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Editorial: The Four Myths
Ralph Schoenman
The Hidden History of Zionism
It is not accidental that when anyone attempts to examine the nature of Zionism - its origins, history and dynamics - they meet with people who terrorize or threaten them. Quite recently, after mentioning a meeting on the plight of the Palestinian people during an interview on KPFK, a Los Angeles radio station, the organizers of the public meeting were deluged with bomb threats from anonymous callers.
Nor is it easy in the United States or Western Europe to disseminate information about the nature of Zionism or to analyze the specific events which denote Zionism as a political movement. Even the announcement on university campuses of authorized forums or meetings on the subject invariably engenders a campaign designed to close off discussion. Posters are torn down as fast as they are put up. Meetings are packed by flying squads of Zionist youth who seek to break them up. Literature tables are vandalized and leaflets and articles appear accusing the speaker of anti-Semitism or, in the case of those of Jewish origin, of self-hatred.
Vindictiveness and slander are so universally meted out to anti-Zionists because the disparity between the official fiction about Zionism and the Israeli state, on the one hand, and the barbarous practice of this colonial ideology and coercive apparatus, on the other, is so vast. People are in shock when they have an opportunity to hear or read about the century of persecution suffered by the Palestinians, and, thus, the apologists for Zionism are relentless in seeking to prevent coherent, dispassionate examination of the virulent and chauvinist record of the Zionist movement and of the state which embodies its values.
The irony of this is that when we study what the Zionists have written and said - particularly when addressing themselves - no doubt remains about what they have done or of their place in the political spectrum, dating from the last quarter of the 19th century to the present day.
Four overriding myths have shaped the consciousness of most people in our society about Zionism.
The first is that of "A land without a people for a people without a land." This myth was sedulously cultivated by early Zionists to promote the fiction that Palestine was a remote, desolate place ready for the taking. This claim was quickly followed by denial of Palestinian identity, nationhood or legitimate entitlement to the land in which the Palestinian people have lived throughout their recorded history.
The second is the myth of Israeli democracy. Innumerable newspaper stories or television references to the Israeli state are followed by the assertion that it is the only "real" democracy in the Middle East. In fact, Israel is as democratic as the apartheid state of South Africa. Civil liberty, due process and the most basic human rights are by law denied those who do not meet racial, religious criteria.
The third myth is that of "security" as the motor force of Israeli foreign policy. Zionists maintain that their state must be the fourth largest military power in the world because Israel has been forced to defend itself against imminent menace from primitive, hate-consumed Arab masses only recently dropped from the trees.
The fourth myth is that of Zionism as the moral legatee of the victims of the Holocaust. This is at once the most pervasive and insidious of the myths about Zionism. Ideologues for the Zionist movement have wrapped themselves in the collective shroud of the six million Jews who fell victim to Nazi mass murder. The bitter and cruel irony of this false claim is that the Zionist movement itself actively colluded with Nazism from its inception.
To most people it appears anomalous that the Zionist movement, which forever invokes the horror of the Holocaust, should have collaborated actively with the most vicious enemy ever faced by the Jews. The record, however, reveals not merely common interests but a deep ideological affinity rooted in the extreme chauvinism which they share.
Read: The Hidden History of Zionism Online FREE!
Ralph Schoenman was Executive Director of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, in which capacity he conducted negotiations with numerous heads of state. He secured the release of political prisoners in many countries and initiated the International Tribunal on U.S. War Crimes in Indo-China, of which he was Secretary General.
Long active in political life, he initiated the Committee of 100 which organized mass civil disobedience against nuclear weapons and U.S. bases in Great Britain. He was founder and Director of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign and Director of the Who Killed Kennedy Committee.
He also has been a leader of the Committee for Artistic Freedom in Iran, Co-Director of the Committee in Defense of the Palestinian and Lebanese Peoples, Director of American Workers and Artists for Solidarity, and Executive Director of the Palestine Campaign which called for an end to all aid to Israel and for a democratic secular Palestine.
Ralph Schoenman broadcasts weekly on WBAI-NY.
Taking Aim with Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone is a collection of archives at http://takingaim.info.
Contact Ralph Schoenman takingaim (at) pacbell (dot) net.
His previous books include Bertrand Russell: Philosopher of the Century, Death and Pillage in the Congo: A Study of Western Rule, which he co-authored with Khalid Ahmed Zaki, Prisoners of Israel written with Mya Shone and Iraq and Kuwait: A History Suppressed.
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Editorial: The Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict
Jews for Justice in the Middle East
The standard Zionist position is that they showed up in Palestine in the late 19th century to reclaim their ancestral homeland. Jews bought land and started building up the Jewish community there. They were met with increasingly violent opposition from the Palestinian Arabs, presumably stemming from the Arabs' inherent anti-Semitism. The Zionists were then forced to defend themselves and, in one form or another, this same situation continues up to today.
The problem with this explanation is that it is simply not true, as the documentary evidence in this booklet will show. What really happened was that the Zionist movement, from the beginning, looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the indigenous Arab population so that Israel could be a wholly Jewish state, or as much as was possible. Land bought by the Jewish National Fund was held in the name of the Jewish people and could never be sold or even leased back to Arabs (a situation which continues to the present).
The Arab community, as it became increasingly aware of the Zionists' intentions, strenuously opposed further Jewish immigration and land buying because it posed a real and imminent danger to the very existence of Arab society in Palestine. Because of this opposition, the entire Zionist project never could have been realized without the military backing of the British. The vast majority of the population of Palestine, by the way, had been Arabic since the seventh century A.D. (Over 1200 years)
In short, Zionism was based on a faulty, colonialist world view that the rights of the indigenous inhabitants didn't matter. The Arabs' opposition to Zionism wasn't based on anti-Semitism but rather on a totally reasonable fear of the dispossession of their people.
One further point: being Jewish ourselves, the position we present here is critical of Zionism but is in no way anti-Semitic. We do not believe that the Jews acted worse than any other group might have acted in their situation. The Zionists (who were a distinct minority of the Jewish people until after WWII) had an understandable desire to establish a place where Jews could be masters of their own fate, given the bleak history of Jewish oppression. Especially as the danger to European Jewry crystalized in the late 1930's and after, the actions of the Zionists were propelled by real desperation.
But so were the actions of the Arabs. The mythic "land without people for a people without land" was already home to 700,000 Palestinians in 1919. This is the root of the problem, as we shall see.
Read Entire Booklet Online FREE! The Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict
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Editorial: The "Jewish Character" Syndrome
From Refugees To Citizens At Home
Palestine Land Society
Considering the European Jews' history of oppression, Jewish fear of gentiles is understandable. But when this fear is forged into active policy, it is dangerous and bloody, as the case has been in Palestine. The expulsion of the Palestinians and expropriation of their property, as a precondition for establishing the state of Israel, was a result of this paranoia. That was Ben-Gurion's doctrine, now fully documented by historians. This doctrine is still being followed. It calls for committing an actual murder for fear that the victim, if he lived, might harm the murderer.
The claim that the "Jewish character" of Israel would be threatened is commonly recited to justify the denial of the fundamental right of Palestinians to their land and property. But what is the meaning of "Jewish character"? Does it mean legal character, demographic, social or religious?
If it entails policies that deny the return of refugees and allow unlimited numbers of Jewish immigrants in their place, these policies are best described by the noted jurists Thomas and Sally Mallison, who pointed out that "the term, 'the Jewish character', is really a euphemism for the Zionist discriminatory statutes of the State of Israel which violate the human rights provisions of the Partition Resolution..... The United Nations is under no more of a legal obligation to maintain Zionism in Israel than it is to maintain apartheid in the Republic of South Africa." The US State Department rejected any special meaning for the Jewish citizens of Israel by stating that it "does not recognize the legal-political relationship based on the religious identification of American citizens.... Accordingly it should be clear that the Department of State does not regard the 'Jewish people' concept as a concept of international law."
This is not an isolated view. In 1998 the UN Treaty-based Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights said that Israel's "excessive emphasis upon the State as a 'Jewish State' encourages discrimination and accords a second-class status to its non-Jewish citizens.... The Committee notes with grave concern that the Status Law of 1952 authorizes the World Zionist Organization/Jewish Agency and its subsidiaries including the Jewish National Fund to control most of the land in Israel, since these institutions are chartered to benefit Jews exclusively.... The Committee takes the view that large-scale and systematic confiscation of Palestinian land and property by the State and transfer of that property to these agencies constitute an institutionalized form of discrimination because these agencies by definition would deny the use of these properties by non-Jews." Israel cannot maintain this position for long. The moral and legal weight of human rights will catch up with it one day. How can this concept of "Jewish character" be an acceptable basis for peaceful relations?
Some Israelis understand the "Jewish character" as a society in which Jews are a numerical majority. But in what territory? In the whole of British Mandatory Palestine? Today, 47 percent of the population of Palestine are (non-Jewish) Arabs and 53 percent Jews. In fact, the percentage would be reversed if we take account of the fact that 62 percent of the Russian immigrants are not really Jews.
Let us examine this matter further. Israel's Master Plan for the year 2020 made a detailed study of population increase in Israel with various scenarios for Jewish immigration. The standard case gives a population of 8,100,000, of which 5,832,000 are Jews and 2,268 (40% of Jews) are Palestinians, in the years 2020. In the same year, Palestinian refugees will increase to 11 million.
The Jews in the world are about 13 million and decreasing at a rate of -0.50% due to mixed marriages and conversion or abandonment of religion. That is because 98% of Jews live in affluent societies and have no need for protectionist measures leading to isolation. Israel plans to have 52% of the world Jewry, or more, in Israel by the year 2020.
Sharon's aggressive plans call for removing the remainder of Russian, all South American and South African Jews from their countries to Israel. Jews in Europe and USA have no interest to immigrate save for the zealots who now build settlements and terrorize the West Bank.
Taking the most and least optimistic forecasts of Jewish immigration (1,700,000 and 800,000 respectively), it becomes apparent that there is an upper limit for immigration which may be reached before 2020 (Fig. 13). Showing the Palestinian increase in Israel on the same curve, it is clear that they will overtake the Jews in or around the year 2070 with or without immigration. That is assuming that no other factor comes into play before then. By 2070, the total number of refugees will be equal to the size of Egypt today at 61 million.
The fallacy of Israeli arguments, aiming to maintain Jewish majority, is abundantly clear. They aim to attain an impossible goal: that Jews will remain a majority at all times in all territories held by Israel. This is impossible. Either the time within which this majority can be maintained shrinks or the territory in which this can be maintained shrinks. A better solution for Jews, indeed for all people, is to live with the people of the land, not instead of them.
All these examples indicate that the notion of the numerical superiority of Jews is a cruel time game in which the refugees rot in their camps until the Israelis realize, or admit, that this contention is a horrible hoax, intended to keep the conquered land empty until its owners give up or are gotten rid of by a "final solution" of the Palestinian problem.
The most incredible notion is the claim that the "Jewish character" means a socially homogeneous society in which Jews speak one language, dress and behave similarly, and uphold the same values, such that the presence of one national group as the Palestinians will 'pollute' this uniformity. It is hard to imagine that very many Israelis really believe this. There are no dominant common features between the Russians and Moroccans, the Mizrahi and Ashkenazi or the Haredim and the secular. There are thirty-two official spoken languages in Israel and about two dozen political groups with an equivalent number of newspapers for a Jewish population a little larger than Los Angeles. The problem of their fractured society is a serious one, and it is already causing internal conflict in Israel, now tenuously held together by the drummed-up Arab danger. Considerable research has already been devoted to this question. The return of Palestinians to their ancestral homes would not substantially exacerbate these problems. Already, the Palestinian citizens of Israel (Fig 9) are 11 percent of the population in group A, 21 percent in group B and 70 percent in group C.
If the "Jewish character" refers to religious practice, this has rarely been a problem in the Arab and Islamic world. Numerous historians have demonstrated that the treatment of Jewish minorities by Islamic and Arab societies has been far better than that by Christian societies.
There is no ethical or legal justification for the maintenance of a "Jewish character" that denies human rights or violates international law. The real reason for Israel's racist practices is to maintain its hold on Palestinian land and keep it as a reserve for future Jewish immigration. On March 1, 2001, the Israeli media reported that Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon told the Jewish Agency that his plan is to bring 1 million immigrants from Russia, Mexico and Ethiopia, and that Israel must bring all of the world's Jews to Israel by 2020.
Ethnic Cleansing Plan
Getting rid of the native inhabitants of Palestine has long been one of the tenets of Zionism. It was clearly spelled out by Yosef Weitz, the head of the Transfer Committee and the chief of land-confiscation operations. As early as 1940, he proposed an ethnic cleansing plan: "The only solution is to transfer the Arabs from here to neighbouring countries. Not a single village or a single tribe must be left."
Plan Dalet was designed to "occupy...expel" the Palestinian people. It was David Ben-Gurion's doctrine that the destruction of the Palestinian people and their cultural and physical landscape was the precondition for creating the state of Israel on its ruins. The systematic elimination of the Palestinians in 1948 took the following forms:
Military Plans for Jewish Settlement
As early as January 1948, four months before the official war began, the Zionists prepared plans for the settlement of 1.5 million new immigrants over and above the existing 600,000 Jews, two-thirds of whom were themselves recent immigrants under the British Mandate. During the Jewish military operations that followed the UN partition resolution of November 1947 and before the end of the British Mandate, more than half of the Palestinian refugees were expelled. The settlement agencies headed by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) directed the military attacks to acquire coveted land, such as the villages of Indur, Qumiya, Ma'lul, Mujaidil and Buteimat in Galilee, which were destroyed primarily to grab their land.
Physical Elimination of the Refugees
Almost every one of the thirty-odd Zionist/Israeli military operations was accompanied by a massacre of civilians. There were at least thirty-five reported massacres, half of which took place before any Arab regular soldier set foot in Palestine. The most notorious of these massacres is Deir Yassin, the largest is Dawayma, and the latest disclosed by an Israeli researcher, Teddy Katz, but known to Palestinians all along, is Tantoura.
Shooting of civilians was not restricted to wartime. After the fighting ceased, some of the refugees tried to return home to rescue civilians left behind, to retrieve some belongings or to attend to crops or cattle. These returnees were shot on the spot as "infiltrators." The UN truce observers reported hundreds of such cases.
Plunder and Destruction of Property
Plunder took place in the immediate aftermath of military assaults, especially in cities such as Haifa, Jaffa, Lydda, and Jerusalem. The looters included nearby kibbutzniks, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) brigade commanders and the high-ranking political figures of the ruling Mapai (Labor) party. There followed a massive campaign of destruction, which lasted over fifteen years and in which 53 percent of the 418 villages surveyed were totally destroyed and 44.5 percent partially destroyed. The clear aim of this destruction was to prevent the return of the refugees.
Political Action
Soon after the state of Israel was declared on May 14, 1948 and following the protest of UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte, who witnessed, by June 1948, the expulsion of about 500,000 refugees, the Provisional Government of Israel stated that it could not allow any refugees to return before a peace treaty was signed, on the pretext that these refugees would be a "security threat." Even after the fighting stopped, Israel refused to re-admit the refugees, and it maintains this position in the international arena to this day. It does so even though Israel's admission to the UN in May 1949 was unique in that it is the only UN member whose admittance is "conditional" upon the return of refugees (Resolution 194) and withdrawal to the lines of the partition plan (Resolution 181).
Creation of a Fictitious Legal Web to Mask Illegal Confiscation
Before, during and after the 1948 war, Israel/Zionists resorted to many pseudo-legal devices to organize and justify the confiscation of 18,700 square kilometres (92 percent of Israel) of Palestinian land, in addition to the property found in 530 depopulated towns and villages. The property was held by the Custodian of the Absentee (i.e., refugee) Property and transferred later to the Development Authority. All such land, as well as JNF holdings, is now administered by the Israel Land Administration (ILA). According to Israel, the "Absentee" is a Palestinian refugee not allowed by Israel to return. The term also applies to Palestinian citizens of Israel, who are not "Absent," hence dubbed "Present Absentees"; much of their land has also been confiscated.
Importing of Jewish Immigrants to Fill the Depopulated Villages
Immediately upon the invasion of Palestinian villages, Israel activated its program of sending Mossad agents to transport Jews in Arab countries to Israel. The immigrants were persuaded by a mixture of rosy promises, incentives, and, for the reluctant ones, various acts of coercion, including throwing grenades at their houses. About 700,000 Jewish immigrants arrived in the period 1949-52. Many of them were unhappy about the discriminatory treatment they received at the hands of the ruling Ashkenazi. Their resentment is still strong today.
All these actions were designed to prevent the return of refugees to their homes. While Israel was successful in preventing their return, the refugees remained adamant in their intention to return. They could often see their old homes across the barbed wire of the armistice line; indeed, most refugees still reside within a two-hour bus ride of their homes. After their expulsion during al Nakba of 1948, the problem for Israel thus became how to get rid of the refugees themselves, wherever they may be in exile.
The Right of Return is Legal
First, the Right of Return is perfectly legal in accordance with international law. The well-known UN Resolution 194 has been affirmed by the international community 135 times in the period 1948-2000. There is nothing like it in UN history. This universal consensus elevates this resolution from a "recommendation" to an expression of the determined will of the international community. International law also prohibits mass denationalization of a people if the territory in which they live undergoes a change of sovereignty. Thus the refugees are entitled to return to the homes they lost and to a restoration of their nationality as well. The Right of Return is supported by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the many regional conventions based on human rights law. It is also derived from the sanctity of private ownership, which is not diminished by change of sovereignty, occupation or passage of time.
Second, the Right of Return is sacred to all Palestinians. It has remained their fundamental objective since 1948. Their determination on the return issue has endured despite warfare, suffering, and enormous social and political hardships. In this, the refugee from Iqrit, who is an Israeli citizen, the refugee from Lydda, who is a Jordanian citizen, the refugee from Haifa, who is stateless in Syria or Lebanon, and the refugee from Jaffa, who is a US citizen, have the same determination.
Third, there is no acceptable reason why they should not return. The Israelis oppose return on the grounds that it will pollute the "Jewish character" of Israel and cause outward emigration of Jews. They say it is impossible because the refugees' villages have been destroyed and property boundaries lost. A senior Israeli intelligence General still perpetuates this claim when he says, "while the principle of 'return to their original homes' was fitting and possible in 1948, it has not been a realistic option for years. Implementing it today would mean dismantling and destroying the new infrastructure built in the last 50 years". None of these claims stand serious scrutiny. They are meant to perpetuate the act of ethnic cleansing. They try to derive some comfort from the dubious assumption that, while planning a crime is illegal and reprehensible, carrying it out efficiently is acceptable.
ORIGINAL
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Editorial: Democrat Senator Calls for 30,000 More Troops to be Sent into the Iraqi Meat Grinder
December 06th 2006
Kurt Nimmo
As the so-called Iraq Study Group "recommendations" hit the street, dubiously entitled "The Way Forward: A New Approach," Texan Democrat, soon-to-be chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Silvestre Reyes, has called for sending more "dumb, stupid animals," as Henry Kissinger once fondly called our soldiers, into the Iraqi meat grinder.
Reyes "wants to see an increase of 20,000 to 30,000 U.S. troops," according to Newsweek. "We have to consider the need for additional troops to be in Iraq, to take out the militias and stabilize Iraq ... We certainly can't leave Iraq and run the risk that it becomes [like] Afghanistan," apparently a reference to the presence of "al-Qaeda" and the Taliban, both created by the CIA and Pakistan's ISI.
As the corporate media suffers from acute amnesia, we hear nada about the established fact the Pentagon organized and unleashed many of the militias currently running amok in Iraq.
"Not only are many of these shadowy militias linked to Iraqi politicians, but the Pentagon is arming, training, and funding them for use in counter-insurgency operations," writes A.K. Gupta. "What you're seeing is, I think, really the fruition of U.S. strategy in Iraq," Gupta told Democracy Now last December. The United States "set up these militias. They funded them. They armed them. They trained them. And a lot of this came out in the Pentagon's own reports, Pentagon's generals talking about how great they were over a year ago, how they really took the fight to the resistance. And so, what's been going on is that the U.S. has set these up."
And what is the "U.S. strategy in Iraq"? To foment as much sectarian strife, chaos, murder, and social collapse as possible. In the meantime, the Bush neocons have lambasted the "embattled prime minister," i.e., puppet and fall guy, Nuri al-Maliki for not "disarming the militias, halting sectarian violence, and shouldering more responsibility for the country's security," according to the Guardian last October.
"One of the long-standing goals of such neoconservative intellectuals has been to see the Middle East broken up into smaller ethnic or sectarian mini-states, which would include not only large stateless nationalities like the Kurds, but Maronite Christians, Druze, Arab Shi'ites, and others," writes Stephen Zunes. "Such a policy comes not out of respect for the right of self-determination-indeed, the neocons have been steadfast opponents of the Palestinians' desire for statehood, even alongside a secure Israel-but out of an imperial quest for divide-and-rule. The division of the Middle East has long been seen as a means of countering the threat of pan-Arab nationalism and, more recently, pan-Islamist movements. Given the mosaic of ethnicities and sects in the Middle East, with various groupings having mixed together within both urban and rural settings for many generations, the establishment of such ethnic or sectarian mini-states would almost certainly result in forced population transfers, ethnic cleansing, and other human suffering."
"At the outset of the Occupation, it was clear that the U.S. would rule Iraq by breaking the country into mini states or regions and dividing the Iraqi population on ethnic and sectarian lines," Ghali Hassan wrote in February. "The Occupation-orchestrated violence between Iraqis was meant to provide a pretext for the long-term occupation of Iraq, and direct Iraqis anger away from the brutality and violence of the Occupation."
To cement these divisions within Iraqi society, the U.S. and its allies staged illegitimate and fraudulent elections. The latter were designed to establish sectarianism-not 'democracy'-as well as legitimize the Occupation. Iraqis were promoted and encouraged to vote based on their religious and ethnic affiliations. Both the electoral system and the methods of voter mobilization applied by major players were meant to fan the flames of sectarianism rather than contribute to national unity and liberation. There were no candidates or political parties with political ideologies, just religious and ethnic slates. In addition, the U.S.-drafted Constitution was there to cement and legitimize these various divisions.
Few seem to remember the "Salvador Option," actually proposed by the Pentagon last year. "Following that model, one Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen," Michael Hirsh and John Barry wrote for Newsweek. Or does the corporate media care to recall the fact two Brits, members of the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, were caught disguised as Arabs with a car full of weapons and explosives (see my British "Pseudo-Gang" Terrorists Exposed in Basra).
For regular readers of this blog, all of this comes as no surprise. It is part and parcel of the ongoing plan, forged decades ago by the Israelis and later adopted by the Israel First neocons, to fragment the Arab and Muslim Middle East into a mosaic of weak and politically and ethnically divided Bantustans. According to the Israeli strategist Oded Yinon, after the Arabs are splintered "into ethnically or religiously unique areas," there will need be "garrisons" established to "prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together," as Zbigniew Brzezinski would have it.
Initially, the Israelis figured they'd be the ones to set-up and man these garrisons, but as their recent experience in Lebanon demonstrated, they are not up to the task. Instead, thanks to the handiwork of the neocons, these garrisons, now known as "enduring camps" in Pentagon parlance, are scattered around Iraq with a massive, billion dollar plus "embassy" in Baghdad that will ultimately coordinate operations across "Haddadland," as the Israelis called southern Lebanon under their brutal occupation, that is before Hezbollah kicked them out.
Thus more troops are required, as Rep. Silvestre Reyes demands, regardless of the conclusions of the Iraq Study Group.
In the months ahead, we should expect the Democrats to follow the script, as authored by the neocons and the Israelis, albeit with possible management style tweaking. More troops will be sent to Iraq and vague assurances of "withdrawal," probably with "honor," as Nixon claimed during a previous war.
In fact, Nixon is the template here, as he promised peace with honor in 1968, although he never offered to end the war in Vietnam, prompting Democrat nominee Hubert H. Humphrey to allege that he must have had some "secret plan." It took seven agonizing years from Nixon's promise to Operation Frequent Wind, when evacuees scrambled to Air America (CIA) helicopters for a mad dash out of the country.
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Editorial: US and Israel targeting DNA in Gaza? Part 1: The DIME bomb, yet another genotoxic weapon
James Brooks
Online Journal
Dec 5, 2006
It's been almost five months since the first report that
Israeli drone aircraft have been dropping a "mystery weapon" on Palestinians in
the Gaza Strip. Since then, news media around the world have run stories
depicting the strange and "horrific" wounds inflicted by the new bomb. The
international press has spoken with Palestinian doctors and medics who say
Israel's new device is a kind of chemical weapon that has significantly
increased the fatality rate among the victims of Israeli attacks. [1] [2]
In mid-October, Italian investigators reported forensic
evidence that suggests the new weapon may also represent the near future of US
"counterinsurgency warfare." Combined with photographs of the victims and
testimony from attending doctors, this evidence points to the use of Dense
Inert Metal Explosives (DIME). [3]
DIME is an LCD ("low collateral damage") weapon developed at
the US Air Force Research Laboratory. Publicly, it is slated for initial
deployment in 2008. DIME bombs produce an unusually powerful blast within a
relatively small area, spraying a superheated "micro-shrapnel" of powdered Heavy
Metal Tungsten Alloy (HMTA). Scientific studies have found that HMTA is
chemically toxic, damages the immune system, rapidly causes cancer, and attacks
DNA (genotoxic). [4-11]
It is unfortunate that the US media have virtually blacked
out the story of Israel's new weapon, not least because our own military may
soon be using it in Iraq and Afghanistan. The story might also have told us
something about the grossly disproportionate brutality of Israel's war on the
Palestinian people -- reason enough for the media to suppress it. [12]
Thanks to the intrepid Italians, the story could even have
introduced Americans to their government's DIME weapons program. This
three-part article will ask whether Israel is 'testing' US DIME bombs in the
Gaza Strip, and explore the workings, dangers, and projected use of DIME
weapons and their roots in depleted uranium (DU) research. These parallels will
lead us to consider DIME in its historical context, as the latest innovation in
the US military's long-running development of genotoxic weapons.
"They cannot return to life again"
The first reports about 'Israel's new weapon' came from Dr
Joma Al-Saqqa, chief of the emergency unit at Gaza's largest hospital,
Al-Shifa. Dr. Al-Saqqa said that Israel was using "a new 'chemical' weapon" and
its siege was "a live exercise on a new ammunition that, so far, has resulted
in killing 50 Palestinians and injuring 200." He observed that, "despite the
damage in internal soft tissue in the bodies of injured people, the fragments
were not detected by X-ray. In other words, they had disappeared or dissolved
inside the body." [13]
"There were usually entry and exit wounds," Dr. Al-Saqqa
reported. "When the wounds were explored no foreign material was found. There
was tissue death, the extent of which was difficult to determine. . . . A
higher deep infection rate resulted with subsequent amputation. In spite of
amputation there was a higher mortality." The effects of the weapon seemed
"radioactive." [14] [15]
According to Palestine News Network, Dr. Al-Saqqa "confirmed
that there were dozens of wounded legs and arms. Many of them had been burned
from the inside, and distorted to the point that they cannot return to life
again." [16]
"When the shrapnel hit[s] the body, it causes very strong
burns that destroy the tissues around the bones . . . it burns and destroys
internal organs, like the liver, kidneys, and the spleen and other organs and
makes saving the wounded almost impossible. As a surgeon, I have seen thousands
of wounds during the Intifada, but nothing was like this weapon." [17]
However, Dr. Al-Saqqa could not analyze the chemistry of the bizarre wounds. On the first day of the siege, June 27, Israel had conveniently
destroyed Gaza's only crime laboratory. [18]
Despite his pleas to the "international community" to
investigate and lend assistance in treating the victims, "no one has lifted a
finger," the doctor was quoted in mid-July. "What we found were journalists who
came to take pictures, but as for the medical community, nothing." [19]
On August 3, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency
(UNRWA) reported that Commissioner-General Karen AbuZayd had visited Dr.
Al-Saqqa's hospital, "where the staff is struggling to deal with wounds
resulting in an unusually high number of amputations." Commissioner AbuZayd
commented that "what we saw in Al-Shifa . . . was rather horrific." [20]
According to Merlin (Medical Emergency Relief
International), "75 per cent of war-wounded patients admitted at one hospital
needed amputations" following an Israeli attack on Gaza City. [21]
The World Health Organization was reportedly considering an
investigation into the injuries. Physicians for Human Rights - Israel "agreed
to take away fragments of tissue from the bodies of Palestinians killed during
the recent military operations in Gaza for possible analysis in Israel but
urged the medics to seek an international investigation." [22]
Tungsten in tissue samples: A DIME weapon?
On October 19, Italy's Rai24news televised an investigative
report that supplied crucial new information. The Italian investigators had
tissue samples from the victims in Gaza analyzed by Dr. Carmela Vaccaio at
University Parma. Dr. Vaccaio reportedly found "a very high concentration of
carbon and the presence of unusual materials, such as copper, aluminum and
tungsten." The doctor concluded that her "findings could be in line with
the hypothesis that the weapon in question is DIME."
Rai24news reporters also talked to Maj. Gen. Yitzhak
Ben-Israel, former chief of the Israeli Defense Force's (IDF's) weapons
development program. General Ben-Israel appeared to be familiar with DIME
weapons. He explained that "one of the ideas is to allow those targeted to
be hit without causing damage to bystanders or other persons." [23]
The US Air Force refers to this emerging realm of weaponry
as FLM (Focused Lethality Munitions). FLM is expected to provide the 'weapons
of choice' for targeting "terrorists hiding among civilians," as a cheerleading
Wall Street Journal article put it. [24]
With "focused lethality [and] higher energy materials . . . nano
particles, intelligent fuzing, [and] mass focus lethality," the Air Force "will
be able to strike effectively, wherever and whenever necessary, with minimal
collateral damage." Ominously, the military thinks these weapons will allow it
to target sites "previously off limits to the warfighter." [25] [26]
This warfare of the future is reminiscent of what Israel has
been doing for years, but with one-ton bombs, 155-mm artillery shells, and
tank-fired antipersonnel flechette bombs. Are FLM weapons like DIME an
improvement? Or will they actually increase civilian casualties and suffering,
and mimic depleted uranium weapons by inducing disease and genetic damage in
their victims? These disturbing questions will be explored in the next
installment of this article.
References
1) Palestinian
injuries suggest Israel is using chemical weapons in Gaza, Ma'an News,
7/10/2006
2) Israel used
chemical weapons in Lebanon and Gaza, Jean Shaoul, wsws.org, 10/24/2006
3) Italian TV:
Israel used new weapon prototype in Gaza Strip, Ha'aretz, 10/19/2006
4) Dense
Inert Metal Explosive (DIME), GlobalSecurity.org, 10/18/2006
5) Abstract:
Potential late health effects of depleted uranium and tungsten used in
armor-piercing munitions: comparison of neoplastic transformation and
genotoxicity with the known carcinogen nickel, Miller, AC, et al, PubMed,
11/26/2006
6) Neoplastic
transformation of human osteoblast cells to the tumorigenic phenotype by heavy
metal-tungsten alloy particles: induction of genotoxic effects, Miller, AC,
et al, Carcinogenesis, Vol. 22, No. 1, 115-125, January 2001, Oxford University
Press
7) Abstract:
Carcinogenic Potential of Depleted Uranium and Tungsten Alloys, Alexandra C
Miller, Ph. D., Department Of Defense, Armed Forces Radiobiology Research
Institute (AFRRI)
8) Depleted
uranium-catalyzed oxidative DNA damage: absence of significant, alpha particle
decay, Miller, AC, et al, Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry, Issue 91, 2002
pp. 246- 252
9) Embedded
Weapons-Grade Tungsten Alloy Shrapnel Rapidly Induces Metastatic High-Grade
Rhabdomyosarcomas in F344 Rats, Kalinich et al, Environmental Health
Perspectives Volume 113, Number 6, June 2005
10) Abstract: Effect
of the militarily-relevant heavy metals, depleted uranium and heavy metal
tungsten-alloy on gene expression in human liver carcinoma cells (HepG2),
Miller, AC, et al, SpringerLink/Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, 1/1/2004
11) Preconceptional
paternal exposure to radiation or heavy metals like cadmium can induce cancer
in unexposed offspring, Alexandra C. Miller, Rafael Rivas, Robert J. Merlot
and Paul, Carcinogenesis 5: Environmental and Endogenous Carcinogens/Proc Amer
Assoc Cancer Res, Volume 47, 2006
12) If Americans
Knew
13) Israel
'is using chemical ammunition' in Gaza, Duraid Al Baik, Centre for Research on
Globalization/Gulf News, 6/13/2006
14) Are New Weapons Being
Used In Gaza and Lebanon?, David Halpin MB BS FRCS, Electronic Intifada,
8/14/2006
15) Ministry
of Health report on toxic Israeli weapons confirmed by Gaza City medical
sources, Palestine News Network, 7/13/2006
16) ibid.
17) Doctors Report
Unusual Weapon Used in Gaza, Pacifica/Free
Speech Radio News 7/11/2006
18) Israel
'is using chemical ammunition' in Gaza, Centre for Research on
Globalization/Gulf News, 6/13/2006
19) Ministry
of Health report on toxic Israeli weapons confirmed by Gaza City medical
sources, Palestine News Network, 7/13/2006
20) UNRWA Commissioner-General Karen AbuZayd: "Please
don't forget what's going on in Gaza," ReliefWeb/UNRWA, 8/3/2006
21) Hospitals in Gaza
overwhelmed and running out of supplies, Electronic Intifada/Merlin,
8/8/2006
22) Gaza
doctors encounter 'unexplained injuries', Donald Macintyre,
The Independent 9/4/2006
23) Italian TV:
Israel used new weapon prototype in Gaza Strip, Ha'aretz, 10/12/2006
24) Air Force seeks a
bomb with less bang, Greg Jaffe, The Wall Street Journal/Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette, 4/11/2006
25) Munition Technology
Drivers, Col. Thomas "Mas" Masiell, Air Force Research Laboratory,
12/1/2006
26) USAF
Unfunded Priority List (UPL), SAF/FMB POC, FY 2007, February 2006, Page 54
Comment on this Editorial
Editorial: US and Israel targeting DNA in Gaza? Part 2: The DIME bomb, yet another genotoxic weapon
James Brooks
Online Journal
Dec 6, 2006
"Horrific" wounds in Gaza may be warfare of the future
In early July, shortly after the beginning of Israel's
bloody military siege of the Gaza Strip, reports began to appear that Israeli
forces were using a new weapon that inflicted strange and untreatable wounds,
and significantly increased the death tolls of Israel's attacks. [1] [2]
Italian investigators have reported evidence that the
unidentified Israeli weapon is probably Dense Inert Metal Explosives, or DIME,
a so-called LCD ("low collateral damage") weapon developed by the United States
Air Force. [3]
DIME bombs blast a superheated "micro-shrapnel" of powdered
heavy metal tungsten alloy (HMTA). Studies indicate that HMTA embedded in the
body disrupts biochemistry and rapidly causes cancer. Like depleted uranium
(DU), HMTA is genotoxic -- it is capable of inflicting genetic mutations. [4-10]
Publicly slated for deployment in 2008, DIME bombs are small
but unusually powerful. Their carbon fiber casings make "more of the blast
energy . . . available as blast as opposed to being absorbed in [a] steel
case". The carbon reportedly breaks into "thousands of harmless fibers" to
prevent unintended casualties from casing shrapnel. [11]
The 'footprint' of the DIME blast is much smaller than a
conventional bomb's, because gravity and air resistance quickly drag the dense,
finely powdered "micro-shrapnel" to the ground. The blast radius is reportedly
as small as 25 feet. [12] [13]
DIME is part of the Air Force's Focused Lethality Munitions
(FLM) program, which is expected to "allow" the targeting of "terrorists"
wherever they are, even in places "previously off limits to the
warfighter." [14]
The ideal of FLM is to reliably kill every human within the
blast zone -- one way or another. It is 'total war' on a 50-foot circle, within
which deaths are not admitted as collateral, but purchased as insurance.
Israel's new weapon "slices" off its victims' legs, leaving
"signs of heat and burns near the point of the amputation." It's "as if a saw
was used to cut through the bone," according to Dr. Habas al-Wahid, head of the
emergency room at Gaza's Shuhada al-Aqsa hospital. [15]
Viewing photographs of the living and dead Palestinian
victims of this device, many of whom are children, we notice patches of
darkened but unburned skin, possibly where metal powder was driven into and/or
through the skin by blast force. A child's torso is peppered with holes, some
of which, judging from doctors' reports, probably tunnel through to exit wounds
in the back. The skin and muscle of one victim is ripped into a blood-encrusted
pulp, as if blasted at close range with tiny birdshot. Some of the corpses are
unrecognizable. Most of the recent photos of "strange" wounds from Gaza appear
to be consistent with what is known about DIME weapons. [16]
The area of a DIME blast should be treated with caution
until it has been decontaminated (assuming this is possible). Depending on the
local HMTA concentration, soil in the blast area may remain barren for an
indefinite period of time, or it may grow plants internally contaminated with
HMTA. [17] [18]
The "who knew?" charade
In the scientific literature on tungsten and its alloys, the
toxicity of HMTA stands apart. This formula (roughly nine parts tungsten and
one part nickel and cobalt or iron) damages DNA even when powders of the metals
are simply mixed together. [4] [5] [9]
Implanting four tiny bits of weapons-grade HMTA in lab mice
induced terminal cancer in 100 percent of the subjects. A powdered HMTA recipe
was tumor-generating and capable of "genotoxic effects." At least one
experiment found parallels in the way DU and HMTA attack DNA. The results of
another suggested that HMTA may pass its genetic damage down to the next
generation. [8] [5] [9] [10]
HMTA may be much more carcinogenic than DU when it is
embedded in the body -- as intended. "Tumors developed rapidly" in rats
implanted with pellets of HMTA, but researchers "did not observe tumor
formation in the DU-implanted rats."
Multiple syndromes of heavy metal poisoning have also been
attributed to this alloy, including polycythemia, which can be induced by
cobalt overdose. Because HMTA contains far too little cobalt to cause the
disease by itself, researchers suspected a synergistic effect among or between
the metals. [8]
In a 2005 article reviewing the "status of health concerns"
about depleted uranium and "surrogate metals" such as HMTA, three scientists at
the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute (AFRRI) wrote that "medical
and political controversies surrounding the use of DU" had spurred "a search
for substitute metals in armor-penetrating munitions." [19]
"[N]ew alloys of tungsten/nickel/cobalt and
tungsten/nickel/iron . . . rival DU in armor-penetrating performance," and are
"among the leading candidates to replace DU in selected munitions." Some of
this ordnance "has already been deployed, although on a relatively small
scale."
The article then reviews the science detailing the alarming
health risks of HMTA, much of it conducted by the authors, whom we thank for
their work. It then attempts to explain how the military's favorite "surrogate
metal" turned out to be almost as genotoxic as DU, and probably more
carcinogenic:
"In many ways the development of substitutes for DU in
munitions has followed a pattern similar to that for DU deployment, in that
incomplete toxicological information was available prior to their release . . .
it was assumed that many years of industrial use of tungsten and alloys such as
tungsten carbide . . . meant they could be used as safely in armaments."
We infer that it was reasonable for the military to deploy
DU weapons, because the toxicological information was "incomplete." It's a
strange scientific rigor that requires us to know exactly how a known poison
works before we stop giving it to people.
The cold fact is that there never was a scientifically valid
reason to "assume" that depleted uranium could be used "safely in armaments."
Quite the opposite; as we shall see in part three, the Army realized more than
60 years ago that finely powdered uranium products could make extremely potent
antipersonnel weapons. [20]
We currently have "incomplete toxicological information"
about HMTA, but for more than 15 years we have had clear warnings about the
health risks of combining these metals. US weapons scientists should have known
as early as 1992 that mixing cobalt with tungsten could greatly increase the
resulting alloy's cancer potential. [21] [22]
It is hardly news that nickel is carcinogenic and genotoxic,
and specialists have long noted that heavy metal alloys tend to unpredictably
amplify the toxicities of their component metals. With this kind of "incomplete"
information at hand, could military scientists have reasonably "assumed" that
nickel would be a "safe" addition to HMTA?
Concerns have been voiced about tungsten sport ammunition
for several years. Tungsten alloy bullets, some also containing nickel and
cobalt (for superior hardness), were found to pose potential environmental
hazards in several studies. A probable link between industrial tungsten and
leukemia has been identified. Compared to these findings, however, the toxicity
of HMTA may be of a different order. [17] [18]
The "who knew?" apologia offered by the AFRRI researchers
asks us to assume that the scientists who developed DIME weapons proceeded in
sheer ignorance of the existing science. They were so incompetent that they
merely "assumed" that they could use any tungsten alloy.
Does this implausibility jibe with the rest of the picture?
A multi-billion dollar military weapons program is stung by the "controversies"
surrounding its toxic DU weapons, and is under pressure to produce an expedient
alternative. Would this program's scientists have been allowed to be so
cavalier about consulting the literature? Would the replacement metal be chosen
on blind faith, without bothering to conduct even simple studies of its
potential health impacts?
Logically, we must conclude that the military developed HMTA
in the knowledge that it could have significant carcinogenic and genotoxic
effects. Did they "assume" that saying "tungsten is safer than DU" would take
care of the matter?
Perhaps relatively non-toxic tungsten carbide, famed for its
hardness and cutting ability, would not have sufficed for the purposes of the
DIME bomb. Focused Lethality Munitions like DIME must kill all of their
victims. Slicing off their arms and legs is not enough.
The last installment of this article will trace the roots of
HMTA in depleted uranium and decades of US warfare with poisonous, DNA-damaging
powders. Then we will return to Gaza to consider the damage done, and the
damage to come, if the warmakers have their way.
References
1) Israel
accused of using 'Dime' bombs, AlJazeera, 10/13/2006
2) Israel used
chemical weapons in Lebanon and Gaza, Jean Shaoul, wsws.org, 10/24/2006
3) Italian TV:
Israel used new weapon prototype in Gaza Strip, Ha'aretz, 10/12/2006
4) Abstract:
Potential late health effects of depleted uranium and tungsten used in
armor-piercing munitions: comparison of neoplastic transformation and
genotoxicity with the known carcinogen nickel, Miller, AC, et al, PubMed,
11/26/2006
5) Neoplastic
transformation of human osteoblast cells to the tumorigenic phenotype by heavy
metal-tungsten alloy particles: induction of genotoxic effects, Miller, AC, et
al, Carcinogenesis, Vol. 22, No. 1, 115-125, January 2001, Oxford
University Press
6) Abstract:
Carcinogenic Potential of Depleted Uranium and Tungsten Alloys, Alexandra C
Miller, Ph. D., Department Of Defense, Armed Forces Radiobiology Research
Institute (AFRRI)
7) Depleted
uranium-catalyzed oxidative DNA damage: absence of significant alpha particle
decay, Miller, AC, et al, Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry, Issue 91, 2002
pp. 246- 252
8) Embedded
Weapons-Grade Tungsten Alloy Shrapnel Rapidly Induces Metastatic High-Grade
Rhabdomyosarcomas in F344 Rats, Kalinich et al, Environmental Health
Perspectives Volume 113, Number 6, June 2005
9) Abstract: Effect
of the militarily-relevant heavy metals, depleted uranium and heavy metal
tungsten-alloy on gene expression in human liver carcinoma cells (HepG2),
Miller, AC, et al, SpringerLink/Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, 1/1/2004
10) Preconceptional
paternal exposure to radiation or heavy metals like cadmium can induce cancer
in unexposed offspring, Alexandra C. Miller, Rafael Rivas, Robert J. Merlot
and Paul, Carcinogenesis 5: Environmental and Endogenous Carcinogens/Proc Amer
Assoc Cancer Res, Volume 47, 2006
11) Air Force seeks a
bomb with less bang, Greg Jaffe, The Wall Street Journal/Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette, 4/11/2006
12) Cancer
Worries for New U.S. Bombs, DefenseTech.org, 5/20/2006
13) Dense
Inert Metal Explosive (DIME), GlobalSecurity.org, 10/18/2006
14) USAF
Unfunded Priority List (UPL), SAF/FMB POC, FY 2007, February 2006, Page 54
15) Italian TV:
Israel used new weapon prototype in Gaza Strip, Ha'aretz, 10/19/2006
16) Effects
of Israel's New Weapon, Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel
17) Possible
Health And Environmental Impacts Of Tungsten In Lead Replacement Shot, Paul
Harrison and Karen Bradley, MRC Institute for Environment and Health 2005
18) Tungsten
Effects on Soil Environments, Nikolay Strigul, et al, UMass, Annual
International Conference on Soil, Sediments and Water, 10/18/2004
19) Status
of Health Concerns about Military Use of Depleted Uranium and Surrogate Metals
in Armor-Penetrating Munitions, D.E. McClain, A.C. Miller, and J.F.
Kalinich, NATO, 2005
20) Memorandum
to: Brigadier General L. R. Groves From: Drs. Conant, Compton, and Urey,
Midfully.org/War Department, United States Engineer Office, Manhattan District,
Oak Ridge Tennessee, 10/30/1943
21) Abstract:
Comparative study of the acute lung toxicity of pure cobalt powder and
cobalt-tungsten carbide mixture in rats, Lasfargues G., et al, Toxicology
and Applied Pharmacology, 1992
22) Evaluation of the
role of reactive oxygen species in the interactive toxicity of carbide-cobalt
mixtures on macrophages in culture, D. Lison and R. Lauwerys,
SpringerLink//Archives of Toxicology, 6/1/1993
Original
Comment on this Editorial
Something MUST Be Done About Zionism
Life In A Palestinian Refugee Camp
Al-Awda/PRRC
Few people can imagine what life is like living in a refugee camp. Palestinians have been living as refugees in camps since 1948 when they were forced out of their homes by the new Jewish immigrants who just arrived from Europe intending to create the new Jewish-only state of Israel. Today, eighty percent of Palestinians are refugees, many in their own country.
It is a painful story and quite difficult to comprehend. How a people, who have suffered bigotry and hate, would attempt to create a home for themselves by ethnically cleansing an entire population of an indigenous people is astounding. But that is exactly what has been happening to the Palestinian people since the creation of Israel.
As horrific as life has been for Palestinians since the imposition of the Jewish State of Israel, many have tried to make the best of their situation however humanly possible.
One such project is the Ibdaa Cultural Center located at the Dheisheh Refugee Camp. Ibdaa means "to create something out of nothing." As is specified on their web site: the Ibdaa Cultural Center is a grassroots initiative of the Dheisheh Refugee Camp. Founded in 1995, Ibdaa serves over 1,200 children and young people annually through various programs, while providing job opportunities to over 25 families in the camp.
Ibdaa's mission is to provide an environment for the camp's children and young people to develop their abilities, creativity and leadership skills through social, cultural and educational activities not otherwise available.
Ibdaa strives to empower children and instill in them the confidence and strength necessary to face up to their difficult future, while educating the international community about the Palestinian refugee issue. We invite you to visit the Ibdaa Cultural Center web site to learn more about this extraordinary group of very courageous, and quite talented people!
Another such initiative is Save the Children UK's Web Project Eye to Eye. Read an article by UK Independent Columnist Robert Fisk on Eye to Eye.
More information on Life in a Palestinian Refugee Camp can be found at the United Nations UNRWA Web Site.
Comment on this Article
One child injured and four taken prisoners in the southern West Bank
IMEMC & Agencies
06 December 2006
One child was injured and four residents were taken prisoner by the Israeli army in the southern West Bank cities of Hebron and Bethlehem on Wednesday.
Rabi' Awad, 9, was injured, on Wednesday afternoon, by a rubber round in his leg and was moved to a nearby hospital during clashes between the school boys and the Israeli soldiers who invaded Ithna village south of Hebron.
Troops attacked the school boys and fired sound bombs and tear gas before, the students responded with bu hurling stones at the army, eyewitnesses reported.
Earliers on Wednesday morning, troops attacked, searched and ransacked several houses in the city of Hebron ,and the nearby Al Arroub refugee camp, and took three residents prisoners including a mother of five children.
Inass Shaheen, 33, she was taken from here house in Hebron city, Mohamed Abu Shikha, 16, and Mohamed Abu Ghazi, 21, from the Al Arroib refugee camp, all three were taken to unknown locations.
In Bethlehem city, Lou'ai Hlish, 27, was taken prisoner from his home located in Aida refugee camp in the northern side of Bethlehem, when troops invaded the camp and searched a number oh houses there, local sources reported.
Comment: American tax dollars at work. Bush, Clinton, Gore, Pelosi and just about every other "law maker" on Capitol Hill enthusiastically supports Israeli brutality and murder of Palestinian civilians.
Please explain.
Comment on this Article
Two Palestinian Civilians Injured by Israeli army fire in northern Gaza strip
IMEMC & Agencies
06 December 2006
Two Palestinian residents were shot and injured, on Wednesday, when Israeli army troops positioned in the northern Gaza borders opened fire and a group of residents.
Palestinian medical sources reported that the two sustained moderate injuries due multiple hits in their limbs, and were moved to Kamal Adwan hospital for treatment.
Comment on this Article
Troops level two Palestinian homes in Jerusalem
IMEMC & Agencies
06 December 2006
Palestinian sources in Jerusalem reported on Tuesday that Israeli policemen and border-guard units leveled two Palestinian homes in Al Tour and Ras Al Amoud, in East Jerusalem. Israel claims that the houses were constructed without obtaining construction permits from the Jerusalem municipality.
In Al Tour area, soldiers leveled the house of Ghadeer Abu Ghalia, and rendered him, his wife and four children homeless.
Abu Ghalia said that soldiers and policemen attacked their house on Tuesday morning, forces them out within 15 minutes and leveled it.
"My children were sleeping, soldiers said they will demolish the house over our heads if we don't leave immediately", Abu Ghalia said, "I called my lawyer and informed him on what was going on".
The lawyer, Hasan Ghanyim, headed to the municipality to void the demolishing order, but the army did not want to wait until legal documents are presented, and started demolishing the house.
Ghanyim manged to obtain an order from Jerusalem Municipality to spare the house, but it had already been leveled by the soldiers who refused to wait for any legal procedures.
The family received a bill to pay from the municipality requiring them to pay "the expenses of leveling their home".
The house was a 150 square-meter, it included three bedrooms, and one living room; the Ghalia family moved to their house three months ago.
In a separate attack, soldiers leveled another house, which is still under construction, in Ras Al Amoud area in East Jerusalem.
The 180 square-meter building was officially licensed by the Jerusalem municipality, but again soldiers did not wait to see the licence and legal documents.
The demolished house costed the family 180.000 NIS in construction expenses.
The Al Quds Center in Jerusalem said that 42 Palestinian houses were leveled in Jerusalem since the beginning of 2006.
Palestinian living in Jerusalem are facing what became known as silent deportation from the city since the municipality is not allowing them to construct new houses or modify the houses they are living in, while settlements, constructed on Palestinian annexed properties, are expanding and wrapping the city from all sides.
Comment on this Article
Israel demolishes entire Bedouin village in the Negev
Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages
6 December 2006
At 5:00am hundreds of police accompanied six bulldozers and demolished 17 homes and three animal shacks in the village of Twail Abu-Jarwal. The entire village is demolished. People are sitting by the piles of tin that were their modest dwellings and wondering what to do, where to go - even their family cannot host them, as no one has a house standing.
This is the fourth time this year that the government demolished in this village. This time they got it "right" - no house is left standing.
But the villagers have nowhere to go to. They lived on the outskirts of the Bedouin town of Laqia, the old folk paid for plots of land to build homes in the 1970s, they still hold on the receipt, hoping someday to receive the plots. For the last 30 years they have been living on land belonging to others, in shacks, the housing becoming ever more crowded, until there was no room left for another baby. They turned to the government for a solution - the option for joining the rest of the residents of Laqia, in a regular house, on a regular plot of land. But the authorities had no options for them. The owners of the land on which they were living requested that they leave - 30 years is enough. So eventually they left back to their own ancestral land - only a couple of miles south of Laqia - by the old ruined school, by their old cemetery. The adult sons built their old mother a modest brick home. The rest built tin shacks.
A year ago the government came and destroyed several houses - including the brick home. Some of the people of Twail Abu Jarwal rebuilt, some moved into more crowded homes with their adult siblings. The government came nine months later and demolished seven more homes. Again, some rebuilt their shacks, some moved in with family. The government came back last month and just to harass, uprooted fences, holding the sheep. And now they came in order to make sure the work is complete.
Israel's Minister of Interior, Roni Bar-On, two days ago was invited to give answers to the Internal Affairs Committee in the Knesset, as to what solutions the government is advancing in order to solve the issue of the unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Negev, and why the government is demolishing homes while these people have no "legal" options for building homes. Bar-On claimed that everything is just fine, he is doing all he can to deal with this issue, but a criminal must be punished, and therefore all the "illegal" Bedouin homes in the Negev must be demolished. He claimed that as far as he is concerned, there are not enough demolitions in the Negev. And now he has proved that he is a man of his word - 17 homes demolished in one foul swoop.
Of the 150,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel living in the Negev, over 50% live in villages that the government as policy has left "unrecognized", meaning that there are no options for building permits, as well as running water, electricity, roads, sewer systems and trash removal, additionally there are very minimal education and health facilities. This policy's aim is to force the Bedouins off their ancestral lands and to concentrate the Bedouins in urban townships, regardless of their wishes or their culture. However, there are also no options for living in the concentration towns the government has built, as there are no available plots of land for homes, as in the case of the families of the Twail abu-Jarwal village. Therefore the government can "legally" demolish the homes of 80,000 members of this community, while they cannot build one "legal" home.
We need help! Both financial and political.
# Please donate to help the people of the village re-build their homes (tin shacks that stand as homes...) Checks can be sent to RCUV - al Awna Fund (the Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages), POBox 10002, Beer Sheva, zipcode 84105, ISRAEL.
# Please write to your representatives! And tell of the quiet and brutal demolitions of homes and lives in the Israeli Negev, demand that they do something about it.
The Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages is an NGO and was created in 1997 as the representative body for the residents of the 45 Bedouin unrecognized villages in the Israeli Negev. Hssein al-Rafaia is the elected head of the RCUV. For more information, please contact Yeela Raanan, 054 7487005, or via email at yallylivnat@gmail.com, Civil Society Activities Coordinator, Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages.
Comment on this Article
Israel refuses to process visa renewal requests
Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry to the OPT
6 December 2006
"Israel is working overtime to create a demographic change in the oPt by targeting the most vulnerable segment of Palestinian society, denying them residency and forcing them to leave," said Basil Ayish, a spokesperson from the Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry to the oPt. "Palestinian residency holders are likely to follow their spouses and children to another country in order to stay together," Ayish explained.
In a new escalation of Israel's policy of denying Palestinians and their families access to the Israeli occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), the Israeli Civil Administration at Beit El is refusing to accept at least 140 passports for visa extensions. The passport holders are mostly spouses and children of Palestinian I.D.-holders and are residing in the oPt. Many of them have been forced to become "illegal" since their visitor visas have expired while waiting to be renewed by Israel.
Twenty-seven-year-old Subha G is one of these cases. Her mother, brothers and her husband all have Palestinian IDs, but her request for family reunification has been frozen since 1997. "I am seven months pregnant and I am afraid of leaving to renew my visa and becoming stranded outside the country. My whole family is here." Subha said. Palestinian IDs can only be issued by Israel. Since Israel is refusing to process an estimated 120,000 family unification residency applications of spouses and children of Palestinians, foreign family members must renew their visa every three months. All foreign spouses and children of Palestinians who requested visa extensions in October had their passports returned from Beit El on November 19th stamped "Last permit." The passport holders are required to leave the country before their visas expire, which in some cases occurred during Israel's processing of the visa extension application. Israeli authorities are regularly denying entry to family members of Palestinians when they attempt to cross the Israeli controlled borders to the Israeli oPt.
Soha N., a French citizen, lives in Beit Jala with her Palestinian husband and their two children, ages six and eight years old. The Israeli authorities refuse to issue residency to Soha and her children. Therefore, they have been renewing their visas every three months. After applying in October for another visa extension, they received their passports back marked "last permit." Soha's final extension lasts until December 25th. Israeli authorities required her two children to leave by December 4th. The family may now be forced to relocate abroad, as their children are now considered "illegal" after overstaying their visas. Shlomo Dror, spokesperson for the Israeli Civil Administration states that those foreign passport holders with family in the oPt who stay illegally in the country, should expect "tough consequences."
"Israel is working overtime to create a demographic change in the oPt by targeting the most vulnerable segment of Palestinian society, denying them residency and forcing them to leave," said Basil Ayish, a spokesperson from the Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry to the oPt. "Palestinian residency holders are likely to follow their spouses and children to another country in order to stay together," Ayish explained.
Comment on this Article
FAQs on Palestinian Refugees - There are 7.2 million Palestinian refugees worldwide
Al-Awda/PRRC
Who are the Palestinian refugees?
Palestinian refugees are the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine, the majority of whom were dispossessed, were forced to run away or were expelled when the state of Israel was created in 1948. This dispossession and expulsion has continued since with the second largest such event in Palestine taking place during the 1967 war, which Israel launched on its Arab neighbors and which resulted in the occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Palestinian refugees generally fall into three main groups: Palestinian refugees displaced in 1948, internally displaced Palestinians who remained within the areas that became the state of Israel, and Palestinian refugees displaced in 1967 from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. For the past 58 years, Israel has continued to deny Palestinian refugees their right to return to their ancenstral towns, villages and homes.
How did the Palestinian refugee problem arise?
The Palestinian refugee problem arose from a systematic policy of ethnic dispossession and elimination, the results of which are apparent in the Palestinian refugee camps and in the Palestinian Shatat (exile). These policies continue to this day.
Zionist policy sought to create an exclusive homeland for Jews in Palestine, a region that already had an indigenous population with a history stretching back thousands of years. The characterization of Palestine as "a land without a people for a people without a land" was a myth created to suggest that Palestine was waiting to be populated. Nothing was further from the truth and this has been evidenced by the atrocities of 1948 and since.
How did Israel expel Palestinians from their land?
Jewish terrorist groups such as Haganah, Irgun and Stern terrorized the Palestinian street, destroyed villages and slaughtered entire Palestinian families. Thirty four massacres were documented by Zionist historian Benny Morris to have occured within a few months: Al-Abbasiyya, Beit Daras, Bir Al-Saba', Al-Kabri, Haifa, Qisarya. These attacks were part of Plan Dalet and aimed to annihilate the Palestinian population. Approxiamtely 50% of all Palestinian villages were destroyed in 1948 and many cities were cleared from their Palestinian population including Akka, Bir Al-Saba', Bisan, Lod, Al-Majdal, Nazareth, Haifa, Tabaria, Yaffa, and West-Jerusalem among others.
Israeli forces killed an estimated 13,000 Palestinians and forcibly evicted 737,166 Palestinians from their homes and land. Five hundred and thirty one Palestinian villages were entirely depopulated and destroyed.
The tragedy of the refugees continued in 1967. That year, Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and many Palestinians were uprooted for the second time. The refugees found shelter in surrounding countries including Jordan, Syria and Egypt.
How many Palestinian refugees are there today?
Palestinians are the largest and longest suffering group of refugees in the world. One in three refugees world wide is Palestinian. There are about 7.2 million Palestinian refugees worldwide. More than 4.3 million Palestinian refugees and their descendents displaced in 1948 are registered for humanitarian assistance with the United Nations. Another 1.7 million Palestinian refugees and their descendents, also displaced in 1948, are not registered with the UN. About 355,000 Palestinians and their descendents are internally displaced i.e. inside present-day "Israel". When the West Bank and Gaza Strip were occupied in 1967, the UN reported that approximately 200,000 Palestinians fled their homes. These 1967 refugees and their descendants today number about 834,000 persons. As a result of house demolition, revocation of residency rights and construction of illegal settlements on confiscated Palestinian owned-land, at least 57,000 Palestinians have become internally displaced in the occupied West Bank. This number includes 15,000 people so far displaced by the construction of Israel's Annexation Wall. Such dispossession of the Palestinian population continues today.
Where do Palestinian refugees reside today?
The majority of Palestinian refugees live not far from their homes of origin either in their own homeland or in neighboring countries. More than half the refugee population lives in Jordan. Approximately 37.7% live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, comprising about 50 percent of the population in those areas. About 15% live in almost equal numbers in Syria and Lebanon. About 355,000 internally displaced Palestinians reside in present-day Israel. The remaining refugee population lives throughout the world, including the rest of the Arab world. Of the 4.3 million refugees registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), 33% live in UNRWA's 59 refugee camps throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
What are the basic rights of refugees?
According to international law, refugees have the right to return to their homes of origin, receive real property restitution, and compensation for losses and damages. The UN General Assembly set forth the framework for resolving the Palestinian refugee case in UN Resolution 194 (III) which provides: repatriation for those refugees "wishing to return to their homes and live in peace with their neighbors," or compensation for those choosing not to return. On November 22, 1974, Resolution 3236 clarified the right to return as an "inalienable right". In Res. 302 (IV), the UN General Assembly created UNRWA and assigned the agency the task of caring for Palestinian refugees. UNRWA defined Palestinian refugees as persons who resided in Palestine two years prior to the outbreak of hostilities in 1948 and who lost their homes and livelihoods as a result of that war.
Why are Palestinian refugees excluded from coverage under UNHCR's mandate?
When the UN adopted the Refugee Convention and established the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, it excluded those falling within the UNRWA mandate from coverage under UNHCR's mandate. In effect, this has meant that UNHCR does not concern itself with (or count) Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, or the West Bank and Gaza Strip, although the agency assists Palestinian refugees outside the UNRWA-mandate area. Although unintended, the effect has been that Palestinian refugees have enjoyed fewer protections than other refugees because UNRWA only has a mandate to provide Palestinian refugees with humanitarian assistance, and, unlike UNHCR, does not have a specific protection mandate.
Is something being done to rectify this exclusion?
Since the beginning of the last Palestinian uprising, the UN Commission on Human Rights, the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, and some independent refugee experts have argued that the fact that many Palestinian refugees lack effective protection should trigger the applicability of the UN Refugee Convention to Palestinians in the UNRWA mandate area. These organizations and individuals cite Article 1D of the Refugee Convention, which effectively states that whenever protection or assistance for Palestinian refugees has ceased for any reason before their situation is resolved in accordance with the relevant UN resolutions, they shall "be entitled to the benefits of this Convention." Proponents of this view contend that UNHCR should have begun to exercise its protection mandate for Palestinian refugees long ago when it became clear that the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine, which was concerned with protection for Palestinians, was unable to carry out its responsibilities.
Why have Palestinian refugees not returned to their homes?
The state of Israel refuses to allow Palestinian refugees to exercise their natural, legal and historic right to return citing three main arguments; first, that there is no space in Israel for the refugees to return, second, that the return of Palestinian refugees would threaten security and lead to conflict, and finally, that the return of the refugees would jeopardize the Jewish nature of the state. With regards to the first argument, recent research shows that 80% of the Jewish population of present-day 'Israel' resides on 15% of the land. The areas where Palestinian villages were demolished lie mainly uninhabited. Hence there is space. As for security concerns, Palestinian refugees broadly accept that exercising their right to return would not be based on the eviction of Jewish citizens but on the principles of equality and human rights. The final argument though is a testament to Israel's false claim that it is the only democracy in the Middle East. Israel is a democracy for Jews only, and this religion-based discrimination or oxymoron should not be confused with real democracy.
Is there a durable solution?
There can be no comprehensive solution without honoring the rights of Palestinian refugees. Three UN human rights treaty committees have found key aspects of Israel's nationality, citizenship, and land legislation which effectively bar Palestinian refugees from exercising their inalienable right to return to be incompatible with the rights codified in relevant human rights conventions. Israel's ongoing aggression against the Palestinian people and continued pursuit of population transfer are incompatibel with the quest for peace.
Sources:
Adapted from The Palestinian Dispossession - Frequently Asked Questions
May 15, 2003 By MIFTAH
Badil Resource Center for Refugee Rights
Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding
Shaml - Palestinian Diaspora and Refugee Center
United Nations Relief and Works Agency
U.S. Committee for Refugees
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Palestinian Center For Human Rights Reports
PCHR
In January 2001, PCHR began weekly reports on Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Published every Thursday since then, the Weekly Reports are compiled by PCHR's fieldworkers and represent a comprehensive record of human rights violations that week in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
PCHR's Weekly Reports
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PLO recommends dismantling Hamas-led gov't
www.chinaview.cn 2006-12-07 21:43:54
RAMALLAH, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- A special subcommittee formed by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) recommended on Thursday the break-up of the Hamas-led government and called for early elections, sources said.
Israel Radio's Arabic service quoted sources close to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as saying that the committee recommended break-up of the Hamas-led government and formation of a transitional government and set March 2007 as the time to hold parliamentary elections.
There was no official comment from Hamas, which would consider the recommendation as non-binding.
Members of the PLO have been meeting in Ramallah for three days to find out a legal solution to end a political crisis after months of talks failed to come up with a deal.
Meanwhile, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told reporters in Ramallah that it was too early to reach conclusions on what options Abbas could take.
He said that Abbas will chair an expanded meeting with members of the PLO Executive Committee next week to prepare for a speech on solutions.
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Prodi pushes for Jewish Israeli state
Jpost
06/12/2006
Israel needs a guarantee it will be able to maintain its character as a Jewish state, Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi has said in a statement pregnant with diplomatic significance since it implies acceptance of Israel's rejection of Palestinian demands for a "right of return" for refugees and their descendants.
Prodi made the comments at a private meeting in Rome on Saturday, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
The statement faintly echoed US President George W. Bush's commitment in his April 2004 letter to then-prime minister Ariel Sharon prior to disengagement. Then, Bush wrote that the United States "is strongly committed to Israel's security and well-being as a Jewish state."
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has been leading efforts over the last few months to get European leaders to make a similar statement. Senior European diplomatic officials in Israel said they knew of no plans for a public EU-wide statement of this nature.
Bush was even more explicit in his letter, saying "it seems clear that an agreed, just, fair and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refuges there, rather than in Israel."
Prodi's comments were made during a meeting in which the ground rules were that the content of statements would not be made public, so that the participants could speak freely.
Addressing ways to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Prodi said there was a need to provide security assurances to Israel, but that more importantly there was a need to give Israel a guarantee that it "would be able to maintain its Jewish character."
The Italian Embassy had no comment on the remarks.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who in his Sde Boker speech last week called on Palestinians to "relinquish your demand for the realization of the right of return," is scheduled to meet with Prodi next Wednesday during a three-day European visit to Berlin and Rome.
Israel has long argued that if Palestinian refugees and their descendants were allowed to move to Israel, it would tip the demographic balance in favor of the Arabs and lead to the demise of the Jewish state.
Prodi's comments came at a meeting during which he also raised the idea of expanding the European role at the Rafah border crossing to include the entire Philadelphi Corridor if both Israel and the Palestinians agreed. He also said that now was not necessarily the time for large-scale Middle East peace conferences, as some have recommended recently in Europe, but rather for confidence building measures by both sides.
Senior diplomatic officials in Jerusalem said Prodi's comments about the need to provide guarantees that Israel would remain a Jewish state were "very significant," because if European leaders talk about the right of Israel to exist as a homeland for the Jewish people, "they are by definition rejecting the idea of a Palestinian right of return."
"It is important to get everyone on the same page on this," one official said. "If this point were agreed upon by the international community, then it could be possible to begin dealing with finding permanent solutions for the refugees without waiting for a final status agreement."
A public European declaration along these lines would represent a significant shift in European policy, the official added.
Another official, however, said it was very unlikely that Prodi, or any other European leader, would repeat his comments in public or come out with a declaration similar to Bush's, because of the waves it would cause in the Arab world.
Comment: Very interesting. Is there no area of world politics that has not been infected by Zionist sympathizers?
"Another official, however, said it was very unlikely that Prodi, or any other European leader, would repeat his comments in public or come out with a declaration similar to Bush's, because of the waves it would cause in the Arab world."
One would hope that Prodi's comments would make waves with the WHOLE WORLD because they are illegal, unjust and genocidal.
We must now look at the reference to Prodi by Litvinenko in a new light.
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America Slips Down The Drainhole Of History
America's "Holiest Book"?
David Kuo
3 Dec 06
So, a Muslim is coming to the United States House of Representatives and he wants to be sworn into office with his hand on a Koran and not on a Holy Bible. Some conservatives have decided this may well be the end of American civilization. One columnist writes, "He should not be allowed to do so -- not because of any American hostility to the Koran, but because the act undermines American civilization." Some people's election loss grief counseling isn't going well.
The writer, Dennis Prager, goes on to argue that this all comes down to "multicultural hubris." After all, "What Ellison and his Muslim and leftist supporters are saying is that it is of no consequence what America holds as its holiest book; all that matters is what any individual holds to be his holiest book."
So the Bible is America's holiest book? Was there a vote? Did Oprah decide? Was it Jefferson? And if so was it his version of the Bible? Does that mean it is true of every American citizen? Even Kevin Federline? And if it is true then America, with its indifference to the poor and lust for money and power, would be seriously backsliding and in need of spiritual counseling.
No, the BIble isn't Ameirca' holiest book. America doesn't have a holy book. It does have two holy documents, however. One is called the Constitution. The other is known as the Declaration of Independence. That's it. Book study finished.
The Bible may be America's most symbolically holy book for many people. But that is only within the context of American civil religion. And only within the context of civil religion is there a question of whether or not the Koran can be used for a swearing in ceremony.
There, again, the answer is an easy one - yes. In courts across America today, people pledge to tell the truth and the whole truth without putting their hands on the Bible if they so choose. (The same thing is true in swearing-in ceremonies). President Bush participates in celebrating Ramadan. If Islam is good enough for President Bush, I suppose its holy book is good enough for a swearing in ceremony.
What is more deeply troubling than Prager's column, however, is the reaction of a group called the American Family Association. Its head, a man named Donald Wildmon, has called for his supporters to egg on Members of Congress to pass a new law - one requriing every official to be sworn in using the Holy Bible. Good idea except for that dreaded Constitution again. After all it contains these diabolical words in Article VI, section 3, "...no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." Darn those liberal Founders.
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Brainwashing Revisited - You Are The Target
By: Alan Stang
EtherZone
First read the books and see how the Communists divided the Chinese. See how they divided our POWs in Korea and set them against each other. Then let the scales fall from your eyes. Recognize that the nation cannot be saved unless the brainwashing stops. Remember that if black is beautiful, white is all right. You do not need to apologize for being white. Shake the guilt. Stand tall. Then get some Myron Cohen recordings.
The recent, unfunny performance by "Kramer" is the latest evidence that the nation is under Soviet attack far more destructive than Nine Eleven. There is much more to it than "Kramer's" personal situation. Here is a quirky talent who found a niche that propelled him into nationwide prominence and profit. Viewers chortled over his every word and antic. His face was known to millions.
After "Seinfeld," he had his own show, which, if I remember correctly, bombed. Working in a comedy club, he was back at the beginning, which may mean simply that it is difficult for a talent so quirky to find another magical niche. In his business, lightning often strikes only once. So there may have been considerable, suppressed anger waiting to erupt. Whatever the reason, it is reasonable to speculate that "Kramer" now needs to find a new line of work despite his unceasing apologies.
Adding to the preposterous nature of the event, word now arrives that the two men who heckled him were so affronted by his outburst - I say so offended, sir, so hurt, so emotionally devastated, so therefore unable to function, et cetera and so on - that they are demanding money from "Kramer," as much as $10 million. Who can blame them? As Jesse and Al would probably say, the honky is down, so get it while you can.
Why are a few public uses of the word "nigger" worth $10 million? This is a word that blacks use daily when addressing each other in ordinary conversation. But, if you are white, you felt a twinge just now - didn't you? - when you read the word on your screen. Seeing the word triggered something in your head.
A few years back, a financial official in the District of Criminals referred to an appropriation as "niggardly." He was fired of course, presumably by a pinhead who doesn't know the word has nothing whatsoever to do with race, means "stingy," and is of Swedish derivation. The District of Criminals is of course a black city.
"Kramer" is the latest in a long series of white men who suddenly erupt in a religious, or, more often, a racial outburst, and then spend considerable time groveling in apology. Before there was "Kramer," there was Mel Gibson, who apparently took off on the Jews after a bender. Sometimes the outburst appears spontaneous. Sometimes it is the product of much provocation.
Remember that Jews and Jewish groups that specialize in provoking lucrative anti-Semitism excoriated Mel for months about his movie, "The Passion," accusing him of almost everything except child molestation. And the two men who want money heckled "Kramer" at the comedy club. That is Stage One. In Stage Two, the victim, provoked beyond endurance, erupts. In Stage Three, the people he dumps on claim to be insulted. And in Stage Four, the perpetrator publicly grovels and pleads.
By now, this has become routine, to such an extent that I wonder who will be next. What is happening? Notice that you could call people "wops," "micks," "dagos," "honkies," "krauts," "mackerel snappers," "polkas," and so on, all day. Most of the targets of that terminology would laugh. There would be no backlash. For years, whenever I would see a beautiful Polish lady of my acquaintance in San Francisco, she would press me to tell her the latest Polish jokes.
But you had better have everything securely nailed down if you plan to use the words, "nigger" or "kike." Even "broad" or "dame" could get you into trouble. The situation is even more farcical when you remember Jesse's characterization of New York as "Hymietown," and Al's involvement in the fraudulent Tawana Brawley hoax.
Many years ago, in New York, there was a club comedian named Myron Cohen. I interviewed him a couple of times. When Myron came out to perform, he looked like a magazine ad for very expensive suits. I asked him about it and he explained that he never sat down in a working suit. That was why he looked so good. When he finished his act he would return to his dressing room and hang it up.
Myron Cohen was Jewish, but that was irrelevant. His "shtick" was dialects. He told ethnic stories in the appropriate dialects, and he could do any one you could name: Irish, Jewish, German, Polish, black, Latino, Italian, you name it. He was riotously funny, and the people in the audience whose dialects he did probably laughed the loudest. But it is probably just as well that Myron is now in Heaven swapping stories with Henny Youngman ("Now take my wife. Please!) because he would not be allowed to work today. He would be sitting down in his stand-up suits.
The answer to my question is that for many years the people of our country have been subjected to the same brainwashing the Soviets used in Russia and Central Europe; the same brainwashing Mao Tse-tung used on the people of China. And its purpose is the same: to bring the target nation to its knees so that it can be conquered.
Again, I offer my periodic request that you read a couple of books by the man who coined the term "brainwashing," journalist Ed Hunter. I believe that if enough Americans were to read those books, the "Kramer" problem would evaporate. They are Brainwashing and Brainwashing in Red China. Don't let the titles fool you. Because Ed Hunter was a journalist and a good writer, both books are very easy to read and exciting.
They will prove that what is happening to us has happened before; it is exactly what the Communists did in Red China. It has nothing to do with the hurt feelings of offended blacks. In fact, the conspirators who are conducting this latest brainwashing campaign couldn't care less about blacks (or any other minority) whom they consider as inferior as did Simon Legree.
The condemnation of certain words over the course of many years is designed to produce that twinge in your head when you hear words like "nigger," until you respond as an automaton, like a lab animal in a behavioral science experiment. The ultimate purpose is to neutralize you, to reduce you to a quivering hulk afraid to raise your head, a terrified weakling afraid to speak up, who can be easily manipulated.
Look around you. Isn't that the atmosphere we have now? No one wants to lose his job, forfeit lots of money and maybe have to undergo "diversity training," which is just another name for a brainwashing session. Guilt is an enormously effective weapon of control. But if you knew you had nothing to be guilty about, knew you were under attack, the fog would lift.
Notice that the attack is concentrated exclusively on the white man, who is blamed for every problem from asthma to zits. Why? Very simple and it has nothing at all to do with race. The conspiracy for world government assaults the white man because most of the people who run this country are white men. If blacks ran it, the conspirators would be doing the same thing to blacks.
The object is not to indemnify any particular racial, religious or ethnic group for some offense, but to bring America down. That is the explanation for America's present failure of nerve, for the fact that Americans will grovel before any challenge and acquiesce in any outrage, however outrageous.
That is why homosexuality and Islam - and utterly phony history - are now taught in the government schools. That is why the nation is being invaded by illegal aliens. That is why so-called "mainstream" churches now worship Bush, not Jesus Christ. That is why the Communist scheme to eliminate public expressions of Christianity from this country is succeeding.
The recent incident in which six "imams" were removed from that US. Airways flight is more of the same. The obvious purpose is to put you on the defensive with charges of religious discrimination, paving the way for even greater outrages to come. They can get away with it only because of the guilt expertly installed in the American psyche, starting in kindergarten, continuing through college and then maintained by our Communist media, left and right.
Some years ago, I was guesting on a radio show. The black host asked me how guilty I felt about slavery. He was genuinely nonplused when I said I felt no guilt at all, so I explained that slavery in this country was gone long before my grandfathers were born and that during slavery my progenitors were not even in this country; they were running for their lives somewhere else. He seemed genuinely surprised; what I had said was a revelation.
First read the books and see how the Communists divided the Chinese. See how they divided our POWs in Korea and set them against each other. Then let the scales fall from your eyes. Recognize that the nation cannot be saved unless the brainwashing stops. Remember that if black is beautiful, white is all right. You do not need to apologize for being white. Shake the guilt. Stand tall. Then get some Myron Cohen recordings.
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Terrorist State: The USA
by Jack Lessenberry
6 Dec 06
Here is something you need to think about today, and every day, as long as it continues: The United States is engaged in a totally immoral and evil war in Iraq, and has been for nearly four years. It is a war we cannot win, and have indeed already lost. The insurgents, who have so much money they can't spend it all, know they need only wait till politics and the next election drive us out.
This war has cost us immensely in terms of world prestige. Indeed, from an international standpoint, this is the worst thing we have ever done, period. We have gotten thousands of our soldiers killed, essentially for nothing.
We have killed tens of thousands of Iraqis, most of them civilians, and have been an effective recruiting force for all the Middle East's crazies. We have done far more damage to Iraq than Saddam Hussein ever did.
This is the central reality of our nation today. Sometimes I think that talking about anything else - taxes, the collapsing auto industry, even global warming - is a mistake till we get the hell out of Iraq.
Anyone not named George W. Bush knows that the "war," which was never ours to win, is hopeless. No, New England town democracy isn't suddenly going to pop up in some zone where the Sunni and Shia are gleefully murdering each other when they can't find any U.S. Marines to snipe at.
There are decent and patriotic Americans who know this, and yet are genuinely and understandably confused about when we should get out. "Yes," a woman told me, "we never should have been there. But if we leave now won't everything just collapse into murderous chaos?"
Yes, that is a point - as if murderous chaos weren't happening now. Yet it isn't as if, by staying, we could somehow calm things down.
After more than three years, all the signs show that we're just making things worse. The American people don't want any more of this. We are going to leave, hopefully sooner than our delusional head "decider" imagines.
The only positive thing Bush now could do is announce that we are leaving, and that as part of the process of getting out, we will be working to help set up a federation with autonomous areas for Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis.
That would be wildly popular with the Kurds, who have never had a country they could call their own. Would it work? Doubtful. But it would represent something positive, and might give various Iraqis something worth defending.
I recognize that this would mean hundreds or thousands or millions of people might have to move. That's what happened when India and Pakistan became separate countries in 1947, and there was a lot of bloodshed then too.
Not that George W. "Captain Queeg" Bush would be likely to agree to anything that makes sense. The finest columnist in the nation today, in my opinion, is The New York Times' multitalented Frank Rich. Check out his column last Sunday, "Has He Started Talking to the Walls?"
"We've witnessed the troubling behavior of a president who isn't merely in a state of denial, but is completely untethered from reality. It's not that he can't handle the truth about Iraq. He doesn't know what the truth is," Rich said.
"When the president persists in talking about staying until "the mission is complete" even though there is no definable military mission, let alone one that can be completed, he is indulging in pure absurdity ... urgent decisions have to be made by a chief executive who is in touch with reality."
This one isn't. There is more, much more, brilliantly put. But George W. Bush doesn't deserve all the blame for abandoning American values and putting on a bad remake of the decaying Roman Empire.
We are all to blame: The so-called "mainstream media," who were so worried they might be called "liberal" or "biased" that they chose not to report the truth. In return, some got to ride around "in bed with" the soldiers in tanks. Then there were the Democrats, who wanted to have it both ways.
Yes, to paraphrase the immortal words of John Kerry, most of them voted against taking the 30 pieces of silver before they changed their mind and snatched them up. Only much later did they start whining that they should never have gone with the Republicans in the first place.
That doesn't matter now. What matters is getting us out of this mess, and trying to figure out how to start being worthy of being Americans again.
So - do I now finally think George W. Bush should be impeached?
No, I still don't. I've taken a lot of heat ever since I said a few weeks ago that I was opposed to trying to impeach the president.
For one thing, removing him from office isn't practical; there isn't enough time to make a case, and there won't be votes in the Senate to convict him.
But even if we could remove this smirking little man from office, I worry what that would do to our system. Our democracy will be weakened if we get in the habit of trying to remove any president we don't like, anytime they screw up.
Impeaching Bill Clinton over tasteless sex acts was a national farce that made our country look like the worst of Comedy Channel.
And the biggest reason not to impeach Bush is that we voted for this. George W. Bush lied and stole his way into office the first time, and then lied about the reasons for starting this insane war. Yet we re-elected him, long after it was clear what he was selling.
Nobody is innocent. And nobody is offering a white knight who will pop up and clean this up for us.
We have to do it ourselves.
Something nice about the Free Press: Every week, people disgusted with the newspapers urge me to write more criticizing them. I have, however, pretty much decided to stop. The Free Press in particular has virtually abandoned being a newspaper; that is, something that attempts to provide an intelligent and balanced digest of important national, state and local events.
What's maddening is when every so often it does show that it can still be a newspaper. Sunday's paper, for example, had a front page that looked respectable. Granted, stripped across the top was a huge headline about a football game that will never happen.
Otherwise, there was a significant story about the University of Detroit Mercy greatly expanding its dental services and a well-written and carefully nuanced package of stories about aging Nazi war criminals in Michigan.
You just knew, however, that none of those stories would have been there had Pamela Anderson murdered Kid Rock in Warren.
Every week on radio station WUOM I talk to newsmakers about stories that you never hear about. Did you know the Great Lakes are threatened by a new disease that makes fish bleed to death, and the governor can't decide what to do about it?
All I really want from these newspapers is what my muse, Lindsay Lohan, wants from life. Lindsay, who may just be the moral philosopher for the Age of Bush, wrote these two mysterious words to the late Robert Altman's family: "Be adequite," she advised them.
She was trying to tell us all something, which is that we live in a world where our media, whether movies or newspapers, are never quite adequate. And you thought she was just a party girl.
Jack Lessenberry opines weekly for Metro Times. Contact him at letters@metrotimes.com.
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Fine Print in Defense Bill Opens Door to Martial Law
Jeff Stein
6 Dec 06
It's amazing what you can find if you turn over a few rocks in the anti-terrorism legislation Congress approved during the election season.
Take, for example, the John W. Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2006, named for the longtime Armed Services Committee chairman from Virginia.
Signed by President Bush on Oct. 17, the law (PL 109-364) has a provocative provision called "Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies."
The thrust of it seems to be about giving the federal government a far stronger hand in coordinating responses to Katrina-like disasters.
But on closer inspection, its language also alters the two-centuries-old Insurrection Act, which Congress passed in 1807 to limit the president's power to deploy troops within the United States.
That law has long allowed the president to mobilize troops only "to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy."
But the amended law takes the cuffs off.
Specifically, the new language adds "natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident" to the list of conditions permitting the President to take over local authority - particularly "if domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of maintaining public order."
Since the administration broadened what constitutes "conspiracy" in its definition of enemy combatants - anyone who "has purposely and materially supported hostilities against the United States," in the language of the Military Commissions Act (PL 109-366) - critics say it's a formula for executive branch mischief.
Yet despite such a radical turn, the new law garnered little dissent, or even attention, on the Hill.
One of the few to complain, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., warned that the measure virtually invites the White House to declare federal martial law.
It "subverts solid, longstanding posse comitatus statutes that limit the military's involvement in law enforcement, thereby making it easier for the President to declare martial law," he said in remarks submitted to the Congressional Record on Sept. 29.
"The changes to the Insurrection Act will allow the President to use the military, including the National Guard, to carry out law enforcement activities without the consent of a governor," he said.
Moreover, he said, it breaks a long, fundamental tradition of federal restraint.
"Using the military for law enforcement goes against one of the founding tenets of our democracy."
And he criticized the way it was rammed through Congress.
It "was just slipped in the defense bill as a rider with little study," he fumed. "Other congressional committees with jurisdiction over these matters had no chance to comment, let alone hold hearings on, these proposals."
No matter: Safely tucked into the $526 billion defense bill, it easily crossed the goal line on the last day of September.
Silence
The language doesn't just brush aside a liberal Democrat slated to take over the Judiciary Committee come January. It also runs over the backs of the governors, 22 of whom are Republicans.
The governors had waved red flags about the measure on Aug. 1, sending letters of protest from their Washington office to the Republican chairs and ranking Democrats on the House and Senate Armed Services committees.
No response. So they petitioned the party heads on the Hill - Sens. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and Harry Reid, D-Nev., Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and his Democratic opposite, Nancy Pelosi of California.
"This provision was drafted without consultation or input from governors," said the Aug. 6 letter signed by every member of the National Governors Association, "and represents an unprecedented shift in authority from governors . . .to the federal government."
"We urge you," they said, "to drop provisions that would usurp governors' authority over the National Guard during emergencies from the conference agreement on the National Defense Authorization Act."
Again, no response from the leadership, said David Quam, the National Governors Association's director of federal relations.
On Aug. 31, the governors sent another letter to the congressional party leaders, as well as to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who had met quietly with an NGA delegation back in February.
The bill "could encroach on our constitutional authority to protect the citizens of our states," they protested, complaining again about how the provision had been dumped on a midnight express.
"Any issue that affects the mission of the Guard in the states must be addressed in consultation and coordination with governors," they demanded.
"The role of the Guard in the states and to the nation as a whole is too important to have major policy decisions made without full debate and input from governors throughout the policy process."
More silence.
"We did not know until the bill was printed where we stood," Quam said.
That's partly the governors' own fault, said a Republican Senate aide.
"My understanding is that they sent form letters to offices," she said. "If they really want a piece of legislation considered they should have called offices and pushed the matter. No office can handle the amount of form letters that come in each day."
Quam disputed that.
"The letter was only the beginning of the conversation," he said. "The NGA and the governors' offices reached out across the Hill."
Blogosphere
Looking back at the government's chaotic response to Katrina, it's not altogether surprising that the provision drew so little opposition in Congress and attention from the mainstream media.
And of course, it was wrapped in a monster defense bill related to the emergency in Iraq.
But the blogosphere, of course, was all over it.
A close analysis of the bill by Frank Morales, a 58-year-old Episcopal priest in New York who occasionally writes for left-wing publications, spurred a score of liberal and conservative libertarian Web sites to take a look at it.
But a search of The Washington Post and New York Times archives, using the terms "Insurrection Act," "martial law" and "Congress," came up empty.
That's not to say the papers don't care: There's just too much going on in the global war on terror to keep up with, much less write about such a seemingly insignificant provision. The martial law section of the Defense Appropriation Act, for example, takes up just a few paragraphs in the 591-page document.
What else is in there? More intriguing stuff, it looks like - and I'm working my way through it.
BACKCHANNEL CHATTER
Putin on the Risk: Don't be too quick to finger Russian president Vladimir Putin in the radiation rub-out of disaffected former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London Nov. 23, says a retired CIA operative who spent a career trying to outwit his Soviet opposites. "I see it all as a little too pat," says Milt Bearden, a 30-year CIA veteran and chief of its Soviet/East European Division when the Kremlin crumbled in 1990.
"Is Putin insane or stupid? I think not," Bearden e-mailed me last week.
"I tilt toward a setup," Bearden said. The villain? "Someone with the [scientific] resources of a state," a large research laboratory, perhaps, with connections to the criminal underworld.
"This story has legs," Bearden went on, "just what Putin would not want if he was behind it."
Stay tuned...
More on Torture Law: Most legal analysts, as reported here last week, believe that the new law setting up Military Commissions will exempt U.S. officials from prosecution for abusing prisoners, by narrowing the definitions of torture in the 1997 war Crimes Act. But at least one eminent jurist begs to differ.
"Even as retroactively amended and narrowed, a person whose actions caused 'serious' or 'severe' mental or physical suffering at any time after 1997 committed a felony violation of the war Crimes Act and can be prosecuted," maintains Stephen Rickard, a former top State Department official, foreign policy adviser to the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., and prominent Washington lawyer with a speciality in human rights.
"I don't like the definitions of 'torture' and 'cruel and inhuman' conduct," Rickard e-mailed me last week, "but even with all of their flaws, I don't see how they exempt interrogators from potential punishment, especially for the harshest, most controversial techniques."
These days Rickard is the director of the Washington Office of the liberal Open Society Institute.
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Becoming What We Despise
Posted on Dec 5, 2006
By Robert Scheer
Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen, has been tortured by his own government for the better part of three-and-one-half years, suffering years of systematic sensory deprivation documented in his attorneys' filings and supported by photos of the prisoner published this week by the New York Times.
In that time, Padilla, who has been judged by professionals as mentally ill as a consequence of his brutal treatment, has been denied his Constitutional right to a fair and speedy trial and was permitted no legal representation for 21 months.
The Bush administration's excuse for this betrayal of our legal system was that Padilla was a dangerous al Qaeda agent, a big fish caught in the administration's successful pursuit of its much ballyhooed war on terror. In the words of then-U.S. Attorney Gen. John Ashcroft, Padilla was "a known terrorist who was exploring a plan to build and explode a radiological dispersion device, or 'dirty bomb,' in the United States." Those lurid claims were abandoned when the government, faced with a belated U.S. Supreme Court censure, finally charged Padilla with vague and lesser crimes carrying a maximum 15-year sentence.
Were this some isolated case of officially condoned sadism, say in a rural county jail, it could be minimized as an aberration. Instead, it is an all-too-accurate reflection of a presidential policy of dehumanizing anyone even suspected of being an enemy. The Times photos, taken from a government video, give evidence of a heavily manacled prisoner with masked eyes and muffled ears being walked down a corridor within a Navy brig, lending physical evidence to Padilla's lawyer's claims of a pattern of disorienting isolation. "There is nothing comparable in terms of severity of confinement, in terms of how Padilla was held, especially considering that this was pretrial confinement," Philip D. Cave, a former Navy judge advocate general, told the Times.
Obviously, a prisoner who has been deliberately disorientated for so long is no longer in a position to exercise his right to confront his accusers. An examining psychiatrist wrote that "as the result of his experience during his detention and interrogation, Mr. Padilla does not appreciate the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him, is unable to render assistance to counsel, and has impairments in reasoning as the result of a mental illness ... complicated by the neuropsychiatric effects of prolonged isolation."
The excuse for this heinous treatment of a U.S. citizen is the same as that given for an entire orgy of despicable treatment of prisoners held in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and a gulag archipelago of secret military facilities around the world: Our enemies, all linked through sophistry to the 9/11 terror attacks, are so vile and dangerous that the limitations on government power enshrined in our guiding documents and political culture no longer apply. Once the Twin Towers were knocked down, supposedly, we could no longer afford to be "nice guys"-as if the rule of law is an indulgence of only the most secure nations.
By that standard, any tyrant can justify the cruelest of actions by citing enemies, real or imagined, be it King George III blockading Boston Harbor to teach the rebellious colonists a lesson or Saddam Hussein killing Kurdish villagers after an assassination attempt on his life. The very uniqueness of our national experiment was the checks and balances put upon the government to prevent such convenient rationalizations for abuse of the individual. The Founding Fathers won a war, but their true contribution to human history was to tackle head-on the reality that humans and their institutions can so easily become that which they despise.
Even when an American is suspected of a "capital or infamous crime," as was Padilla, the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution specifically says he still cannot "be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." That is why the Supreme Court finally forced the Bush administration to give Padilla his day in court.
In the end, the administration has retreated from its hoary claims; Padilla's trial, set to begin on Jan. 22, does not include any reference to dirty bombs, al Qaeda, or any specific plans to attack America. Instead, he faces lesser charges claiming he was the recruit of a "North American support cell," whose interest was in jihad in Bosnia and Chechnya. As if it had no bearing on the disoriented state of mind of the defendant, the Bush administration's lawyers have argued in motions that his treatment as a prisoner should not be presented before the jury.
The more important question now, however, is when will those who, like Ashcroft, used this case to shamelessly exploit our fears for political purposes face their own day of accountability in a court of law?
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The Roman Empire is falling - so it turns to Iran and Syria
Robert Fisk
07 December 2006
The Roman Empire is falling. That, in a phrase, is what the Baker report says. The legions cannot impose their rule on Mesopotamia.
Just as Crassus lost his legions' banners in the deserts of Syria-Iraq, so has George W Bush. There is no Mark Antony to retrieve the honour of the empire. The policy "is not working". "Collapse" and "catastrophe" - words heard in the Roman senate many a time - were embedded in the text of the Baker report. Et tu, James?
This is also the language of the Arab world, always waiting for the collapse of empire, for the destruction of the safe Western world which has provided it with money, weapons, political support. First, the Arabs trusted the British Empire and Winston Churchill, and then they trusted the American Empire and Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Truman and Eisenhower administrations and all the other men who would give guns to the Israelis and billions to the Arabs - Nixon, Carter, Clinton, Bush...
And now they are told that the Americans are not winning the war; that they are losing. If you were an Arab, what would you do?
Be sure, they are not asking this question in Washington. The Middle East - so all-important (supposedly) in the "war on terror" - in itself, a myth - doesn't really matter in the White House. It is a district, a map, a region, every bit as amorphous as the crescent of "crisis" which the Clinton administration invented when it wanted to land its troops in Somalia. How to get out, how to save face, that's the question. To hell with the people who live there: the Arabs, the Iraqis, the men, women and children whom we kill - and whom the Iraqis kill - every day.
Note how our "spokesmen" in Afghanistan now acknowledge the dead woman and children of Nato airstrikes as if it is quite in order to slaughter these innocents because we are at war with the horrid Taliban.
Some of the same mindset has arrived in Baghdad, where "coalition" spokesmen also - from time to time - jump in front of the video-tape evidence by accepting that they, too, kill women and children in their war against "terror". But it is the sentences of impotence that doom empires. "The ability of the United States to influence events within Iraq is diminishing." There is a risk of a "slide towards chaos [sic] [that] could trigger the collapse of Iraq's government and a humanitarian catastrophe."
But hasn't that already happened? "Collapse" and "catastrophe" are daily present in Iraq. America's ability "to influence events" has been absent for years. And let's just re-read the following sentence: "Violence is increasing in scope and lethality. It is fed by a Sunni Arab insurgency. Shiite [Shia] militias, death squads, al-Qa'ida and widespread criminality. Sectarian conflict is the principal challenge to stability."
Come again? Where was this "widespread criminality," this "sectarian conflict" when Saddam, our favourite war criminal, was in power? What do the Iraqis think about this? And how typical that the American media went at once to hear Bush's view of the Baker report - rather than the reaction of the Iraqis, those who are on the receiving end of our self-induced tragedy in Mesopotamia.
They will enjoy the idea that American troops should be "embedded" with Iraqi forces - not so long ago, it was the press that had to be "embedded" with the Americans! - as if the Romans were ready to put their legions amid the Goths, Ostrogoths and Visigoths to ensure their loyalty.
What the Romans did do, of course - and what the Americans would never do - is offer their subjects Roman citizenship. Every tribe - in Gaul or Bythinia or Mesopotamia - who fell under Roman rule became a citizen of Rome. What could Washington have done with Iraq if it had offered American citizenship to every Iraqi? There would have been no insurrection, no violence, no collapse or catastrophe, no Baker report. But no. We wanted to give these people the fruits of our civilisation - not the civilisation itself. From this, they were banned.
And the result? The nations we supposedly hated - Iran and Syria - are now expected to save us from ourselves. "Given the ability [sic] of Iran and Syria to influence events and their interest in avoiding chaos in Iraq, the United States should try to engage [sic] them constructively."
I love those words. Especially "engage". Yes, the "influence of America" is diminishing. The influence of Syria and Iran is growing. That just about sums up the "war on terror". Any word yet, I wonder, from Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara?
The strategies
The Baker panel considered four options, all of which it rejected:
Cut And Run
Baker believes it would cause a humanitarian disaster, while al-Qa'ida would expand further.
Stay The Course
Baker accepts that current US policy is not working. Nearly 100 Americans are dying every month. The US is spending $2bn (£1bn) a week and has lost public support.
Send In More Troops
Increases in US troop levels would not solve the cause of violence in Iraq. Violence would simply rekindle as soon as US forces moved.
Regional Devolution
If the country broke up into its Shia, Sunni and Kurd regions, it would lead to ethnic cleansing and mass population moves.
Baker outlines a fifth option - 'responsible transition' - in which the number of US forces could be increased to shore up the Iraqi army while it takes over primary responsibility for combat operations. US troops would then decrease slowly.
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U.S. airman must answer for shooting - Kyrgyz leader
By Olga Dzyubenko
Reuters
7 Dec 06
BISHKEK - Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev said on Thursday U.S. servicemen and women stationed in his Central Asian state should no longer enjoy immunity from prosecution after the fatal shooting of a truck driver.
Alexander Ivanov, a 42-year-old ethnic Russian who worked as a fuel truck driver, was shot and killed on Wednesday by an unidentified U.S. Air Force airman at a checkpoint leading to a U.S. airbase in the country's main civilian airport.
"It would be appropriate for military based in Kyrgyzstan to bear responsibility for any illegal acts they carry out, in accordance with Kyrgyzstan's laws," Bakiyev told U.S. ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, according to a statement from his office.
Ivanov, a father of two, had no criminal record, Kyrgyz government officials said. He was killed by two pistol shots to the chest, police said.
Troops at the base, set up in 2001 to support operations in nearby Afghanistan, enjoy a similar status to diplomats and cannot be prosecuted by Kyrgyz courts under an agreement between the two countries.
A statement released by U.S. forces on Wednesday said the airman from the base's security forces "used deadly force in response to a threat".
A military spokesman said on Thursday Ivanov threatened the airman with a homemade knife at the checkpoint after parking his truck. The airman fired his pistol in response.
Bakiyev said Kyrgyz police should be allowed to question the airman and he should not leave the country until an investigation had taken place.
In a separate security incident linked to the base in September, a U.S. Air Force major went missing for several days after a shopping trip in the nearby capital Bishkek.
Major Jill Metzger reappeared unharmed. According to U.S. media, she said she had been kidnapped, although Kyrgyz police sources questioned the assertion and she was flown out of the country within hours of being found.
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Hero Of 9/11 Won't Stop Speaking Out Against Bush
This Is Devon
02/12/2006
One minute he was going about his business, the next he was looking at a vision from the depths of hell. Still reeling from a blast which rocked the World Trade Center, William Rodriguez could hardly believe what he was seeing."A man came running into the office shouting 'explosion, explosion!'" Mr Rodriguez soon saw a third of his body had been badly burnt by the blast. "When I realised, I started screaming. I looked at his face and it was missing parts."
It was the start of a day that transformed Mr Rodriguez from a maintenance man to the hero of 9/11. He ran back into the crumbling tower three times, and helped save hundreds of people.
In the months that followed, his role would change again, from the "face" of the rescue effort to an outspoken critic of the government.
For Mr Rodriguez, a native of Puerto Rico, swears his ordeal began before the first plane hit the Twin Towers. He claims that the White House failed to act, and accuses the government of being involved in "sponsored terrorism" in a bid to find a motive to invade Iraq. He brought his argument to a Westcountry audience on Wednesday, when he spoke in Torquay as part of the Global Truth movement.
Before America's trade epicentre was reduced to rubble, Mr Rodriguez routinely ate breakfast at the Windows of the World restaurant, on the top floor of the North Tower, where his friends would feed him free of charge. On 9/11, he was running late, so he skipped the treat.
It was while he was in basements of the North Tower that Mr Rodriguez says he felt an explosion from below. "It was so hard that it shook the foundations of the building and the walls cracked," he said. "The ceiling fell on top of us."
Mr Rodriguez, 45, had worked in the building for 20 years, and survived the 1993 bomb blast. As the sprinkler system came on, he was mentally transported back. It was only then that he claims he heard the sound of the first plane hitting the tower, at 8.46am. "It came from far away - all the way at the top of the building," he said.
The handyman's thoughts immediately raced to the plight of his friends on the top floor, and he spent the rest of the ordeal battling his way through the building, trying to reach them.
Mr Rodriguez, one of only five people to hold a master key which opened the doors to an escape route, repeatedly encountered people in need of help. He saved scores from the crumbling tower, including two who were stuck in a lift shaft that was filling with water from the sprinklers.
"I could hear them shouting 'we're going to drown'," he said. "I was always an agnostic, but in that moment, I prayed."
He suddenly remembered where ladders were stored, and found the longest one unlocked, so he was able to drop it down the shaft and escort two workers out to waiting ambulances.
Mr Rodriguez dived back into the building to try to reach his friends, but again he encountered a casualty in need, this time on the 34th floor. "There was a blonde woman, lying on the floor shaking. I told her she had to get out, but she was new and she didn't know where to go."
Mr Rodriguez helped her down the stairs, and ran back into the building on his third trip. This time, he played a role in helping a man in a wheelchair to the waiting ambulance crew.
"It was like a scene from The Towering Inferno," he said. "Pieces of rock kept falling all over us and hitting us. I said to the man in the wheelchair 'when we get out we will go for a drink'. His face was just a dust mask."
Mr Rodriguez was set to make a fourth trip up the stairs when he heard police outside ordering him not to look back. "Of course, when they tell you not to look back you always do," he said. "It was the worst memory I ever had."
The blonde woman he had helped save lay dead, just outside the exit of the building, her body mangled by falling debris.
"I looked around, and saw all the bodies of people who had jumped out of the windows, and they looked as if they had melted into the ground," he said.
Mesmerised by the apocalyptic vision, Mr Rodriguez realised the ground was trembling. To cries of "run", he dived under a nearby fire engine as the huge building tumbled down. "I thought I was going to die from asphyxia," he said. "I thought 'God, please don't let my mother see my body cut in half'."
But the media saw Mr Rodriguez dive, and soon rescue workers were hauling him free.
Today, Mr Rodriguez is grateful to be alive, but he said: "I never found my friends. I saved hundreds of people, but the reason I do what I can to get the word out is that I lost 200 friends who have no way of claiming justice."
In the aftermath, Mr Rodriguez was hailed a hero, and felt he was playing a big role in the 9/11 Commission. "I thought they were going to do the right thing," he said.
But Mr Rodriguez soon felt his evidence was being covered up, when he became the only person to be interviewed behind closed doors. And his account was omitted from the final report. He claims evidence he collected from scores of other witnesses was overlooked.
The final straw came when he was asked to give a public address on why Iraq should be invaded. "I said no - 9/11 was nothing to do with Iraq. I helped organise the families, and we voted against the President using us for his political motive. That's when the thrust changed, and the invasion suddenly became about weapons of mass destruction."
These days, Mr Rodriguez fears for his life - and says his plight is relevant in the wake of the death of Alexander Litvinenko, the ex-KGB spy many believe was poisoned by the Russians.
But Mr Rodriguez continues to speak out. Once a prominent magician, he said: "The 9/11 attacks are just an illusion. It never happened in the way they say. It's all manufactured to give the impression that it happened like that."
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Police told me my cricket ball was 'a potentially lethal weapon'
4th December 2006
UK Telegraph
Like millions of other cricket fans, Chris Hurd was looking forward to the start of the Ashes. The 28-year-old's passion for the game was such that he carried a cricket ball as he went to watch the opening clash between England and Australia.
But one policewoman certainly did not share his enthusiasm. She stopped the accountant to tick him off for holding a 'potentially lethal weapon' as he travelled on the London Underground.
Mr Hurd, who was wearing a suit and had just finished work at the major City firm Ernst & Young, said yesterday: 'It was a ridiculous over-reaction.
'She was completely humourless and inflexible, and showed no understanding of my excitement about the Ashes.'
He was stopped at Baker Street in Central London as he headed to a pub to meet up with friends to watch the match being televised from Australia.
Mr Hurd, a leg-spin bowler for his local team, said: 'I took the ball to the office because I was getting more and more excited about the start of the Ashes.
'All day long, I was fiddling with it and throwing it into the air, which I do to strengthen my arm muscles for spin bowling.
'But when I was stopped after work, I was just holding the ball going up the escalator. There was a policewoman on the step below me and she was staring at the ball all the way up.
'As we got to the top, she tapped me on the shoulder and said she wanted a word. I wondered what on earth I had done. She asked if I was aware I was carrying a very hard object and I said, "Yes, it is a cricket ball".
'She told me I should not be carrying it in public because it was a potentially lethal weapon. I told her I was only carrying it because the Ashes were about to start and I was very excited.
'I was wearing a boring suit and looked every inch the bean counter I am. It is not as if I was unshaven and looked dangerous.
'But she confiscated the ball for most of our conversation, gave me a verbal warning and said she was being very lenient.
'She filled out a stop-and-search form and finally gave the ball back at the end and sent me packing.'
Mr Hurd, of Belsize Park, North London, said the experience had shaken his faith in the police.
'I have not really had many dealings with them before,' he said. But what happened struck a chord with the complaints you hear from minority groups over stop and searches.
'The policewoman failed to realise that I presented no threat whatsoever and I left feeling completely misunderstood. It wasted ten minutes and left her with paperwork. How can a cricket ball be an offensive weapon? I don't think it would be anyone's weapon of choice and all I was doing was holding it.'
A spokesman for British Transport Police declined to comment without knowing the full details of the incident.
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Manufacturing Armageddon
Oil for Sale: Iraq Study Group Recommends Privatization
By Antonia Juhasz
AlterNet
December 7, 2006
The Iraq Study Group may not have a solution for how to end the war, but it does have a way for its corporate friends to make money.
The proposals should come as little surprise given that two authors of the report, James A. Baker III and Lawrence Eagleburger, have each spent much of their political and corporate careers in pursuit of greater access to Iraq's oil and wealth.
In its heavily anticipated report released on Wednesday, the Iraq Study Group made at least four truly radical proposals.
The report calls for the United States to assist in privatizing Iraq's national oil industry, opening Iraq to private foreign oil and energy companies, providing direct technical assistance for the "drafting" of a new national oil law for Iraq, and assuring that all of Iraq's oil revenues accrue to the central government. President Bush hired an employee from the U.S. consultancy firm Bearing Point Inc. over a year ago to advise the Iraq Oil Ministry on the drafting and passage of a new national oil law. As previously drafted, the law opens Iraq's nationalized oil sector to private foreign corporate investment, but stops short of full privatization. The ISG report, however, goes further, stating that "the United States should assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise." In addition, the current Constitution of Iraq is ambiguous as to whether control over Iraq's oil should be shared among its regional provinces or held under the central government. The report specifically recommends the latter: "Oil revenues should accrue to the central government and be shared on the basis of population." If these proposals are followed, Iraq's national oil industry will be privatized and opened to foreign firms, and in control of all of Iraq's oil wealth.
The proposals should come as little surprise given that two authors of the report, James A. Baker III and Lawrence Eagleburger, have each spent much of their political and corporate careers in pursuit of greater access to Iraq's oil and wealth.
"Pragmatist" is the word most often used to describe Iraq Study Group co-chair James A. Baker III. It is equally appropriate for Lawrence Eagleburger. The term applies particularly well to each man's efforts to expand U.S. economic engagement with Saddam Hussein throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. Not only did their efforts enrich Hussein and U.S. corporations, particularly oil companies, it also served the interests of their own private firms.
On April 21,1990, a U.S. delegation was sent to Iraq to placate Saddam Hussein as his anti-American rhetoric and threats of a Kuwaiti invasion intensified. James A. Baker III, then President George H.W. Bush's secretary of state, personally sent a cable to the U.S embassy in Baghdad instructing the U.S. ambassador to meet with Hussein and to make clear that, "as concerned as we are about Iraq's chemical, nuclear, and missile programs, we are not in any sense preparing the way for preemptive military unilateral effort to eliminate these programs."*
Instead, Baker's interest was focused on trade, which he described as the "central factor in the U.S-Iraq relationship." From 1982, when Reagan removed Iraq from the list of countries supporting terrorism, until August 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, Baker and Eagleburger worked with others in the Reagan and Bush administrations to aggressively and successfully expand this trade.
The efficacy of such a move may best be described in a memo written in 1988 by the Bush transition team arguing that the Unityede States would have "to decide whether to treat Iraq as a distasteful dictatorship to be shunned where possible, or to recognize Iraq's present and potential power in the region and accord it relatively high priority. We strongly urge the latter view." Two reasons offered were Iraq's "vast oil reserves," which promised "a lucrative market for U.S. goods," and the fact that U.S. oil imports from Iraq were skyrocketing. Bush and Baker took the transition team's advice and ran with it.
In fact, from 1983 to 1989, annual trade between the United States and Iraq grew nearly sevenfold and was expected to double in 1990, before Iraq invaded Kuwait. In 1989, Iraq became the United States' second-largest trading partner in the Middle East: Iraq purchased $5.2 billion in U.S. exports, while the U.S. bought $5.5 billion in Iraqi petroleum. From 1987 to July 1990, U.S. imports of Iraqi oil increased from 80,000 to 1.1 million barrels per day.
Eagleburger and Baker had much to do with that skyrocketing trade. In December 1983, then undersecretary of state Eagleburger wrote the U.S. Export-Import Bank to personally urge it to begin extending loans to Iraq to "signal our belief in the future viability of the Iraqi economy and secure a U.S. foothold in a potentially large export market." He noted that Iraq "has plans well advanced for an additional 50 percent increase in its oil exports by the end of 1984." Ultimately, billions of loans would be made or backed by the U.S. government to the Iraqi dictator, money used by Hussein to purchase U.S. goods.
In 1984, Baker became treasury secretary, Reagan opened full diplomatic relations with Iraq, and Eagleburger became president of Henry Kissinger's corporate consultancy firm, Kissinger Associates.
Kissinger Associates participated in the U.S.-Iraq Business Forum through managing director Alan Stoga. The Forum was a trade association representing some 60 American companies, including Bechtel, Lockheed, Texaco, Exxon, Mobil, and Hunt Oil. The Iraqi ambassador to the United States told a Washington, D.C., audience in 1985, "Our people in Baghdad will give priority -- when there is a competition between two companies -- to the one that is a member of the Forum." Stoga appeared regularly at Forum events and traveled to Iraq on a Forum-sponsored trip in 1989 during which he met directly with Hussein. Many Kissinger clients were also members of the Forum and became recipients of contracts with Hussein.
In 1989, Eagleburger returned to the state department now under Secretary Baker. That same year, President Bush signed National Security Directive 26 stating, "We should pursue, and seek to facilitate, opportunities for U.S. firms to participate in the reconstruction of the Iraqi economy, particularly in the energy area."
The president then began discussions of a $1 billion loan guarantee for Iraq one week before Secretary Baker met with Tariq Aziz at the state department to seal the deal.
But once Hussein invaded Kuwait, all bets were off. Baker made a public plea for support of military action against Hussein, arguing, "The economic lifeline of the industrial world runs from the Gulf and we cannot permit a dictator such as this to sit astride that economic lifeline."
Baker had much to gain from increased access to Iraq's oil. According to author Robert Bryce, Baker and his immediate family's personal investments in the oil industry at the time of the first Gulf War included investments in Amoco, Exxon and Texaco. The family law firm, Baker Botts, has represented Texaco, Exxon, Halliburton and Conoco Phillips, among other companies, in some cases since 1914 and in many cases for decades. (Eagleburger is also connected to Halliburton, having only recently departed the company's board of directors). Baker is a longtime associate and now senior partner of Baker Botts, which this year, for the second year running, was recipient of "The International Who's Who of Business Lawyers Oil & Gas Law Firm of the Year Award," while the Middle East remains a central focus of the firm.
This past July, U.S. Energy Secretary Bodman announced in Baghdad that senior U.S. oil company executives would not enter Iraq without passage of the new law. Petroleum Economist magazine later reported that U.S. oil companies put passage of the oil law before security concerns as the deciding factor over their entry into Iraq. Put simply, the oil companies are trying to get what they were denied before the war or at anytime in modern Iraqi history: access to Iraq's oil under the ground. They are also trying to get the best deal possible out of a war-ravaged and occupied nation. However, waiting for the law's passage and the need to guarantee security of U.S. firms once they get to work, may well be a key factor driving the one proposal by the Iraq Study Group that has received great media attention: extending the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq at least until 2008.
As the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group are more thoroughly considered, we should remain ever vigilant and wary of corporate war profiteers in pragmatist's clothing.
*All quotes are referenced in my book, "The Bush Agenda."
Comment: "Eh, yeah, sorry about the 700,000 dead Iraqis, George is a very bad boy, but moving on to your oil, we think we should em...ya know...let Exxon Mobil take control of it..."
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Media Sham for Iraq War Is Happening Again
By Norman Solomon
AlterNet
December 6, 2006
- The mainstream media that misled the public into the war with Iraq is now trumpeting so-called analysis about why we should stay, but their rhetoric is just another betrayal.
The lead-up to the invasion of Iraq has become notorious in the annals of American journalism. Even many reporters, editors and commentators who fueled the drive to war in 2002 and early 2003 now acknowledge that major media routinely tossed real journalism out the window in favor of boosting war.
But it's happening again.
The current media travesty is a drumbeat for the idea that the U.S. war effort must keep going. And again, in its news coverage, the New York Times is a bellwether for the latest media parade to the cadence of the warfare state.
During the run-up to the invasion, news stories repeatedly told about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction while the Times and other key media outlets insisted that their coverage was factually reliable. Now the same media outlets insist that their coverage is analytically reliable.
Instead of authoritative media information about aluminum tubes and mobile weapons labs, we're now getting authoritative media illumination of why a swift pullout of U.S. troops isn't realistic or desirable. The result is similar to what was happening four years ago -- a huge betrayal of journalistic responsibility.
The WMD spin was in sync with official sources and other establishment-sanctified experts, named and unnamed. The anti-pullout spin is in sync with official sources and other establishment-sanctified experts, named and unnamed.
During the weeks since the midterm election, the New York Times news coverage of Iraq policy options has often been heavy-handed, with carefully selective sourcing for prefab conclusions. Already infamous is the Nov. 15 front-page story by Michael Gordon under the headline "Get Out of Iraq Now? Not So Fast, Experts Say." A similar technique was at play Dec. 1 with yet another "News Analysis," this time by reporter David Sanger, headlined "The Only Consensus on Iraq: Nobody's Leaving Right Now."
Typically, in such reportage, the sources harmonizing with the media outlet's analysis are chosen from the cast of political characters who helped drag the United States into making war on Iraq in the first place.
What's now going on in mainline news media is some kind of repetition compulsion. And, while media professionals engage in yet another round of conformist opportunism, many people will pay with their lives.
With so many prominent American journalists navigating their stories by the lights of big Washington stars, it's not surprising that so much of the news coverage looks at what happens in Iraq through the lens of the significance for American power.
Viewing the horrors of present-day Iraq with star-spangled eyes, New York Times reporters John Burns and Kirk Semple wrote -- in the lead sentence of a front-page "News Analysis" on Nov. 29 -- that "American military and political leverage in Iraq has fallen sharply."
The second paragraph of the Baghdad-datelined article reported: "American fortunes here are ever more dependent on feuding Iraqis who seem, at times, almost heedless to American appeals."
The third paragraph reported: "It is not clear that the United States can gain new traction in Iraq..."
And so it goes -- with U.S. media obsessively focused on such concerns as "American military and political leverage," "American fortunes" and whether "the United States can gain new traction in Iraq."
With that kind of worldview, no wonder so much news coverage is serving nationalism instead of journalism.
Norman Solomon is the author of the new book, "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death."
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Iraq fantasyland - Can we please stop persevering?
by Joshua Holland
Alternet.org
December 6, 2006.
In a letter accompanying the Iraq Study group's report, James Baker and Lee Hamilton offer this bit of wishful thinking:
Our country deserves a debate that prizes substance over rhetoric, and a policy that is adequately funded and sustainable... Our leaders must be candid and forthright with the American people in order to win their support.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, Major General William Caldwell (the fourth), the Pentagon's chief press flack in Iraq, explains "Why We Perservere" -- an homage to the classic WWII propganda film "Why We Fight" -- that is anything but candid and forthright ...
I don't see a civil war in Iraq. I don't see a constituency for civil war. The vast majority of the people want hope for their families, not to massacre their neighbors or divide their country. A poll conducted in June by the International Republican Institute, a nonpartisan group that promotes democracy, found 89 percent of Iraqis supporting a unity government representing all sects and ethnic communities.
That's some cherry-picking. Download the study (PowerPoint) and you'll see that while "most Iraqis" wanted a unity government, many -- especially Arabs in the North and in Sunni areas -- didn't think that's what they got. Iraqis also said that things were getting worse in just about every area -- and this was back in June before things got noticeably worse still.
No wonder no "rebel army" steps forward to claim credit for vicious car bombs and cowardly executions of civilians.
I see debates among Iraqis -- often angry and sometimes divisive -- but arguments characteristic of political discourse, not political breakdown.
The debates this guy sees among Iraqis in the Green Zone aren't the signs of breakdown -- it's the 3,000 tortured bodies that show up each month that are the tip-off.
The Council of Representatives meets here in Baghdad as the sole legitimate sovereign representative of the people, 12 million of whom braved bombs and threats last December to vote. No party has seceded or claimed independent territory.
I see a representative government exercising control over the sole legitimate armed authority in Iraq, the Iraqi Security Force. After decades in which the armed services were tools of oppression, Iraq is taking time to build an army and national police force loyal to all. There have been setbacks, but also great successes.
I don't see terrorist and criminal elements mounting campaigns for territory. Al-Qaeda in Iraq doesn't use roadside bombs, suicidal mass murderers and rocket barrages to gain and hold ground.
I studied civil wars at West Point and at the Army Command and Staff College. I respect the credentials and opinions of those who want to hang that label here. But I respectfully -- and strongly -- disagree. I see the Iraqi people suffering from overlapping terrorist campaigns by extremist groups combined with the mass criminality that too often accompanies the sudden toppling of a dictatorship. This poses a different military challenge than does a civil war.
I won't unpack all of that -- the denial here is so thick. The one thing I'll comment on is the idea that only when there's a uniformed "rebel army" attempting to hold ground can we call a civil war a civil war. It's a definition of civil war invented wholly in the last few years and specifically in order to spin what's going on in Iraq as something it isn't. I never studied ay West Point, but my degree is in international relations with a focus on security studies, and we learned that civil wars are intra-state conflicts that may on the surface be about ethnic or religious identity but ultimately come down to substate actors contesting the authority of a central government -- a civil war is ultimately about power and the chaos in Iraq fits that to a tee.
Maybe if the various militias and insurgent groups in Iraq wore gray uniforms, marched in columns and whistled Dixie, these guys would be able to acknowledge what's so obvious to everyone else, but until then I can only say, again, that good policy can't flow from bad analysis, and op-eds like Caldwell's tell us a lot about why a constructive policy in Iraq has been and will continue to be so elusive.
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U.S. military suffers deadly day in Iraq
KIM GAMEL
AP
7 Dec 06
Baghdad - The toll in one of the U.S. military's deadliest days in Iraq rose to 11 Thursday when the military confirmed that another soldier had died in fighting west of Baghdad.
At least seven Iraqis - six policemen and a 7-year-old girl - were killed in a series of bombings and shootings.
The U.S. soldier was shot Wednesday while manning a machine gun nest on the roof of an outpost in Ramadi, 112 kilometres west of Baghdad, the capital of the volatile Anbar province, according to a Associated Press reporter on the scene.
The death came on the same day that 10 other U.S. troops were killed in four separate incidents in Iraq, and a blue-ribbon panel in Washington recommended gradually shifting U.S. forces from a combat to a training role.
The military released details about five of the other troops killed on Wednesday, saying they were Task Force Lightning soldiers who were struck by a roadside bomb while conducting combat operations in the vicinity of the northern city of Kirkuk. The soldiers were assigned to 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division.
The U.S. military gave no further details about identities or the other deaths, pending notification of relatives.
The attacks followed a particularly bloody weekend and raised to at least 31 the number of U.S. troops who have died in the first week of this month. At least 69 troops were killed in November and 105 soldiers were killed in October - the highest monthly toll since January 2005.
"Our thoughts are with all 11 families who lost family members yesterday. Taking care of them right now is the military's highest priority," U.S. spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Garver said.
At least 2,919 service members have been killed since the war started in 2003, according to an AP count.
At least 75 people were killed or found dead across Iraq on Wednesday, including 48 whose bullet-riddled bodies were found in different parts of the capital.
Gunmen also broke into a school in western Baghdad, killing its Sunni headmaster in his office, then instructing teachers not to return, an Iraqi army officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Tuesday urged university professors and students to ignore a Sunni Arab insurgent group's warnings to avoid class, calling them "desperate attempts."
The group had sent e-mails to students and posted signs at schools and mosques saying students should stay away while it cleanses the campuses of Shiite death squads, according to a statement from Mr. al-Maliki's office late Tuesday.
The Iraqi government said the U.S. Iraq Study Group's report recommending a change of course in Iraq did "not come as a surprise," and it agreed that Iraq must take the lead in its own security.
"The situation is grave, very grave in fact, and cannot be tolerated," Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh said on the pan-Arab satellite TV channel Al-Arabiya. "Absolute dependence on foreign troops is not possible. The focus must be on boosting the Iraqi security forces."
Regular Iraqis on the streets of Baghdad greeted the Iraq Study Group report with widespread skepticism.
"This report is no different than others we have received from national unity conferences or regional conferences in the last three years, ones that came up with nice words that had no effect," said Khalid Abdel-Rahim, 42, a Sunni Arab employee of Iraq's Industry Ministry.
The U.S. report warned "the situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating."
It recommended the U.S. reduce political, military or economic support for Iraq if the government in Baghdad cannot make substantial progress toward providing for its own security.
On the highly emotional issue of troop withdrawals, the commission warned against either a precipitous pullback or an open-ended commitment to a large deployment.
"Military priorities must change," the report said, toward a goal of training, equipping and advising Iraqi forces. "We should seek to complete the training and equipping mission by the end of the first quarter of 2008."
Mr. Saleh, the deputy prime minister, said the government agreed with the broad recommendations of the panel but acknowledged "there may be some details on which we differ." He did not elaborate.
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Bush and Blair to meet, discuss Iraq report
Thursday, December 7, 2006
CBC News
U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were expected to meet at the White House on Thursday to talk about a bipartisan panel's report that identifies an urgent need to revamp the current strategy in Iraq.
The Iraq Study Group released its report on Wednesday, recommending that the U.S. engage Syria and Iran to resolve the "grave and deteriorating" situation in Iraq. Bush and Blair are close allies in the war.
The two leaders were expected to meet on Thursday at 9:35 a.m. ET and to hold a news conference at 10:55 a.m.
Blair was interviewed by members of the study group before it issued its report on Wednesday. Blair, who arrived in Washington on Wednesday night, is expected to be in the U.S. for a single day.
Aides told the Associated Press that a meeting between the two has been planned for weeks, and it was a coincidence the meeting closely follows the release of the report. But there is no question that Iraq will dominate the meeting's agenda.
Britain has already begun to pull some of its troops out of Iraq.
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According to the report, which made 79 recommendations, the U.S. should speed up training of Iraqi security forces and conduct a "diplomatic offensive" to stabilize the country. It's hoped this would allow for the withdrawal of most U.S. combat troops by early 2008. The report does not provide an exact timeline for withdrawal of troops, however.
The U.S. focus on Iraq has "necessarily diverted attention from Afghanistan," the report said, adding that a troop withdrawal could allow the U.S. to bolster its contribution to NATO's Afghan mission, which includes more than 2,000 Canadian soldiers fighting the Taliban.
The report painted a bleak picture of Iraq nearly four years after U.S. forces toppled Saddam Hussein. During that time, the U.S. government has spent about $400 billion US in Iraq, it says.
It calls for the creation of an Iraq support group including "all of Iraq's neighbours ... and key states in and outside the region," including the United Nations Security Council, the European Union, as well as Egypt, Syria and Iran.
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Apocalypse now: 79 recommendations and a President forced into a corner
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington and Colin Brown
07 December 2006
A gauntlet was thrown at George Bush's feet yesterday when a long-awaited report on Iraq recommended that he seek the help of Iran and Syria, significantly bolster Iraqi forces and prepare to withdraw most US troops within 14 months.
It warned that finding a way forward had to be part of a broader Middle East settlement that established a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestine conflict and provided peace for Lebanon.
In a 100-page, bleak, uncompromising report that contained 79 separate recommendations, the Iraq Study Group warned "the situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating" and that a regional conflict could be triggered if things continued to slide. It added: "There is no path that can guarantee success but the prospects can be improved."
Many of the report's recommendations had been leaked in advance and in some cases - for instance the deployment of US troops with Iraqi units - are already being carried out on the ground.
But, crucially, the bipartisan report may provide the political cover required by Mr Bush to break from his refusal to alter strategy.
With every day bringing more bad news from Iraq, and with US casualties having passed 2,900, Mr Bush is under increasing pressure to offer a solution to the violence and to find some way of withdrawing the 140,000 US troops.
On Tuesday his nominee for Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, admitted the US was not winning in Iraq and last night Tony Blair arrived in Washington intent on pressing the President to adopt the ISG's proposal of finding a regional solution. The two leaders are due meet later today. Before leaving for the US, Mr Blair was challenged in the Commons by the Tory leader, David Cameron, as to whether he agreed with Mr Gates's bleak assessment.
The Prime Minister replied: "Of course. On July I said myself that the situation Baghdad with sectarian killing was appalling and the bloodshed was appalling.
"What is important, however, is, as he went on to say, that we do go on to succeed in the mission that we have set ourselves."
Mr Bush said he would take "every proposal seriously and we will act in a timely fashion". But the President is not obliged to adopt the report's recommendations and he has continued to insist he is not seeking a "graceful exit out of Iraq".
The report does not directly criticise the government and neither does it consider how the US happens to be involved in a bitter, bloody conflict that has claimed the lives of perhaps 655,000 Iraqis. But taken together, its recommendations can be read as both a clear rebuke of the Bush administration's policies in Iraq and a rejection of its rhetoric about the extent to which events have slipped out of US control.
For instance, whereas Mr Bush pursued a policy of unilateralism, the report now recommends launching a "diplomatic offensive"; whereas Mr Bush insists the US is "winning", the report makes clear that attacks against US and Iraqi forces are "persistent and growing"; whereas Mr Bush often speaks as though the US is the blameless bystander in the middle of a sectarian war the report makes clear that "because events in Iraq have been set in motion by American decisions and actions, the US has both a national and moral interest in doing what it can to give Iraqis an opportunity to avert anarchy". It concludes that the current strategy "is not working".
In addition to recommending that the number of US troops embedded with Iraqi forces be increased in the short term from 4,000 to up to 20,000, the report also considers ways of improving Iraq's oil sector, the reconstruction efforts and US intelligence capacity.
It said there was significant under-reporting of the level of violence in Iraq and raised questions about the effectiveness of US intelligence saying the government "still does not understand very well either the insurgency in Iraq or the role of the militias".
Though written overwhelmingly from a US perspective, the report also stresses the issues faced by the Iraqi population. "There is great suffering and the daily lives of many Iraqis show little or no improvement," it says. "Pessimism is pervasive."
Underlining such an assessment, at least eight more people were killed and dozens wounded yesterday in the Sadr City district of Baghdad by a mortar assault and a suicide bomb attack.
The devastating findings
* US should launch new diplomatic offensive to build an international consensus for stability in Iraq and the region, drawing in every country that has an interest in avoiding a chaotic Iraq, including all of its neighbours. They and other key states should form a support group to reinforce security and national reconciliation within Iraq
* US should engage Iran and Syria constructively, given their ability to influence events within Iraq. Iran should stem the flow of arms and training to Iraq, respect Iraq's sovereignty and territorial integrity and use its influence over Iraqi Shia groups to encourage national reconciliation. The issue of Iran's nuclear programme should continue to be dealt with by the permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany. Syria should control its border with Iraq to stem the flow of funding, insurgents and terrorists in and out of Iraq
* Troops not needed for force protection could be pulled out of Iraq by the first quarter of 2008, depending on the security situation. "Substantially more" US combat troops should switch to a role of training and advising Iraqi security forces by working within Iraqi units
* There must be a renewed and sustained commitment by the United States to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace on all fronts.
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Israel holds "different view" on ISG report
www.chinaview.cn 2006-12-07 21:34:24
JERUSALEM, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Thursday responded to a U.S. report on the Iraqi issue by presenting "different view."
The Iraq Study Group (ISG) report, presented to U.S. President George W. Bush on Wednesday, said resolving the long-running Arab-Israeli conflict was key to achieving Washington's regional goals in Iraq and the Middle East.
It is an attempt to create linkage between the Iraqi issue and the Mideast issue and "we have a different view," Olmert was quoted by local daily Ha'aretz as saying.
Olmert made the remarks at the Editors' Conference in Tel Aviv, which is Israel's first official response to the report.
"The Middle East has a lot of problems that are not connected to us," Olmert said, adding that "I am not convinced that this report imposes all of the U.S.' troubles on Israel's shoulders."The highly-anticipated report has recommended major changes in the policy adopted by the U.S. President George W. Bush on the Iraqi issues.
Meanwhile, the ISG report called for direct talks with Iran and Syria to stabilize Iraq, saying they need a renewed and sustained commitment by the United States to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace on all fronts: Lebanon, Syria and a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians.
However, Olmert said Thursday that the conditions were not ripe for Israel to reopen talks with Syria.
"Syria's supports to Hamas and its efforts to destabilize Lebanon minimized the chance of having negotiations with the Syrians at any time soon," Olmert said.
"Nobody wants to negotiate more than we do," said the prime minister, adding that "The question is, what can we get from the Syrians if enter negotiations."
Syrian President Bashar Assad has called in recent months for a new round of talks with Israel, but Olmert has rejected them out of hand.
Olmert also voiced his support for the U.S. war in Iraq at the conference.
Addressing the controversy over Iran's nuclear issue, Olmert reiterated Israel's position that it would not tolerate a nuclear Iran, but would not take unilateral action.
Talking on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Olmert said that Israel wants "with all our might" to restart peace talks with the Palestinians.
Despite occasional rocket attacks by Gaza militants at Israel,"we will continue to show restraint," he added.
Israel and Palestinians reached a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip on Nov. 25. The move was welcomed by the international community, but seemed fragile due to occasional violations of the truce deal by both sides.
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Another bloodbath in Lebanon?
Mike Whitney
Online Journal
Dec 6, 2006
"The Lebanese government has nearly doubled the size of its security forces in recent months by adding about 11,000 mostly Sunnis and Christian troops, and has armed them with weapons and vehicles donated by the UAE, a Sunni state." --Lebanon Builds Up Security Forces, Megan Stack, LA Times
"The army's conclusion is that a war in the near future is a reasonable possibility . . . the IDF's operative assumption is that during the coming summer months, a war will break out against Hezbollah and perhaps against Syria as well." --Ha'aretz editorial
When Hezbollah puts a million people on the streets of Beirut, it doesn't appear on the front page of The New York Times. That spot is reserved for Bush's "made-in-Washington" extravaganzas like the Cedar, Orange or Rose revolutions. Those bogus revolutions were cooked up in American think tanks and engineered by US non-governmental organizations (NGOs); that's why they got headline coverage in the Times. The Beirut demonstrations don't promote the political agenda of the America's ruling elite, so they're stuck on page 8 where they'll be ignored.
Some things never change.
But the demonstrations are an important part of the drama which is currently unfolding in the region. They signal the shifting of power away from Washington and Tel Aviv to a new Shiite-dominated Middle East. The American-backed government of Fouad Siniora is the next domino on the list which could fall in a matter of weeks. Time appears to be running out for Siniora and there's nothing Bush or Olmert can do about it.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is moving Lebanon towards "democratization" by demanding greater representation for the country's majority, the Shiites. So far, he's decided to take the peaceful route, but the massive protests are an impressive "show of force" that could be a sign of things to come. If the situation deteriorates, Hezbollah will do what is necessary to defend its people and its interests. Siniora knows that Nasrallah has the power to bring down the government or to plunge the country into civil war. So, it's all a matter of who blinks first.
Ironically, Nasrallah's tactics mirror those that were used during the so-called Cedar Revolution which put Siniora in office and forced the Syrian troops out of Lebanon. Now, the situation has reversed itself and tens of thousands of mostly poor Shi'ites have set up camp in Bierut's main square, the Riad el Soloh, and are hunkering-down for the long haul. There defiance is as much an indication of class struggle as it is a rejection of the Siniora government.
Megan Stack of the LA Times clarifies this point: "Some of the poorest and most marginalized people in the country, Shiite Muslims, have abandoned their homes in suburban slums to camp out on the nation's priciest bit of real estate. Though they often have trudged through Lebanese history as war refugees, now they have managed to displace Lebanon's wealthiest shop owners. They also have surrounded Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, barricaded in his office."
"Class struggle" is a big part of the present confrontation. The media has tried to emphasize the religious differences to promote their theory of a "clash of civilizations"; the ongoing struggle between modernity and Arab reactionaries. It's all the same gibberish Americans read every day in op-ed columns by Tom Friedman, David Brooks or the other neocon scribes.
The "clash of civilizations" theory is a great boon to those who would like see war in the Middle East continue into perpetuity or at least until every Arab country is broken up into little defenseless statelets.
But the truth is that the Shiites are mostly poor and underrepresented and are entitled to a bigger place at the political table. Does that mean they would have the right to "veto" legislation? (which seems to be the main bone of contention)
Yes, of course, if they are in the majority, but that doesn't imply that Lebanon is destined to become an Islamic theocracy. Nasrallah has already dismissed the idea of an Iranian-type "Mullahocracy," run by ayatollahs who strictly apply Sharia law. Nasrallah is fiercely nationalistic despite his clerical robes. His main objective is to remove the US-Israeli agents, like Siniora, from the government and reestablish Lebanese sovereignty. Remember, Siniora refused to even deploy the Lebanese army to fight the Israelis when they invaded his country and killed 1,300 Lebanese nationals. For the hundreds of thousands of victims in the south, there's no doubt as to where Siniora's true loyalties lie.
Siniora is Washington's man. In fact, he even kept the lines of communication open with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice while his country was being bombed with American ordinance dropped from Israeli planes. After the war he quickly reopened the US embassy even though his country's infrastructure was still in ruins from Israel's 34-day rampage. He has been a great asset to US-Israeli plans to create a "New Middle East," but utterly useless for the great body of poverty-stricken and homeless Lebanese civilians.
Michel Chossudovsky summarized the administration's goals in Lebanon this way: "Washington's objective is to transform Lebanon into a US protectorate. The Lebanese people are demanding the resignation of a government which is acting on behalf of the US and Israeli invaders of their country. They are demanding the formation of a national unity government which will defend the Lebanese homeland against US-Israeli aggression."
Chossudovsky adds: "The Beirut government is taking orders directly from the US embassy. The Siniora government has allowed the deployment of NATO forces on Lebanese territory under the pretext of a UN-sponsored peace-keeping operation. NATO warships under German command are stationed off the country's eastern Mediterranean coastline. NATO has a military cooperation agreement with Israel." ("Mass Demonstrations against the US-backed Lebanese Government," Michel Chossudovsky; Global Research)
The US and Israel are working feverishly behind the scenes to destabilize Lebanon as part of their broader plans for the entire region. The assassination of Lebanese Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel can only be understood in this larger context. The assassination strengthened the US-Israel position vis-a-vis Syria and increased the likelihood of a confrontation between Hezbollah and government forces. This is precisely what Israel wants. It allows Tel Aviv to stay uninvolved while their 34-Day War resumes via their Lebanese proxies.
Megan Stack of the LA Times reports, "The Lebanese government has nearly DOUBLED the size of its security forces in recent months by adding about 11,000 mostly Sunnis and Christian troops, and has armed them with weapons and vehicles donated by the UAE, a Sunni state." ("Lebanon Builds Up Security Forces, LA Times)
The dramatic increase in the Interior Ministry troops, including the creation of a controversial intelligence unit and the expansion of a commando force, is meant to counter the growing influence of Iran and Hezbollah, its Shiite ally in Lebanon. . . . The quiet, speedy buildup indicates that Lebanon's anti-Syria ruling majority has been bracing for armed sectarian conflict since the withdrawal of Syrian forces in the spring of 2005. It also reflects growing tensions across the region between US-allied Sunnis Muslims who hold power in most Arab nations and the increasingly Shiite-ruled Iran and Hezbollah." (LA Times)
The Siniora government has actually moved troops out of the army into the Internal Security Forces (ISF). The implication is clear. Siniora has no interest in defending his country from foreign (Israeli) invasion; he's simply getting ready to fight his own people. Clearly, the weapons from the United Arab Emirates are being provided under Bush's authority to help Siniora in a future confrontation with Hezbollah.
Mark Mackinnon of the Globe and Mail confirms much of what appeared in the LA Times. Mackinnon says, "Since the Syrian army's departure from Lebanon in early 2005, the US and France have been providing money and training to the Internal Security Forces (ISF). With the political situation souring further in recent weeks, the UAE stepped in to provide the unit with an emergency 'gift' of thousands of rifles and dozens of police vehicles." ("West helps Lebanon build Militia to fight Hezbollah"; Globe and Mail)
Even though Siniora's troops have been armed and trained by Western powers, Israel is still not confident that they can prevail. In fact, Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported, "The mounting crisis threatening the Siniora government in Lebanon, and the specter of a Hezbollah takeover, have spurred senior Israeli government officials in Jerusalem to raise several proposals in recent days aimed at strengthening Siniora. . . . (They are) increasingly concerned that Siniora's government will fall, resulting in a Hezbollah takeover that would turn the country into what an Israeli government official source termed 'the first Arab state to become an Iranian protectorate.'"
But Israeli fears may be unwarranted. While Hezbollah receives military assistance from Iran, it certainly does not compare to the high-tech weaponry and foreign aid that Israel gets from the US. Nor is there any indication that Hezbollah is merely a puppet of the Iranian Mullahs. This is just more baseless scare-mongering. In fact, a strong nationalist government in Beirut could serve to stabilize the region by developing a more credible deterrent to Israeli aggression. (Israel has invaded Lebanon four times in 25 years) That might undermine Israel's regional ambitions but, it would be infinitely better for the Israeli citizens who simply want peace and security.
Nevertheless, Israel is preparing for any eventuality; especially since it is unlikely that Bush will be able to commit any American troops if war breaks out. Ha'aretz summarized the somber mood of the Israeli high-command in an editorial earlier in the week: "The army's conclusion is that a war in the near future is a reasonable possibility. As Amir Oren reported several weeks ago, the IDF's operative assumption is that during the coming summer months, a war will break out against Hezbollah and perhaps against Syria as well."
But there is room for optimism. By summer, the Bush administration should be winding down in Iraq. This is bound to have a profound effect on the entire region. Israel will be less likely to restart its war with Lebanon if the administration is engaged in fragile negotiations with the neighboring states. And, who knows, a phased withdrawal of troops in Iraq might force a compromise in the Israel-Palestine standoff. (Olmert has already begun talking to Saudi Arabia about a comprehensive peace plan modeled on the Road Map)
So far, only one thing seems certain: that US-Israeli influence will steadily decline just as Shiite power continues to rise. Another bloodbath in Lebanon won't change that reality.
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Russian Zionists - Who Are They Really?
Russia demands the handover of Putin's critics in exchange for poison case help
Tony Halpin in Moscow and Daniel McGrory
6 Dec 06
Russia named its price yesterday for providing help in the investigation into the death by poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko. It demanded that Britain hand over the enemies of President Putin who have been given asylum in London.
The ultimatum came as Russian officials imposed strict limits on how Scotland Yard detectives will be allowed to operate as they began their investigation in Moscow.
The strict conditions threatened to deepen the diplomatic rift between Moscow and London caused by the death last month by radioactive polonium-210 poisoning of Litvinenko.
John Reid, the Home Secretary, pledged this week that no diplomatic obstacles would stand in the way of Scotland Yard's investigation. But yesterday Yuri Chaika, Russia's Prosecutor-General, told the nine British counter-terrorism detectives that they would not be allowed to question senior officers in the FSB, Russia's secret service.
Whitehall officials are convinced FSB agents orchestrated the poison plot, but Mr Chaika said: "The issue of the FSB authorities is not on the agenda."
Andrei Lugovoy, the key figure of interest to the police, who was among the last people to see Litvinenko on the day he fell ill, was suddenly admitted to hospital in Moscow yesterday. He claimed that he was too ill with radiation poisoning to speak, but later from his hospital bed said that he had nothing to hide and was ready to meet the detectives.
Even when doctors decide that he is well enough to talk to investigators, the Prosecutor-General says that his men, and not Scotland Yard, will question Mr Lugovoy. In addition, British detectives will have to seek FSB approval to conduct any interviews in Moscow.
Mr Chaika said that during the interviews the British detectives "may participate with our consent, and we might also withhold our consent".
Any trial of a Russian suspect would have to be in Moscow, he added.
Russian officials also said that the British team would not be able to interview Mikhail Trepashkin, a former FSB agent who is serving a four-year sentence for disclosing state secrets. Mr Trepashkin claims to have vital information about the plot to kill Litvinenko.
At a press conference yesterday Mr Chaika again promised his full co-operation with the British inquiry, but gave little tangible sign that he will make it easy for Scotland Yard. He denied that the radioactive substance used to poison Litvinenko could have come from Russia, and emphasised that Britain would have to provide evidence to that effect before he would open a formal investigation.
Alexander Sidorov, a spokesman for the Russian prison service, said: "Trepashkin is serving a sentence for treason, therefore we cannot allow him to contact foreign security services."
Prison officials have moved swiftly to punish Mr Trepashkin for "violating regulations". A district court is to hear an application today to transfer Mr Trepashkin to a tougher, more secure prison, despite concerns from his lawyer about his deteriorating health.
Meanwhile, in Moscow yesterday a search was carried out at the British Embassy for traces of polonium-210 in the room visited by Andrei Lugovoy when he applied for a visa to visit Britain. Experts said they did not expect to find evidence of the radioactive substance.
In England an HPA spokeswoman confirmed that minute quantities of radiation had been found at the Emirates Stadium in North London at "barely detectable levels". She reiterated previous advice that there was no public health concern, adding that the levels picked up were lower than natural background activity.
In a clear sign of growing diplomatic tensions, the Prosecutor-General appeared to link the Litvinenko investigation to the demands by the Kremlin for Britain to hand over Boris Berezovsky, the exiled oligarch, who is one of President Putin's fiercest critics.
British courts have thrice rejected Russian requests for the extradition of the billionaire businessman, but Mr Chaika said that he expected a fresh application "in the near term" for Mr Berezovsky and for Akhmed Zakayev, the Chechen separatist leader.
The two men were close friends with Litvinenko.
Last night British diplomats gave a restrained response to Russia's ultimatum but ruled out any idea of "a swap".
Last night Litvinenko's father said his son would be buried on Friday in a sealed coffin in a Muslim ceremony in or near London. Valter Litvinenko said that the family is negotiating with police and the Health Protection Agency on the location.
# Police in Naples last night seized documents and computers from the home of Mario Scaramella, the self-styled Italian defence consultant who was with Litvinenko when he was poisoned, after prosecutors accused him of "illegally dumping waste".
Mr Scaramella claims he has evidence that leading Italian left-wing politicians are agents of Moscow. However he is increasingly seen as a figure of diminishing credibility. His claims to be an academic have so far failed to stand up, since none of the universities with which he says he is associated - from Naples to New York - have endorsed him.
Britain wants to interview
Andrei Lugovoy Former KGB officer. Worked for a TV station in Moscow run by Boris Berezovsky. Briefly jailed, on release set up business offering bodyguards for wealthy Russians.
Mikhail Trepashkin Former FSB officer. Investigated 1999 bombings of Moscow apartments, which President Putin blamed on Chechen separatists. Mr Trepashkin claimed FSB was behind the explosions.
Russia wants to extradite
Boris Berezovsky Russia's first billionaire. Mr Berezovsky, 61, fell out with Mr Putin and sought asylum in Britain. Employed Litvinenko and other dissidents. Wanted by Kremlin for alleged corruption
Akhmed Zakayev Foreign Minister of the Chechen government in exile, he is accused by Russia of terrorist attacks. Mr Zakayev, 50, lived next door to Litvinenko and saw him hours before he fell ill
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Russia opens criminal case in spy poisoning
AP
7 Dec 06
London - Russia has opened a criminal case in the poisoning death of former spy Alexander Litvinenko, the Prosecutor General's office said Thursday.
The move would allow suspects to be prosecuted in Russia. Officials previously have said that Russia would not allow the extradition of any suspects in the killing of Mr. Litvinenko, who died in London on Nov. 23.
The Prosecutor General's office also said it had opened a criminal investigation into the attempted killing of Dmitry Kovtun, one of at least two Russian businessmen who met Mr. Litvinenko in London's Millennium Hotel on Nov. 1, hours before the former spy fell fatally ill.
Interfax news agency reported that British and Russian investigators on Tuesday and Wednesday interrogated Mr. Kovtun.
Mr. Kovtun and an associate, Andrei Lugovoi, have told the Russian media they went to London as part of a group of Moscow soccer fans, and met briefly with their exiled countryman to discuss business matters. Later, they attended a soccer game between CSKA Moscow and Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium in north London.
Both men have told reporters in Moscow that someone is trying to frame them in Mr. Litvinenko's death.
Meanwhile in London, friends said Mr. Litvinenko was to be buried Thursday in that city.
Around 30 family members and friends have travelled to Britain from Russia and Italy to attend the ceremony in north London, according to a family friend who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release details about the service.
British police on Wednesday upgraded their inquiry, saying they were treating the death of Mr. Litvinenko as murder - rather than as a suspicious death.
Officers continued inquiries in Moscow, where they are seeking to question several man but are facing resistance from Russian authorities.
Mr. Litvinenko's friend Alexander Goldfarb said Thursday he could not confirm the date of the funeral in advance, but insisted it would be a nonreligious ceremony.
"There has been suggestion that he had converted to Islam before his death; that is completely wrong - he was not a religious man. His wife has insisted that the funeral is nondenominational," Goldfarb told The Associated Press.
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Flashback: A funny sort of democracy
Neil Clark
New Statesman
11/17/2003
It is well documented that a cabal of Likud-supporting American neoconservatives played an important role in bringing about this year's illegal war against Iraq. What is less well known is the link the group has with the billionaire oligarchs in Russia and how theyare trying to use the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky to harden USpolicy towards Moscow. Richard Perle's gang of regime-changers andadvocates of total war are taking advantage of their disproportionate influence in the western media to portray the arrest of the billionaire businessman as a major international scandal and evidence thatVladimir Putin, a man whose elevation to power they largely welcomedthree years ago, is now the new Stalin.
Perle's interest in Russiagoes back a long way. As for most Likudniks of his generation, the Soviet Union was the "evil empire" - not so much for its clampdowns on western-style freedoms, but for the support it gave to secular Arab regimes and its sponsorship of Palestinian liberation movements. Perle helped draft the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment which, to the chagrinof supporters of detente, made US-Soviet trade deals dependent onthe Soviets facilitating Jewish emigration. In the 20 years that followed, more than a million Russian Jews left for Israel, boostingthe electoral prospects of Likud and the far right. This also produced new settlements in the occupied territories, which did much to provoketoday's troubles.
The eventual disintegration of the Soviet Union and the shock therapyof Russia's road to a "market" economy were widely welcomed by Perle and his supporters, even though this led to the impoverishment ofswathes of the population. With the rapid transition to capitalism came the emergence of the oligarchs - seven businessmen who usedtheir connections with the corrupt Yeltsin administration to seize valuable state assets at knockdown prices. In the oligarchs, Perleand his fellow hawks saw a way in which the US and Israel could, by proxy, gain political and economic power in Russia and, by doing so,eventually gain control of enormous energy resources.
But seven years on from the heady days of 1996, when the intervention of the oligarchs and their backers in the west guaranteed re-electionfor the "reformer" Boris Yeltsin, things have gone very wrong. BorisBerezovsky, the "Godfather of the Kremlin", and his fellow oligarchVladimir Gusinsky are both in exile. Earlier this year, Russia'sstubborn holding of its line on Iraq infuriated the neoconservativesand increased their determination to work towards regime change atthe next presidential elections in 2004 - and to accelerate theirplans to secure Russia's energy resources.
Before his arrest, Khodorkovsky had been in talks with US oil companies over a merger with Yukos. Now, with their man in Moscow behind bars,it is time for the neoconservative propaganda war against Putin to go into overdrive. Perle was first out of the blocks, calling for Russia's expulsion from the G8 and its exclusion from any postwarIraq oil contracts, and accusing it of collusion with Iran's nuclearpower programme.
Bruce P Jackson - like Perle a member of the Project for the NewAmerican Century and president of the hawkish Project on Transitional Democracies - used his column in the Washington Post to arguethat Putin had established a "de facto cold war administration inMoscow" and that the Russian president's actions were motivated by anti-Semitism (a claim echoed by Ariel Sharon). "In dollar terms weare witnessing the largest illegal appropriation of Jewish property since the Nazi seizures during the 1930s."
For Jackson, Putin is not just a new tsar and a new Stalin, but a newHitler, too. In Britain, the Daily Telegraph, a paper not known forhanding its comment pages to refugees wanted for criminal activities in their own country, did just that. Boris Berezovsky condemned the"increasing totalitarianism" of the Putin regime.
In the unrelenting pro-Khodorkovsky, anti-Putin propaganda we have beensubjected to, much has been made of the oligarchs' role in buildingRussian "democracy" - as opposed to the crude attempts of the Russianpresident to shunt his country back to the days of Peter the Great. Butthe "democracy" that Berezovsky and Khodorkovsky stand for is the"democracy" of an elite of billionaire businessmen to buy themselves not just political power, but immunity from the laws of the land.
"We hired First Deputy Chubais," Berezovsky boasted in 1997. "Weinvested huge sums of money. We guaranteed Yeltsin's re-election. Now we have the right to occupy government posts and use the fruits ofour victory."
True democracy in Russia would mean not only the return of propertyheld by the oligarchs to their rightful owners - the Russian people -but the formation of a government that puts the needs and interestsof Russia first, rather than those of the US or Israel.
For all their lip-service to the democratic ideal, that is the last thing Richard Perle, the oligarchs and their supporters in the west really want.
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Olmert rejects linking Iraq with Israel's conflicts
AP
7 Dec 06
TEL AVIV - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Thursday that he disagreed with a U.S. advisory group's report linking efforts to stabilize Iraq with new moves to end Israel's conflict with its neighbours.
The Iraq Study Group's report, released Wednesday, calls for direct talks between Israel and its neighbours, Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinians, and says that a concerted effort to resolve the Israel-Arab conflict would improve the situation in Iraq.
"The attempt to create linkage between the Iraqi issue and the Mideast issue - we have a different view," Mr. Olmert said in his first response to the report.
Mr. Olmert said conditions were not ripe to reopen long-dormant talks with Syria and added that he received no indications from U.S. President George W. Bush during a recent visit to Washington that the U.S. would push Israel to start such talks.
Syrian President Bashar Assad has called in recent months for a new round of talks with Israel, but Mr. Olmert has rejected them out of hand.
"The question of what Israel can offer Syria has been raised before. The question is, what can we get from the Syrians if enter negotiations," he said.
Mr. Olmert, however, said that Israel was deeply interested in restarting new talks with the Palestinians and would work, "with all our might" to make them happen.
He also welcomed a peace initiative put forward by Saudi Arabia, saying it contains "interesting elements that should not be ignored." However, he did not fully endorse the plan, which called for Israel to withdraw from all of the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, a stipulation Israel rejects.
Mr. Olmert also rejected suggestions that Israel's recent cease-fire with Palestinian militants in Gaza would simply allow the militants to rearm and regroup for another round of fighting, saying that Israel would not allow that to happen.
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Special committee sets conditions for truce with Israel
www.chinaview.cn 2006-12-07 20:24:15
GAZA, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- A Palestinian special committee Thursday finished drawing up conditions for reaching a general and inclusive ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian factions.
The committee proposed a one-year truce as of the beginning of 2007 in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank on the basis of the current ceasefire only observed in Gaza.
The factions demand Israel halt all its operations in the Palestinian territories, stop chasing down what it calls wanted militants and release the frozen tax revenues of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA).
It also calls on Israel to withdraw forces from the territories which were reoccupied after the eruption of the second Palestinian uprising in 2000.
But the governing Hamas has boycotted the meetings of the committee, saying that the time was not suitable for such talks as the stalled talks over unity government was more important than talking about the ceasefire.
A ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinians went into effect on Nov. 26, under which Israel withdrew forces from the Gaza Strip in exchange for stopping rocket attacks against Israel.
The truce has been largely held by Israel and major Palestinian factions though it was neglected by some minor Palestinian militant groups, which continued the rocket attacks against Israel regardless of the ceasefire.
In face of continuous rocket attacks, Israeli Security Cabinet voted on Sunday to maintain a policy of restraint in Gaza but Defense Minister Amir Peretz clearly rejected extension of the ceasefire to the West Bank.
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A snub from Segolene Royal
By Daniel Ben Simon, Haaretz Correspondent
It was a very embarrassing moment. The scene: the lobby of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. The players: Segolene Royal's spokesman Julian Dray and a representative of CRIF, the umbrella organization of the Jewish community in France. "I have nothing to talk to you about!" said Dray heatedly to the astonished Jewish representative. "You have sold your soul to the other side; you have nothing to look for with us. Go back to your friend Nicolas Sarkozy; he's your landlord."
The CRIF representative tried with all his might to convince Dray that his organization is taking an absolutely objective position with regard to the presidential race in France. But Dray stuck to his guns. "You are going to pay dearly for your one-sided mustering," he went on to shout. "Segolene will be president, and you will have to pray for her to receive you for a discussion."
The incident occurred Sunday evening, a few minutes before the discussion that Royal held with journalists about what she viewed as a successful visit to Israel. Dray, an influential parliament member with the Socialist Party, expressed the anger that has built up in the Royal camp against the Jewish community, and especially against the organization headed by Roger Cukierman.
It is an open secret that the Jews as an organized body have sworn allegiance to the candidate of the right, Sarkozy. At every opportunity, he meets with them and consults with them. At every opportunity they evince enthusiasm for him that is intended to convey the impression they are supporting him in his race for the presidency.
This is the reason Royal did not accept an invitation to meet with the heads of the organization in recent months. This is also the reason she ignored their existence when she decided at the last minute to pop over to Israel and the reason the party spokesman related to the representative of the organization as though he were a leper.
In the past, French leaders who came to visit Israel would take along a representative of CRIF, to demonstrate their connection to the Jews. Royal came to Israel with her own people and left the people of the organization helpless. The latter scorned her at first and saw her as a passerby who had stumbled into a battle of titans. Later on, when she started to gather momentum, they sent out probes to her camp to create conditions for friendship. When she defeated the men in her party in the first round, the heads of CRIF realized they had erred in their bet. After they recovered from the shock of her victory, they were certain that in the final race, their man, Sarkozy, would defeat her with one hand tied behind his back. And now, the latest surveys are indicating a close race with a slight edge for Royal.
What should they do? They are trying to carry out an elegant retreat and signal to the Royal camp that the Jews, in fact, have not yet decided who they think is the preferable candidate. However, it is possible that CRIF's mustering for Sarkozy has already created a deep crisis of trust with the Royal camp.
It has always happened that when France faces major decisions, the Jews try to appear neutral. In a desperate attempt not to become embroiled with the leading political forces, they have tried to adopt an open-bridges policy in their contacts with the two major parties.
However, recently they have been attacked by an acute desire to resemble the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). For years, the American lobby has been standing up as a defensive wall behind the hawkish views in Israel. The heads of the right have been greeted as heroes at its conferences, whereas the heads of the left have pleaded in vain for similar treatment.
The heads of CRIF took a step and learned it came with a price. "It has never yet happened to us that we have not had a connection with any key person in a candidate's headquarters," admitted a senior figure in the organization.
This is why they are trying to make a pilgrimage to Julian Dray, so he can blaze a path for them to the candidate's heart. However Dray, a declared Jew and staunch supporter of Israel whose brother works here as a doctor, has turned his back on them.
It is no wonder, then, that the first to make accusations against Royal in the wake of her visit to Israel have been the heads of CRIF. While in official Israel they have forgiven her for her stumble in Lebanon and have seen it as the mistake of a novice, the heads of CRIF have attacked her for daring to meet with a Hezbollah representative. The organization has issued an extraordinary statement of condemnation in which it reminded Royal that the Shi'ite organization is responsible for mass murders, and that its radio station disseminates anti-Semitism. All is fair in war - and both sides are sharpening their swords in anticipation of the continuation of the fight.
This situation does not work to the benefit of French Jews, of Israel and of relations between the two countries. CRIF achieved its greatness because it appeared to be a bridge that stretched over the turbulent waters of French politics. This is the reason the elders of the country, no matter from which camp, went to the trouble of accepting every invitation to appear before its members, in the knowledge that the Jewish organization is a French institution that rises above political disputes.
And there is another risk inherent here. When the alliance between the Jews and the presidential candidate of the right becomes a consolidated fact, the voters from Muslim backgrounds will flock to the Socialist candidate to serve as a counterweight to the Jews.
To the extent that the Jews will expect a return for their support of Sarkozy, the Muslims will expect a similar return for their support of Royal. If this happens, the distance between the two communities, which are embroiled in any case, is liable to grow even larger.
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French minister Alliott-Marie 'ready' to run against Sarkozy in presidential race
Daily Mail
07/12/2006
French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie has confirmed she plans to seek the nomination of the ruling UMP party to run in next year's presidential election, challenging party frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy.
"I think today that I am ready because I have a certain experience of things and I have worked for it," she was quoted as saying by the daily Le Figaro after a party meeting.
The declaration, which follows a series of indications that suggested she might run, pits her against Sarkozy, the tough talking interior minister and UMP party chief, who confirmed last month he would seek the nomination at a special party meeting on Jan. 14.
Sarkozy is the overwhelming favourite to win the nomination, which would pit him against Socialist Segolene Royal in next April's election.
He is neck-and-neck with Royal in the opinion polls but he has faced accusations from some in the party that his hardline stance and autocratic leadership style will alienate many mainstream voters.
He has invited critics to challenge him in a mini-primary, which kicks off with a debate this weekend.
The contest, modest compared to six weeks of rallies and televised debates the opposition Socialists use to pick Royal mid-month, is seen as a sop to internal critics and a response to polls showing UMP members wanted a full-blooded primary.
Alliot-Marie, who has clashed with Sarkozy in the past, said she would support him if he had the backing of the party.
"If, in a few weeks, it appears that Nicolas Sarkozy is the candidate with the greatest chance of winning...I will support him," the paper quoted her as saying.
"And I am sure that Nicolas Sarkozy will do the same for me," she said.
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It's The End of The World!
Dire Predictions 2007!
John Townley
AstroCocktail
Last December, our "Dire Predictions 2006" pinned the meters, as an unexpected flood came to find out what was expected. This year's harvest of frightening futures is even more outlandish than the last, as reality has made future-casters stretch the envelope just to surpass the current news. Since chaos, madness, and a world spinning into reckless destruction have become dinnertime TV, the urge to descry something even more compelling has propelled predictions to new levels of intensity. Almost every linked end-of-the-world forecast below has a harvest of other links, ad infinitum, so even if you live in a parallel universe, it's likely that one's about to end, too. The cornucopia of coming catastrophes falls into four rough categories:
Old Themes For The New Age. Armageddon is still definitely scheduled for 2007, in the Middle East of course, though that just seems so yesterday - or, in real terms, today, because it appears to be already happening. But despite some traditional end-of-the-worlders getting a thumpin' at the ballot box, there are still plenty of Biblically-proportioned endings on the table...
New Themes From The Old Age. But maybe that's also why someone so traditional as Mel Gibson has brought us not an Easter update but Apocalypto instead. The Mayans predicted the end of the world for 2012, but they managed it for themselves centuries earlier. For them, it's come and gone, so maybe they know something we don't. But then, it's so hip to be already history there's a gamesite about it...
Deadly Databases. Since the end of the world is more popular than ever, it gets more analysis than ever. From ticking doomsday clocks to laying endgame bets, a good dose of discussion may throw light (or darkness, as may be) on the matter. You needn't consult fringe fortunetellers, either, when hard science is chock full of doom, from killer asteroids to the Sixth Great Extinction... (that's us!)...
Unique Perspectives. There are still individual entrepreneurs who, like Nostradamus, seek to trump them all. Why reduce yourself to simple surveys, traditional terrors, or fallible fads when you can tune into personal disaster dreams, perhaps vote for your favorite, or even take charge and publish your own revelation...
Ultimately, when you know the end is near, it's time to have fun with it. Last year we picked the K-rave party in Toronto, but for this New Year's Eve we say with terminal conviction: radio fans especially, get yourself to Chicago...
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Flashback: Wanted: man to land on killer asteroid and gently nudge it from path to Earth
David Adam
Friday November 17, 2006
The Guardian
It is the stuff of nightmares and, until now, Hollywood thrillers. A huge asteroid is on a catastrophic collision course with Earth and mankind is poised to go the way of the dinosaurs.
To save the day, Nasa now plans to go where only Bruce Willis has gone before. The US space agency is drawing up plans to land an astronaut on an asteroid hurtling through space at more than 30,000 mph. It wants to know whether humans could master techniques needed to deflect such a doomsday object when it is eventually identified. The proposals are at an early stage, and a spacecraft needed just to send an astronaut that far into space exists only on the drawing board, but they are deadly serious. A smallish asteroid called Apophis has already been identified as a possible threat to Earth in 2036.
Chris McKay of the Nasa Johnson Space Centre in Houston told the website Space.com: "There's a lot of public resonance with the notion that Nasa ought to be doing something about killer asteroids ... to be able to send serious equipment to an asteroid.
"The public wants us to have mastered the problem of dealing with asteroids. So being able to have astronauts go out there and sort of poke one with a stick would be scientifically valuable as well as demonstrate human capabilities."
A 1bn tonne asteroid just 1km across striking the Earth at a 45 degree angle could generate the equivalent of a 50,000 megatonne thermonuclear explosion. Attempting to break it up with an atomic warhead might only generate thousands of smaller objects on a similar course, which could have time to reform. Scientists agree the best approach, given enough warning, would be to gently nudge the object into a safer orbit.
"A human mission to a near Earth asteroid would be scientifically worthwhile," Dr McKay said. "There could be testing of various approaches. We don't know enough about asteroids right now to know the best strategy for mitigation."
Matt Genge, a space researcher at Imperial College, London, has calculated that something with the mass, acceleration and thrust of a small car could push an asteroid weighing a billion tonnes out of the path of Earth in just 75 days.
Gianmarco Radice, an asteroid expert at Glasgow University, said the best approach would be to land a device to dig into the object. "You could place something on the surface to eject material that would push the asteroid in the other direction."
Mirrors, lights and even paint could change the way the object absorbed light and heat enough to shift its direction over 20 years or so. With less notice, mankind could be forced to take more drastic measures, such as setting off a massive explosion on or near the object to change its course. In 2005, Nasa's Deep Impact mission tested a different technique when it placed an object into the path of a comet.
Dr Radice said robots could do the job just as well, doing away with the need for a risky and expensive manned mission. Last year Japan showed with its Hayabusa probe that a remote spacecraft can land on an asteroid.
But with manned missions to the moon and possibly Mars on its to-do list again, Nasa is keen to extend the reach of its astronauts.
Dan Durda, a senior research scientist in the Department of Space Studies at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado said an asteroid landing mission would be a good way test the new Constellation programme spacecraft, the Apollo-style planned replacements for the space shuttle with which Nasa hopes to return to the moon.
He told Space.com: "A very natural, early extension of the exploration capabilities of this new vehicle's architecture would be a "quick-dash" near-Earth asteroid rendezvous mission."
Tom Jones, a former shuttle astronaut, said: "After a lunar visit, we face a long interval in Earth-Moon space while we build up experience and technology for a Mars mission. An asteroid mission could take us immediately into deep space, sustaining programme momentum, adding public excitement and reducing the risk of a later Mars mission."
Europe has its own efforts to tackle asteroids. Its planned Don Quijote mission will launch two robot spacecraft, one to tilt at a harmless passing space rock, and a second to film the collision and watch for any deviation in the asteroid's path.
'Not if, but when...' Hits and near misses
At Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in California, scientists monitor all "potentially hazardous asteroids" that might one day end up on a collision course with Earth. So far they number 831. The next close-ish shave - at a mere 17 times the distance from the Sun to the Earth - will be asteroid 2004QD14 on November 29.
The Earth has a long history of asteroid strikes. Thirty five million years ago, a 5km-wide asteroid ploughed into what is now Chesapeake Bay, in the US, leaving an 80km crater. In 1908, an asteroid devastated swaths of Siberia when it exploded mid-air with the force of 1,000 Hiroshimas. The theory that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a huge asteroid striking Mexico 65m years ago is controversial since scientists uncovered rocks from the crater predating the extinction of the dinosaurs by 300,000 years.
A near miss, when asteroid QW7 came within 4m km of Earth in September 2000, led Liberal Democrat MP Lembit Opik to declare: "It's not a case of if we will be hit, it is a question of when. Each of us is 750 times more likely to be killed by an asteroid than to win this weekend's lottery."
In January 2002, the former science minister, David Sainsbury, announced the government's response to the threat from hurtling asteroids: a new information centre based in Leicester.
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Flashback: The Pleistocene-Holocene Event: The Sixth Great Extinction
by Dave Foreman
The ReWilding Institute
"Soon a millennium will end. With it will pass four billion years of evolutionary exuberance. Yes, some species will survive, particularly the smaller, tenacious ones living in places far too dry and cold for us to farm or graze. Yet we must face the fact that the Cenozoic, the Age of Mammals which has been in retreat since the catastrophic extinctions of the late Pleistocene is over, and that the Anthropozoic or Catastrophozoic has begun." --Michael Soulè (1996)
[Extinction is the gravest conservation problem of our era. Indeed, it is the gravest problem humans face. The following discussion is adapted from Chapters 1, 2, and 4 of Dave Foreman's Rewilding North America.]
Click Here For Full PDF Report... or read Summary below...
The Crisis
The most important-and gloomy-scientific discovery of the twentieth century was the extinction crisis. During the 1970s, field biologists grew more and more worried by population drops in thousands of species and by the loss of ecosystems of all kinds around the world. Tropical rainforests were falling to saw and torch. Wetlands were being drained for agriculture. Coral reefs were dying from god knows what. Ocean fish stocks were crashing. Elephants, rhinos, gorillas, tigers, polar bears, and other "charismatic megafauna" were being slaughtered. Frogs were vanishing. Even Leviathan-the great whales-were being hunted down in their last redoubts of the Antarctic and Arctic seas, and their end was in sight. These staggering losses were in oceans and on the highest peaks; they were in deserts and in rivers, in tropical rainforests and Arctic tundra alike.
A few biologists-including geneticist Michael Soulè (who was later the founder of the Society for Conservation Biology) and Harvard's famed E. O. Wilson-put these worrisome anecdotes and bits of data together. They knew, through paleontological research by others, that in the 570 million years or so of the evolution of modern animal phyla there had been five great extinction events. The last happened 65 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous when dinosaurs became extinct. Wilson and company calculated that the current rate of extinction is one thousand to ten thousand times the background rate of extinction in the fossil record.
That discovery hit with all the subtlety of an asteroid striking Earth: RIGHT NOW, TODAY, LIFE FACES THE SIXTH GREAT EXTINCTION EVENT IN EARTH HISTORY. The cause is just as unsettling and unprecedented: eating, manufacturing, traveling, warring, consuming, and breeding by six billion human beings. For the first time in the history of life on Earth, one species is killing countless others. For the first time, one species-Homo sapiens; that's us-is waging a war against Nature.
The crisis we face is biological meltdown. Wilson (1992) warns that the proportion of species driven to extinction "might easily reach 20 percent by 2022 and rise as high as 50 percent or more thereafter." Soulè (1980) has said that soon the only large mammals left will be those we consciously choose to protect; that, "[The twentieth] century will see the end of significant evolution of large plants and terrestrial vertebrates in the tropics." He writes (1996), "The end of speciation for most large animals rivals the extinction crisis in significance for the future of living nature. As [Bruce Wilcox and I] said in 1980, 'Death is one thing, an end to birth is something else.'"
Five Great Extinctions
The fossil record reveals five great extinction episodes in the last half-billion years. They are:
Ordovician-500 million years ago, 50 percent of animal families became extinct, including many trilobites (a dominant kind of marine organism that looked sort of like a horseshoe crab).
Devonian-345 million years ago, 30 percent of animal families became extinct, including some types of early fishes.
Permian-250 million years ago, 50 percent of animal families, 95 percent of marine species, many amphibians, and many trees became extinct.
Triassic-180 million years ago, 35 percent of animal families became extinct, including many reptiles and marine mollusks.
Cretaceous-65 million years ago, dinosaurs and many mollusks became extinct.
The Three Waves of the Pleistocene-Holocene Extinction Event
The First Wave: Spread of Modern Humans 40,000 years to 200 years BP |
Location |
Date |
Affected Species |
Europe and Northern Asia |
40,000 to 13,000 BP |
Megafauna, including Homo neanderthalensis |
Australia and New Guinea |
40,000 to 25,000 BP |
Large marsupials, reptiles, and birds |
North and South America |
11,000 to 10,000 BP |
Megafauna |
Caribbean Islands |
7,000 to 3,000 BP |
Giant ground sloths, monkeys, tortoises |
Mediterranean Islands |
5,000 BP |
Dwarf megafauna, including elephants |
Wrangel Island (Siberian Arctic) |
3,500 BP |
Mammoths |
Pacific Islands |
3,000 to 200 BP (AD 1800) |
Birds |
New Zealand |
1500 to 200 BP (AD 1800) |
Moas, other flightless birds |
Madagascar |
1000 to 200 BP (AD 1800) |
Large birds, tortoises, lemurs, small hippos |
The Second Wave: Spread of Europeans 500 BP (AD 1500) to 30 BP (AD 1970) |
Islands |
|
Tortoises, birds, mammals |
Continents |
|
Freshwater taxa, and steep population declines of remaining megafauna |
Oceans |
|
Steep population declines of marine mammals, large fish, and other species |
The Third Wave: Overpopulation and Globalization AD 1970 to 2100 |
Everywhere |
|
All taxa |
|
|
|
|
|
The Causes And Processes Of Extinction
Many things can push a species into the long, dark night of extinction. However, only a few things can cause mass extinction. For past mass extinctions, cataclysmic events-either terrestrial or extraterrestrial-so altered or harmed the biosphere that many species and whole groups of organisms died out. Scientists have found convincing evidence that the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago came suddenly (perhaps in a matter of days or weeks) when an asteroid struck Earth in a shallow sea where today's Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico lies.
But what causes "normal" extinctions, the kind that make up the background rate between the few big catastrophes? A species can become "extinct" by evolving into a new species or several new species (speciation driven by natural selection), or a species can become extinct by dying out and not continuing its evolutionary experiment. The latter is real extinction.
Extinction, or evolution into daughter species, is the fate of all species. Careful study of the fossil record of marine invertebrates shows that species usually last for one million to ten million years. What may cause species to become extinct? Michael Soulè lists the possible factors: rarity (low density); rarity (small, infrequent patches); limited dispersal ability; inbreeding; loss of heterozygosity (genetic diversity); founder effects; hybridization; successional loss of habitat; environmental variation; long-term environmental trends (such as climate change); catastrophe; extinction or reduction of mutualist populations; competition; predation; disease; hunting and collecting; habitat disturbance; and habitat destruction.
Soulè (1983) points out that some of these factors "do not become operative until one or more of the other factors have reduced the local populations to a very small size." Note that he lumps the natural and human causes. Most of these factors are at play in today's mass extinction.
Soulè warns, however, that "It is disappointing that we know so little about natural extinction." Why does modern science know so little about this fascinating subject? It is because "no biologist has documented the extinction of a continental species of a plant or animal caused solely by nonhuman agencies."
The grim truth is that we humans are the cause of modern extinctions. How do we do it?
Extinction expert David Wilcove and his colleagues list five anthropogenic causes of extinction in the United States, in order of current importance: habitat destruction; non-native (alien) species; pollution; overexploitation; disease. (Worldwide, however, overexploitation is far more important than in the United States today.)
Here are a few examples of the ways humans cause extinction in each of these categories.
Habitat Destruction. We reduce, modify, degrade, or transform natural habitat upon which species depend by burning, agricultural clearing, logging, mining, grazing by domestic animals, preventing natural fire, damming rivers, dewatering rivers through irrigation diversion, drying up springs and streams through groundwater pumping, eliminating keystone species like beaver and prairie dogs whose activities create habitat for other species, and urban and suburban development. Furthermore, we fragment habitat-thereby disrupting necessary patterns of movement of many species-through the above activities and by building roads, clearing power-line rights-of-way, and driving vehicles.
Non-native (Alien) Species. As humans have spread into new lands, we have brought with us disruptive alien species that are generally well adapted to human disturbance and that outcompete native species, in part because their normal enemies, such as predators and diseases, are left behind. Such damaging invaders include plants and animals, both deliberately introduced species such as domestics or ornamentals, and accidentally introduced species such as weeds or pests. These non-native species include predators (cats, rats, pigs) and competitors (starlings, tamarisk, zebra mussels.
Pollution. Pollution, whether localized or global (acid rain, greenhouse gases), can poison the waters and soils that are habitat for sensitive species, or leach away needed nutrients. Global warming and atmospheric ozone depletion-major threats to life forms worldwide-are caused largely by air pollution.
Overexploitation. Hunting, fishing, trapping, collecting, and government "pest" eradication programs have caused the extinction of many species and seriously endanger others today.
Disease. As humans have spread around the world, we have brought exotic diseases with us. Global trade is spreading many new diseases. An exotic disease caused the loss of the American chestnut in the wild. The black-footed ferret was nearly wiped out by canine distemper, a disease not native to the Americas.
Ernst Mayr, perhaps the biological giant of the twentieth century, writes (2001):
Background extinction and mass extinction are drastically different in most respects. Biological causes and natural selection are dominant in background extinction, whereas physical factors and chance are dominant in mass extinction. Species are involved in background extinction, and entire higher taxa in mass extinction.
As the cause of today's mass extinction, we humans are no longer just a biological phenomenon, but are now a physical factor equivalent to an asteroid or continental drift in radically changing biological diversity. We are not exterminating only individual species, but "entire higher taxa."
The Three Waves of Extinction
We can see the Sixth Great Extinction occurring in three waves, each caused by new groups of humans armed with new technologies spreading over new lands. The First Wave, the Spread of Modern Humans, ran from 40,000 to about 3,500 years ago as skilled big game hunters first entered lands where Homo sapiens had not previously existed. It continued from 3,000 years ago until 200 years ago, as Stone Age farmers found previously unpeopled islands in the Pacific and Indian oceans. The Second Wave, the Spread of Europeans, began in 1500 and ended around 1970 as European colonial and then industrial civilization spread over the world. The Third Wave, Overpopulation and Globalization, began about 1970 as human population exploded and new technologies and business practices tied the world into one exponentially expanding agro-techno-economy.
In the First Wave, extinctions were caused mostly by hunting, and perhaps by fire-setting and introductions of dogs and diseases into areas that had not previously experienced them. The victims were primarily large mammals, birds, and reptiles on continents and islands. In the second phase of the First Wave, Stone Age farmers settled Hawaii, New Zealand, Madagascar, and other islands, and extinctions were caused by agricultural clearing, fire-setting, hunting, and introductions of dogs, rats, pigs, goats, and diseases into areas that had not previously experienced them. The victims were primarily birds and reptiles.
The Second Wave was caused by hunting with guns; large-scale fishing; massive habitat destruction by agriculture, forestry, and domestic livestock grazing; river damming and diversion; introduction of exotic predators, browsers, grazers, parasites, and diseases; and later by industrial pollution. Islands lost birds, giant tortoises, and small mammals. On continents, some birds, fish, and large mammals have been driven into extinction, but many more species of birds, freshwater fish, and large mammals have had their numbers drastically reduced to possibly nonviable remnants. In the oceans, sea mammals, shellfish, and many fish have been wastefully exploited so that their populations are mere shadows of what they were 400 years ago.
The Third Wave has just begun. Its agents of extinction are those of the other waves, but now the human population explosion-from about 10 million 10,000 years ago to over six billion today-and a globalized agro-techno-economy spread over the whole Earth threaten everything from the last megafauna to plants to insects to coral reef ecosystems.
In 40,000 years, fully modern humans have spread across the Earth three times, with devastating consequences for the rest of life.
The Evidence For Mass Extinction Today
Even if we grudgingly acknowledge past human-caused extinctions, what proof is there that a mass extinction continues today? We can take at least three different tacks in answering this question. First is the area-species relationship and the evidence of habitat destruction. Second is the decline of specific living species. Third is the accounting of our takeover of Earth's terrestrial and marine net primary productivity (NPP) and our overshooting of ecological carrying capacity.
Species-Area Relationship
Michael Soulè writes (1999-2000), "One of the principles of modern ecology is that the number of species that an area can support is directly proportional to its size. A corollary is that if area is reduced, the number of species shrinks." In 1980, John Terborgh and Blair Winter wrote that research showed that "extinction is strongly area dependent." The species-area relationship has been shown with birds, mammals, reptiles, and other kinds of animals on the Greater Sunda Islands (the Indonesian archipelago), Caribbean islands, and elsewhere. An ecological rule of thumb is that if a habitat is cut by 90 percent, it will lose 50 percent of its species, or, if 50 percent of the area is lost, 10 percent of the species will disappear.
Known Loss of Species
Another way of showing that mass extinction is real comes from looking at historic extinctions and the number of species that are in danger of extinction today. Let's just consider mammals.
In 1997, Ross MacPhee and Clare Flemming of the American Museum of Natural History Department of Mammalogy published the results of their careful review of mammal extinctions since 1500 AD. They identified 90 species of mammals that have become extinct during the modern era of European expansion, although they think it likely that the number will be "revised upward to 110 or 115 confirmed losses" or "close to 2 percent of all mammal species on Earth." Using the highest estimate for the rate of natural or background extinction of one mammal species every 400 years, the loss of 90 species in 500 years is "a minimum 7,100 percent increase over the natural rate."
What of the near future? In 1995, 22 of Earth's 30 surviving species of large mammalian carnivores were listed as "endangered by either the United States or the World Conservation Union." There are only some 2,000 breeding adult African wild dogs left in the wild, and the Ethiopian wolf is down "to fewer than 500 individuals." According to the World Wildlife Fund, there may be no more than 1,000 giant pandas left in the wild. BBC News reports that "India's Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment has warned that by 2007 'there would be no breeding elephants left in India...and the species would die out'" because of poaching, capturing, and habitat destruction. Ten percent of the 608 species and subspecies of primates are in grave and immediate danger of extinction. Cambridge University's primatologist David Chivers says, "I've spent 30 years on [primate conservation], and now we don't seem to be getting anywhere. It's ridiculous."
Net Primary Productivity
The third area of evidence for the reality of mass extinction is to add up humans' impact. But is it really possible to calculate the human impact on Earth? Actually, we can, and we can even put a number on it. A group at Stanford University, including Paul and Anne Erhlich, published the results of their research in BioScience that showed human beings were using about 40 percent of Earth's Net Primary Productivity (NPP) in 1986. This basic ecological measure is defined by Paul and Anne Ehrlich as "[a]ll the solar energy annually captured worldwide by photosynthesizers and not used by them to run their own lives."
The Stanford group's calculations were strongly confirmed in 2001 by Stuart Pimm with his book, The World According to Pimm: a scientist audits the Earth. Pimm gives a detailed accounting of our appropriation of Net Primary Productivity.
Forty percent is how much of NPP we are taking now with 6 billion humans. However, we continue to pile baby upon baby. The exponential growth of human population multiplied by rising affluence and more invasive technology is the main driver of the Third Wave of Extinction. Where will it all end? Many demographers predict that human population will stabilize at 11-12 billion-twice what it is today. If we double our population, and affluence and technology continue to increase as world leaders, corporate heads, and economists believe, what becomes of our taking of NPP? Double our population and we will take over 80 percent. This is conservative because it does not incorporate increasing affluence and technology. Is this sustainable? How many species could continue to exist on less than 20 percent of the Net Primary Productivity? Clearly an ecological crash will happen before we reach this point.
(From Rewilding North America by Dave Foreman [chapters 1, 2, and 4]. Copyright © 2004 by the author.)
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Armageddon Online! Biblical Prophecies (Don't Laugh, These People are Serious! And they sell books and videos, too!)
Armageddon Online
Predictions of the End of the World
Many people believe that the Bible says the Battle of Armageddon, the Antichrist and the return of Jesus will occur in 2007. On this page I elaborate on this prediction and outline the reasons why.
The Scenario
The war will start in 2007. The antichrist will stand in the Jewish Temple of Jerusalem and declare that he is God. The Bible calls this the 'abomination of desolation'. Shortly after this the Arab nations will unite against Israel. Egypt will lead Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan - every nation with a border with Israel - against it. Russia and its allies will join on the side of the Arabs. During the fight the US and Russia will use nuclear weapons against each other. The war will leave 2 billion dead.
The Evidence
Don't feel the need to read all of the passages, I've highlighted key quotes in bold. There are many other passages I could have used but these illustrate the point well.
When will it happen?
This is a quote from Mark 13:14-28:
But when you see the abomination of desolation standing where it should not be then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. And let him who is on the housetop not go down, or enter in, to get anything out of his house; and let him who is in the field not turn back to get his cloak. But woe to those who are with child and to those who nurse babes in those days! But pray that it may not happen in the winter. For those days will be a time of tribulation such as has not occurred since the beginning of creation which God created, until now, and never shall. And unless the Lord had shortened those days, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect whom He chose, He shortened the days. And then if any man shall say to you, Lo, here [is] Christ; or, lo, [he is] there; believe [him] not: For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if [it were] possible, even the elect. But take ye heed: behold, I have foretold you all things. But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory. And then shall he send his angels, and shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the uttermost part of the earth to the uttermost part of heaven.
The 'abomination of desolation' is the antichrist.
The 'elect whom He chose' is the return of Jesus.
The reference to those in Judea fleeing is because of the invasion.
Continued:
Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When her branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is near: So likewise ye, (Israel) when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.
The fig tree is Israel. This is because in Jeremiah's prophecies he used 'Figs' as a symbol of the children of Israel. If figs are the children, Israel must be the father, the fig tree.
'When her branch Is yet tender' means that Israel will still be a new state (it was founded in May 1948).
'Putteth forth leaves' could mean when Israel recaptured all of Jerusalem in June 1967.
'Summer is nigh' means that the end of the world is near.
So soon after Israel takes Jerusalem the end of the world will occur. It says 'this generation shall not pass till all these tings be fulfilled'.
A generation in the Bible is 40 years, so the end of the world will be 40 years after 1967: 2007.
How will the war start?
This passage suggests that the return of Jesus will shortly follow the start of war on Israel. Read this from Luke 21:20-24
But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then recognize that her desolation is at hand. Then let those in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are in the midst of the city depart, and let not those who are in the country enter the city; because these are the days of vengeance, in order that all things which are written may be fulfilled. Woe to those who nurse babes in those days; for there will be great distress upon the land, and wrath to this people, and they will fall by the edge of the sword, and will be led captive into all the nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.
This clearly refers to the destruction of Israel by 'surrounding armies'.
Who will fight in the war?
The attack is described in Daniel 11:40
And at the end of time the king of the South will collide with him, and the king of the North will storm against him with chariots, with horsemen, and with many ships; and he will enter countries, overflow them, and pass through.
The 'King of the South' are the Arab nations, the 'King of the North' is Russia. 'Him' refers to Israel, so the passage clearly describes an attack by these forces on Israel. It also shows how the 'end of time' will occur after this war.
The nations involved are describe in Ezekiel 38: 5-7
Persia, Ethiopia, and Libya with them; all of them with shield and helmet: Gomer, and all his bands; the house of Togarmah of the north quarters, and all his bands: [and] many people with thee. Be thou prepared, and prepare for thyself, thou, and all thy company that are assembled unto thee, and be thou a guard unto them.
Persia is the site of Iran. Gomer and Togarmah are the sites of Turkey. All of these nations are Arab.
What will the war be like?
Revelation 9:13-16 states that the war will involve '200 million soldiers' and 'slay the third part of men.' This means that 2 billion (1/3 of the Earth's population) would die - a conceivable figure for a nuclear war. Such a war could use 200 million men.
This is a key passage - Ezekiel 39: 1-6:
Therefore, thou son of man, prophesy against Gog, and say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I [am] against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal: And I will turn thee back, and leave but the sixth part of thee, and will cause thee to come up from the north parts, and will bring thee upon the mountains of Israel: And I will smite thy bow out of thy left hand, and will cause thine arrows to fall out of thy right hand. Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel, thou, and all thy bands, and the people that [is] with thee: I will give thee unto the ravenous birds of every sort, and [to] the beasts of the field to be devoured. Thou shalt fall upon the open field: for I have spoken [it], saith the Lord GOD. And I will send a fire on Magog, and among them that dwell carelessly in the isles: and they shall know that I [am] the LORD.
It says all but a 'sixth part' of the invading army will be destroyed. Israel's army could not do this, but Israel is known to have nuclear weapons so these could be used against an invading force.
Magog is Rusia. 'Fire on Magog' could easily be a nuclear strike. Those that 'dwell carelessly in the isles' could be referring to the US, as it is isolated geographically from other countries. This then suggests that there could be nuclear war between Russia and America.
Many scriptures describe the sun and moon becoming dark shortly after the war, eg:
Joel 3:14-15: The sun and the moon grow dark, and the stars lose their brightness
Matthew 24:29 The sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky
Mark 13:24 But in those days, after that tribulation, The sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven
This refers to the end of the world. The references to the sun going dark could be describing the Nuclear Winter scenario, where dust from nuclear wars blocks out the sun.
Conclusion
So that is the evidence. In 2007 the Battle of Armageddon will take place, there will be nuclear war and Jesus will return. However, some of these interpretations of the text are fairly loose, so if in doubt read through them again and make your own mind up. Whether you believe in this or not is largely a matter of faith, and either way, we will know in 6 years.
I've opened the Armageddon Store selling great books, videos and DVDs related to the end of the world.
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The Early 21st Century: 2007 Prophecies
newprophecy.net
These predictions are all hyperlinked so go to the ORIGINAL to check it out.
Warning: This is mostly silly, but if you want a little entertainment, go for it!
MOST RECENT PREDICTION(S):
Russian Military Re-invades Afghanistan - New prediction dated November 30, 2006.
Russia Invades Turkey - New prediction dated November 30, 2006.
Monster Tsunami Strikes Off West Coast of Alaska or Canada - New prediction dated November 26, 2006.
US Warship Attacked and Bombed in Persian Gulf - New prediction dated November 9, 2006.
The First in a Series of Mega-Fireballs - New prediction dated October 4, 2006.
Fire or explosion on Russian sub or naval vessel in Gulf of Bothnia - New prediction dated September 6, 2006.
"The King of Babylon" Comes (or Returns) To Power - New prediction dated September 2, 2006.
New Middle East Peace Accord Is Attempted - New prediction dated June 2, 2006.
International Space Station Crashes to Earth - New prediction dated May 3, 2006.
Terrorist Attack or Plane or Boat Accident Kills Member of Royal Family - New prediction dated April 28, 2006.
Actress or Supermodel Tragedy - New prediction dated June 12, 2005.
Arrival of "The Great Comet" - New prediction dated June 11, 2005.
EZEKIEL'S WAR OF GOG, LAND OF MAGOG: Russia Re-Invades Middle East, Attacks Israel - New prediction dated April 24, 2005.
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World Economy Soon To Be "Suicided"
Big Box Swindle: The Fight to Reclaim America from Retail Giants
By Stacy Mitchell
AlterNet
December 7, 2006
A growing number of communities are fighting back against the rising power of large retail stores like Wal-Mart. But real change won't come until we stop thinking of ourselves as consumers and start thinking of ourselves as engaged citizens.
Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from Stacy Mitchell's new book, Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses (Beacon Press, 2006).]
To Beat Wal-Mart We Need to Shed Our Consumer Identity
Citizens groups are waging a growing number of successful campaigns against big-box retailers. They are winning victories in places as far-flung as Damariscotta, Maine, a coastal village where two stay-at-home moms ignited an uprising this past spring that not only blocked a Wal-Mart supercenter but led several towns to adopt store size cap laws that effectively ban big boxes region-wide, and Inglewood, California, a working class city near Los Angeles where voters handed Wal-Mart a stunning upset two years ago even though the chain spent over $1 million on a massive public relations blitz.
Despite differences in circumstances and demographics, all of these successful campaigns -- and there have been dozens in the last two years -- have one striking commonality: a core part of their strategy involves getting people to see themselves not just as consumers, but as workers, producers, business owners, citizens, and stewards of their community. When people walk into a voting booth or city council meeting with this vastly expanded sense of their own economic and political identity, they are far more likely to reject big-box development projects and to endorse measures that force these companies to adhere to higher standards. This is a crucial lesson as we work to knit these local efforts together into a broader movement to counter the power of global corporations.
In contrast, when the big chains win, they do so by getting people to assume the familiar and narrow role of consumer and to view their relentless expansion and radical restructuring of the economy as simply a matter of shopping options.
Although pervasive in its influence today, this consumer identity is a relatively recent invention. It only became a powerful force in U.S. politics in the years after World War II. To a large degree, it was created and propagated by the first generation of chain retailers-companies like A&P, Kroger, and Woolworth-which encountered such strong public opposition in the 1920s and 30s as to call into doubt their continued existence. The chains responded with a massive PR campaign that managed to transform American citizens into consumers-a sharply circumscribed identity that corporations have used to augment their power ever since.
Chain stores first began to multiply in large numbers in the years following World War I. During the 1920s, the number of chain stores climbed from about 30,000 to 150,000. By the end of the decade, they were capturing 22 percent of all retail sales nationally. Leading the pack was A&P, with some 15,000, mostly small, outlets that accounted for 11 percent of the country's grocery sales and generated over $1 billion in annual revenue. A&P was the Wal-Mart of its day-although it was, in relative terms, significantly smaller, accounting for 2.5 percent of all retail sales, compared to Wal-Mart's 10 percent share today.
As the chains expanded, so too did opposition to their presence. It was a cause embraced by populists, progressives, unions concerned about wage pressures, farmers fearful chain store buying power, wholesalers, and of course local business owners. By the late 1920s, more than 400 local organizations had sprung up around the country to counter the chains. These "home defense leagues" and "better business associations" were varied in their approaches. Some, like the Community Builders in Danville, Virginia, never mentioned the chains, but instead promoted the idea, through billboards and radio programs, that money that stayed in town helped to build the community and its institutions. Other groups attacked the chains directly and exhorted people to boycott them. A campaign in Springfield, Missouri, urged, "Keep Ozark Dollars in the Ozarks," and ran newspaper ads describing chain store managers as "mechanical operators" whose duty was to "get Springfield's money and to send it to the Home Office."
The anti-chain cause was the focus of at least forty newspapers and a dozen radio programs, including a broadcast by W.K. Henderson, the popular and foul-mouthed forerunner of today's shockjocks, whose show, out of KWKH in Shreveport, Louisiana, was heard throughout the South and West. In 1930, the Reverend J.M. Gates, a prolific African-American preacher who sold tens of thousands of records of his sermons, including such hits as "Are You Bound for Heaven or Hell?" and "Kinky Hair is No Disgrace," recorded one calling on people to "stay out of the chain stores."
By 1930, "the chain store problem" had entered the national political debate in full force. The Nation ran a four-part series entitled, "Chains Versus Independents," while The New Republic asked, "Chain Stores: Menace or Promise?" That year, the nation's high school and college debate teams argued the proposition, "Resolved: that chain stores are detrimental to the best interests of the American public." Several U.S. Senators and Congressmen ran on anti-chain platforms, while Progressive gubernatorial candidates in Wisconsin and Minnesota made the chains a central issue in their campaigns. An ex-governor of Texas reportedly "received a revelation from God to get back into politics and save his people from the chain-store dragon."
Opponents argued that the chains threatened democracy by undermining local economic independence and community self-determination. As they drove out the local merchant -- a "loyal and energetic type of citizen"-- the chains replaced him with a manager, a "transient," who was discouraged from independent thought and community involvement, and who served as "merely a representative of a non-resident group of stockholders who pay him according to his ability to line their pockets with silver."
Many believe, wrote Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, author of Curse of Bigness and a strong advocate of vesting both economic and political power in local communities, that "the chain store, by furthering the concentration of wealth and of power and by promoting absentee ownership, is thwarting American ideals; that it is making impossible equality of opportunity; that it is converting independent tradesmen into clerks; and that it is sapping the resources, the vigor and the hope of the smaller cities and towns." Chain stores drained money from communities, drove down wages, and squeezed producers. In a study of 45 chain and independent grocers in ten cities, two writers for The Nation found that prices at the chains were seven percent lower, but their wages were 20 percent less.
At a time when Americans had not yet defined their role in economic and political life as primarily that of a consumer, but still thought of themselves as independent producers, workers, citizens, and custodians of local communities, these arguments found widespread support. The chains' overall market share stagnated, hovering at just over 20 percent through the 1930s and well into the 1940s.
Those opposed to chains sought not only to change people's shopping habits, but to implement legislation that would retard their growth. In the mid 1920s, several state legislatures debated bills that would impose a special tax on chains. In 1929, Indiana became the first state to adopt such a tax. It was a graduated business license fee that increased according to the number of outlets a retailer operated, ranging from $3 a year for a single store up to $25 per store for chains with 20 or more outlets. The law was immediately challenged as a violation of the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. Two years later, it was upheld by the Supreme Court in a 5-4 ruling that concluded that the distinction between chains and independents was reasonable enough to justify different tax rates.
Between 1931 and 1937, twenty-six states adopted chain store taxes. Dozens of cities did as well, led by Portland, Oregon, in 1931. Others, including Cleveland, Louisville, and Phoenix, soon followed. Some of these taxes, such as Indiana's, were nominal enough to have little impact on the chains. Others were more severe. Texas assessed a $750 per store tax on chains with 50 or more outlets; Pennsylvania collected $500 on stores in chains exceeding 500 units. To put this in perspective, the grocery chain Kroger, which had 4,000 outlets in 1938, posted profits of about $1,000 per store, while Walgreen with 1,900 units earned about $4,000 per store. When figuring the tax, most states counted only the number of outlets within their borders, but Louisiana based its levy on the total number of stores the chain had nationally.
Although the U.S. Supreme Court upheld these taxes in several cases, including one challenging Louisiana's law in 1937, it defined the scope of state authority very narrowly and somewhat arbitrarily. Variations on the standard chain store tax-the graduated license fee-were struck down by the Court, including laws in Kentucky and Iowa that taxed a retailer's revenue, increasing the rate according to the volume of sales. The majority concluded-with Brandeis and two other Justices dissenting-that these laws treated national retailers differently from other retailers, violating their rights under the 14th Amendment, which was adopted after the Civil War to ensure all people equal treatment under the law.
The decision was built on rulings going back to the 1880s, when the Supreme Court had greatly expanded the power of corporations by extending to them the same protections granted to citizens under the Bill of Rights. It was a radical departure from the first century of U.S. history. Where once corporations had been subordinate to the public will, now they were given equal footing and potent legal rights. This expansive notion of corporate "rights" hindered states' ability to regulate chains. It endures to this day and explains why mega-retailers have been allowed to initiate ballot referenda and engage in political campaigns: despite their superior financial resources, they are deemed to have the same rights as citizens to free speech and participation in the political process.
As cities and states continued to test the reach of their authority to regulate chain stores, Congress took up the issue, passing the Robinson-Patman Act, which barred large retailers from using their market power to coerce suppliers into giving them special deals not made available to independents.
Then, in 1938, Congress turned its attention to another proposal by Rep. Wright Patman, who sought to levy a national tax on chain stores. Co-sponsored by seventy-five Congressmen from 33 states, the bill would have dealt a death blow to most national chains. For those with more than 500 outlets, the base rate was $1,000 per unit. This was then multiplied by the number of states the chain spanned. Had the tax been in place in 1938, A&P would have owed $472 million in taxes on earnings of $9 million, while Woolworth's would have been assessed $81 million on $29 million in profits. Patman's bill phased in the tax over several years; the intent was to give the chains time to sell most of their stores to local owners.
By the time Congress considered Patman's bill, however, the political terrain had begun to shift. The chains had mounted a massive public relations effort. It began in California in 1936, when the chains hired the Lord and Thomas Advertising Agency to gather signatures to force a referendum on the state's newly enacted chain store tax and to wage a campaign against the measure.
Lord and Thomas advised the chains that they had three natural allies: their employees, suppliers, and customers. Under the ad firm's counsel, the chains started calling employees by name rather than number, raised their salaries, and lessened their work load. They curried favor with farmers by absorbing a bumper crop of peaches. They tried to improve their community image by ordering store managers to join local chambers of commerce. Lord and Thomas dispatched an army of speakers, who extolled the chains' virtues before any civic group or club that would listen.
Two months before the vote, the chains unleashed a barrage of radio and newspaper advertising. They sidestepped the issues of community self-determination, jobs, and local businesses, and instead cast the debate in the narrow framework of consumption. "Vote NO and keep prices low," they urged. Early opinion polls had shown strong support for the tax, but on election day, it was trounced by a two-to-one margin.
The chains took their public relations campaign national, forming the American Retail Federation (which later became today's National Retail Federation) to carry it out. They ran advertisements touting their consumer benefits and attacking the Patman tax in every daily newspaper in the country. They won over key constituencies, notably farmers and organized labor. Support from farmers came as the chains continued to buy up surplus crops, saving citrus growers in Florida, walnut growers in Oregon, and turkey farmers in New York. In 1938 and 1939, A&P, which had previously fought unionization, permitted its stores to be organized and signed a series of collective bargaining agreements. The company's change of heart came "under the guidance of their public relations council." In meetings with the president of the American Labor Federation, they cut a deal: unionization in exchange for labor's opposition to Patman's bill.
Most significantly, the chains continued to cultivate the consumer identity. The more people saw themselves as consumers-not producers, workers, or citizens-the less concerned they were about how the chains were impacting their livelihoods and their communities, and the more inclined they were to see the chains as satisfying an essential need for "quality, price, and better buying information."
In 1939, Business Week reported that the chains had "reversed the trend against them." Patman's tax failed in 1940. The following year Utah voters rejected a chain store tax. No other chain store taxes were enacted after that point. Over the years, those on the books were either repealed or rendered irrelevant by inflation.
The post-war years saw the triumph of the consumer as the primary way in which Americans identified themselves and articulated their economic and political interests. The notion that the ownership structure of the economy ought to embody and support democratic values faded from view. Economic policy was no longer seen as an instrument for nurturing self-reliance and self-government, but for furthering efficiency and consumer welfare.
Brandeis's stance in favor of decentralizing both economic and political power disappeared as a working policy position. Liberals instead resolved the problem of concentrated economic power by embracing a strong federal government that would regulate corporate America's worst excesses and establish a social welfare system to absorb the fallout. Today, while liberals and conservatives may argue about the size and scope of the federal government, support for breaking up and dispersing economic power finds expression in neither of the major parties.
Unease about corporate power and a desire for greater community self-determination has, however, emerged once again as a potent issue at the local level. It's evident in the rising interest in locally grown food and other products, and in the many cities that are setting their own economic policies, enacting such measures as living wage laws and ordinances that restrict the expansion of Wal-Mart and other corporate retailers. Many are also actively fostering the development of a locally rooted economy. Meanwhile, in some three dozen cities, local business owners have banded together in Independent Business Alliances that are calling on people as citizens to engage in a kind of economic disobedience by withdrawing support for the chains and shopping locally owned, as well as shaking up local politics by articulating a pro-business agenda that differs markedly from what's put forth by most big business-dominated chambers of commerce.
It's too early to tell, but these initiatives-which will be the subject of the remainder of this book-may well usher in a future America that is not dominated by a handful of global corporate giants, but rather embraces a decentralized economy more conducive to democracy.
Stacy Mitchell, author of Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses, is a senior researcher with the New Rules Project, a program of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. She is the author of "The Hometown Advantage: How to Defend Your Main Street Against Chain Stores and Why It Matters."
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Consumption Has Finally Caught Up With Us
By Michael T. Klare
Foreign Policy in Focus
December 7, 2006
We're closer than we think to an age when gasoline becomes a luxury and restaurant meals become unattainable.
Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, foreign policy analysts have struggled to find a term to characterize the epoch we now inhabit. Although the "Post-Cold War Era" has been the reigning expression, this label now sounds dated and no longer does justice to the particular characteristics of the current period. Others have spoken of the "Post-9/11 Era," as if the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were defining moments for the entire world. But this image no longer possesses the power it once wielded -- even in the United States.
I propose instead another term that better captures the defining characteristics of the current period: the Post-Abundance Era.
If there is one thing that most inhabitants of the late 20th century shared in common, it was a perception of rising global abundance in virtually all fields: energy, food, housing, consumer goods, fashion, mass culture, and so on. Yes, there were pockets of poverty in many areas, but most people in most places around the world were seeing a rise in their personal income and an increase in the number of things in their possession, along with the supply of energy with which to move or power their many personal goods.
At least some strata of the global population will continue to experience an increase in personal wealth in the 21st century, but the sense of abundance that characterized the late 20th century is likely to evaporate for the great majority of us. One day affordable luxuries like overseas vacations and meals out will become unattainable, and even basic necessities like energy, electricity, water, and food are likely to become less plentiful and more expensive. This global austerity will produce great hardship for the poor and will force even lower-middle class families to choose between long car trips, restaurant meals, air-conditioning in summer, and high thermostats in winter.
Less Supply, More Demand
Lying behind this historic shift in global fortunes is a fundamental reversal in the balance between resource supply and demand. For most of the 20th century, global stockpiles of vital materials like oil, natural gas, coal, and basic minerals expanded as giant multinational corporations (MNCs) poured billions of dollars into exploring every corner of the Earth in the drive to locate and exploit valuable deposits of extractible materials. This permitted consumers around the world to increase their consumption of virtually everything, safe in the knowledge that even more of these commodities would be available next year and the year after that, and so on infinitely into the future.
But this condition no longer prevails. Many of the world's most promising sources of supply have been located and exploited, and all of the additional billions spent by MNCs on exploration and discovery are producing increasingly meager results. Ever since the 1960s, the most fruitful decade in the worldwide discovery of new oilfields, there has been a steady decline in the identification of new deposits, according to a recent study by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Even more worrisome, the rate of oil field discovery fell below the rate of global petroleum consumption in the 1980s, and since then has fallen to approximately half the rate of consumption. This means we are increasingly relying on deposits found in previous decades to slake our insatiable thirst for petroleum -- a pattern that cannot continue for much longer before we will begin to experience an irreversible and traumatic decline in the global supply of oil.
The same is true of other vital resources, including natural gas, uranium, copper, and many minerals. There may be adequate stocks of these materials on global markets today, but the MNCs are not finding enough new deposits of these commodities to replace what we're consuming. So future shortages are inevitable.
Water is somewhat different, in that we receive a fresh supply of it each year through evaporation from the oceans and precipitation on land -- but even this precious resource will become scarcer in the years ahead due to population growth, urbanization, industrialization, the over-exploitation of underground aquifers, and global warming (through persistent drought and the accelerated evaporation of rivers and lakes).
This contraction in the global supply of vital resources will affect our lives in myriad ways. On a personal level, it will force us to consume less -- for example, by buying smaller, more fuel-efficient cars and smaller, more energy-efficient homes. We will have to make other accommodations as well: fewer long-distance trips to the seaside or distant amusement parks; fewer long-distance airplane rides; lowered thermostats in winter; and so on. These cutbacks will be minor inconveniences for some, but significant hardships for others -- especially the poor, the elderly, and others on a fixed income. Farmers will have a particularly hard time, as the cost of virtually everything associated with modern, mechanized agriculture -- diesel fuel, pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, food supplements -- will become far more expensive.
Less Stuff, More Conflict
At the national level, we can expect a significant change in foreign policy. As supplies of energy and other basic necessities become scarce, senior officials will come under enormous pressure to "solve" the problem by any means necessary, including the use of military force.
In the case of energy, this could lead to future wars over oil. Even if oil were not the only motive for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the United States has long sought to maintain a dominant position in the oil-rich Persian Gulf area and a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq will facilitate American efforts to seize the oil of Iran and neighboring countries if a decision were ever made to do so. The Department of Defense is also beefing up its capacity to "project" military power into the oil-producing areas of Africa and the Caspian Sea basin. No one in official circles will admit that "guarding foreign oil fields" is the ultimate objective of Pentagon war plans, but it is becoming increasingly evident that the American military is being reconfigured to accomplish exactly this task.
Nor is the United States alone in thinking along these lines. China also seeks to enhance its capacity to project power into foreign oil-producing areas. And Russia, with a surplus of energy, seeks to exploit its advantageous position in order to extract concessions from less privileged nations.
Future shortages of water are also likely to prove a source of international friction and conflict. Egypt, which relies on the Nile River for virtually all of its water, has threatened to attack Sudan and Ethiopia if they proceed with plans to dam the Nile and divert some of its waters into irrigation schemes desperately needed to feed their rapidly growing populations. Israel has also threatened to go to war with neighboring Arab states if they move ahead with plans to dam the Yarmuk River (one of the tributaries of the Jordan) or otherwise jeopardize Israel's already over-stretched water supply. Such threats -- and possibly actual outbreaks of conflict -- are likely to become more common as the demand for water rises and global supplies dwindle.
The Gestalt of Austerity
The end of abundance is not the same thing as outright scarcity. Some commodities, like oil, may become truly scarce in later decades of the 21st century, but they will not disappear altogether. Those with means will still be able to purchase gasoline and air conditioning and other soon-to-be luxury items. But the end of abundance will create a new international environment -- a new gestalt, if you will -- in which expectations are lowered and struggles over what remains become fiercer and more violent.
Ideological, political, and ethnic differences will have their place in this new environment, but increasingly these will be infused with or subordinated to resource pressures. The growing edginess evident in Sino-American relations, for example, can be traced at least in part to a perception that the United States and China are becoming bitter competitors in the global hunt for new sources of petroleum. Likewise, the growing frostiness in U.S.-Russian relations can be attributed in part to Moscow's heavy-handed use of its natural gas monopoly to browbeat neighboring countries like Ukraine and Georgia. This is exactly how we would expect international affairs to evolve in a Post-Abundance Era.
Prediction is always risky, and it is entirely possible that some unanticipated event on the scale of 9/11 or World War II will come along and redefine the current epoch. But such a calamity aside, the end of global abundance and the resulting scramble for resources is likely to prove the most conspicuous feature of the emerging international landscape.
Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., and the author of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Petroleum Dependency.
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The Housing Crash Recession of 2007
05 December 2006
TruthOut
As we approach the end of 2006, the economy's prospects for next year appear more gloomy with each new piece of economic data. And, just like President Bush in his assessment of the situation in Iraq, the economic forecasters are gradually revising their forecasts downward, as it no longer appears credible to present the rosy pictures that they had been trying to sell.
The trouble began early in the year, when the housing boom that was supposed to continue forever turned into a housing bust. The rate of house price appreciation didn't just slow, as most economists predicted, nor did prices simply flatten in accordance with their revised predictions. House prices began to fall. Nationwide, house prices are now down between 1 percent and 2 percent from their levels at the same point in 2005. (The decline is between 4 percent and 5 percent, if we adjust for inflation.) The price declines in some of the most over-valued areas, like Washington, DC, and parts of Florida and California, have been considerably sharper.
In fact, the price declines are even larger than is shown in the data, because sellers now routinely make payments that are not captured in the contracted price, such as picking up some of the buyer's closing costs or making repairs to the house before the sale. Such practices were unheard of a year ago.
When the downturn in the housing market could no longer be denied, the economic forecasters assured us that the rest of the economy would remain strong. They noted the strength in non-residential construction, strong investment in equipment and software, and of course the resilience of consumers.
This picture is not panning out well either. The non-residential sector experienced a short boom earlier in the year. This should not have been a surprise. The housing boom pulled resources (workers and construction materials) away from the non-residential sector. In some of the areas with the most over-heated housing markets, it wasn't possible to get the workers needed to build stores, offices or other non-residential structures. This meant that when demand in the residential sector eased, resources could switch to meet the pent-up demand in the non-residential sector.
But, it was predictable that this boom would be short-lived. The residential sector is twice as large as the non-residential sector. And there just is not that much pent-up demand. There was serious overbuilding in the office and retail sectors in the late-90s boom, and the continued decline in manufacturing means demand for factory construction is limited. According to the most recent data, construction in the non-residential sector was already falling off by the end of the third quarter.
The boom in equipment and software investment also seems to have disappeared. The latest numbers in this sector have been negative also, suggesting that investment will be at best a very small positive in the economy in the next year.
This leaves us with our resilient consumer. The economic forecasters assure us that strong job growth, coupled with healthy wage growth and falling gas prices, will give consumers the money they need to keep spending.
Well this story does not look very good either. Job growth has actually been slowing over the course of the year, with the private sector adding less than 100,000 jobs on average for the last two months. Falling gas prices are a positive, but since no one had expected gas prices to soar to $3 a gallon, the fact that prices have fallen back to last year's levels does not give consumers that much of a boost. Finally, we are looking at modest real wage growth (at 1 percent annually), but this is not extraordinary and not enough to provide a very large boost to demand.
The more important part of the story for consumers is that they are losing the ability to borrow against their homes. Last year, consumers pulled more than $800 billion in equity out of their homes. Many people bought their homes with little or no money down, and then borrowed against their equity as quickly as their house price rose. Now that house prices have turned down, they have no further equity against which to borrow. This means that these consumers have no choice but to curtail their consumption.
The evidence for this falloff is spreading by the day. Projections of weak holiday sales and slumping car sales top the list. Throw in the reports of rapidly rising rates of mortgage delinquencies and defaults and you get a clear picture of rapidly growing distress.
Of course, with all sources of demand showing weakness, job growth will slump further, and we'll get our classic downward spiral: declining employment, falling income, falling consumption, and then further job loss. The story is not pretty, but unfortunately there is no way to prevent it. This downturn will be especially painful because it is associated with a crash of the housing bubble. This means both that many people will lose their life's savings and also that the recession is likely to be longer lasting than most.
The picture would not have been so dire if economists had been better able to do their job. Unfortunately, economic forecasters seem more interested in happy talk than economic analysis. Not one of the "Blue-Chip 50" forecasters saw the 2001 recession coming. The record seems no better this time around.
Unfortunately, no one ever holds the forecasters accountable. Even though they all missed the last recession, and just about all of them will have missed this recession, the same group will probably still be around to miss the next recession. Some workers, like dishwashers and custodians, teachers and truck drivers, have to meet performance standards. Economic forecasters apparently just have to show up to collect their paychecks.
Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer (www.conservativenannystate.org). He also has a blog, "Beat the Press," where he discusses the media's coverage of economic issues. You can find it at the American Prospect's web site.
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Georgia foreclosures jump 99%; rate is nation's 3rd highest
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
12/06/06
Hundreds of Georgians lost their homes Tuesday.
The houses, taken from debt-laden homeowners, were sold to bidders on courthouse steps statewide
The increasingly busy monthly auctions show that not all of the residential market is in decline.
Foreclosures are rising.
More than 115,000 properties across the country were in the foreclosure process in October - up 42 percent from the same month a year earlier, according to RealtyTrac, a California company that tracks foreclosures.
Foreclosures in Georgia are up a stunning 99 percent in the past year.
The state now has the nation's third-highest rate of foreclosures: One in every 449 households. In October, that meant 6,895 properties were in the foreclosure process.
Not all changed hands. Some homeowners came up with the needed payments; others couldn't afford the whole debt but lenders agreed to a delay while they worked out a payment plan. Still, hundreds were auctioned.
The taking of homes - generally because the owner hasn't been making mortgage payments - has always been brisk here because state laws are written for speed. Georgia is one of three states in which lenders can foreclose on houses in as few as 37 days.
Foreclosures ramped up in recent months as once-low introductory interest rates on adjustable mortgages edged up, making monthly payments unaffordable for some homeowners.
Qualified borrowers several years ago could get mortgages with rates below 4 percent, but at the end of the starter period, those rates could adjusted skyward by 2 or 3 percentage points. That would add more than $300 a month to a mortgage of $250,000.
"We really haven't had any letup," said Ralph Goldberg, a Decatur attorney whose clients include many distressed homeowners. "We know, toward the end of the month, people are going to be coming in. The Friday and Monday before [monthly] Foreclosure Day are always busy."
A foreclosure dashes a person's dream of home ownership; it also tarnishes a consumer's credit and makes future borrowing more costly.
The danger for the overall economy is that a rising pool of foreclosures will overflow into other segments of an already troubled real estate market.
Most critically, foreclosures add to the number of homes for sale. They offer bargains to buyers, but dampen the prices other sellers might get.
In addition, many of those who lose their homes also are losing the largest investment of their lives, a source of both confidence and cash.
Marginally qualified
The surge of foreclosures is, in some ways, the backwash of the five-year housing wave that began washing out last year.
Homeownership, construction and sales reached unprecedented levels, partly because lenders tried so hard to get people into houses. By standards of the past, many first-time purchasers were marginally qualified, with modest incomes and little in savings.
But with creative mortgage arrangements, the buyers often were able at least to start off paying interest rates dramatically below market levels. They often avoided a down payment entirely. Atlanta has been among the nation's leaders in the percentage of borrowers taking adjustable rate or interest-only mortgages.
"They get qualified at the teaser rate," said attorney William J. Brennan Jr., director of the Home Defense Program Atlanta Legal Aid Society. "Of course, they can't afford to pay when the rate goes up."
Most foreclosures happen on mortgages held less than five years, according to a study last year by Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies.
Goldberg, the Decatur attorney, said an increase in mortgage payments can be crippling.
"There are a lot of people who seem to have mortgages that are astronomically high, and they are just being eaten up," he said. "You look at the money they have, and you look at the mortgage, and you think, 'How did this happen?' "
Professionals hit, too
Lenders have a powerful incentive to find and qualify borrowers - whatever their income or past. The risks are eliminated for lenders that sell the loans to companies that package thousands of loans together. Those firms figure any defaults will be offset by the vast majority of loans that are profitable.
Buyers are willing co-conspirators. Buyers often lose their homes because they have no cushion to absorb unexpected expenses.
"We see people with the same issues over and over," Brennan said. "There's a death in the family, or someone is losing a job, or someone gets sick."
That can mean trouble even for white-collar professionals.
Phillip Newman is a mechanical designer. He bought a home in Lithonia two years ago, obtaining a mortgage that required a monthly payment of $1,260.
Four months later, his company was purchased and his job eliminated.
He was out of work for five months, then found a one-year contract job. When that ended, he scrambled for three months and in July found his current position - where he makes about 25 percent less than he had as a consultant. He fell way behind in his mortgage payments and was scheduled for foreclosure in October. He says he cut spending: He has no cable television, no cellphone, no Internet connection.
He kept talking to the mortgage company and arranged to pay a little more each month to catch up - something that the new job makes possible.
"Hope the car doesn't break down," he said.
One sign of how widespread foreclosures have become is the growing willingness of lenders to negotiate with delinquent homeowners, said Herb Heitman, an Atlanta bankruptcy attorney. "Ten years ago, they never made deals."
Local agency busy
In January, the Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Greater Atlanta assisted 450 people with financial troubles - nearly all of them dealing with the threat of foreclosure.
In October, the agency counseled more than 1,000, said Susan Hunt, director of the housing program.
"I have doubled my staff, and we still haven't met the need," she said.
In some ways, it's the same as always: People lose a paycheck or hit a sudden expense, Hunt said. But it's different, too. Millions of home buyers are just coping with their first big jump in mortgage rates.
"About 40 percent of the people we talk to have a mortgage with an adjustable rate," Hunt said. "And that is true across the board. We have people who live in Alpharetta in great big mansions. Their adjustable rate escalates, too."
By Foreclosure Day, it's too late for Consumer Credit to help, Hunt said.
"Someone will call and say, 'I am on the courthouse steps, and my house is next. What can I do?,' " she said. "And we can't do anything then."
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Royal Bank of Scotland Posts £1 million ($2 million) per hour in profits for 2006
Scotsman
07/12/2006
ROYAL Bank of Scotland is on course to make more than £1 million an hour in profits this year, outstripping analysts' forecasts once again.
The bank said yesterday it was on target to beat City estimates that it would make profits of £9.2 billion this year, up from £8.25bn in 2005.
The news sent the shares in Britain's second-biggest bank towards their biggest daily rise in almost three years.
RBS has used a series of headline-grabbing acquisitions to fuel its stellar growth. Operations overseas, including US-based Charter One, for which it paid £5.8bn in 2004, generate 40 per cent of overall profits.
The Edinburgh-based group, which is worth some £60bn, also appears to be doing a better job at keeping a lid on consumer debt than many of its rivals. It told the City that losses in this area were continuing to moderate.
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Racism-Fascism Rife In US Culture
Pundit Attacking Muslim Congressman Is Bush Appointee to Holocaust Memorial Board
Nico
Thinkprogress.org
5 Dec 06
Right-wing talk show host Dennis Prager has raised a firestorm charging that Rep.-elect Keith Ellison (D-MN), the first Muslim elected to Congress, must swear in using a Bible. He said that if Ellison swears in with a Quran, it would "undermin[e] American civilization" and be akin to swearing in with a copy of Hitler's "Mein Kampf."
Prager is not a typical talk radio host. In September, he was appointed by President Bush to a five-year term on the taxpayer-funded United States Holocaust Memorial Council. A statement announcing Prager's appointment praised his "unique moral voice."
Yesterday, the Council on American Islamic Relations called on Prager to be removed from this position:
No one who holds such bigoted, intolerant and divisive views should be in a policymaking position at a taxpayer-funded institution that seeks to educate Americans about the destructive impact hatred has had, and continues to have, on every society. As a presidential appointee, Prager's continued presence on the council would send a negative message to Muslims worldwide about America's commitment to religious tolerance.
Likewise, the Anti-Defamation League, a group battling anti-Semitism and other bigotry, issued a statement calling Prager's views "intolerant," "misinformed on the facts," and "downright un-American."
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O'Reilly: "Do I care if the Sunnis and Shiites kill each other in Iraq?"
Media Matters
05/12/2006
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Bill O Reilly - Scum Bag Par Excellence
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On the December 5 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, discussing the then-impending release of the Iraq Study Group's conclusions and reports that it would recommend substantial troop withdrawals by early 2008 (read report here), Bill O'Reilly claimed that the redeployment of U.S. troops is "necessary," adding, "I don't care" if "the Sunnis and Shiites kill each other in Iraq." O'Reilly then stated: "Let's get our people out of there. Let them kill each other. Maybe they'll all kill each other, and then we can have a decent country in Iraq."
From the December 5 edition of Westwood One's The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly:
O'REILLY: So, tomorrow when the Baker Commission is released, report is released -- we'll talk about it tomorrow -- this is what's going to happen: The commission is going to say that the USA has to engage Syria and Iran in talks. OK, fine. I'm going to send [co-host] E.D. Hill right over to talk to them. She's very nice and attractive, and they'll like her, OK? So, that's what they're going to say, we've got to talk to those people, and then we have to redeploy -- yes, that's necessary in Iraq -- we'll redeploy our troops, got to get them out of Anbar, in those places -- let them kill each other.
Do I care if the Sunnis and Shiites kill each other in Iraq? No. I don't care. Let's get our people out of there. Let them kill each other. Maybe they'll all kill each other, and then we can have a decent country in Iraq.
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Flirting With Fascism on CNN Headline News - Host Glenn Beck threatens Muslims with concentration camps
Picassa
5 Dec 06
The New York Times (12/4/06), profiling new CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck, called him "brash" and "opinionated," with an "unfiltered approach." The conservative talk-radio host-turned-cable news announcer, the paper reported, "take[s] credit for saying what others are feeling but are afraid to say."
The Times mentioned one of the things Beck has said recently, to newly elected U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a Muslim: "Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies." But as press critic Eric Alterman pointed out (Altercation, 12/4/06), as offensive as that question is, it doesn't begin to suggest the poisonousness of Beck's rhetoric about Muslims.
On his August 10 radio show, distributed by Clear Channel's Premiere Radio Networks, Beck told listeners, "The world is on the brink of World War III," then issued this warning:
All you Muslims who have sat on your frickin' hands the whole time and have not been marching in the streets and have not been saying, 'Hey, you know what? There are good Muslims and bad Muslims. We need to be the first ones in the recruitment office lining up to shoot the bad Muslims in the head.' I'm telling you, with God as my witness... human beings are not strong enough, unfortunately, to restrain themselves from putting up razor wire and putting you on one side of it. When things-when people become hungry, when people see that their way of life is on the edge of being over, they will put razor wire up and just based on the way you look or just based on your religion, they will round you up. Is that wrong? Oh my gosh, it is Nazi, World War II wrong, but society has proved it time and time again: It will happen.
On September 5, Beck took the same message to his CNN Headline News audience, declaring, "In 10 years, Muslims and Arabs will be looking through a razor wire fence at the West." He explained:
Since 9/11, Americans have gotten so fed up with the "yes, but" Muslims. The "yes, but" Muslims are the ones who show up on talkshows and in the media and say, "Yes, terrorism is bad, but"-and then they go through a list of reasons on why we should try and sympathize with people who fly planes into buildings.... If, God forbid, there's another attack, we won't have anymore patience for the "yes, buts." The Muslim community better find a spokesman who isn't a "yes, but" Muslim. They shouldn't even understand the word "but," because if they don't, when things heat up, the profiling will only get worse, and the razor wire will be coming.
Beck went on to say:
You want the profiling to stop? Then, here's an idea. Stop murdering innocent people. Stop excusing the people who do. You do that for a while, and I guarantee you won't have any more problems at the airports. Stop blowing stuff up and the world just might be your oyster. Otherwise, it's going to be like that movie, The Siege. You remember that movie? The Muslims will see the West through razor wire if things don't change.
He concluded:
Look, I'm not saying all Arabs and Muslims are anti-American. Far from it. We should get to know these people and embrace the good Muslims, and eliminate the bad ones. Here's what I don't know. I don't know if the Muslim community will ever step to the plate like the Japanese-American community did during World War II. You know, it was absolutely disgraceful how we rounded innocent people up then and, sadly, history has a way of repeating itself no matter how grotesque that history might be. The Muslim community can prevent this if they act now.
When Beck is talking about "razor wire," he's talking about concentration camps-in the original sense of the word, places where masses of people are imprisoned "just based on the way you look or just based on your religion." Despite his (perfectly accurate) observation that such camps are "Nazi, World War II wrong," comparable to the "absolutely disgraceful" wartime interment of Japanese-Americans, Beck is clearly using the threat of such camps to coerce Muslims into behavior he approves of, like volunteering "to shoot the bad Muslims in the head."
Since the overwhelming majority of U.S. Muslims are neither "murdering innocent people" nor "excusing the people who do," there's really nothing that they can do to avert Beck's threat that "the razor wire will be coming." And Beck is explicit that there's nothing non-Muslims can do to avoid locking Muslims up en masse.
The New York Times, in its profile about Beck, refers to his criticism of the animated film Happy Feet, but fails to mention that he uses his Headline News slot to issue threats that he himself compares to Nazi behavior. For the Times, CNN's decision to give Beck a TV show is a "success," because he "has increased the ratings in his 7 p.m. time period 60 percent among all viewers, and 84 percent among viewers aged 25 to 54."
The Times article quoted CNN executive Kenneth Jautz as saying that the network did not take Beck's politics into account when it hired him. "We did not set out to have anyone from any particular view fronting these shows," he said. In fact, CNN hired Beck knowing that the host's repertoire included hateful attacks--the Hurricane Katrina refugees seen on TV and the father of a terrorism victim were both "scumbags" (Mediamatters.org, 5/17/04, 9/9/05)--as well as a disturbing preoccupation with violence: Beck has told his listeners that he was praying for a gruesome death for Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich (3/6/03), and that he was fantasizing about strangling filmmaker Michael Moore to death (5/17/05). As FAIR predicted (FAIR Action Alert, 1/18/06), Beck has not changed his repellent tune simply because he's been hired by a major media outlet.
Contrary to Beck's suggestion, there are things that the people of the U.S. can do to avoid repeating the "grotesque" history of Japanese-American internment. One of these things is to take people seriously when they start threatening people with concentration camps-rather than looking the other way because of their ratings "success."
ACTION: Please contact CNN/U.S. president Jonathan Klein and urge him to condemn Glenn Beck's chilling threats against Muslims.
CONTACT: CNN/U.S. President Jonathan KleinPhone: 404-827-1500
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The Crime of Breathing While Black
By Christopher Rabb
TheNation.com
December 7, 2006.
A young black man and an elderly black woman each die in a hail of police bullets; a comedian invokes the era of lynching, and suddenly it feels like a crime to be caught breathing while black.
There is nothing like being made to feel like a nigger. Just having to verbalize it or commit such a thought to text is gut-wrenching. Janitor or journalist, if you're black in America, that feeling is both unmistakable and more familiar than it ever should be so long after the the visible successes of the civil rights movement. But despite the greater prospects, opportunities and privileges earned for and by many of us over the decades, the default has remained the same: The power dynamics that exist in this country at any given time may render us niggers.
I have often joked that if you ever want to see a modern-day Uncle Tom, look no further than me in the vicinity of a white police officer. The reality is, that is how I have been conditioned to behave around the police for pure self-preservation reasons, having grown up black in Chicago with parents who wanted their boys to live to adulthood. But the other reality is that whatever newfound liberties I have experienced, and all too often have taken for granted, I don't ever want to be made to feel like a nigger -- something far, far worse than its utterance. It is a status whose roots form the tree from which we are lynched. Without the corollary lack of humanity and powerlessness, lynching could not occur, in all of its modern iterations, "contagious shootings" included.
Two recent police shootings involving black victims have a deeper meaning and impact for those of us who are unwarranted, but nevertheless prospective, suspects. In New York, Sean Bell, a 23-year-old unarmed man, died and two of his friends were critically wounded -- caught in a hail of fifty bullets fired by undercover officers -- as the group emerged from a nightclub, where they had been celebrating Bell's bachelor party. In Atlanta, 88-year-old Kathryn Johnston was shot as she sought to defend herself from police who had stormed into her home in search of drugs.
This past Thanksgiving I was stopped by an Alabama state trooper for a minor, unintentional moving violation. It was late, my family and I were tired and we were driving through rural Alabama in a rental car. Almost instinctively I knew what I had to become and how I had to act when pulled over. But as soon as I knew that the trooper had no desire to use his discretion to let me off with a warning, I committed an inviolable act that I will not soon forgive myself for as a husband and father of two small children: I challenged the trooper, albeit politely. It was a stupid and potentially dangerous thing for me to do, as the stealthy punches to my thigh from my wife reminded me.
Nothing is more important to me than the safety of my family, and yet there was this dissonant part of me -- that privileged post-civil-rights-era, Generation X sensibility that was evoked -- asserting that "we've been niggers long enough," as I recounted the generations and diversity of indignities my family has had to withstand with no recourse.
Such indignities still abound in popular culture. Consider comedian Michael Richards, who recently unleashed a racist tirade after being heckled by a few black men in the audience. Worse, he made graphic reference to lynching when he explained what would have befallen them had they "mouthed off" to a white person fifty years ago.
But whether or not we use the word "nigger" or discourage its use by others -- or among black folk -- the discrete events that trigger that visceral feeling in us will remain as long as black lives continue to have less value than white lives. Because they do. To invoke a newer, insidious rhetorical tool of conservatives, it is white "innocent life" that is sacrosanct, not society's moral outrage against violence and brutality, physical or psychological.
More than a decade after the O.J. Simpson verdict, Simpson is still the poster boy for brutality and injustice, whereas former detective Mark Fuhrman is all but legitimated as a bestselling author despite a long history of his admitted brutality as a member of the LAPD.
For many African-Americans, whether or not they believe a guilty man was nearly framed, to cast Simpson as a symbol of brutality gone unpunished is not only bizarrely misplaced and insulting; it is also symptomatic of a society intentionally blind to the daily realities of what it feels like to be seen more as a problem than as a person.
Every day we are made conscious of our own race and status in society by a host of peers and judges in a range of venues. And even if we never have to endure an altercation with the police, we still are acutely aware of how easily we can be made to feel like niggers: our gait, tone, behavior, our proximity to valuables (or more valuable people) is scrutinized. And our choice to accept this reality and conform to earn that eye contact, that begrudging customer service or that success in hailing a cab is related to this issue of brutality, because it is an assault on our citizenship and very humanity.
"Contagious shooting" may very well be a legitimate assessment of the events that culminated in Sean Bell's death hours before his wedding. But it is symptomatic of something larger that undoubtedly correlates to when such contagions most often occur and to what degree. If there is a presumption of guilt or reason to fear or distrust someone irrespective of context, that itself is a crime; it represents the psychological brutality and ubiquity of institutional racism.
But perhaps institutional racism sounds a bit too harsh for the thin-skinned mainstream media, the proxy of our willfully ignorant body politic. Society prefers what is in essence "situational racism" that dissolves with a well-placed, well-timed apology to the right brokers of contrition. "Some of my best friends are black." "I was drunk." "He had a wallet." All socially acceptable mitigators of brutal speech are deftly untethered from their more vile origins, too shameful and heavy for those most complicit to bare. But the weight of its impact never lessens on those of us who do not have a choice as long as we're breathing while black.
Christopher Rabb is a blogger, freelance writer, web entrepreneur and activist. He is the founder of Afro-Netizen, one of the largest Black-oriented weblogs on the Internet, and has also founded the Progressive Civic Fund.
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Weird Science
Poland: Alleged UFO reported in Wrocław Area
Piotr CielebiaÅ›
6 Dec 06
A couple from Mirków reported a sighting of a probable UFO on 5th December 2006.
"Yesterday, on 5th December, just about 11 pm. I noticed a strange light over DÅ‚ugoÅ‚Ä™ka [WrocÅ‚aw area]. I observe the sky on regular basis hoping that someday I manage to perceive some unknown object. The night was exceptionally bright because it was full Moon shining very brightly. It was located over Dlugoleka, i.e. about 3 km away from my house." - says Mrs. Ewa from Mirków.
"At first I thought that it is a lamp located on a top of some tower [seen at nigh on tall buildings]. I was looking at that light trying to remind if there is any tower or high chimney there. There is indeed a tower in the vicinity with two red lights always visible. In went to the balcony to check it better but the light was still in the same place. Then I realized that there is no towers in the area and it must be something 'hovering' in the air."
"I went downstairs asking my husband to check that light and he asked about any tower in that place. He's a skeptic and treats my interest in UFO and paranormal phenomena as a harmless oddity. Anyway, he approached the window and peered by it claiming that it looks like a light on a certain building. I asked if he see any in the area. As I mentioned, the night was very bright and there were no construction under the light. I grasped my binoculars and when I began observing the object, I saw a huge ball of light. I passed the binoculars to my husband and went to take a photo. Unfortunately, we had only an analogue camera and I'm afraid that nothing would be visible on the photo."
The witness feels pity that she tried to take a snap of the object. When she returned her husband dressed up and went outside with binoculars. She went along with him. Both of them noticed that the mysterious light began moving in southern direction from Dlugoleka. "As the object was moving left [looking from our perspective], the light became less intense and finally only 3 lights [positioned in a row] left. They were twinkling as those of a plane. The outer ones were white and the central one green [...]. Anyway, we were observing the ball of intense light for 3 minutes that was standing motionless and after that time it began to move."
Mrs. Ewa isn't able to determine the altitude the object was while her husband admitted that it was positioned about 0.5 - 1 km over the ground.
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Unexplained force shakes NSW mid-north coast
Sydney Morning Herald
5 Dec 06
Residents in towns along the NSW mid-north coast inundated police with calls of a tremor that shook homes on Monday evening.
Taree police said they took "a lot" of calls from people in the area reporting an earth tremor about 9.30pm (AEDT).
But in Canberra, Geoscience Australia, the agency that measures seismic activity, said it had not recorded any tremor in the area.
"We have registered absolutely nothing at all on our seismograph," a spokeswoman said.
Police said they received calls from concerned residents.
"Most of the calls came from Forster, with people saying their windows and doors were rattling," the police spokesman said. "A few residents were concerned people were breaking into their homes. But it's a fair dinkum mystery what happened."
The "tremor" lasted anything from a few seconds to up to two minutes, according to reports.
Taree radio station 2RE announcer Jeremy Miller said he started taking calls about 9.25pm (AEDT) from people wondering what was happening.
"It was felt around Forster, Nabiac, and then up as far as Taree, Wingham.
"The Taree Aquatic Club told me they felt the windows rattle for a couple of minutes."
One caller to 2RE, reported on Macquarie Radio, said: "There was all this shaking; my windows were just shaking."
Another caller said: "Both my doors, back and front, rattled at the same time, it sounded like there was thunder but it wasn't thunder. It was definitely coming from under the ground."
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Britain's Last Witch Trial - 1944
By David Edwards
Mirror
6 Dec 06
In 1944, medium Helen Duncan became the last woman in Britain to be convicted of witchcraft when one of her seances exposed a government attempt to cover up the deaths of 861 sailors. Now, campaigners aim to clear her name
IT started much the same as her other seances. With a chilling moan and strange white substance leaking from her mouth, Helen Duncan began communicating with the dead...
But suddenly, the eerie calm was pierced by a police whistle and officers piled into the house, in Portsmouth, Hants, to arrest Britain's top medium.
The following morning Helen, known as Hellish Nell, was charged under section four of the 1735 Witchcraft Act.
It was 1944, and, astonishingly, officials had ordered her arrest because they were afraid she would reveal top-secret plans for the D-Day landings.
They had been monitoring her since she had revealed the sinking of a British battleship earlier in the war - even though the government had suppressed the news to maintain morale at home.
It took a jury just 30 minutes to find her guilty and she became the last person to be convicted of witchcraft in Britain.
As she was led away to start her nine-month sentence in London's Holloway Prison, the housewife cried out in her broad Scottish accent: "I never heard so many lies in all my life!"
Helen's "gift" had long put her on a collision course with the authorities and led to one of the most bizarre chapters in British judicial history.
Today, exactly 50 years after her death, campaigners hope to persuade Home Secretary John Reid to overturn the verdict. "Helen Duncan was one of the world's top mediums, a woman who gave hope and comfort to many," says Ray Taylor, editor of Psychic World.
"It was her gift that caused the government to hound her under an archaic law which eventually led to her death.
"It's a scandal and it is time that her name was cleared."
Helen Macfarlane was born into a poor family in Perthshire, central Scotland, in 1897. Growing up in Callander, Stirlingshire, she earned her nickname due to her tomboyish behaviour. Even as a teenager, she appeared to have a sixth sense, predicting the length of the First World War and invention of the tank.
When the unmarried Helen became pregnant in 1918, she fled the village and settled in Dundee. There, she married an invalid soldier, Henry Duncan, and had five more children.
During that period, Britain was still reeling from the devastating losses sustained in the First World War and many grieving families sought spiritual comfort.
Seances quickly sprang up, conducted by people claiming to be in touch with the dead.
Helen was among them and, by the 1930s, she was travelling the country, summoning up spirits before incredulous audiences.
But while the seances were making her a celebrity, scientists were already questioning her abilities and, in 1931, she was invited with Henry to London to have her skills tested by psychic researcher Harry Price.
He recalls: "She was placed in the curtained recess. In a few seconds, the medium was in a trance. The curtains parted and we beheld her covered from head to foot with cheese-cloth!
"Some of it was trailing on the floor, one end was poked up her nostril, a piece was issuing from her mouth. I must say that I was deeply impressed - with the brazen effrontery that prompted the Duncans to come to my lab, with the amazing credulity of the spiritualists who had sat with the Duncans and with the fact that they had advertised her 'phenomena' as genuine."
In a bid to reveal the contents of Helen's stomach, Price asked if she would undergo an X-ray.
"She refused. Her husband advised her to submit. But that seemed to infuriate her and she became hysterical. She jumped up and dealt him a blow on the face.
"Suddenly, she jumped up, unfastened the door and dashed into the street - where she had another attack of alleged hysterics and commenced tearing her sŽance garment to pieces.
"Her husband dashed after her and she was found clutching the railings, screaming." Yet the researchers did not bring about Helen's downfall. Instead, the seeds were sown in the Mediterranean, on November 25, 1941.
HMS Barham, a 29,000-tonne battleship, was attacking Italian convoys when it was hit by three German torpedoes.
The ship went down within minutes, with the loss of 861 lives. Already reeling from the Blitz, the British government decided to keep the news quiet, even forging Christmas cards from the dead to their families.
But they never reckoned on Helen's psychic powers...
Days after the attack, she held another seance and claimed that a sailor with the words HMS Barham on his hatband appeared and said: "My ship is sunk."
News of the apparition swiftly reached the Admiralty, which finally chose to act two years later, in January 1944, amid fears that Helen would somehow reveal plans for the D-Day landings five months later.
When Helen was arrested, everyone expected a swift release. But such was the paranoia of the authorities, she was refused bail and told that she would stand trial at the Old Bailey.
It was alleged she had pretended "to exercise or use human conjuration that through the agency of Helen Duncan spirits of deceased dead persons should appear to be present".
News of the case infuriated PM Winston Churchill. In a note to his Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison, he wrote: "Give me a report. What was the cost of a trial in which the Recorder was kept busy with all this obsolete tomfoolery, to the detriment of the necessary work in the courts?"
The trial lasted seven days. Mediums had rallied to her cause and their defence fund allowed her barrister to call 44 witnesses to testify she wasn't a fraud.
Yet it was to no avail. Helen served her sentence and emerged from prison that September a changed woman.
AT first, she vowed never to hold another meeting but eventually relented â€" a fateful decision.
The end came in 1956, when she agreed to give a seance in Nottingham. Though the Witchcraft Act had been repealed five years earlier and spiritualism was recognised as a bonafide religion, Helen was arrested and subjected to a strip search.
She never got over the shock and, after being rushed to hospital, remained there for the next five weeks and died on December 6.
Whether a gifted psychic or a charlatan who exploited people's griefs, the strange tale of Helen Duncan - the unfortunate victim of Britain's last witchhunt - continues to attract controversy.
CASTING A SPELL THROUGH THE AGES
PENDLE WITCHES
IN 1612, at Lancaster prison, 10 men and women were hanged for witchcraft. They were believed to have been responsible for the murder by witchcraft of 17 people in and around the Forest of Pendle.
NORTH BERWICK WITCHES
A GROUP of men and women were tortured, condemned and burnt in Scotland in the late 16th century, for "crimes" including creating a storm to drown King James I.
MOTHER SHIPTON
A 15TH century Yorkshire witch, said to have powers of healing and spellcasting. "England's Nostradamus" predicted the invention of planes and cars, and had accurate visions of wars.
MARY BUTTERS
KNOWN as the Carnmoney Witch, Butters narrowly escaped trial in the 19th century for the killing of a cow and three people. At the inquest, she claimed that she had been knocked unconscious, causing her witch's spell to become toxic.
SALEM WITCHES
IN 1692, six men and 14 women were hanged or crushed to death in Salem, Massachusetts. The witch hysteria began when four girls in the town dabbled in fortune-telling games.
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Israeli psychic starts paranormal fad
By MATTI FRIEDMAN
Associated Press
5 Dec 06
JERUSALEM - When the young Uri Geller packed his spoons and self-styled supernatural powers to seek fortune abroad, no one could have predicted he would return to his native
Israel in triumph 35 years later as a reality TV star - no one, presumably, except Uri Geller.
The premise of Geller's new show, "The Successor" - which has received smash ratings here and started something of a paranormal fad - is that the psychic celebrity, now approaching his 60th birthday, has come home to choose an heir.
On recent episodes of the live show, the nine contestants aspiring to succeed Geller read the minds of audience members and made them imagine different tastes in their mouths on command. One contestant stopped his heartbeat for several seconds, leading an unfortunate 10-year-old in northern Israel to try the same trick at school - and pass out briefly.
Geller, who gained fame bending spoons using what he says are psychic powers, also performs on every show. In one episode, he drew a copy of a picture that had just been drawn by a pilot flying an El Al jet 30,000 feet above the Sinai desert. (It was a fish.)
In an interview with The Associated Press, Geller attributed the show's success to Israel's Jewish mystical traditions. "People here have roots in positive mysticism carried through the centuries by the Kabbalah," he said, referring to the ancient mystical work that has won non-Jewish enthusiasts, most famously Madonna.
While the show's content - illusion, sleight of hand and the supernatural - might stretch a picky viewer's definition of a reality program, its format sticks close to the staples of the genre: judges, manufactured drama, celebrity cameos and viewer participation. Contestants show off their powers over 10 episodes, and the winner gets fame and fortune as Geller's anointed successor, along with a secret prize, though one can assume the contestants have guessed what it is.
For Geller, his new success in his homeland brings him full circle.
Before Geller became perhaps the world's best known psychic entertainer and an intimate of Salvador Dali's and
Michael Jackson's, he was an unknown Israeli from Tel Aviv. His biography - in his telling, at least - reads like the plot of a spy novel.
At 10, his parents divorced and he left Tel Aviv for Cyprus, where his stepfather ran a hotel that was a front for Israel's Mossad spy agency, and he ran errands for agents.
He served in the Israeli paratroops, was wounded in 1967's Six-Day War, became a male model, began to showcase his psychic powers at parties, was accused of being a fraud, and went to the U.S. There, he was humiliated by a dubious Johnny Carson when his powers failed him, so he moved to Britain, where he spoon-bent his way to international stardom.
Geller has always been popular both among the credulous, who fill his shows and made him a multimillionaire, and the skeptical, who have made him a top target for debunking.
But none doubt his supernatural powers of self-promotion. Beginning with little but his trademark trick, Geller turned himself into a major entertainment enterprise, becoming a self-help guru, a TV personality, a sought-after motivational speaker and the author of 16 books. Today he lives in a mansion outside London.
Geller immediately shook things up when he arrived in Israel several weeks ago and pronounced himself able to wake up Ariel Sharon, the former prime minister who has been in a coma since January. He hasn't done so, he said, because Sharon's sons told him they weren't interested. When a serial rapist escaped police custody in Tel Aviv, throwing the country into a panic, Geller again appeared, offering to use his powers to get the man to turn himself in.
Geller's return has sparked something of a paranormal revival. A popular political talk show briefly abandoned the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to devote an episode to the supernatural. Another channel now has a show featuring a young entertainer who claims an abnormally developed sixth sense and who has mastered a smoldering and distinctly Gelleresque gaze.
The success of Geller's show might be due to the country's current atmosphere of disillusionment following the costly and inconclusive Lebanon war this summer, said Tom Segev, a prominent historian and journalist. "This atmosphere leads people to look for escape in things that can't be explained and to turn to people like Geller," Segev said.
Geller put it differently: "There is a tension in the psychic atmosphere here."
Yossi Elias, the show's chief editor, had a more prosaic explanation: It's entertaining.
"It's fun sometimes not to be able to explain everything," Elias said. "Uri is very charismatic, and it's fun for Israelis to get their rich and successful uncle back from abroad. The combination makes for good television."
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Weird World
Military radios kill garage door openers
By Michael Hampton
December 3, 2006
If you have a remote controlled garage door opener, you may need to get it replaced, and soon, before the military rolls out its new Land Mobile Radios which interfere with them.
One year ago today I told you about the Land Mobile Radio system, which the Department of Defense is rolling out in order to use radio spectrum more efficiently. The radios use frequencies between 380 and 399 MHz, frequencies which are licensed to DoD but which many garage door openers also use for their remote controls.
When the radio system is in use, garage door openers in the area will fail intermittently, or just stop working entirely, as has happened in Ottawa, Ontario, and most recently, in Colorado Springs, Colo.
The Cheyenne Mountain Air Station, which houses the North American Aerospace Defense Command, tested the system last week, interfering with garage door openers all across the area. "They have turned it off to be good neighbors," Air Force Capt. Tracy Giles told the Associated Press.
In general, effects from the transmissions would be felt only within 10 miles, but the Colorado Springs signal is beamed from atop 6,184-foot Cheyenne Mountain, which likely extends the range.
Holly Strack, who lives near the entrance to the facility, said friends in the neighborhood all had the same problem.
"I never thought my garage door was a threat to national security," she said. - Associated Press
The system has also been tested at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla.; the Defense Distribution Depot Susquehanna near New Cumberland, Pa.; and Ft. Detrick, Md., resulting in thousands of complaints, according to a 2005 Government Accountability Office report (PDF).
If the Air Force is unable to resolve the interference by retuning their system, homeowners would have to replace their garage door openers with devices that use different frequencies. Under Federal Communications Commission rules, unlicensed devices such as garage door openers must accept any interference received from licensed users of a frequency.
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A guide to email etiquette - Is there a correct way to start an e-mail? Is your digital correspondence riddled with faux pas?
Guy Adams
7 Dec 06
When John Debrett founded his eponymous toffs' "Bible" in 1769, he didn't have to contend with such modern delights as the e-mail, text message and video-conference. Yet if the legendary expert in Georgian manners had been born 250 years later, you get the feeling that he'd have used digital technology in the nicest possible fashion.
With this in mind, the publisher of Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage has dragged itself kicking and screaming into the 21st century, with its first ever fully comprehensive guide to modern office etiquette.
The latest edition of the firm's traditional guide to manners, Correct Form, contains an entire chapter on the subtleties of what might be described as "techno-politeness".
For longstanding Debrett's readers, who might normally use the book for advice on addressing the wife of a son of a baron, it is likely to be quite an eye-opener.
In addition to tables helping them speak the Queen's English (Salisbury should be pronounced "Sawls-bri", by the way) they will find chapters headed Teleconferencing and Mobile Phones.
Next to a chapter on how to address a King or Queen ("Your Royal Highness" for the first time and subsequently "Sir" or "Ma'am" as appropriate) lies a beginners' guide to text-messaging: "A quick and efficient method of communication, usually sent from one mobile phone to another."
The advice offered by Debrett's covers everything from the mundane to the potentially explosive. Readers are warned, for example, that: "Text messages cannot be secured, or the distribution limited. They can be stored indefinitely and propagated at whim." They are also sternly cautioned that: "It is unacceptable to read a text message sent to another person's mobile phone. It is equally unacceptable to send a text from another person's mobile phone."
Yet many of Correct Form's new chapters aim to offer common-sense advice to help committed Luddites come to terms with the onward march of Progress. "Teleconferencing is constrained by the lack of facial expressions and body language," reads one such entry. "It is therefore important to speak distinctly and keep the tone of voice modulated."
Although the revelation that Debrett's has embraced digital technology is likely to set moustaches twitching among traditional readers, the firm is adamant that it must move with the times.
"With all matters of etiquette, things change," says the company's chairman, Conrad Free. "Some of this technology hasn't been around for a long time, but it is still right that people use it in the correct manner. People still listen to Debrett's. Many people in the UK use Correct Form as a reference book on a regular basis, and as the voice of authority on how to behave, we have to evolve."
In general, the modern gent is advised to reply to an invitation or message in the medium in which it was originally sent, and if in doubt to err on the side of formality when communicating via new technology.
E-mail etiquette is an art in itself, yet the most socially intrusive, and therefore potentially dangerous, modern gadget is, unsurprisingly, the ubiquitous mobile telephone. "We've all sat there on a train or in a restaurant with people bellowing into a mobile phone, and it can be very annoying," says the book's editor, Jo Aitchison. "Equally, with ring tones, putting a phone on silent or vibrate is generally the way forward. If you really want a novelty ring tone, then I suppose you can have one, but for goodness sake answer it quickly, and we would advise having an alternative 'ring ring' one for work."
As a general rule of thumb, though, it's all about having consideration for others. In both "E-tiquette" and etiquette, she adds: "The number-one rule is to treat others as you would like to be treated."
Think Before You Use The 'BCC' Field
"Blind carbon copy", or "bcc", should seldom be used; it is deceptive to the primary recipient. Instead, the e-mail should be forwarded on to the third party, with a short note explaining any confidentiality, after its distribution. If blind copying is essential - for example, for a confidential document where all recipients must remain anonymous - senders should address the e-mail to themselves, and list all recipients as "bcc" recipients. The recipients will be aware that the full distribution list has been hidden from them.
Avoid Writing A Pointless Subject Field
The subject line is a summary of the content of the e-mail, and should alert the recipient. A well-written subject line will ensure that the e-mail gets the appropriate attention. It is also used for filing and retrieval purposes, so it is important that it accurately reflects the topic of the e-mail.
Should You Send A Letter Instead?
Written correspondence must never be replied to solely by e-mail. If an urgent response is necessary, then a telephone call or an e-mail is acceptable, but only provided it is followed up with the appropriate written correspondence.
Use Proper Punctuation
Ensure that correct punctuation is used, and do not succumb to the habit of using lower case letters throughout.
Don't Waste People's Time
As with letters, it is polite to reply to e-mails promptly. A few words suffice as a holding reply (and reassure the sender that the e-mail has been received) until a longer reply can be composed.
Include Your Contact Details
It is common to have a choice of several professional and informal signatures. Business e-mail signatures should supply relevant information, such as job title, company website address, telephone and e-mail address.
Salutation And Sign-Off
Suggested informal salutation: name only (ie, "Jon"). Informal sign-off: "See you soon". Formal salutation: "Dear Mr Davenport". Informal salutation: "Kind regards". Err towards the formal.
Refrain From Sarcasm
Unlike an interactive telephonic or face-to-face conversation, it is impossible to judge how the recipient will interpret any comments in an e-mail. The writing should therefore be kept brief, simple and to the point. Any sarcasm or subtle humour must be tempered, especially in messages sent between those who are less well-acquainted.
Correct Form is published by Debrett's, priced £17.99
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Tornado wrecks London street
7th December 2006
Daily Mail
It looks like a scene from the Blitz but this was the trail of devastation after a twister tore through northwest London today.
The side of one house was completely ripped off and the car parked outside destroyed after debris was thrown hundreds of feet into the air.
At least six people were injured as the high winds smashed windows, sending glass flying, and tiles were blown off roofs. Stunned residents said the aftermath of the twister looked like a "war zone".
One man was taken to hospital with a head injury and five people were treated at the scene for minor injuries and shock.
Residents told how they ran in terror from their houses in Whitmore Gardens and Chamberlayne Road in Kensal Rise as the tornado struck. Miko Adam said: "There were some lightning strikes and then suddenly, out of nowhere, this cyclone whipped up. It was terrifying. I was in my attic and had to crawl under the bed up there.
"It only lasted about 10 seconds but they were the longest of my life. I never thought I would experience this kind of weather in this country," he said.
"My neighbour Fiona had the entire side of her house ripped off. She ran out into the road after it happened and was screaming." Mr Adam said about six houses had been badly damaged and another 20 or so had missing chimney stacks, roof tiles and garage walls. On the two streets in the path of the tornado trees were uprooted, and cars flung about.
A spokesman for the Met office said: "From about 11am what we call a squall line has been passing through north-west London. "When the clouds are well ordered in a clear line it can lead to tornadic activity."
Tim Klotz, who works in entertainment and film and has recently moved to the street, said it happened right in front of his house.
He said: "It was like some sort of cyclone. I was actually in an attic room working at my desk on the computer and there was heavy rain and sleet and then the wind just really changed.
"I looked up through a skylight and debris was falling through the air. I heard what seemed like large, clay dominoes falling, which I think were roof tiles."
The 34-year-old, originally from New York, said it then went "a bit dark" so he went downstairs and heard a smash at the front of his house.
He said: "My house was very lucky because there was only a broken window and some damaged roof tiles, but another house had its roof peeled off and fences had come down along the street.
"It was right in front of my house. I must have been right in the middle of it. There are police and fire services here now but I cannot see any fires."
A spokesman for weather forecaster MeteoGroup said a band of strong storms came through, with Heathrow Airport recording gusts of 48 knots (55mph).
He said: "That is quite squally so residential areas might have had gusts of up to 60mph.
"It still seems to be very localised so it is either what is called a micro burst - a strong down-burst of wind - or a tornado, which is when the wind goes up."
Local resident Daniel Bidgood told BBC London 94.9: "I've witnessed my first tornado.
"I was in my living room and I heard a big crack of lightning and thunder, then as I went to the window I heard a sound which was like standing behind a jetliner.
"I could see a huge cloud rolling up the street, making this tremendous sound.
"I went to try to take a picture of it but a shower of debris smashed all the windows of my house."
Colin Brewer, who lives in nearby Trevelyan Gardens, told the BBC: "It was really, really incredible. All of a sudden I saw a swirl starting to form and then, it was amazing, but it then touched land.
"I then saw clumps of all sorts of things flying into the air."
He reported seeing trees collapsed in the road and people being hit on the head by flying objects.
ondon Fire Brigade said it had sent 11 fire crews and around 50 firefighters to the scene.
Fire engines from stations including Paddington, Soho, Kentish Town and Kensington fire stations were sent.
Dawn Butler, the Labour MP for Brent South, told Sky News: "We have to try and make sure that those people who are put out and not able to get their belongings that it does not have a detrimental effect upon their Christmas.
"But we also should be grateful that nobody has been fatally injured and that no lives are lost.
"This is a mini tornado and look at the damage it has done. It has done maximum damage." She believes the tornado is a sign that climate change is having an effect.
Ms Butler said: "This is a sign that we have to take it seriously and we have to look at how we live our lives. It is quite devastating." Emergency services are currently on the scene, securing the area.
Ms Butler added: "We have to leave it to the experts. I would suggest that nobody try to go back in. It is material belongings. Our first priority has to be that residents are safe and the area is secure. We don't want another disaster, we have already got one."
Ms Butler is set to talk to local hotels to try to ensure that displaced residents have shelter.
Showroom manager Darma Vaja said it was "like a minor explosion" and no- one realised what it was.
Recalling the moment when the tornado hit, he told Sky News: "There was a sudden gush of wind, it was quite powerful. The next minute it started clearing up and we saw the commotion outside.
"There were people walking down the street saying it was some sort of blast and did not know what had happened. Then the police told us.
"There was debris on both sides of the Chamberlayne Road. There were roof timbers on the floor and roof tiles all over the place. You could see on the school opposite some of the roof tiles had been blown off."
He spotted that the side wall of one house had been completely knocked out. He said: "It looked like it was about to be demolished, you can see the internals of the house very clearly. The pitched roof of the house had been completely blown away."
Maya Sendall, an actress, said she was on the phone to a friend when the tornado ripped up the street.
She said: "I carried on with my phone call but as it came past I was absolutely shrieking with shock. It sounded like a train going by and it shook the house.
"I saw the rubbish bin going by and my hedge flattened by about two or three feet. I did not hear too much of the crashing because the sound of the wind was astonishing.
"I was four houses away from having the roof ripped off basically. I just could not believe my luck."
Julia Haughton, 22, a student, heard the tornado from inside her boyfriend's house on Crediton Road.
She said: "There was a thunder clap and it felt like the house was falling in on us. It was really frightening. My boyfriend came running in saying it was a tornado. He ran out just as it had gone through our back yard and pulled down our neighbour's tree. When I came out all the windows were smashed."
The Association of British Insurers (ABI) said it was too early to estimate the cost of damage caused by today's tornado.
However, a spokesman said damage caused by the Birmingham tornado in 2005 ran into "tens of millions of pounds".
He said damage caused to homes and businesses today would be covered by buildings insurance. Most household policies would cover the cost of alternative accommodation, up to the policy's limit, if residents needed to move out while repairs were carried out.
Damage to vehicles would be covered under comprehensive motor insurance, the ABI said. A spokesman advised those who had suffered damage to contact their insurer for advice on making a claim.
He said people should arrange for temporary repairs to stop damage worsening if necessary, and to keep all receipts as they would form part of any insurance claim.
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Racer Recovers From Severed Head
MyFoxAtlanta
7 Dec 06
A 12-year-old boy whose head was severed from his neck in a racing car crash has made a miraculous recovery.
Chris Stewart suffered an internal decapitation - which kills or disables most people - during a 40mph smash on a track near Alton, Hampshire, in September.
Firefighters spent an hour and a half cutting him free from the wreckage of his 1000cc Mini after the accident.
The force of the crash had separated his head from his neck internally and detached his tongue at the root.
Surgeons re-attached his head to his spine with metal plates and bone grafts during a six-hour operation. His parents were warned he only had a 7% chance of survival.
However, after 19 days in intensive care and four weeks wearing a neck collar, he was able to swim, walk and exercise, although speaking and eating remain difficult.
He has now been allowed to leave leave Southampton General Hospital for weekend visits, and his delighted parents have hailed his amazing recovery.
Mum Debra, 40, said: "I was watching the race and I just felt physically sick. I could see the impact, how fast he was going.
"At first I wasn't really sure about the extent of his injuries. He had been knocked out but came round and stayed awake while they cut him out of the car.
"He is very lucky to be alive. It's a miracle really."
She said Chris, from Fareham, now wants to get back behind the wheel, adding: "He has no chance. I can't go through that again."
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Water has been flowing on Mars within past five years, Nasa says
Times Online
07/12/2006
Water has flowed on the surface of Mars within the past five years, according to evidence that suggests the Red Planet could be capable of harbouring life.
Images taken from an orbiting spacecraft have found two fresh features in the Martian landscape scientists think were formed by torrents of water flowing as recently as 2001.
The remarkable observations demonstrate for the first time that modern Mars may not be as dry and barren as is usually assumed. Wherever liquid water is found on Earth there is also life, and most scientists consider its presence a prerequisite for the existence of primitive extraterrestrial organisms. If it exists on Mars, it raises the very real prospect that life may not only have evolved there in the past, but could survive there today.
Ice has been detected at the Martian poles, and many of the planet's features are known to have been formed by water in the distant past. But there have been few firm indications that it is present today, in liquid form. That has changed with the latest images from Nasa's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. Between 1999 and last year, it took pictures of thousands of gullies, which have since been examined for significant change.
At two sites, the Terra Sirenum crater and an unnamed second crater in the Centauri Montes region, channels were seen in later images containing fresh, pale-coloured deposits that appear to have been left by flowing water.
At Terra Sirenum, the image changed dramatically between December 2001 and April 2005, and at Centauri Montes the changes happened between August 1999 and February 2004. The character of the deposits left by whatever cascaded briefly down these slopes, particularly the way it has flowed around solid obstacles, points firmly towards water rather than dust as the cause of the new features.
"The observations suggest that liquid water flowed on Mars during the past decade," Mike Malin, chief scientist for the camera that took the pictures, said. In each case, the amount of water that formed the features would have been approximately equivalent to five to ten swimming pools full, Michael Meyer, Nasa's lead scientist for Mars exploration, said. "On Mars, the atmospheric pressure is so low that it's going to be boiling as it comes off. You've heard of a smoking gun. This is a squirting gun." John Murray, of the Open University, one of the lead scientists on the European Mars Express spacecraft, agreed that the new channels appear to have been formed by water. He said: "It is a really interesting and tantalising find. There is so much evidence of past water flow, but if this is right then the same is happening at the present time.
"This is one more place in which we might possibly find life. If you have microorganisms frozen in water deposits just below the surface of Mars, then yes, these could be revived.
"It's a small possibility but it is a possibility: on Earth, microbes can exist for tens of thousands of years like that and still be revived."
The images represent a fitting swansong for the Mars Global Surveyor, which fell out of contact with mission control last month after ten years in orbit around the planet.
Philip Christensen, of Arizona State University, said: "Five years ago, we were talking about water on Mars five million years ago. Today we can honestly talk about water on Mars today. That . . . has really changed how we think about Mars and how we should think about exploring Mars."
Comment: And a "revelation" about "life" on Mars can't be far behind. They love to play their little games.
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