was seen in Britain as an emblem of anti-communism and applauded by newspapers that usually vilified union activists. Poles are bringing many skills to this country. One of the most valuable could well be their much-needed involvement in the union movement and the part they play in providing just the kind of solidarity that many employers had hoped was now unfashionable.
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There's just no escape from these snoops
Henry Porter
Sunday December 3, 2006
The Observer
As a rural town installs official surveillance, in London they experiment with secret microphones on the street. Not a nightmare. Paranoid Britain today
In Dawlish (for heaven's sake), where there are black swans, cream teas and an annual display by the Red Arrows, where a recent excitement involved the long-billed murrelet, a bird associated with the North Pacific which turned up just off Boat Cove... In Dawlish, Devon, they are about to install a £70,000 CCTV system to watch the town from day through dead of night. The posts are in, and when the weather permits cabling and cameras will follow.
It's like placing CCTV in a poem by Thomas Hardy. It is absurd, incongruous, a symptom of the high old state we've got ourselves into over crime and security.
There is very little crime in Dawlish. True, a burglary was reported in October and there is always the slight possibility of a serious crime taking place, as one PC Carter told a meeting of the town council: in the event of a murder being committed in Dawlish, the cameras would be equal to the task of identifying and locating the murderer. The town clerk, John Winchester, helped this doubtful - I hesitate to say dishonest - case for CCTV by saying that he was fearful when traversing a local park known as the Lawn.
The council undertook a consultation exercise involving about 1,000 people - 800 residents and 200 tourists. Of these, less than 5 per cent actually mentioned the fear of crime and an even smaller percentage talked of CCTV cameras. But on the basis that cameras would allay fears - fears that had not found expression previously and we may reasonably conclude did not exist - the town council went ahead with the system, overriding planning laws and without seeking the consent of the landowner - Teignbridge District Council. One man, a retired writer named Keith Sharp, has done everything in his power to stop the system because he believes it threatens privacy, freedom and the quality of life in his town but after a long and articulate campaign he has lost: the hysterical Conservative and Liberal Democrat councillors have got their way and the cameras are going up to change forever this corner of England.
Security cameras do have their value and in the centre of big cities they are often responsible for identifying criminals. Country towns and villages do not have big city problems, as the Dawlish official website makes clear.
Dawlish is not alone. In towns and villages all over Britain you will find cameras popping up, both official and private systems trained on public spaces. In the village where I grew up a camera has been nailed to an old chestnut tree in order to monitor the traffic on a quiet country road.
We are suffering a collective failure of nerve, which as Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat spokesman on home affairs, pointed out last week is relentlessly encouraged by the government. Though non-violent crime has declined and levels of violent crime are lower than three years ago, we have got ourselves into a panic. Naturally, I agree that violent men such as the killers of the Tom ap Rhys Pryce are out there, and that CCTV is essential to catching them. But we must get a sense of proportion, and more than that an understanding of the likely effect of these surveillance systems on our society.
In this climate of fear, Britain is changing faster than most of us understand. What is compelling and worrying is the barely scrutinised extension of police power that is being allowed. On this, the last few weeks have brought much disturbing news.
If you want to hire a car at Stansted airport, you must first give a fingerprint, which will be stored by the car hire company and handed over to the police on demand. In Luton, police have begun a pilot scheme to randomly demand motorists' fingerprints. If they protest they may be arrested, on some unfathomable suspicion, and conveyed to a police station where their fingerprints, photograph and DNA are taken.
The police and the Home Office have announced that they are looking at ways to enable every CCTV camera in the country - publicly or privately owned - with visual and behaviour recognition software that will allow an individual to be automatically identified in a crowd and his conduct analysed for criminal intent. Suddenly Dawlish's new cameras seem a lot more menacing.
It is no longer what a person has done, it is what he or she may do. Taking the lead from Tony Blair's announcement of a super Asbo, which is designed 'to harry, hassle and hound' suspects, the police have set up a database to identify high-risk individuals and are constructing profiles based on statements of former partners, private information from mental-health workers and details of past complaints.
There is a fine line between good police intelligence and deciding someone's guilty without a court of law being involved, and this crosses it. But you see almost no comment in the press, no reaction from judges and hear little from our Parliament of narcolepts.
One of the most worrying developments followed a story last week that police and councils are considering the use of high-powered, long-range microphones attached to CCTV cameras. These would alert the authorities to trouble on the street by measuring pitch, level and speed of speech. The microphones can be used to bring evidence to court in criminal cases and, of course, to monitor conversations of, for instance, people involved in legitimate political protest. The police deny that this would be their purpose.
The story presented this as a mere possibility, but with a reader's help I discovered that Westminster Council has carried out two unannounced experiments with street microphones in central London, one in Soho Gardens.
The council insist that the system is simply measuring noise levels to alert police to trouble on the streets, but my information is that specific conversations were inadvertently picked up and listened to in this pilot project. The council denies this. The project is now being rolled out across Westminster; we will probably not learn the truth until all our streets are wired for sound and vision and it slowly dawns that liberty and the ordinary human experience in Britain has been incrementally curtailed to a point where we may no longer consider ourselves a free and independent people.
I do not apologise for returning to this subject over the last year: it is not some Orwellian nightmare but a fast-developing reality. Everything in this column, apart from the Westminster experiment, has already appeared in the public domain.
Why we seem to care so little about this drift into the unknown horrors of a controlled society is a complicated business. It is partly due to what Nick Clegg said about the climate of fear which has paralysed our reason with the finality of a deep brain seizure. We are not thinking straight, not seeing what's before our eyes; that's for sure. But it also has a lot to do with the new tone in government, which in the recent mid-term policy review suggested that the people of Britain owe the state something more than paying their taxes and obeying the law. What more is expected of us is as yet undefined, but we may assume that the government will make greater incursions into the sphere of personal choice and behaviour, on the lines that we have seen about smoking, drinking and eating fatty foods.
The implication of these systems and databases is that we all have something to hide. It follows that a condition of the new citizenship that New Labour has dreamed up for us is that innocence must be routinely demonstrated in a process of daily positive vetting, and if this entails the loss of freedom and privacy, well, that is just the price we must expect to pay for security.
Let me just state that the people owe the state nothing more than taxes and obedience to the law. And that is for a simple reason. The supreme authority in this country is not the Queen, the Executive or Parliament: it is the people and we should never forget it.
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Sixth Grader Tasered At Middle School
November 29, 2006
WSBTV
JONESBORO -- Officials at Jonesboro Middle School say police tasered an 11-year-old student Wednesday as a last resort. The incident immediately prompted an internal police investigation.
Channel 2 was told the incident began after something happened at lunch to spark a verbal argument between two 6th graders. The verbal argument turned physical and a school resource officer with the Jonesboro Police Department says she had to resort to using a taser.
Channel 2 cameras were rolling when police left Jonesboro Middle School with what appeared to be a male student handcuffed in the backseat.
School officials confirm that an 11-year-old, 6th grade male was tasered by a school resource officer. They say the boy was physically assaulting a female 6th grader and refused to listen to verbal commands to stop. As a last resort the officer tasered the boy twice - once to get the students separated and a second time when the boy tried to attack the girl again.
The male student was taken to juvenile detention - the female was treated by emergency personnel and released to her parents.
Opinions are split on whether this kind of force should be used a school.
"I would tell them if my child got out of hand and they couldn't control him they would have to taser him," said one parent. "I know what it is and it doesn't scare me - so long as it's used properly it's not serious."
"No, it is not necessary...school is a safe place, right?" said parent Syeda Nessa. "They don't need that, they don't need that in the school."
Channel 2 tried to speak with Jonesboro Police but they refused to comment pending an on-going internal affairs investigation into the incident.
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South Carolina mother has son arrested for playing with Christmas present
Published: Tuesday, December 5, 2006 | 10:00 PM ET
Canadian Press
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - A fed-up mother had her 12-year-old son arrested for allegedly rummaging through his great-grandmother's things and playing with his Christmas present early.
The mother called police Sunday after learning her son had disobeyed orders and repeatedly taken a Game Boy from its hiding place at his grandmother's house next door and played with it. He was arrested on petty larceny charges, taken to the local police station in handcuffs and held until his mother picked him up after church.
"My grandmother went out of her way to lay away a toy and paid on this thing for months," said the boy's mother, Brandi Ervin.
"It was only to teach my son a lesson. He's been going through life doing things...and getting away with it."
Police did not release the boy's name.
The mother said her son was diagnosed in the last year with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder but his medicine does not seem to help.
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Everyone must love the EU... says Tony Blair
Daily Mail
2nd December 2006
A multi-million pound propaganda war to force the British people to love the European Union and Brussels bureaucrats is to be launched by Tony Blair as part of his legacy as Prime Minister, it has been revealed.
The operation to overcome strong opposition to the EU in Britain and soften them up in the event of fresh moves to forge closer links with Brussels was secretly agreed by Mr Blair and his Ministers at last week's Cabinet meeting.
Details of the plan, obtained by The Mail on Sunday, show how the Prime Minister is so frustrated at his failure to persuade voters that the EU is a good thing, he is to spend a fortune from public funds in a final attempt to brainwash them before he resigns next year.
They include banning Ministers and officials from referring to unpopular EU institutions like the European Commission, places such as Brussels and Strasbourg, the euro currency, terms like 'Eurocrat' and 'EU directive' and controversial policies such as the Common Agricultural Policy and the EU constitution.
Instead they have been ordered to try to promote the 'EU brand' by linking to popular European events and institutions such as the Eurovision song contest, the Cannes Film Festival and the UEFA soccer organisation that runs the Champions League tournament - even though none of them has anything to do with the EU.
Every Whitehall department is to appoint a spin doctor responsible for promoting the EU. And Downing Street will draw up an 'EU Grid' to make sure stories portraying Brussels in a good light are leaked to the media on a regular basis.
The leaked plans state that propaganda must be tailored to win over all groups by encouraging them to think that 'as a tourist, as a mother, as a birdwatcher, as an entrepreneur... the EU is relevant and can make a difference.'
More controversially, it suggests Ministers should not waste their energies trying to win over the elderly and people with few academic qualifications.
It says the 'young and educated' have much more appetite for learning about Europe than 'the old and uneducated'.
The plans were drawn up on Mr Blair's instructions by Whitehall's £180,000-a-year head of communications Howell James, a close friend of EU Commissioner Peter Mandelson.
Mr James had a relationship with Mr Mandelson's partner, Brazilian Reinaldo da Silva, before Mr Mandelson met him.
Mr Howell's links with Mr Mandelson are thought to have been a factor when he was appointed as Whitehall's first permanent secretary in charge of media relations two years ago.
At last week's Cabinet meeting where the EU propaganda campaign was approved, Ministers were told it was needed because of a growing expectation that Brussels would revive plans for an EU constitution, further reducing Britain's ability to govern itself.
The constitution was abandoned last year after it was rejected by voters in France and the Netherlands.
They will shortly receive a 'new core script and toolkit' suggesting that issues such as climate change, Blue Flag beaches, cheap flights and cheap mobile calls when abroad should be emphasised with the EU downplayed.
The paper presented to the Cabinet by Mr James complained of the continuing 'negativity and euro scepticism' among British voters, adding: "Indifference and apathy remains significant." Ministers must claim victories for Brussels, not Britain. "There is a risk of overplaying the UK's role and achievements at the expense of the EU,' it stated.
The new pro-EU message will be dumbed down, using a 'reframed and compelling narrative with accessible and "friendly" themes, wherever possible steering away from institutions, politics and legislation'. And pro-European politicians should be replaced by pro-European celebrities with a 'range of non political voices'.
In one of the most controversial sections on 'rebranding the EU', the Cabinet paper provides a chart showing the most unpopular aspects of the EU: the constitution, the commission, Brussels, Strasbourg, the Common Agricultural Policy, Eurocrats and the euro, described as issues towards which the public feels 'cold'.
They are contrasted with popular - or 'warm' - aspects of Europe, including UEFA, the Eurovision Song Contest, the Cannes Film Festival and Liverpool, Europe's "Capital of Culture' for 2008, though none have EU links. The best-known 'warm' EU topics were its Pet Travel Scheme and the EU-sponsored "Blue Flag' clean beaches.
Titled Reframing The Debate, the paper says Ministers must use 'themes with a "natural" European dimension to maximise impact and increase familiarity with Europe'.
The objective is to 'realign the EU brand via alliances with familiar, trusted organisations and brands'.
A new network of Whitehall spin doctors with orders to promote the EU has been created, with one senior "Press co-ordinator' in all 23 Government departments.
They will help No 10 draw up a 'rolling grid of upcoming EU issues' to ensure British voters are fed with a constant diet of pro-EU news.
Mr James told Ministers Press releases about the EU must be censored, removing references to the EU and its directives.
Instead they would refer to 'Europe' - which Mr James describes as 'a European sub brand' which people warm to.
Comment:I find this really funny given that Brits are only 'Euroskeptic' because they were told to be by previous Conservative governments and the British media. Now an attempt will be made to reverse the process, and why shouldn't it work? It did the first time!
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Iran...How Long Left?
France Says Iran Will Face Sanctions
Wednesday December 6, 2006
Associated Press
PARIS (AP) - The French foreign minister said Wednesday that Iran will face U.N. sanctions for refusing to halt its nuclear program but that major world powers remain divided over their extent.
"The question is about the scope of sanctions but there will be sanctions,'' Philippe Douste-Blazy said on RTL radio. His ministry said Tuesday that closed-door talks in Paris had made "substantive progress'' but failed to reach an accord on a resolution to punish Iran for defying demands that it cease enriching uranium.
Iran's hard-line president threatened to downgrade relations with the 25-nation European Union if tough sanctions emerged from the talks among diplomats from the permanent Security Council members - the United States, Britain, China, France and Russia - as well as Germany and the EU.
After months of diplomatic wrangling, the United States and France had hoped Tuesday's talks would produce a resolution imposing sanctions on Iran for defying an Aug. 31 U.N. deadline to halt enrichment. Western powers accuse Iran of seeking nuclear bombs, while Tehran insists it only wants civilian nuclear energy.
Still, a top European diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks, said Russia, which has sided with Iran on many points, made some concessions at Tuesday's talks. The Russians agreed to a measure prohibiting financial transfers to "problematic'' Iranians linked to nuclear or ballistic missile programs, the diplomat said.
Russia still opposes the broader asset freeze that Britain, France and Germany proposed in a draft U.N. resolution presented in October, the diplomat said.
The discussions now move to the United Nations in New York. The Americans and Europeans are pushing for a resolution by the end of the year.
"We are coming up to the time (when) the credibility of the U.N. is at stake,'' U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington before the Paris talks.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed Tuesday to stick by the nuclear program and issued a new threat to downgrade relations with the EU if European negotiators opted for tough sanctions. He gave no details on how ties might be downgraded. The EU is Iran's biggest trading partner.
The Russians also remained resistant to a measure expanding the powers of the International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor Iran's nuclear program, considering that a "provocation'' to Iran, the European diplomat said.
The draft resolution would exempt a nuclear power plant being built by the Russians in Iran, but not the nuclear fuel needed for the reactor. Russia wants to remove any mention of the Bushehr reactor.
Washington's patience had appeared to be wearing thin.
When asked Tuesday when he expected Russia and China to begin supporting the resolution, the American participant in the discussions, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, replied: "This afternoon would be a good time.''
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Six powers fail to agree on Iran sanctions
www.chinaview.cn 2006-12-06 13:52:32
BEIJING, Dec. 6 (Xinhuanet) -- Six powers failed on Tuesday to agree a draft U.N. resolution to punish Iran for defying demands to halt its nuclear program, according to the French Foreign Ministry.
"We made substantive progress on the scope of the sanctions targeting proliferation-sensitive activities. There remain several outstanding issues, upon which we will reflect over the coming days," the French ministry said in a statement. "We are now close to a conclusion of this process."
Delegates from the five permanent members of the Security Council, the U.S., U.K., Russia, China and France, plus Germany and the European Union, met in Paris to try to agree on sanctions aimed at convincing Iran to stop enriching uranium.
After months of diplomatic wrangling, the United States and France had hoped Tuesday's talks would produce a resolution imposing sanctions on Iran for defying an Aug. 31 U.N. deadline to halt uranium enrichment. Western powers accuse Iran of seeking nuclear bombs, while Tehran insists it only wants nuclear energy.
The discussions now move to the United Nations in New York. The Americans and Europeans are pushing for a resolution by the end of the year.
"We are coming up to the time (when) the credibility of the U.N. is at stake," U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington before the Paris talks.
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German analyst: Only negotiations can solve Iran's nuclear case
Brussels, Dec 6, IRNA
A German analyst said here that threats of military strike by the US or Israel against Iran will not solve the issue, and stressed that only dialogue can lead to a solution.
"The problem can only be solved by negotiations in good faith with the Iranians," Goetz Neuneck, senior fellow at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg, Germany, told IRNA in an interview.
"We clearly have a stalemate in terms of communication and negotiation. I think Iran should answer the IAEA questions more specifically...these are minor problems," said Neuneck, who was in Brussels to attend an international conference on the Iran nuclear issue on Tuesday.
Neuneck, who is a physicist by profession, said he thought some sanctions on Iran will be decided upon by the end of the year, and added that "this will not solve the problem."
He said "uranium enrichment is a critical thing, but it can be solved. It can be solved through cooperation."
Neuneck said trust between Europe and Iran can be restored if Iran accepts the Additional Protocal for some time and if they answer some of the questions of the IAEA.
"I am sure the Europeans can then argue with the Americans and say, 'Look, the Iranians are flexible, they are not against negotiations.'"
Responding to US and Israeli military threats against Iran, the German expert said: "I think it is counter-productive. It does not solve any problem."
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Britons to attend Iran's Holocaust conference
Robert Tait in Tehran
Wednesday December 6, 2006
The Guardian
- Gathering will consider whether deaths took place
- Event 'will not be a forum for anti-semites'
Iran announced yesterday details of a conference questioning whether the Holocaust really happened, prompted by an international outcry a year ago when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad described the slaughter of six million Jews by the Nazis as "myth" fabricated to justify Israel.
The foreign ministry said "intellectuals and researchers" from 30 countries - including Britain - would attend Studying the Holocaust: An international view, in Tehran on Monday and Tuesday.
The idea for the gathering was dismissed earlier this year as "shocking, ridiculous and stupid" by Tony Blair. Iran responded by inviting him to attend.
A Foreign Office spokesman said it had no record of who was going. "I think the government's views on Iran's comments regarding the Holocaust are well known but it is not up to us who travels to Iran."
Participants will consider documentary, pictorial, physical and demographic evidence in what Iranian officials depict as an academic investigation to establish the Holocaust's authenticity and whether the reported number of victims was exaggerated. Organisers say it will include submissions for and against. It will also focus on the plight of the Palestinians.
The conference will have six panel discussions and an open forum. It will discuss the capacity of Nazi death camps and the impact of the second world war on other national and ethnic groups. Iranian officials say Jewish suffering is played up at the expense of other victims. Manouchehr Mohammadi, the foreign ministry's research and education officer, said the conference was intended as a platform for open discussion of the Holocaust, which Iran claims is denied in the west.
"Our aim is to scientifically study the Holocaust and listen to both sides before reaching a conclusion," Mr Mohammadi said. "This issue has a crucial role regarding the west's policies towards the countries of the Middle East, especially the Palestinians. Iran isn't against or for. We weren't involved in this event so we can be a neutral judge. It is important for us to know the answer so that we can process our stances to issues in this region. If we conclude that the Holocaust happened, we will admit it but we are still going to ask why Palestinians have to pay." He said it would not be a forum for anti-semites or neo-Nazis, and rabbis would attend. "Our policy doesn't mean we want to defend the crimes of Hitler."
Mr Ahmadinejad has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" and has said its inhabitants should go to Europe or Alaska.
Michael Rosen, of the Community Security Trust, which works to safeguard Jews in Britain, said he was aware of the event but that it was not clear who was planning to attend from the UK. Karen Pollock, of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said: "To hold a state-sponsored conference questioning the truth of the Holocaust is not only deeply disturbing but a huge insult to Holocaust survivors and the families of Holocaust victims."
Comment: Notice the weasel words in this article. It says that "Iran claims" study of the holocaust is denied in the West. That isn't just a claim. There are people in jail for putting forward views on the holocaust that disagree with the official story. Is there any other topic in the study of all of human history that can land you in prison if you differ from the official story?
And notice the task of the Community Security Trust, to "safeguard Jews in Britain". As if anti-Semitism in Britain were a big problem....
But this is what passes for "objective" reporting. While you claim to be presenting both sides, you throw in the line that Ahmadinejad has called for Israel to be wiped off the face of the map, a line that is false. He never said that. He was calling for all of the residents of Palestine to vote for a democratic government, where everyone, regardless of religion or ethnicity, would live together in peace.
Like they do in other democracies all over the world. But the West hears that and translates it into "wipe Israel off the face of the map".
Of course, Israel is really and truly wiping Palestine off the face of the map. It isn't just a wish, it is a fact. And who complains about that?
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Iran to replace dollar with euro in foreign trade: Finance Minister
TEHRAN, Dec. 4 (Mehr News Agency)
Iran has decided to replace dollar with euro in its foreign trade given the continual impediments and hostile policies directed by U.S. toward the country, Iranian finance minister said on Monday.
According to ISNA, the would-be decision is also more attuned to existing trade volume between Iran and European nations, the country's major economic partners, which is transacted through the 'euro banks'. "Such inclination has been underlying part of our economic policy for awhile and our Oil Stabilization Fund (OSF) in dollar is at its lowest now," Davud Danesh-Jafari continued.
Back in September, the head of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) Ebrahim Sheibani had threatened that Iran would resort to dollar-to-euro conversion if the U.S. pressure continued. Moreover, the 9/11 event seemed to consolidate a tentative unanimity being formed on this matter among Iranian statesmen after the emergence of euro in 2000.
Experts believe that less reliance on dollar and conversion to euro may increase Iran's financial flexibility and access to euro accounts would be easier if the U.S. chooses to impose a unilateral economic sanction on the country.
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North Korea Ready to Give Up Nuclear Arms - Russian Agency
Created: 06.12.2006 15:21 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 16:58 MSK
MosNews
North Korea will renounce its nuclear weapons if the U.S. withdraws nuclear arsenals from South Korea and other countries in the region, Russia's Interfax news agency reported on Wednesday.
"The statement that North Korea would act as a nuclear power at the negotiations means that, in exchange for its nuclear disarmament, it will demand the withdrawal of US nuclear weapons from South Korea and other countries of the region," an informed North Korean diplomatic source was quoted as saying by the Russian news agency.
He added that North Korea is ready to return to the negotiations if the conditions defined on October 31, would be observed. The heads of the North Korean, Chinese and US delegations to the six-party talks on the North Korea nuclear problem met in Beijing in October.
Comment: Looks like the threat of cutting off the illustrious leader's access to an iPod worked.
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The Good, The Bad And The Cuddly
Chavez Officially Proclaimed President-Elect for 2007-2013
Wednesday, Dec 06, 2006
By: Michael Fox - Venezuelanalysis.com
Caracas, Venezuela, December 5, 2006 (Venezuelanalysis.com)- With a large crowd of supporters outside, Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias was officially proclaimed President-elect of Venezuela for the "period of the next 6 years" by the Venezuelan National Electoral Council (CNE) yesterday morning, with 7,161,637 votes, 62.89% of the total. His next term officially begins on February 2, 2007.
Chavez "humbly" accepted the certification of his election for his next term in a black suit and red tie, and spoke briefly congratulating and thanking the electoral power and Venezuela's citizens.
"I receive this certification with a great humility and with a great commitment," said Chavez.
Chavez announced that Venezuela will be a Latin American power, and that those who voted for him, voted for a project.
"Those that voted for me didn't vote for a name, or a slogan, or a song," said Chavez "They voted for a project, and just like 8 years ago, when I repeated everywhere that we were going to hold a constitutional assembly."
"Today I say the same," continued the Venezuelan President. "Those who voted for me, didn't vote for me, they voted for a socialist project to construct a profoundly different Venezuela, they voted for a project, they voted for a profound consciousness."
Chavez congratulated the Venezuelan people for their record participation, and also addressed what he called "the responsible opposition."
"I want to extend my hand to the serious opposition, to its leaders, that assumed with seriousness in the end. It's about time that they took the attitude of a true democrat," said Chavez.
Chavez remembered the 2004 Recall Referendum, which he said "was also transparent and clear", but "the opposition still hasn't recognized the great triumph of the people."
"It was about time that the political opposition in Venezuela assumed seriousness," said Chavez
Chavez spoke of the Constitution and quoted Simon Bolivar, "The impulse of this revolution has been made, nothing can detain it. Our party (partido) is taken, to turn back would be the ruin for all, we must triumph for the road of the revolution, never for another road."
"That is our road," announced Chavez. "The road of this Republic is the revolution, a democratic, social, political, economic, and moral revolution that continues integrating all of the Venezuelans." Chavez highlighted the increasing support for his government over the last 8 years, and the "growing gap" between the Bolivarian Revolution and the opposition.
"The people have spoken," said Chavez, "The voice of the people is the voice of God, and that's how I assume it, and I ask god to that I am capable of continuing to sail this boat with the help of all of you, of the great majority, and hopefully with the help of those who didn't vote for me as well, because this homeland is for them and their children as well."
CNE Congratulations
Tibisay Lucena, President of the CNE, who proclaimed Chavez President, thanked all of the candidates, poll workers, and Venezuelan citizens for the "democracy, tranquility and happiness that Venezuelan showed the world."
According to the CNE, participation was extremely high, with an abstention rate of only around 25%.
"We congratulate the people of Venezuela. We heard the voice of the people that was expressed on the 3rd of the December," said Lucena, who also additionally congratulated "all of the men and women who worked to carry out an electoral process that was transparent, quick and democratic."
Lucena announced that the poll workers opened a record number voting centers before 8:00am. According to Lucena on Sunday, by 9:30 am, 96% of the voting stations were open.
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Doctor: Chile's Pinochet no longer in danger
www.chinaview.cn 2006-12-06 07:17:05
SANTIAGO, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) -- Chile's former military leader, Augusto Pinochet, is no longer in imminent danger following his Sunday heart attack, Dr. Juan Ignacio Vergara, head of the medical team caring for him at Santiago's Military Hospital said on Tuesday.
"The acute phase of the acute myocardium arrest is over," he said. "The general is improving favorably and his clinical measures are within the normal range," he said.
He said 91-year-old Pinochet had survived the sudden heart attack because he has modern medical equipment in his home 24 hours a day. The cardiac arrest had barely occurred when the Military Hospital was informed. The appropriate medical team was immediately sent out to help him. That is why that an acute myocardium attack was swiftly diagnosed and we managed to treat him with angioplasty," he said.
Pinochet would be out of bed and will do some exercise with a therapist, he said.
Michelle Bachelet, Chile's current president, told media that it was "bad taste" to speak about Pinochet's possible funeral, avoiding questions about whether she would make an official speech at the event, if Pinochet were to die.
Chilean army rules insist that the former military leader must receive state honors at his funeral, unless he is convicted of a crime.
Comment: None of Pinochet's 30,000 innocent victims received such care or consideration, and, to be frank, we are not concerned whether or not the old psychopath is alive, dead or stuff and mounted. May he receive full payment for his actions during his time on earth.
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Cuba: Castro to return to public life
www.chinaview.cn 2006-12-06 06:00:39
HAVANA, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) -- Cuba's leader, Fidel Castro, is recovering well from his July operation and will soon return to public life, Vice President Carlos Lage said on Tuesday.
Castro, 80, is following doctor's orders in a disciplined manner, he said. That is why Castro was absent from the 50th anniversary parade by the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces.
Cuba normally holds a military parade for Castro on Aug. 13, his birthday, but this year the nation suspended August celebrations because of the leader's illness, following an operation for intestinal bleeding.
Ahead of the July 31 operation, Fidel Castro handed power to his brother Raul for the first time since taking power in the country's 1959 revolution. He has been president of the country's council of ministers since 1976. He was last seen in public in a video published in October.
State newspaper Granma on Tuesday published a message from Fidel congratulating Hugo Chavez for his Dec. 3 reelection as president of Venezuela.
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Nicaragua's new gov't to enforce free education
www.chinaview.cn 2006-12-06 10:21:32
MANAGUA, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) -- The new government of Daniel Ortega, who will take power as president on Jan. 10 in Nicaragua, will introduce free education in the country, said Miguel De Castilla from Ortega's Sandinista National Liberation Front on Tuesday.
"The first thing that the Ortega government will implement is the elimination of so-called voluntary contributions," De Castilla, an educationalist, told media at a joint press conference with outgoing Education Minister Miguel Angel Garcia.
De Castilla called on head teachers to stop asking parents for money, saying that "education is not a piece of merchandise to be bought and sold. It is a right for Nicaragua's poor and we are making sure our Constitution will be observed."
In 1993, Nicaragua adopted an education model that forced teachers to make profits. "This has seriously distorted Nicaraguan teachers' roles and the education system," he said.
Ortega, 60, a Cold War era foe of the United States, led the country in 1979 after toppling military dictator Anastasio Somoza. He won the presidency in 1984 but lost the next election and left power in 1990.
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